In Support of Crazy Ex-Girlfriends

Raise your hand if you’ve been in a relationship with someone who mentions they had a “crazy ex-girlfriend”. If you’re a woman who dates cis men, you have definitely heard this before, probably a few times from a few different guys, and I’ll guarantee that no matter how great of a girlfriend you think you were, there’s a man out there saying you were his crazy ex.

How did we get here?

To answer that, I’ll share a discussion I had with my husband. We were talking about how guys will say anything to get a girl in bed. I had a situation where I was seeing someone who was moving in a few weeks. I knew, going into this, that it would be a short lived summer romance. I was 100% game. I wasn’t invested in this person and knew I might have to see them at some point in my future (the down side of mutual friends) so let’s not make it awkward. Fast forward to date number 2 and being told that I would absolutely LOVE the area he’s going to move to and that when I visit, we’d do all these cool things. Sure, I could have stopped him and said, “No dude, it’s okay. I know what this is. You don’t need to talk me into hooking up with you”. I was in my late 20s during this time and had gone through it enough in my earlier years. I wasn’t naive. But I was annoyed. Since we had only a short time together, I didn’t want to rock the boat. When he said things like that, I tucked them away in a “Sure, if that happens, that might be cool” file somewhere in my head, but not believing it would. Then, after hooking up, he still tried to sell me on this future together. He talked up our future until he moved and I never heard from him again. So why continue the charade? You’ve already been in my pants so your goal was fulfilled – why continue? Jacob’s argument was mostly along the lines of, “That’s just what guys do because we think it’s what you want to hear”.

Cool.

So if it’s just “what guys do”, why are we the crazy ones?

Women are consistently punished for believing men when they say something. You say we’re going to be exclusive and then sleep with other women but we’re the ones crazy for getting angry when we find out. You say that you want a future with us, despite not at all wanting that, but we’re psychos because we believed you. All the lies you say to us, you brush off because we’re being totally crazy for wanting to be with you. You turn our good nature against both us and yourself. We no longer believe that gut feeling inside of us.

Then, when you’re good and ready to settle down with a woman, you’re angry because she doesn’t believe a word you say.

Ironic, isn’t it? We spend years being lied to by men, being called crazy for believing it and being upset (both at the guys in question and at ourselves, for believing them), then called crazy again for not believing men. You wonder why women can’t just chill the fuck out sometimes. This is one of the many reasons why.

We’re groomed into no longer believing what our gut tells us. At a young age, we’re lied to by guys and then humiliated for believing the lies. And it doesn’t just happen once or with one guy. We begin to really believe that our gut has no idea what it’s doing because that feeling that we originally got, that little nugget of “huh, I don’t know if I believe this guy” was squashed down by some dude who didn’t actually care at all about us. After happening SO many times, our gut feeling just dies a little and it takes YEARS to get it back again. It’s 2022, not 1822. You can absolutely find a woman who just wants to have sex, not a deep meaningful relationship. Go find that woman and leave the woman who wants a serious relationship to the men who also want that. It’s really not that hard. And if you don’t know what you want, hold off on the lies. If that’s a hard ask, you should probably seek therapy.

When I look back at all the guys who were dicks to me in the past, I’m infuriated because I know that it’s still happening. I know that my niece is going to go through this. I know that if I have daughters, they’ll go through this. Because the “crazy ex-girlfriend” narrative is so strong. Are there actual women out there who took it a wee bit too far? Sure. Any sort of violence is not warranted (barring self-defense) – including destroying items. But believing that we’re in a serious relationship because that is all you led us to believe and then being very upset afterwards when we find out that it was a pack of lies? Not crazy. That’s actually… normal. Like oh, boo hoo, the girl you were seeing is crying and has erased you off social media. What a psycho. I don’t even know how you were able to stand her. Poor you. Barf.

I want to say all the things I’ve always wanted to say to those guys who would never listen because omg I’m so crazy… Go fuck yourself. No seriously. You are absolutely the problem – not the women. You have stacked up so many crazy ex-girlfriends that you really need to understand that you’re the common denominator here. If you had been honest with us, most of us would absolutely still have hooked up with you because, SHOCKER, women like sex too (it’s alarming how many men think that women don’t like sex and think they have to talk us into it due to how much we don’t like having sex but that’s a whole other conversation that needs to be had and boy oh boy am I not prepared to go there). Also, why are you calling women crazy because they like really liked you and wanted to be with you? I mean, yeah, I’ll agree that we’re crazy for wanting to even date you in the first place but honestly the bar is so low for cis men right now that I think you might just stumble over the gap the bar made while going into the center of the Earth. So maybe, just maybe, remember that that girl you want to hook up with is an actual literal human being. Unfortunately, dudes seem to need this kind of motivation buuuuut… Remember that your mom was a girl once upon a time and she cried over a douchebag like you lying to her. So congrats. You just made your mom cry. She would be so proud.

You don’t owe anyone an explanation on why you want to dip out on a semi-formed or very newly formed relationship. Fine. Be a ghost. But, if you sit on your throne of “I don’t have to explain myself to you, person I’ve been dating/seeing” then we don’t have to tone down or explain our emotions. We’re freely able to cry and be upset, just as you are freely able to just disappear from our life. You don’t get to have your cake and eat it too, asshole.

So before you go on about your crazy ex-girlfriend. Take a beat. Was she “crazy” because you led her to believe that you actually wanted to be with her (when you knew you didn’t) and she was upset after the fact? Yes? Good. Now go find a therapist, breath work coach, yoga class, meditation class, backpacking trip, WHATEVER, just go work on yourself and start again, with another woman and remember not to be a big fat liar this time.

Because someday, your pants really will be on fire 🙂