Question for the Dating Culture

I hope you can think my naming this post "Question for the Dating Culture" is funny.

Let's get right into it. Men will really say anything to get you to be with them. Even if they aren't even remotely ready to get married, if they see you're good for them, they'll whip up something to keep you with them. My friend and I started dating these guys a couple years ago, right. Both of us laid down strong boundaries regarding timelines, financial expectations, and commitment levels. Both of the men we started dating claimed to be on the same page as us. Said they wanted the same things. Slowly and with enough time in between, it became clear that they both just said that to bide their time. They knew they had wonderful, talented, well raised, and successful women in front of them and said whatever it took to keep us there. They thought that if they said the right things and tried to catch up quickly enough, they could get away with it. Unfortunately, they couldn't. So, they turned to gaslighting and taking advantage of our empathy to bide their time. It worked for a while. Now, two years in, they're both out of time and learning what it means to be with someone who knows that a boyfriend is NOT a husband. 

Once there was a time where a “boyfriend” as the term exists now, didn't really exist. A time where the only real commitments between adults were engagement and marriage. Now, me and my homegirls have guys asking us to date them for years, live with them before marriage, and even call them our "partners”. Like…why are heterosexual cisgendered men asking us to low key have the kind of relationships queer people were forced to have before they got proper civil rights. I can't stand this “partner” stuff either. Can straight men that fear commitment PLEASE stop appropriating queer culture because they know they're too old to introduce someone as their girlfriend, but too emotionally incompetent to propose, so they can call their girlfriend of 3 years their wife or at least fiancé.

"This sh*t is bananas! B a n a n a s." Gwen Stefani (Hollaback Girl)

I tell mine all the time that the level of commitment he gives is the level of commitment he gets. This really makes him furious. Which is insane to me because if you're that upset, lock it down? He wants me to not talk to any men that could potentially be interested in me. Like…that's a husband request, dear. Why does he think he can ask that at boyfriend status? Because these men are deluded. They've lost the plot. 

I've all this to say about my findings, but no plans to solve the problem. Where to start?