Sign up for a free recipe e-book →

Clarissa's Blog

A Boyfriend of 5 Years

Published by

Clarissa

on

It is my very strong opinion that “a boyfriend of five years” deserves everything that’s coming to him. He strung this poor woman along for half a decade. She owes him nothing. Yes, the famous soccer player will discard her in a couple of weeks. But she’ll get a lot of expensive outfits out of him, which will help her in her search for a normal guy who might actually offer something beyond the status of a forever girlfriend.

Seriously, it’s like people who are commenting on the situation are incapable of hearing themselves. “A boyfriend of five years!! How could she?” Imagine the daily humiliation of that young woman. Everybody raising their eyebrows and giggling. What was she supposed to do? Wait around for five more years? Maybe then the dude would finally choose her? Or not, who knows.

Curiously, it is the exact same people who keep bitching about low birth rates that think this is a great life plan for a young woman. Sit there waiting for God knows what until it becomes way too late to have children.

Before I left for Florida, I had dinner with a friend who is the mother of a 24-year-old woman. This friend is politically very, very liberal. She is a fellow college professor. She said, “Josh proposed last week. Of course, they’ve been seeing each other for almost two years. There is no chance Emma [her daughter] would continue the relationship if a proposal was not coming at this point.” My friend might be as liberal as they get, but I know her well, and she would have personally made beef hash out of Josh if he had tried to turn her daughter into “a girlfriend of five years.” My point is that you don’t need to be a reactionary to notice that this is a bad situation for a young woman.

“Women delay childbirth until it’s too late. How horrible!” Yeah, because “faithful boyfriends of five years” are wasting their lives. It’s exactly like that character in Jem Calder’s new novel. After a twelve-year engagement, he kicks the fiancée to the curb and picks up an eager twenty-year-old at a bar.

And by the way, I’ve seen a variation on the posted comment in my feed on X in five different languages from at least three dozen accounts, all run by men. Who are either clinical morons or putting on a very convincing imitation.

19 responses to “A Boyfriend of 5 Years”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?

    Walnut

    Like

    Reply
    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      The “5 year boyfriend” didn’t get the milk, though. Unless by milk you mean sex which, honestly, is in very large supply these days, so who cares. They both wasted their time while he got humiliated in the end. And she’ll be humiliated by the athlete soon enough.

      Like

      Reply
      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        Of course it means sex. This guy got everything he wanted from her including a no strings attached dissolution. I’m sure he’s crying all the way to the club. Why would he feel humiliated? If you drive a Corvette for free for five years without paying anything and then it’s gone, whats the downside from his perspective? How is it a waste of time? Easy come easy go. Clearly he didn’t revere her. I’m not endorsing any of this but it’s obvious you don’t grasp how a young man like this will view it.

        Walnut

        Like

        Reply
        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Neither you nor I know anything about this boyfriend, including whether he is real. He’s not participating in this discussion, and it’s not him that I’m responding to. I’m responding to the comment that I linked and dozens of similar comments. Go on X, and you will easily find them. In these comments, as I already explained in great detail, male authors invariably position the boyfriend as a victim in the situation. There’s a huge wave of male compassion for this guy on social media. The point I’m making is that he doesn’t deserve compassion. A guy like this will always be cheated on in the most egregious ways, and he will forever fail to understand why this keeps happening.

          Like

          Reply
  2. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    And then people look at me like I’m nuts when I say dating in your 20s, for women, should look like a lightning elimination round gameshow. Too many people treat it like the end goal is to “have a boyfriend” instead of “get married.” Do they believe they’re not worth marrying? Or is this a classic case of taking the short-term payoff at the expense of the long-term goal?

    The five-year boyfriend is EXTREMELY expensive in opportunity cost.

    Everybody has (or should have) their list of dealbreakers– and not everybody’s list is the same. The goal of dating should be to find out as quickly as possible if a potential boyfriend has any of those dealbreakers, and if so cut ties and keep looking immediately. Don’t waste your time or his. It’s the most compassionate thing you can do.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      RIGHT?? When I was looking for a potential mate in my 20s, forget 5 years. My cutoff was 3 months. I had absolutely no problem with being single for long stretches of time because the idea of putting up with a dead-end relationship was intolerable. If I know this is not it, why stick around?

      The problem is that a whole culture has been created around pretending that women should have absolutely no problem with these setups. Women don’t even know how to verbalize it because it makes them look outdated, not cool, and like harpies. As a result, men sincerely talk about a good boyfriend of five years without a shadow of suspicion passing through their mind that there might be anything wrong with that concept.

      It will never stop being fascinating that all of this female liberation we have experienced led to a place where women can’t verbalize their most basic needs and have to pretend that such needs don’t even exist. We have been liberated to try to be like men. We will always fail at that task because we’re not men, so we have been liberated to fail. The liberation of women to pursue specifically female goals and fulfill the specifically female needs will have to take us in the exact opposite direction.

      I am beyond annoyed that the exact same people would complain about low birth rates and, in the same breath, express support for men like this boyfriend.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply
      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        Right? Who do they think should be having all these babies? Single women?

        Before I met my husband, the max number of (completely casual, daytime lunch/bowling) dates I ever went on with the same person was: 3. Then I found out he was a congenital Catholic (dealbreaker for me, maybe not for you) and let him go. Most guys I knew were not gonna work *before they ever asked me out* so it never got beyond a polite refusal. And that meant that when I finally did meet my husband: I was available. Five year girlfriend: how many eligible men never asked you out because you weren’t available?

        And yeah, that meant I was totally OK with being single for a long time. I’d worked out that I was actually OK with being single forever if I didn’t meet anybody appropriate, and I was OK with getting married if I did, but I was NOT OK with screwing around in a bunch of precarious non-committing relationships where kids and shared finances would be risky and stupid. I didn’t want to be a Perpetual Roommate.

        ethyl

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply
        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          A huge mistake women make is fulfilling all of the duties of a wife without being a wife. If he’s not offering to be your husband, then don’t act like a wife towards him. I never cooked a meal for a guy before meeting my husband. I’m a fantastic cook, but I kept that to myself. I did not provide the emotional support that the wife provides. I didn’t organize anybody’s social life. I most certainly never offered to clean anybody’s living space. It’s simply strange to me that a guy who offers nothing but dating would be getting a quasi-wife in return for this very minimal offer.

          And the worst part is that this five-year boyfriend, who doesn’t believe in marriage and isn’t sure when he’s going to be ready to have children, will meet a woman he really likes and will be married with a baby on the way in under eight months. I’ve seen this many times. These seemingly indecisive guys make up their minds extremely fast once they meet the right woman.

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply
      2. Avatar
        Anonymous

        If you’re talking about me, I’m not supporting this guy at all. I’m simply explaining his mindset. We use to say girls like this were sitting on a goldmine but were to stupid to know it. “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.” Why would any man respect them? Has it ever occurred to you that women’s lib and abortion were actually promoted by men? Hugh Hefner was pushing this stuff back in the 50’s. Women in the workforce meant cheap labor and high taxes. The breakdown of traditional mores meant more government control and power. Cheap easy sex requires cheap easy abortions. But just as in the beginning, the power to say no rested with the woman.

        Walnut

        Like

        Reply
        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Is it possible that the image in the post is not showing in your app?

          I can no longer embed X posts. I’m responding to the X post in the image.

          Like

          Reply
      3. oldcowboy3 Avatar
        oldcowboy3

        “It will never stop being fascinating that all of this female liberation we have experienced led to a place where women can’t verbalize their most basic needs and have to pretend that such needs don’t even exist. ind a sufficient number of suitable matesig trouble find a sufficient number of suitable mates.”  

        This not rocket science, there are consequences for decades of preferential hiring programs — because necessarily, every such position requires that males have been removed from that competition. Consequentially, there must be fewer successful males, basically “the feminist chickens can no longer roost” ;-D

        https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-lost-generation/

        Like

        Reply
        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Honestly, I’m not seeing any women sitting there alone, unable to scare up a boyfriend. But I am seeing these aimless relationships that never result in marriage. A former student told me that a boyfriend of four years offered that she move to Texas with him. She asked, “Are we going to get married? Is this going anywhere?” The boyfriend responded that he’s too young to think about it. She is not a moron, so she ended the relationship on the spot.

          In all of the posts about the poor boyfriend of five years, there are endless comments by women pointing out the exact issue that I’m talking about. And the same number of comments by men who seem unable to comprehend what this is even about. Society, hiring preferences, this, that, and everything else. All this except for talking about an issue over which they have full control, which is that women are not going to sit around waiting until late middle age for a “good boyfriend of 35 years” finally to mature. They think they got dumped because of their height, their looks, their size, or their earnings. When in reality, it’s their desire for the Peter Pan lifestyle until retirement age.

          Like

          Reply
          1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
            oldcowboy3

            Kid, interfering with employment positions is only one of the problems. But whether you like it or not, reducing the number of suitable males cannot help to interfere with normal courtship. That is serious, but realize that “liberated” no-fault divorce and court ordered custody, with oftime resultant financial ruin, is now fully understood by many young men, they saw what happened to their dads and uncles. My nephews are definitely affected, divorced, and very unlikely to remarry. And then there is the current financial situation, I foolishly hesitated to marry until graduation, the lack of confidence is far, far worse today.

            Like

            Reply
            1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
              oldcowboy3

              but interfere ;-D

              Like

              Reply
  3. mitchellporter Avatar
    mitchellporter

    She says it’s all made up

    Like

    Reply
    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      It doesn’t matter what these people actually did. The point is that there’s an enormous reaction in the vein that this boyfriend model is a good one when it’s terrible.

      Like

      Reply
      1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
        oldcowboy3

        Clarissa

        Kid, I for one was certainly not saying that it is good, in fact it may well be FUBAR, was just trying to explain why some of it was happening. And while some impacts, such as effective contraception, simply happened, much of the moral societal decay in the past three generations was very deliberate and very, very nasty…so one cannot rationally blame current young men for the shitty hand that too many were dealt.

        “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

        C.S. Lewis

        Like

        Reply

Leave a comment

A conservative literary critic and college professor

Recent posts