Woman Questions If She's Wrong For Breaking Up With Her Boyfriend For 'Constantly Downplaying Women's Experiences'
His blatant sexism was a red flag she could no longer ignore.
Photoroyalty | Shutterstock Breakups are always difficult, no matter how needed or overdue they are.
One 27-year-old woman broke up with her boyfriend because of his misogynistic attitude and lack of emotional intelligence. Despite the overwhelming red flags, she is questioning if she was too harsh.
A woman broke up with her boyfriend for 'constantly downplaying women's experiences.'
She explained in her since-deleted Reddit post, that she and her boyfriend Luke had been dating for almost two years.
"Things were fine at first. He's smart, funny, has a decent job. On paper, he's the whole package," she wrote. "But over time I started noticing this pattern where he'd completely dismiss my feelings."
For example, whenever she told her boyfriend that something upset her, he accused her of being "dramatic," and attempted to gaslight her. He never took the time to understand why she was upset.
"He just didn't seem to care about how I felt about anything," she admitted.
The red flags only got worse, and things came to a head at a friend's dinner party.
“One of the women there was talking about how hard it was for her to get ahead in her male-dominated job,” the Redditor recounted. “Without missing a beat, Luke goes ‘Maybe if women stop playing the victim and worked harder they’d get promoted.’ He said it like it was a fact with zero care about how she felt.”
Despite his dismissal, the Pew Research Center found that around 50% of women working in male-dominated workplaces report experiencing at least a small problem related to their gender impacting their ability to succeed, with around 15% stating it's a major issue.
Luke's response was incredibly disrespectful, yet when his girlfriend confronted him about it, he expressed zero remorse. He doubled down his comment and claimed that if the woman was a hard worker then she would've been promoted, completely ignoring the other factors involved, including sexism and misogyny.
His comment was not a one-off, and the woman began to notice a pattern of him completely downplaying women's experiences.
Anytime she tried to bring up a point related to sexism, he brushed her off, claiming she was "brainwashed by feminist propaganda."
Srdjan Randjelovic | Shutterstock
"His attitude towards women in general just sucked, but the worst part was how he acted like I was the problem for even mentioning it," she admitted.
Seeing their obvious communication issue, the woman suggested therapy to her boyfriend, resulting in yet another incentive comment.
"He laughed and said, 'Therapy? That's for weak people who can't handle their own issues,'" she recalled. "When I told him I needed him to be more emotionally available, he looked at me in the eye and said, 'Why do you need me to be all emotional? I’m not a woman. You deal with your own feelings.'"
That was the last straw, and the woman immediately ended their relationship.
Although the woman questioned whether she was wrong to break up with him, commenters assured her that she was better off without him.
"You did the right thing, honey," one commenter promised. "Stay strong, and one day, you'll look back on this and give yourself the high five you so deserve!"
"Honestly, [it] sounds like you dodged a bullet, and maybe even the whole arsenal," another user wrote. "If he thinks a 'great relationship' means invalidating your feelings and ignoring basic respect, let him have that with someone else who won’t mind that their boyfriend missed the empathy memo entirely."
Ultimately, their relationship was not worth fixing, and she was right to end it. He is misogynistic and clearly doesn't hold women in high regard. Frankly, being in a relationship with a man who holds that much hatred for women is terrifying.
Imagine she didn't break up with him, and they continued their relationship and eventually got married. If they chose to start a family and had a daughter, she would be forced to grow up in a household with a father who hated her, her mother, and all women.
She would likely struggle with her self-esteem and confidence because of her father's blatantly misogynistic and discriminatory remarks. No girl deserves that.
Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.