NYT- Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back.

quote:

---

We knew what worked. We knew how to frame a face, a gesture, a moment of implication — just enough to ignite fantasy and open a wallet. I came to understand, in exact terms, what cues tempt the average 18-to-36-year-old cis heterosexual man. What drew him in. What kept him coming back. It wasn’t intimacy. It wasn’t mutuality. It was access to simulation — clean, fast and frictionless. In that world, there’s no need for conversation. No effort. No curiosity. No reciprocity. No one’s feelings to consider, no vulnerability to navigate. Just a closed loop of consumption. What struck me most wasn’t the extremity of the content; it was the emotional vacancy behind it. The drift. The way many men had quietly withdrawn from intimacy and vulnerability. Not with violence or resistance, but with indifference. They weren’t sitting across from someone on a Saturday night, trying to connect. They were scrolling. Dabbling. Disappearing behind firewalls, filters and curated personas. And while they disappeared, women continued to gather. To tend. To notice who wasn’t arriving — and to show up anyway.

---

quote:

---

That dynamic has quietly collapsed. We have moved into an era where many men no longer seek women to impress other men or to connect across difference. They perform elsewhere. Alone. They’ve filtered us out.

---

quote:

---

There was a time, not so long ago, when even a one-night stand might end with tangled limbs and a shared breakfast. When the act of staying the night didn’t announce a relationship, just a willingness to be human for a few more hours. Now, even that kind of unscripted contact feels rare. We’ve built so many boundaries that we’ve walled off the very moments that make connection memorable. And frankly, morning sex is often the best sex. Sometimes you even get a side of eggs before you disappear from their bed and their life forever. This idea that vulnerability is a threat instead of an invitation has created a culture of hesitation, of men circling intimacy but never entering it. And the result is thousands of tiny silos. Everyone performing closeness, but no one making a move that binds. Isolation. Loneliness. A hunger for contact that has nowhere to land.

---

quote:

---

But here’s what’s real: We never needed you to be perfect. We needed you to be with us. Not above. Not muted. Not masked. Just with. And you can still come back. Not by becoming someone else, but by remembering what connection feels like when it’s honest and slow. When it’s earned and messy and sacred. We’re still here, those of us who are willing to cocreate something true. We are not impossible to please. We’re not asking for performances. We are asking for presence. For courage. For breath and eye contact and the ability to say, “I’m here. I don’t know how to do this perfectly, but I want to try.” Come back. Not with flowers or fireworks, but with willingness. With your whole, beautiful, imperfect heart. We’re still here. And we haven’t stopped hoping.

---