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Is It Really Embarrassing to Have a Boyfriend in 2025? With the wrong man, absolutely yes. It is.

Women everywhere have read this question and felt something stir. Because in 2025, it does feel embarrassing to have a boyfriend, not because love itself is shameful, but because of the collective disappointment that often comes with loving men today.

You can be in a relationship that looks loving and stable, and yet carry a quiet fear that it could all change by tomorrow. That uncertainty is not paranoia; it is a learned survival instinct. Modern love has become a balancing act between trust and vigilance. You can never feel entirely safe in it. You can never truly rest. Somewhere deep inside, you know that many men have made it difficult to trust that love will protect you. And only a rare few have proven that they can love with the same sincerity, depth, and emotional consistency that most women do.

It is easy to take a woman for granted, perhaps because her nature is to nurture. She feels deeply, forgives easily, and holds on longer than she should. The world has long justified this imbalance by claiming that men and women are “wired differently,” that their emotional patterns are governed by biology. But in practice, it is women who adapt, who accommodate, who study men to understand their silences and soften their sharpness. Women stretch their empathy wide enough to hold both love and disappointment, until even pain begins to feel like devotion.

Yet the truth remains: it is not having a boyfriend that is embarrassing. It is having a boyfriend who performs love instead of living it. A man who knows the script, the gestures, the words, the public display, but cannot follow through in private where love actually counts.

Modern dating has only made this performance easier. Micro-cheating has become normalized, digital infidelity disguised as harmless engagement. There are now infinite ways to betray someone quietly. A reaction here, a comment there, a private message that blurs boundaries. The world rewards attention, and loyalty has become outdated. What is truly humiliating is not just being cheated on, but being made to feel naïve for believing in exclusivity.

Because when a man gives other women signals, it is not only you he disrespects. It is you he embarrasses. It is your dignity that becomes collateral in his quest for validation. You become the woman others pity, the one whose partner performs devotion publicly but desecrates it privately.

It is the quiet betrayals that erode you: the half-truths, the convenient omissions, the late-night “friendships,” the messages sent under false names. The lies so absurd they almost insult your intelligence, but so consistent they begin to rewrite your sense of reality.

It is the emotional affair that lingers for months while you keep breaking yourself, hoping he will see how much you love him. You keep showing up, keep forgiving, keep hoping, and he keeps taking. You plead for honesty from a man who takes pride in how well he can hide. That is the humiliation, loving someone who turns deceit into sport.

He builds a dream for you, then abandons you to carry it alone. You give everything, your peace, your energy, your stability, for a man who swears he is “trying.” You stay, because love has always been portrayed as endurance. But love cannot save you when you are the only one fighting to keep it alive.

And then, one day, you end up in an emergency room at four in the morning, bleeding and terrified, and he does not come until the next evening. You ask him once, just once, to come with you to change your stitches. He chooses instead to attend an event where his rumored affair partner is waiting. Something like that is not just painful; it is dehumanizing.

You sit at home, watching it unfold in real time. You learn that he tells her you were upset he went, and she weaponizes your pain, mocks you publicly for trying to “stop him from supporting noble causes.” And he lets her. He stands by silently while others ridicule you.

What could be more humiliating than loving someone who allows the world to harm you, and says nothing? What could be more painful than realizing you have been dying for him in silence while he watched, unmoved?

Over time, the dismissal becomes internal. You start silencing yourself. You start thinking maybe you overreacted. Maybe you were too sensitive. Maybe you deserved it. You learn to gaslight yourself into numbness.

That is what women mean when they say it is embarrassing to have a boyfriend in 2025. It is not love that embarrasses us. It is the exhaustion of loving someone who makes you question your worth, your perception, your sanity.

It is embarrassing to love a man who was never going to love you back. It is embarrassing to be loyal to someone who would not defend you or keep you safe. It is embarrassing to let someone dismantle your selfhood while convincing yourself it is love.

The embarrassment does not lie in the emotion itself, but in how recklessly it is handled by those who have never had to earn it.

So yes, maybe it is embarrassing to have a boyfriend now, not because women are bitter or cynical, but because we have learned to see love for what it truly is in this generation: fragile, unreliable, and often undeserving of the devotion we pour into it.

And that is why so many women choose to be single, not out of pride, but out of peace. Because the most humiliating thing of all is not being alone. It is being unseen by the one person you trusted to see you completely.

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*This is fiction, based purely on a dream.

Let’s call him Mr. T.

We met years ago, in that strange in-between time when I was half healing and half pretending I already had. He messaged me out of nowhere and asked me out. He was already doing well for himself. I was looking for stability, or at least the illusion of it. Saying yes didn’t feel reckless. It felt like an attempt at starting over.

He picked me up in a black Benz, the kind that makes a quiet statement. The car smelled faintly of oud. Loud Hindi music filled the air as he drove, his fingers tapping against the steering wheel. I remember thinking he must be the type who comes alive at parties, the kind who dances without caring who’s watching. The music was blaring though, far too loud for the car’s terrible speakers, and for a moment I wondered if he heard anything at all beyond himself.

He took me to a dim, lifeless café. We shared shisha and small talk, both hollow. He talked mostly about his work, his travels, his own charm. I smiled politely and realized I wasn’t interested. There was something performative about him, something that left no room for anyone else. I never called him again after that night.

Years passed. I heard he was seeing someone new. She was beautiful.. I remember thinking good for her, then wondering if she saw in him what I had seen. I was lonely, restless, and maybe a little self-destructive. So I texted him.

He replied instantly. Some people never change.

We went out again. This time it wasn’t dinner or shisha. We drove until the streets were empty, stopping in a ghostly patch of moonlight where even the air felt still. Same car. Same faint oud scent.

And then I did something that, even in the dream, felt unreal. I leaned over the hood of his car and let him. It was raw and detached, like watching myself play a role I didn’t audition for. When it was over, I sent a clip to his girlfriend from a fake account, which I had taken of us, with the message, ‘come get your man’.

Pure evil. The kind I’d never even imagine doing in real life.

He found out. Of course he did.

That evening, the roads were heavy with traffic, headlights streaking across puddles like restless thoughts. I followed him to the same spot where it happened. He was standing outside his car, angry, pacing. I hid across the street, watching.

And suddenly, in the logic of dreams, I was holding a gun.

I fired first, missing him on purpose. The sound was deafening. He froze for a moment, then pulled out a gun of his own. He fired back. The bullets cut through the air, hitting the ground near my feet. I dropped, feeling the vibration of each shot echo through the earth. I wasn’t sure if he was warning me or trying to kill me. After the third bullet, I decided it didn’t matter.

I aimed at his chest and fired.

He fell.

The silence after was unbearable.

I got up and walked up to his car and drove away. My hands were trembling against the leather steering wheel. My reflection in the rearview mirror looked like a stranger.

As I drove past police officers directing traffic, I could feel my pulse in my throat. I kept thinking there was no way I’d get away with this. There were cameras everywhere, even in the car. I wondered why I had done it, why I had gotten into his car, why I hadn’t just walked away.

But then another thought crossed my mind, maybe the longer I delayed turning myself in, the longer I could pretend I was still free.

So I kept driving.

The night air felt heavy. My eyes started to blur with exhaustion. All I could think about was my bed, the way the sheets felt, the quiet comfort of sleep. I knew I’d never feel that again.

That was my last thought before I woke up.

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