Joseph Jarrett

It doesn’t matter if you’re gay, straight, or something in between. We’ve all heard it said: “It’s not you, it’s me.” There may not be a more frustrating line than that one. Especially since it always seems to come after the dude spent weeks or months making you feel like his top priority. Men have a weird love for toying with the heart of an emotionally stable and available person. It draws them in, like blood in the water draws a shark in. They wait for the right moment to sink their teeth in.

            When I was a younger adult, I used to think that maybe it was just the population of gay men in Jacksonville that was problematic. Then, the same phenomenon happened in Dallas. And in Miami. And in Chicago. When I started using Tinder on my layovers as a flight attendant, I had the realization that there was a globally devastating level of emotionally unavailable gay men.

            For a long time, I believed that I was the problem. Maybe I invested too much in the “what we could be,” and ignored the “what we are.” Maybe my standards are just too insanely high, even though I know the bar has been on the ground since the dawn of time. The more and more that I have dealt with these new romances ending so quickly, the more I have realized that dating will make you extremely jaded. I have always imagined that life is a rom-com movie playing out scene by scene. At some point, the idiotic men will fade away from the storyline when the main love interest comes into play. If only that’s how it actually works. I’ve tried my hardest to keep the rom-com vibes alive. I once gave two different passengers on my flights my phone number written on an airplane napkin. One never texted me, and the other one ended up being a very bad fit for me. When will it be over?

            Here’s the scoop: the second we realize a man is emotionally unavailable, we start to see just how problematic he has been throughout the entire course of the so-called relationship. While you could say most of the guys I talked about in Mishaps & Mistakes match this description, I want to offer some examples from pop culture.

1. Oliver in Call Me by Your Name might just be one of the infamous examples of a problematic man. His sexuality doesn’t even matter in this case; he’s just evil. Armie Hammer, who is also not the most solid example of what to be, does a phenomenal job of portraying how men who know they’re hot and charming will ruin your life. Elio was incredibly young and emotionally immature when he fell for Oliver, but that does not alleviate the pain he caused Elio and viewers/readers of the story.
2. Connor Walsh in How to Get Away with Murder made fans from all walks of life swoon and fall head over heels. The budding lawyer with gorgeous features and a matching un-humble persona was so captivating and elusive. But he was actually really quite awful to people, especially Oliver. Spoiler alert – it actually pissed me off that Oliver didn’t leave his ass in the end.

I could list out a lot of other problematic men, but this post would probably fuel their ego if they saw it. I can’t afford for that to happen. And, after all, they aren’t real, so it won’t be an issue. It’s simply the principle behind it.

I’ve had a million and one crushes in my lifetime, but none have ever led to fruition. I’m about one failed talking stage away from giving up and marrying one of my girls instead. At least we’d be happy. Right? Let me know what your experience with this kind of partner was like and how you recovered from it!