Why do we keep dating men? Heterofatalism and straight desire
An exploration of the paradox at the heart of straight dating: we know the system is broken, we expect disappointment, yet desire refuses to die – turning heterofatalism into a survival instinct
What is heterofatalism: the doom, the desire, the delusion shaping modern straight dating
Heterofatalism is a collective admission that heterosexual relationships are a rigged game: exhausting, unequal, and weirdly inevitable. It takes heteropessimism’s eye-rolling “men are disappointing” vibe and turns it into full-blown fatalism—this isn’t a bad date; this is the system. A fatalistic acceptance that heterosexuality produces emotional exhaustion. Cheaply made, quickly damaged, infinitely replaceable. In short, a culture of “this is just how it is.”
Who are the heterofatalists: women who desire men but no longer believe in the narrative
The concept derives from heteropessimism, first articulated by writer Asa Seresin in his 2019 essay On Heteropessimism for The New Inquiry, where he described a growing tendency among straight women to voice their disappointment with men as a kind of ironic self-awareness.
Phrases like “men are trash” or “I wish I weren’t straight” became shorthand for a collective — a way to acknowledge the failures of heterosexuality without actually opting out of it. What started as a feminist diagnosis gradually blended into meme culture, emotional shorthand, and a backlash against the romantic scripts that no longer matched lived reality. It’s a meme-friendly audit of heterosexuality’s emotional footprint.
Why consistency feels suspicious: the emotional instability built into contemporary straight dating
Consistency feels rare, luxurious, slightly suspicious. Emotional inconsistency has become the standard operating mood of heterosexual dating — not because people are malicious, but because no one knows how to regulate anything anymore. Consistency now feels like an intimacy kink — rare, luxurious, slightly suspicious.
App culture has trained people to approach intimacy with the same emotional posture they bring to clearing notifications: quick and detached. Adults orbit each other indefinitely without ever risking sincerity. The love child of emotional minimalism and commitment-phobia — flexible, collapsible, and designed for short-term use. Consumption isn’t just material; it has become emotional. A risky exposure, like sending a nude without the right lighting.
Exclusivity must now be negotiated. Intimacy has become structurally precarious — supporting the idea that heterofatalism isn’t personal cynicism but a system-wide crisis of romantic logic. The shift from implicit trust to explicit negotiation mirrors the shifts in culture. Fatalism becomes the mood people date in, which ends up producing exactly what they fear.
When sex remains intimate but desire becomes structurally precarious
Sex has become more available than ever, and that is precisely what makes its intimacy feel strangely fragile. The erotic landscape has shifted, and intimacy unfolds without the burden of consequence. A new era where people can explore freely, negotiate boundaries, and detach sex from outdated definitions. Under heterofatalism, the surge in sexual availability comes with a sharp decline in emotional investment, raising the question: what happens when sex remains intimate, but desire quietly disappears?
Why desire survives the collapse: the paradox of wanting men even when the system no longer works
The most uncomfortable part of heterofatalism is that the desire doesn’t disappear with the system. Straight desire persists even when the cultural infrastructure that once sustained it—romance, stability, expectation—has eroded. Women keep wanting men not because the narrative is intact, but because desire doesn’t obey narrative. It’s pre-rational, pre-political, shaped by childhood imprinting, early attachments, and decades of cultural conditioning that taught intimacy as a gendered choreography.
We inherit scripts long after we stop believing in them. Fairy tales, sitcoms, mothers’ warnings, father-shaped silences, the ecosystem of media that positioned men as both the problem and the prize. Desire grows inside that architecture and refuses to collapse just because the architecture does. Biological impulses overlap with symbolic ones; the erotic imagination remains stubborn, even romantic, even when the cultural logic feels obsolete. Wanting men has become something like nostalgia for a version of intimacy that never fully existed.
The paradox is that heterofatalism thrives precisely where desire and disillusionment collide. The system feels broken, but the body hasn’t been briefed. Emotional fatigue coexists with sexual instinct; skepticism coexists with craving. This tension isn’t a contradiction—it’s the engine of the entire phenomenon. Straight women aren’t delusional for wanting men; they’re navigating the dissonance between a desire that persists and a structure that no longer supports it.
Desire persists long after the system collapses
Crucially, this fatalism doesn’t negate desire; it sits alongside it. Women express hopelessness about straight romance while still dating men, still wanting intimacy, still participating in the very dynamic they critique. Viewed this way, heterofatalism is not a retreat from heterosexuality but an uneasy coexistence with it: a recognition that the system feels broken, even as the desire within it remains.
The emotional churn of straight dating as the symptom of a culture built on disposability
It’s the emotional symptom of a society built around instant gratification, overload, and perpetual disposability. Micro-attention spans, algorithmic intimacy, and the constant hum of performance. The culture teaches us to cushion everything with irony: love included. In this climate, fatalism is a cultural mood board. The emotional numbness that defines modern dating mirrors the perceptual collapse. Everything looks appealing from a distance, but nothing is built to last.
Dupe culture, then, is more than an economic adaptation; it is the aesthetic expression of a dating culture that no longer believes in the possibility of durability. It is the refusal to engage deeply. If heterofatalism is the soft resignation to romantic disappointment, the dupe is the soft resignation to creative disappointment.
What remains of men when the narrative dissolves: the emotional deficit at the center of heterosexual burnout
Heterofatalism can’t be understood without looking at the condition of men themselves—because the disappointment women articulate is not a mystery but a symptom. Men today inherit a relational script that no longer works, yet they’ve never been equipped with a new one. Emotional literacy has been outsourced to women for generations, leaving men underdeveloped in intimacy, conflict, and self-reflection. The result is a mismatch: women’s emotional expectations have evolved; men’s emotional training has not.
Much of straight dating’s frustration isn’t rooted in malice, but in deficits. Boys are raised to avoid vulnerability, to perform independence, to perceive need as weakness. They enter adulthood fluent in desire but illiterate in care. The apps exacerbate this gap: detachment becomes efficiency, ambiguity becomes strategy, inconsistency becomes default. Not because men consciously engineer emotional scarcity, but because they’ve never been encouraged to practice anything else.
The collapse of the old romantic narrative exposes the emptiness underneath it. Without the scaffolding of gender roles—provider, protector, pursuer—many men find themselves without a relational identity at all. Women experience this as absence: emotional minimalism, low effort, the chronic inability to risk sincerity. Heterofatalism grows in the space left by that absence. It becomes easier to call the whole system doomed than to confront the cultural failure that shaped cis-hetero masculinity into something emotionally insufficient.
The crisis is structural, not personal: women have evolved beyond scripts men were never taught to update. The relational ecosystem changed, but masculine socialisation stayed still. The result is a form of heterosexuality where the desire remains, but the partner feels unprepared for the relationship it demands.
Straight romance in a state of recall: why continuity now feels oppressive, eccentric, or unnecessary
Sustainability collapses because the culture that demands it no longer believes in permanence. Repair — whether emotional or material — feels excessive, outdated, almost eccentric.
Ironically, the rise of heterofatalism forces a confrontation with something we’ve spent a decade avoiding: intention. The conversation drifts toward the same realization: we are consuming faster than we are feeling. The burnout is not just romantic; it is sensory, creative, existential. If heterofatalism is a refusal to keep investing in systems that no longer work, it also doubles as a quiet invitation to rethink how we choose anything.
Heterofatalism as a cultural lens: desire, collapse, and the politics of repair
Heterofatalism is a term that evolved from heteropessimism, first described by Asa Seresin in 2019. It reflects the cultural mood among women who desire men while feeling increasingly disillusioned with heterosexual dating dynamics. The concept has since expanded to include the emotional, aesthetic and ecological implications of contemporary intimacy. A lens through which to read desire, collapse, and the politics of repair.
Melis Özek
