Zen Prem’s “Modern Love (Part 4): The Uprising of ‘Rather Be Alone Than in Another Relatingshit’” hit my feed recently, and it landed hard.
Some men are angry. Others are brushing it off.
I flinched too—at first.
But when I sat with it, the uncomfortable truth came into focus:
He’s not just right about some men. He’s right about the system we’re all caught in.
We’re not just failing at relationships.
We’re failing at getting to them in the first place.
Let’s talk about dating apps for a second.
We’ve never had more tools to connect.
To match, message, plan, sync, share, communicate, build.
But how many people are actually building anything?
We swipe. We vibe. We trauma dump. We disappear.
We dive in fast—no scaffolding, no emotional prep, no long game.
Just chemistry and chaos, attachment and algorithm.
We want intimacy but fear the boredom of consistency.
We want to be seen but won’t slow down long enough to be known.
We want the magic of partnership without the actual practice of building a life with someone.
And let’s be honest—social media is feeding the disconnect.
We perform closeness instead of earning it.
We confuse communication with connection.
We think vulnerability is replying to a meme in under 48 hours.
Here’s what else I’ve come to realize:
It’s easy to ghost someone who isn’t integral to your life.
It’s hard to let go of someone who is.
Intimacy is supposed to make people harder to lose—not easier to swipe away.
We’ve lost the art of getting to know someone slowly.
We’re chasing immediacy at the expense of depth.
And in that race to be “there” ASAP, we’ve forgotten that trust, intimacy, and emotional safety only grow with time, intention, and presence.
Meanwhile…
Women today are freer than ever.
They don’t have to settle.
They don’t have to stick around for emotional breadcrumbs.
They don’t have to build a life with someone who expects them to be mother, therapist, and girlfriend all at once.
They’re waking up—and walking away.
But here’s the thing: this isn’t just about women being fed up with men.
We’ve been talking about the male loneliness crisis for years—but the truth is, this isn’t a gendered issue anymore.
It’s a human crisis.
In a time where we’re more connected than ever, more people are lonely than ever.
We have all the tools.
We just don’t have the follow-through.
Or the patience.
Or the emotional literacy.
And while women are waking up and walking away, too many men are left with nothing but silence—and no idea how to live in it.
We’ve made jokes for decades about helpless old men who can’t cook, clean, or make a doctor’s appointment without their wives. But it’s not funny.
It’s tragic.
Because beneath that is a pattern we’ve allowed to continue unchecked:
Men outsourcing their entire emotional lives to their partners.
No community. No brotherhood. No real tools.
Just one woman expected to be their only mirror, caregiver, therapist, and stabilizer.
And when she’s gone—by choice, by divorce, by death—what’s left?
A hollowed-out emotional center.
Grief that has nowhere to go.
Loneliness that doesn’t know how to speak.
We’ve called it stoicism.
We’ve wrapped it in pride.
But what it really is… is neglect.
And it hurts everyone—men included.
We cannot keep expecting women to carry the full weight of our inner lives.
We cannot call it strength when we never learn how to process fear, sadness, or shame unless someone else holds space for it.
Men’s mental health is not a side conversation.
It’s a central piece of the collapse—and a necessary part of the repair.
So much of what we call “dating” today isn’t building—it’s drifting.
We expect connection to just happen. No intention. No investment. No plan.
But we can’t keep falling into relationships and hoping they’ll become healthy.
We have to work for them.
We have to build healthy relationships—not stay stuck in what Zen Prem calls “relatingshits.”
That means reciprocity.
It means shared effort.
It means both people stepping up with care, self-awareness, and a willingness to name what they want—not just feel it and hope the other person reads their mind.
There has to be communication. Balance. Planning.
Yeah, planning. Even if the world feels too chaotic for it.
Somewhere along the way, we started treating romance like it was corny and planning like it was pointless.
But the truth is: real love requires both.
Not grand gestures. Not fairytales.
But thoughtful action. A shared future you actually look forward to.
The world may move fast, but love is still built slow.
And here’s one thing I tell every guy I know who’s getting married:
Keep things special.
It sounds simple. But it’s everything.
Because what actually breaks most relationships isn’t drama—it’s drift.
We get caught in the daily grind. We stop checking in.
We stop surprising each other, seeing each other, celebrating the little things.
We stop communicating, and start assuming.
At least… that’s what I think happened in my marriage.
We didn’t fall out of love.
We just got busy.
We got tired.
And eventually, we got lost in separate orbits.
So now, if I have the chance to pass anything forward, it’s this:
Don’t let “ordinary” become neglect.
Keep some magic in the mix.
Even if it’s small—especially if it’s small.
The grind will always be there.
But so is the choice to love intentionally.
Really falling in love with someone should mean more than “I like you a lot.”
It should mean: I’m willing to build something that grows.
Something that honors the self and the other.
Some say love’s purpose is children, but that’s too narrow.
Life is meant to be lived by the individual, yes. But love?
Love is where the self meets the other in shared purpose, shared time, shared care.
When we live only for ourselves, something goes hollow.
When we serve only the other, we disappear.
Love—real love—is balance.
Mutuality.
A steady co-creation that takes more than vibes and good intentions.
So yeah—Zen Prem was right. There is an uprising.
And maybe after the collapse comes something new.
Not a fairytale. Not a fix.
But a slow, honest return to craft.
Because the real revolution isn’t just walking away.
It’s learning how to build something no one wants to leave.
And maybe I’ll end with this:
There was a woman who shared that post.
Brilliant. Grounded. A single mother.
Her words lit something up in me—not because she was trying to get attention, but because she was telling the truth.
And I saw her.
And I thought: she deserves more than what the world is giving her.
And I have more to give.
But I couldn’t say that.
Not in a DM. Not in a thirsty comment. Not in this broken courtship theater we’ve all inherited.
Because too many men before me have poisoned the well.
Because sincerity is suspect now.
Because even well-meaning interest gets mistaken for manipulation—or worse.
So I stayed silent.
Not because I don’t care. But because I do.
Because in this world, silence can feel more respectful than reaching out and being misunderstood.
And that’s the part that hurts.
That real people are missing each other every day—not because we don’t see each other, but because we no longer know how to say it safely.
So if that “alien ship” the fake news keeps saying is coming in November actually is on the way…
I hope they bring us telepathy.
I hope they give us a way to finally cut through the noise.
To speak without fear. To see without filter.
To say, “I see you. I’m not here to take. I’m here to build.”
Because when you strip away the posturing, the games, the apps, the ghosting—
That’s what most of us are still longing for:
To be known.
To be safe.
To be real.
Together.
I don’t even know if we’re meant to be together for life—like some people say.
But it’s a beautiful ideal.
And at the very least, people deserve security and love while they’re here.
P.S. If Zen Prem’s piece resonated with you as much as it did me, consider giving it a read and a click—it sparked this whole conversation:
Read Modern Love (Part 4) on Facebook
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