Disappointing Men

At only 23, I have a long list of experiences beginning from 12 years old that distinctively involve how disappointing men are. I know that this is a phrase constantly used (for good reason I argue) but it is a kind idiom to describe the barrage of inappropriate, unwanted, and appalling behaviour that women experience daily. Around October last year, I was fed up with having such negative experiences with men, particularly those that involved an element of possible romance. After reading what felt like a million self-help books around mindfulness, positivity, and self-love, I decided to spend an evening manifesting my ideal future partner. Included in the list of qualities was kind, outdoorsy, funny, compassionate, driven etc. This list also included how I wanted my ideal future partner to interact with me, for example very considerate, loved cuddles, his love language was words of affirmation, you get the general gist. Here I was thinking I was being so specific, and eagerly awaited the Universe to provide me with the man of my dreams before the new year.

Fast forward a couple of months to December — my friend Kath and I decided to schedule in some interviews for our blog ‘The Novice Hikers’ that would involve talking to GP’s, mountain climbers, altitude experts, extreme hikers etc. all about advice and inspiration to make it to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro 2021. Like always, I ended up in a rabbit hole on Instagram, searching for hashtags to find the perfect people to interview on zoom. We were aiming high for Levison Wood but in case the likely reality that he would respond and fall head over heels for Kath, I also wanted to search for more people we could interview that wouldn’t turn into a marriage proposal. After hours of investigation, I came across a great page all about a collective of amazing, inspirational men who were very open about their mental health and supporting the improvement of mental health for men who are struggling. Instantly inspired I scrolled through the page over and over and over until I was taken off guard by a striking picture. There was a man sitting on a sofa, bald head, lots of tattoos on his legs, glasses and though not seemingly someone I would find attractive, I found myself studying his features a lot. ‘He’s fit’ I thought to myself, now scrolling through his page, and looking through his tagged photos. I found myself admiring how open he was about his own battle with his mental health, and how he used hiking and spending time outdoors to combat this and improve his own self confidence and self-love. Not being able to shake the thought of contacting him out of my head, I immediately had an idea! Why don’t I interview him with Kath as a part of The Novice Hikers?! I sent Kath his profile, not being 1000% candid about the fact a huge incentive to interview him was an excuse to make contact for the first time, and Kath seemed to love his page too. So, I did it, I slid in the DM’s.

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Efe: Hey! My name’s Efemena and I’m climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in August with an amazing sanitation charity. I stumbled across your page this morning and loved it! My friend Kath and I would love to interview you as part of the blog we are documenting called The Novice Hikers all about our progress to the climb. But of course, there is no pressure at all x.

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Though I was a bit nervous, I felt like an absolute boss as I pressed send, feeling confident that I had pushed myself out of my comfort zone by sliding into someone’s DM’s for the first time ever. After analysing my message for a couple of minutes, I had seen the status of the message change to ‘READ’. With a rush of uneasiness, I instantly left my inbox, locked my phone screen, and turned my phone upside down to avoid seeing if he had responded or not. I went to the toilet to distract myself, obviously thinking for those two incredibly long minutes whether he had responded, and immediately turned over my phone when I reentered my bedroom.

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Pete: Hey Efemena! I’d love to take part, sounds like you’re doing great things for a great cause, and I love that. Just let me know how I can help x.

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I was absolutely elated! Not only did Pete respond, but he loved what Kath and I were up to and wanted to be involved — this was literally the best outcome scenario! Basically, short story made even shorter, we agreed to have a zoom call at 2pm the following week with Kath to discuss the benefits of walking outdoors, his favourite/ worst hiking moments, top tips and mental health and the outdoors. I was SO looking forward to it. You best believe, despite not caring at all what I looked like over lockdown, the day of the interview I spent a whole hour painting my face. I tried to make it look as natural as possible, bit of foundation, a natural light eyeshadow, a bit of lippy and bronzer. I have to say, I think I looked pretty great — Kath looked fab as well! The countdown began to the interview, 3, 2, 1…

The first thing I noticed was Pete’s lovely pastel lilac jumper and gorgeous Northern accent. I was so elated that Kath was on the call to keep it relaxed because I definitely was a bit nervous. You could tell because I was laughing a little more than usual. All in all, the chat was fantastic. He was clearly very passionate about mental health, and really cared about human welfare (which was a huge tick for me). He also revealed that he loved painting, and as a fellow artist that was a slight turn on for me. The only thing is he said he had a girlfriend — but my instant thought was of course he does, he’s amazing. I found it so funny that even after an amazing chat with a mutual friend of Kath and myself, Kim, I hadn’t specified when I manifested my ideal future partner, that they would actually be single! I thought the Universe was playing a bit of a prank on me. And to be honest, even though I did fancy him, I was just happy we had a positive interaction, that I’d put myself out of my comfort zone, and I thought Pete would make a great friend. He even invited Kath and I to visit him up North in the Summer when lockdown had eased to climb a local mountain. Over the upcoming months, I believe Pete and I had developed a really nice friendship. He was on a journey to improve his physical fitness and his Instagram stories were really motivating me to get through all my Chloe Ting workouts and improve my running. We would often respond to each other’s stories with claps and words of encouragement — it was genuinely lovely.

Kath, Kim, and I were feeling slightly disappointed as our Kilimanjaro trip had been cancelled again! This was the third year in a row for me. The first year trying I got very ill with pneumonia, and the second year when Kath, Kim and I became Kili’s Angels, Covid-19 happened, and it also affected us this year. The travel restrictions and traffic light system were making it very difficult to organise, so the charity we are doing it with decided to postpone it for another year. After feeling rather gutted and having a little cry, purely because it was the only thing getting me through the shit show of the last year, Kath had the most genius idea. In April, she messaged Pete to pull him up on his offer of climbing a mountain together and invited Kim and I to spend some time in the Lake District and Scotland. I was so excited to have something else to look forward to and felt really lucky that I had such thoughtful friends to set this holiday/ adventure up. By this point, I still thought Pete was attractive and lovely, but we hadn’t spoken much, and I hadn’t really thought about him in that way because it was frankly inappropriate. However, this dynamic quickly changed, at least in my mind.

After I had finished my stats exam in mid-May as part of my grueling University course (I ill-advisedly chose to start during a global pandemic), I bought myself a lovely jumper based on one of my favourite sit-coms and uploaded it proudly onto my Instagram story, to which Pete responded, ‘this is so strong, I love it!’. Soon after in the chat, it was very clear we had the same sense of humour, genuinely loved the same niche, hilarious shows and were enjoying chatting to each other. I personally felt it was slightly flirtatious that he casually dropped into the conversation that he was single and said he was very much looking forward to meeting me. I also thought he was being quite inviting as he shared with me some impressive photos of his artwork that didn’t appear anywhere on his online profile. Over the next couple of weeks our conversations progressed to become longer, more frequent, open, and hilarious. I was absolutely loving talking to this guy, and I felt the feeling was mutual. I absolutely loved how I had him in hysterics and that he would constantly compliment me on my humour and say how sweet and lovely I was.

It was now only a few days until Kath, Kim and I travelled to the Lake District to meet Pete. I would be lying to say I hadn’t fantasized over some stolen kisses by the lakes or some hand holding/ obvious flirtation going up the mountain. In the midst of one brilliant conversation about The Office, our joint favourite show, Pete dropped a bomb shell. He told me he was having a Jim and Pam situation at the moment, which if you haven’t watched The Office, is basically an intense attraction between two colleagues who work together. Confused, a part of me had hoped that he was just being strange and was actually talking about me. That optimism was quickly shat on when he mentioned her name, and it certainly wasn’t mine. This left a strange taste in my mouth as I wasn’t sure why he had brought this up. I thought for sure we were flirting; we had been talking non — stop. A part of me even wondered ‘when did you even have time to talk to your Pam?’. I instantly questioned whether the attraction was there, whether he was just trying to make it obvious he didn’t like me because perhaps I made him feel uncomfortable, or whether he was actually beginning to feel like he took the conversation too far and in reflection wanted to create a boundary before he met me. Regardless, it annoyed me. A lot. Well, enough to document it in my journal. In fact, I wrote down that it made me feel like a right tit. The feeling was a familiar friend, and honestly, I felt so fed up with chasing disappointment.

It was now only a day away from the trip. I had tried to shake off the disappointment and try and view Pete as just a friend, especially seeing as we had great chat and we were going to be seeing him the next day. I was being strangely optimistic, probably because I was elated to see Kath and Kim and was so happy to get out of the house for once! Saying this, Pete continued to be disappointing. To quote Kath, he was ‘overpromising and underdelivering’. Despite the fact that Kath had booked in to climb Helvellyn with Pete in April, for some reason he decided to not only invite his ‘gal pals’, but he also decided to change the plans the night before to do an easy 7K walk. 7K? I run 7K basically every other day and I’m not even that fit. I was incredibly underwhelmed, and honestly found it quite rude of him to invite his friends he sees all the time without asking, including his ‘Pam’. I said to Kath ‘who does Pete think he is, Snoop Dogg?’. 10 girls and just himself. And he even insisted on going swimming in the lakes after the anticlimactic walk. My manifestation powers clearly weren’t working, because my hand holding fantasies were now going to be watching Pete flirt with his crush on a shitty short walk and then witness him splashing them in the lakes under a waterfall. Sorry but absolutely not. After we picked up Kim in the car, she almost instantly turned my hopelessness and frustration into power, and I scrambled the confidence to message Pete.

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Efe: Hey Pete! We are all in the car on the way! We’ve all been chatting, and as Kim is moving to NYC soon and this is the last time we’ll see each other for a while, we want to stick to our plan of climbing Helvellyn as a fun send off and to replace Kilimanjaro as much as possible. I know this is significantly different than the new route you had prepared, so we completely understand if you wouldn’t want to come with us/ have other plans! If not, we’d still love to see you later on for a drink at the pub either tonight or tomorrow night x’

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After having so much fun in the car with Kath and Kim, I wasn’t really bothered whether Pete would climb Helvellyn with us or not. Out of principle though, and us driving 9 hours to be in his town so we could easily see him, I thought he would have joined us. Instead, he texted saying he is going to stick with his new plan with his friends and he will see what he’s up to tomorrow night. I personally thought that was quite rude but at this point we had already arrived, and I was keen to make the best out of a Pete polluted situation. Forward to the next day after the strangest night in a ghost infested inn, Kath, Kim, and I had the absolute best day climbing Helvellyn. We all mutually but secretly felt like the first 30 minutes were complete hell and were unsure of whether we’d be able to make it to the top. But after a burst of energy, regular breaks soaking up the ridiculous views, lots of chats with lots of strangers and our happiness constantly spiked by giggles, a shit ton of sweets and cute dogs, we reached the top! And it was utterly incredible.

We rewarded ourselves with having a short rest and then got in the shower and made ourselves look fab before a gorgeous meal in the pub (that Pete recommended) and a few drinks. Throughout the day Pete hadn’t asked how our journey to the Lake District was, how our climb went, if we were going to meet up later, nothing. So, Kath broke the ice and messaged him.

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Kath: Wow! What a day, I can’t move haha. Are we going to see you later?

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Now, the possibility of Pete not meeting us for drinks had never actually popped into the realm of possibility for me. But, he had the audacity to message us at 8:30pm stating, his parents had surprised visited him. That smelt like absolute bullshit to me. Not only that, but he also didn’t suggest another time for us to meet or even attempt to see us for 5 minutes that day, knowing we were off to Scotland the next day. Sorry, but how fucking rude? We had booked to see him in April, had been messaging non-stop for a couple of weeks, were a 10-minute walk away from his house, had traveled 9 hours in the car, and he couldn’t be bothered to even call us on the phone or send a nice text. WOW. I was obviously a bit gutted, more so because I felt like we had wasted our time and that he was performative, inauthentic and presented himself as someone he wasn’t. How exhausting that must be. Despite this, obviously Kath, Kim and I continued to have a fantastic night and shared hilarious stories (in hindsight) of how men have been a constant let down. This whole experience for me really just sums up how disappointing men are.

Before we went to sleep at the scary inn (that was instantly more comforting than the tension currently plaguing my DMs with Pete), Kim reminded me of a very important take away. That even though men can be incredibly disappointing, not all of them are, and it is important to intend only to have the highest expectations of men to manifest incredible experiences and relationships. I refuse to have another Pete in my life, and next time I manifest my ideal future partner, I will make sure to state that they are a decent, considerate human being and make time for me.

“The bond between a girl and her friends is a powerful thing. With all the emphasis we place on finding the man of our dreams. I think far too many of us lose sight of one of the greatest love stories we’ll experience in life. The one with our friends “— Dolly Alderton