In today’s dating world, attention is saturated; desire has become easy to offer and even easier to withdraw. But what does it mean when desire is everywhere, but rarely stays anywhere?
Approximately fifteen men hit on me every week.
That’s not a brag. It’s a statistic I carry around like a receipt.
It happens any and everywhere: on the street, at cafés, on social media, in clubs, sometimes even when I’m buying toothpaste. My friends think I should be flattered. Strangers assume I already am.
There’s a cultural script that argues female desirability is a kind of power; that attention – any attention – is a compliment. If men want you, you must be doing something right.
But here’s the quieter question that follows me home, slipping into bed beside me, waiting until the night is dark enough to ask itself honestly: If I’m so wanted, why do I feel so disposable?
The abundance hoax
Fifteen men a week sounds like an abundance. Like options. Like choice. In the language of modern dating, it should make me rich.
But abundance is a strange concept. When desire becomes abundant, it stops feeling precious. It starts to feel almost industrial – mass-produced, impersonal, and automated.
The compliments blur together. You’re stunning. You’re hot. You’d look good under me. The words arrive pre-packaged, as if copy-pasted from a shared document titled “Things to say to women you don’t know.”
Attention isn’t scarce, but intention is.
There is an undeniable difference between being desired and being dignified.
In contemporary society, dating apps only amplify this illusion of abundance, asking our brains to operate in ways they were never designed to.
The biological anthropologist Helen Fisher argues in her book, Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray, that human attachment evolves slowly – through repetition, familiarity, and sustained attention.
Bonding, traditionally, was built through proximity and time, not rapid evaluation and endless comparison. When attraction unfolds too quickly and too often, it loses its capacity to deepen. Faces blur. Stories flatten. Conversations become patterns. People begin to feel less like individuals and more like options in a queue.
It’s no wonder, then, that research on swipe culture shows how often people feel disposable and interchangeable when reduced to photos and bios in a sea of other candidates.
The endless options generate choice/decision fatigue, making it harder to invest in any one single person. When the next option is always just a swipe away, depth becomes inefficient. Why linger when you can just scroll?
We’re not drowning in abundance. We’re drowning in disposability.
And this disposability comes with its price – a price that countless women have to pay worldwide. Even when you are wanted, there is a quiet emptiness in the desire. People see you, sure, but they do not see you. You move through their apps and screens, present only superficially – noticed, but not known.
Desire, without dignity
There is an undeniable difference between being desired and being dignified. Sometimes I wonder if we pretend not to know this simply because desire is easier to celebrate. My example is only one example of a pattern that feminist scholars and researchers have documented extensively.
Objectification, long written about by feminist scholars, refers to a person being reduced to their body, face, and sexual appeal.
Contrary to popular belief, objectification doesn’t always look violent or cruel. Often, it can look like compliments. Interest. Someone wanting you intensely – just not seriously.
Being hit on constantly enforces a strange realisation in you: that your body can arrive in a room before you do. That men can project fantasies onto you with confidence and speed, filling in blanks you haven’t consented to.
That men can visually undress you, whether you want them to or not. It’s almost like you become less like a person and more like a figment of their imagination.
This isn’t just an abstract realisation on my end; research on objectification theory, originally proposed by Fredrickson and Roberts in 1997, supports this pattern, highlighting that when women are primarily viewed through a sexual lens – reduced to their body and its parts – observers often fail to register their thoughts, feelings, and individuality.
This phenomenon is described as a form of dehumanisation, and so, in other words, being wanted can almost strip you of your visibility as a human.
And here, perhaps, is the trickiest part of all: sometimes, it feels good. Sometimes, it feels like validation.
When the societal script tells women that our value is tied to our level of attractiveness, being found attractive can often feel like proof of our worth. To reject that outright would be dishonest.
But pleasure can’t cancel out harm. You can appreciate being wanted and still resent what that wanting costs you. For countless women’s lives, across generations and cultures, it is not black and white, and it does not have to be.
The truth women notice (and men rarely name)
When I asked other women about their experience with this pattern – intense persuasion, followed by disappearance or a lack of initiative when things got emotionally real – something almost electrifying rippled through every conversation: recognition.
Like a collective exhale: Finally, someone is asking.
“They want access to my body, but not access to my life,” said Saira Mehta, 28, a post-graduate student in Delhi, her voice firm with her truth.
“It’s like I’m a prototype of some sort,” said Kelly Frostman, 31, a primary school teacher in Dubai, her brows furrowing with the weight of her experiences. “Fully tested, but never upgraded.”
“I’ll go on ten dates talking about feelings and then – poof,” laughed Mei Soo, 21, a musician in London. “Gone. No explanation. No closure.”
Being pursued does not translate into being chosen. Desire is abundant, commitment is not.
Conversation after conversation, offline or online, in a bar, at work, or at the street, the dynamic women described to me sounded painfully familiar: constant sexual desire paired with a striking lack of emotional follow-through – men who pursued with intensity, only to vanish as soon as vulnerability entered the room; men who wanted intimacy without responsibility, desire without investment.
“It’s so exhausting,” sighed Saira. “Every compliment feels like a promise, but none ever comes with genuine commitment. Ever.”
“They’re all obsessed with gambling with my time. My heart,” added Kelly. “It’s like they don’t even register I’m a human being beyond my looks.”
These aren’t isolated anecdotes. A growing body of research on modern dating, unfortunately, shows that women disproportionately experience emotional burnout tied to digital dating – a phenomenon often referred to as ‘dating app fatigue’.
A 2024 Forbes Health survey found that 78% of dating app users feel emotionally, mentally, or physically exhausted by app usage, with women reporting slightly higher burnout rates than men.
This fatigue extends to in-person social contexts. A study using ecological momentary assessment found that women reported being targeted by sexual objectifying events (such as the objectifying gaze) about once every two days. These events were associated with increased self-objectification, a significant risk factor for negative emotional outcomes.
Emotional burnout doesn’t care about platform, and sexual objectification isn’t just an online phenomenon – it happens in everyday life, repeatedly, and has measurable emotional effects.
Across several generations and geographical backgrounds, the story remains unchanged and repetitive: being pursued does not translate into being chosen. Desire is abundant, commitment is not.
Over time, this gap begins to erode something far deeper within these women: trust.
When attraction keeps stopping short of care, women are left carrying the same pressing question: Is something wrong with me, or is this just the system?
What men (sometimes) admit – when pressed
When men talk about dating amongst themselves, a different set of vocabulary emerges. The significance is no longer on ‘desire’ or ‘romance’ – it’s on risk.
Commitment is often described as ‘something to manage’, emotional closeness as ‘something to brace for’. And casual sex? Ease. Simplicity. Low stakes.
“I like her, I do, but I just don’t want to get stuck,” said Jessie Lloyd, 25, a consultant in London, when asked about why a relationship he actively pursued never materialised.
“What if I choose wrong, though? It all feels too high-stakes,” said Rohan Josh, 33, a product manager in Delhi. “And what if I lose all my freedom?”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone, I’m just not sure what I want – or who,” said Ali Saab, 21, a student in Dubai – shortly after admitting he routinely disappeared once women asked where things were going.
Again and again, the fear amongst these men sounded the same: the fear of consequence.
The men spoke openly about feeling emotionally under-equipped. About not really knowing how to truly sit with discomfort, how to communicate their uncertainty, how to hold themselves accountable for someone else’s feelings, without feeling trapped by them.
Psychological research confirms that this pattern isn’t just an accident. Research from April 2025 shows that men often avoid behaviours that are fundamental to connection – emotional responsiveness, vulnerability, mutual disclosure, etc. – because they tend to contradict societal, dominant expectations and ideals of ‘masculinity’.
Emotional closeness is rarely modelled as a strength. Vulnerability is apparently something to be endured, not practised. By adulthood, many men have learnt how to pursue, sure, but not how to stay.
So, desire then becomes the safer entry point. Wanting someone’s superficial shell does not require emotional fluency. It doesn’t require self-examination, consistency, or reliability. Loving someone does.
This doesn’t necessarily make men villains – but it does create a well-repeated system where other, non-avoidant women absorb their fallout. One group’s avoidance becomes another group’s exhaustion.
I don’t want fewer men to desire me, but I do want desire to mean more.
In fact, it is truly not even about gender, or even individual intent – it’s about a cultural pattern, where emotional avoidance is normalised, and its consequences are carried by relationships themselves.
Whether it be the male who’s avoidant or the female, emotional avoidance has consequences, even when no one intends the harm.
As Rohan Josh put it in conversation with me: “I didn’t realise how disposable I was making people feel. I just thought I was protecting myself.”
And that, perhaps, is the most uncomfortable truth to hold: disposability, more often than not, is rarely intentional. But its impact is still real.
The (quiet) cost
What happens when you are wanted repeatedly but wanted rarely?
At first, nothing obvious. There’s no single, intense rupture or dramatic ending. Instead, the impact accumulates quietly, almost invisibly.
You begin to second-guess your standards – not because they’re ‘unrealistic’, but because they somehow keep going unmet. You forfeit, lowering them incrementally, telling yourself that you’re only just being ‘flexible’, ‘open-minded’, ‘evolved’.
And then, somehow, somewhere down the line, you begin to resent yourself for this very ‘flexibility’, unsure when compromise turned into self-erasure.
“Wanting more has begun to feel embarrassing — even naïve.”
You, almost unwillingly, become fluent in casualness – even when it doesn’t suit you. You master the language of low expectation: no pressure, let’s just go with the flow, let’s not label anything.
You perform easily, because ease is rewarded. You try telling yourself you’re chill, independent, and unbothered – until you’re alone, and none of these words feel authentic.
There is a particular, indescribable loneliness in being desired without being known. It isn’t the loneliness of invisibility; it’s more disorienting than that. It’s the loneliness of only being partially seen – enough to be desired, to be touched, to be wanted in fragments, but not enough to be stayed with in full. Enough for proximity, but not enough for presence.
Over time, this kind of repeated experience subtly reshapes behaviour. Women learn to pre-empt disappointment by shrinking their expectations, needs, and wants.
By delaying asking for clarity. By softening their desire for confession. Ambiguity begins to masquerade as emotional maturity, and distance is reframed as independence. Wanting more has begun to feel embarrassing, perhaps even naïve.
And so, the emotional labour shifts inwards. Women become responsible, not just for micro-managing the connection, but for managing their own expectations, reactions, and hurt – often in silence.
And then we wonder why dating feels so hollow.
Desire isn’t absent, sure, but it so rarely asks anything of the person doing the desiring. The fallout pools at the feet of the one being desired.
If men hit on you every week, should you be flattered or offended?
As I said, approximately fifteen men hit on me every week, and during most of these superficial interactions, the one question that never escaped my consciousness was, should I be flattered or offended?
In hindsight, I’ve come to realise that is the wrong question to ask. Flattery and offence exist on the same shallow plane.
The better question is this: What kind of desire is being offered – and at whose expense?
Desire that does not require respect is cheap. It’s far from the kind of desire any of us want. So is desire that evaporates at the first sign of emotional depth.
Being hit on constantly does not mean I’m powerful. It means I’m legible with a system that still prioritises women’s bodies and faces over their interior lives. A system that mistakes availability for value. A system that rewards men for wanting, and women for being wanted.
I don’t want fewer men to desire me, but I do want desire to mean more.
I want desire to come with curiosity. With consistency. With reliability. I want desire to stay when the fantasy dissolves, and a real person remains.
Anything less isn’t true desire. It’s just attention passing through.
Featured image by Réne Ranisch via Unsplash. All screenshots by Anusha Aggarwal.