Whenever I try to date, I feel like Hillary Clinton. I filter whatever I want to do or say through all the ideas I have about everything a woman is supposed to be. I say “I’m not cool girl” and reference ‘Gone Girl’ with its famous feminist fuck-you speech, but guys don’t get it. I say “I don’t party and I don’t hook up” and what I mean is, I’m an adult, I am over the days of wanting to reach out and touch just anyone who would let me. If I’m here now with you, it’s because I want to be here. Now. With you.

I filter, and I arrive at a packaged, android version of myself. I speak in short, clipped sentences. I become incapable of communicating complicated ideas. The most real version of me I am capable of being with a man is the version I am when I am silent.

Otherwise, I feel like I have to pretend to care. I pretend to care how things work. I ask questions about his job when I am thinking about his mouth. I ask questions about his family pets when I am thinking about why he didn’t call me back. I am careful to come off as relaxed, and easygoing, and laid back about sex, and less interested in children or relationships. I try therefore not to actually talk about anything I am actually passionate about. I try not to say anything real. It’s easier to maintain the facade that way.

I hate pretending, so sometimes something true breaks through. And then, I have to figure out what to do.

Because the real truth unvarnished is lots of things, and none of them are ‘cute.’ The last time I said something real to a man, I texted him from an airport that we kept hurting each other and should stop. I immediately apologized, tried to dial back. But I meant it. It was maybe the first thing I ever said to him that I really truly meant. Everything else was me trying to be who I thought he wanted me to be. Someone sexy and carefree. Someone a little more sexually experienced and substantially more stupid.

The problem is, when you try to hold back your truth for too long, it comes out all bent out of shape. Passion emerges as anger. Insecurity comes out as outrage. Before you know it, you’ve become your own nightmare and you’re saying things you don’t even mean.

And you always think you will get another chance to put it right. Always.

But you are Hillary Clinton. And he does not want the unvarnished truth, not really. Men don’t really want to know what women really truly think of them. What women feel, immersed as we are in a culture that hates us. Men can’t bear knowing how much they let us down every single day, just by being part of it. Just by benefiting from it.

We talk sometimes in this culture about misogyny but the truth is. Men don’t hate women. Some men blame women for their own pain, it’s true. But mostly men just take out their anger at other men on women because it is convenient. It’s impersonal. They see us as walking, talking blow-up dolls for them to either punch or fuck. They don’t see us as people with feelings. So how could their actions possibly be fueled by hatred? You can’t hate something that’s inanimate.

We talk sometimes about misogyny but the truth is. The truth is, there is this blanket widespread hate that women have for men. All women. On some level, perhaps deep in the subconscious, but there. Because we have to live our lives afraid. All of us. Every day. And so, we hate.

I am so afraid to tell men that. I filter out what is real and I filter out my passion and I filter out my emotions because I do not want them to know that I hate them, or why.

And so what I say instead, is crap. And they know it. And it makes them not trust me.

And I feel always that I am lying to them. So I try to trauma-dump or I try to love-bomb though it sucks that is even a thing in human terminology, can you imagine being so afraid of your own shadow that you despise someone for caring about you too much? Women read books about how to stop loving men too much. Men read books about how to start loving anybody even a little bit.

And so we hate men.

Which is not to say I cannot also love them. Or that I am lying when I say that I do. Only….

Only, I do not want to be a cheerleader for my entire life. Any more than Hillary wanted that when for years she let herself be shepherded into a role she clearly hated. A role that made her hate the American people. And hate her husband more than anybody has maybe ever hated anybody in the history of humanity. I would, if it were me.

It seems to me that most men believe that is what a marriage is. The man messes up, and the wife fixes it. The man cheats, and the wife stays. The man drinks too much, but that’s okay, the woman is not going anywhere. She really loves him, so she’ll put up with it.

I say things like ‘I have never seen an aspirational relationship except on tv’ but what I mean is ‘the way most men speak to their girlfriends or wives would not fly with me’ or ‘I will not date a man who is even capable of the contemptuous, cruel, callous, arrogant, entitled, whiny, sarcastic crap most guys seem to think is a completely reasonable way to talk to somebody, if that person is a woman. As opposed to a real actual human being.’

I am Hillary Clinton, when I date men. I can’t tell them the truth. I worry so much about optics that I wind up saying nothing real.

Because if I told the truth, the sky really would fall. And I suppose I would rather love men from a safe emotional distance, than not at all.

Although I’d like to tell the truth someday. See what it feels like. Because I have to tell you, being Hillary Clinton and polished and poised and emotionless in the face of emotional devastation can get pretty lonely.