Is the internet making me hate my boyfriend?

“I lived like it was cool not to have a boyfriend before it was cool to not have a boyfriend.”

Laura Roscioli is a sex writer based in Melbourne. Her fortnightly column on Fashion Journal is here to make sex (and the conversations around it) more accessible and open-minded. She believes that the best learnings come from lived experience, and she’s here to share hers — and other people’s — with you. You can follow Laura on Instagram at @lauraroscioli.

It’s 2025 and I have a boyfriend. Which is, apparently, very embarrassing. Honestly, I feel kind of annoyed. I spent a decade desperately wanting a boyfriend and never quite having one.

Over the past decade or so, boyfriends were very cool. Borderline integral. It was the era of wearing your boyfriend’s T-shirt in your Facebook profile picture, Alex Turner’s love letter to Alexa Chung was considered the benchmark and teenagers pined for a Sex God Boyfriend (see: Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging).

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Back then, there were no boys in my vicinity I deemed to be boyfriend material. They made immature jokes, didn’t understand the importance of good shoes and seemingly had no hopes and dreams.

Only as I entered into the world of adult men did I start to properly pine, but that came with a whole other host of problems: lovebombing, gaslighting and shamelessly hitting on my friends behind my back.

When Tinder launched onto the scene over ten years ago and I moved from my small hometown to the big smoke, I thought I found myself a boyfriend. In quick succession, I had my heart broken and spent the next few years one-night-standing myself back to health.

I guess you could say I was ahead of the game. I lived like it was cool not to have a boyfriend before it was cool to not have a boyfriend. But now, we’re firmly in the era where people are writing articles on whether having a boyfriend is embarrassing and look, it’s about time we de-centred men.

Many of you reading this likely have parents that believe marriage, kids and a house in the suburbs is the only way to live a successful life. For women, that typically means finding a man and settling down as soon as possible — despite his flaws.

“It’s about what you can live with,” my mum once said to me when I was debating whether or not to stay with my ex. I remember resisting that at the time. “I don’t want to just put up with him!” I replied. She rolled her eyes, but to me it didn’t seem like too much to ask.

It makes sense that we spent our young adult lives searching for ‘The One’. Our parents told us to, and society backed them up. To be a successful woman was to be chosen and loved, to be a successful man meant being in control and providing. We tried so hard to find The One! We hunted! We dedicated our precious youth to searching every room for potential candidates!

Look, to be honest, I was so over men before I met my current boyfriend. Not having a boyfriend felt so c**t to me and I was prepared to be alone forever. I’d gone through a toxic relationship dynamic and straight into another. I broke up with both in feverish anger. I was done. If having a boyfriend meant silencing all of the bold parts of myself that I loved, I didn’t want one.

So, I get it. And I’m honestly glad we’re here. So glad, that it’s making me hate my boyfriend a little bit.

Women standing their ground and prioritising their self-worth is something I feel deeply passionate about. I love that we’re at a point where we’ve collectively decided that having a boyfriend is not everything, especially if we don’t feel respected, loved and valued by them.

I love that the internet has become a place that welcomes female rage and truth, that an album about a marriage falling apart due to a man’s inability to have a hard conversation is being received with validation. I love that clips of women dancing to lacklustre voice notes from the men they’re dating online are going viral. It’s about fucking time.

Despite the empowering place this comes from, I find myself being suspicious of my boyfriend. Is he really making my life better? He leaves the toilet seat up. He never buys the right brand of milk. He’s always a little bit late to everything. But try as I might to find petty reasons for why he sucks… he just doesn’t. He’s the best person I’ve ever met and dating him makes me the best version of myself. I get to be independent and flirty, but also taken care of. It’s the best of both worlds.

I think the only reason I found him is because I came into this relationship from the same place that women online are at right now. I didn’t need a man. I didn’t need external validation. I didn’t need monogamy. I found the concept of a boyfriend so fucking embarassing.

So maybe this is where we need to be. A place where we don’t need men or relationships to make us whole, and because of that, the right relationship has a chance to actually reach us.

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