I Texted Every Guy Who Dumped Me—Here’s What They Said

And yes, one of them hearted my Instagram story after re-ghosting me.

I was on a phone call that was becoming uncomfortably familiar.

“This relationship is going nowhere,” said the man who’d just flown to NYC to spend the weekend with me. “I go to bed early. You go to bed late. It’s not going to work.”

It was such an absurd reason it might as well have been, “I can’t date you because you wear hats on Wednesdays.”

“Maybe you’re just trying to find a way to articulate a feeling,” I suggested. “And if you’re not feeling a strong connection, that’s totally fine and fair. But for the record, I spent a year of my life going to bed at 9 p.m., and I liked it.”

He was adamant: bedtime incompatibility was the real reason.

I hung up and let a few tears leak out—not because I’d lost something precious, but because I felt defeated. Why did this keep happening?

Dating in New York

Rejection has a pattern. When you date as much as I do, you develop a sixth sense for it: slower response times, a shift in tone, a text asking if they can “give you a call.” It’s a routine I know by heart.

2024 started out particularly bruising. First, there was Furniture Assembly Guy, who helped me move and build furniture on our first date, then vanished as if he’d been raptured by IKEA itself. Then there was Daily Texter, who messaged me every single day while I was in Asia for three weeks, only to ghost after four dates. And finally, there was Hotel Reservation Guy, who planned an overnight trip for our fourth date... and then disappeared without a trace. To this day, I occasionally Google his name alongside “obituary,” hopeful that he actually politely died rather than the alternative.

By the time Early Bedtime Guy ended things in June, my sense of despair had hit a new low. Seven years without a boyfriend (or three, if you count the guy who ghosted an entire four-month relationship a week after letting me call him his boyfriend) had me spiraling.

Of course, it wasn’t exclusively the men who did the breaking up. But I at least clearly knew why I ended things, whereas they were the black box that comprised 60% of the equation.

Getting someone to go on a date with me was never the problem—clearly, I was doing something wrong. But what?

Friends and strangers alike had theories. Maybe I was too intimidating. Or too cold. Maybe I slept with men too quickly and needed to “make them wait.” My standards were either too high or too low. I went on too many dates. (Thankfully, no one suggested I wasn’t going on enough. Small mercies.)

None of these explanations felt quite right.

The truth is, only the men I dated and I had the full picture—and let’s be real, men (like all people) aren’t exactly known for their brutal honesty when ending things. I mean, I’ve never told someone, “Sorry, I’m just not that into your face,” because that’s cruel, unhelpful, and frankly, a me problem, not a them problem.

But even if they were honest, I’m skeptical. Why? Because humans are terrible at understanding their own motivations. Take split-brain experiments: when the verbal side of the brain doesn’t know why the other half is doing something, it just makes up a story. We’re basically walking, talking fiction factories.

Dating is no different. It’s emotional, not rational, and most people have the scintillating insight of an athlete in a post-game interview.

So, armed with the knowledge that I was possibly about to collect a bunch of made-up, garbage data, I embarked on my next project: texting 13 men I’d dated over the past 18 months who had either ghosted me or explicitly ended things.

I created a spreadsheet (because of course I did) and started logging responses, adding columns for common reasons as they came in.

Shockingly, 12 out of 13 men responded in full. (The lone holdout? A guy who ghosted me after our first date—despite planning a second. He replied to my “Can I ask you a weird question?” text but re-ghosted when I asked why he didn’t pursue things. He’s since hearted an IG story and sent a Facebook friend request. Sir, are you okay?)

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The Results

Here’s what I learned:

ChatGPT, generate illustrations in the style of a Modern Love column.

1. Vaping Was a Problem (4 men)

Four men explicitly cited vaping as something they disliked about me.

From one breakup message:
“I have thought on some things re: vaping as secondhand smoke, Burning Man, AI use, relative activity levels, and think though we could be a good short-term match, we may not be a good long-term match with styles of living.”

(Yes, he really included “AI use” as a dealbreaker. To be fair, I was trying to launch an AI influencer account during the two weeks we dated, but still—he couldn’t even eat cheese on pizza, so we were doomed anyway.)

At first, I thought this was as absurd as Early Bedtime Guy’s reasoning. Surely, if someone found me attractive and interesting, a little nicotine vapor wouldn’t be a dealbreaker. But four men? It started to feel less like a coincidence.

2. Messiness (2 men)

Two men cited my messiness as a reason for not pursuing a relationship.

My parents warned me from an early age that no man would want me because I was messy. Apparently, they were more right than I’d realized.

“Your house was in a bit of disarray,” said Furniture Assembly Guy. “I know you were in transition, but was a little too messy for my comfort. I think a person's home says a lot about their internal state.”

3. Lack of Perceived Interest (2 men)

Two men said I didn’t seem interested enough in them.

From one:
“I think I vibed with you more as a friend because I typically look for charged passion from the other person, and didn’t feel like I was getting that ‘super interested in me’ energy from you.”

Another wrote:
“It didn’t really feel like you were genuinely interested in me, felt like you were more just bored and killing time.”

While I liked both men, they were correct that I wasn’t super interested for whatever reason. At least I am… genuine?

4. Connection Issues (1 man)

The most thoughtful response came from an actor I’d dated briefly:
“End of the day, it’s connection though… I told ya how I didn’t feel heard when I shared with you my ayahuasca trip which was vulnerable… the other stuff is all just habits, but didn’t feel like we were on the same wavelength to me in my gut in that moment.”

I remember feeling disconnected during that conversation but had no idea why - I have had many psychedelic experiences myself and am not sure if I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day.

He was right, though: if you open up to someone and they don’t make you feel heard, they’re probably not Your Person.

5. Life Circumstances (4 men)

Four men cited life circumstances as the reason they couldn’t pursue a relationship.

One guy explained:
“I couldn’t see it going anywhere. I wasn’t looking for an emotional connection.”

The Daily Texter guy who ghosted after 4 dates confessed:
“My dad was diagnosed with cancer mid-March and then I had knee surgery. I didn’t think we were going to get married.”

While I don’t doubt that they’re being honest, I mentally also fill in the blanks here that they just ultimately weren’t interested/excited enough.

6. Not Ready (4 men)

A lot of men cited “timing” - recently out of a divorce, starting a new business - but I also kind of lump it into the above bucket of “just not into it enough.” If they were really excited, they could have reached out a year later.

7. Too Many… Drugs? (1 man)

When I reached out to Furniture Assembly Guy, he said “too many drugs” which utterly baffled me.

As someone who has at most dabbled in psychedelics maybe once every few years, I had to ask for clarification.

“Felt like there were a lot of drugs around,” he said. “I found you incredibly intelligent and beautiful, but the drugs turned me off. Nicotine, sleeping pills, Ozempic… and you did nearly an entire box of nitrous.”

To be fair, he’s allowed to have concerns about the nicotine and nitrous (both of which, for the record, are gone now). But I’ve never even had a prescription for sleeping pills. The closest I’ve come is melatonin gummies and the occasional Benadryl. And Ozempic? That’s not exactly a recreational drug, so I have no idea why it even made the list.

This felt like a case of meeting someone at a low point in life. I was a little depressed at the start of the year and probably wasn’t presenting my best self. That said, I ultimately don’t want to date someone who would judge me so harshly for taking Ozempic anyway, so it was a relief in some ways to get this feedback. It confirmed we weren’t compatible.

It’s now one of my funniest anecdotes. I love telling anyone who knows me about it because… I don’t really do drugs? Not the ones that matter?¹

8. Not Polyamorous Enough (1 man)

One particularly baffling piece of feedback came from a man who told me I wasn’t polyamorous enough.

To be clear, I had been upfront about being open to a relationship anywhere on the monogamy to monogamish spectrum, but he wanted like, Kitchen Table Poly.² He explained that while he could consider monogamy with the right person, that person would have to be a “traditional” partner who viewed monogamy as the only option. Since I didn’t fall into the “monogamy-or-GTFO” category, I wasn’t eligible for either his monogamous or polyamorous offer.

“If this is that important to you,” I said, completely nonplussed, “You should put it in your Bumble profile.”

What Changed

Since then, a few things have shifted.

First, the vaping. I stopped vaping on dates to avoid scaring anyone off, and then—completely unintentionally—I quit vaping altogether. It wasn’t a deliberate decision; I just didn’t want to anymore. Go figure.³

Second, my apartment is neater these days. A new roommate has forced me to keep shared spaces clean, and I’ve stopped hosting men at my place entirely for the most part. (Pro tip: dating men with museum-clean apartments is a compatibility red flag. We’d never survive each other’s messes.)

It’s been 6 months since I conducted my survey. It’s honestly hard to say what has caused what, but I actually have had a lot more success with dating.

I am truly surprised by that.

I won’t go into detail out of respect for what is ongoing, but this is by far the best I’ve had it in the last 7 years.

I really thought that the entire exercise would just shift people towards new, spicy reasons to reject me (and of course, men still ghost!) but a far higher percentage have around for 5+ dates than before when the percentage was approaching 0.

Tips

If you want to do this for yourself, I would do it this way:

First, your initial text should not immediately ask the question Y U NO LIKE ME?!!!. Too blunt/awkward/easy to ignore.

Start off with a text that simply says: “Hi! Can I ask you a super awkward and random question?”

Once they respond in the affirmative, here’s an example of a message I sent: “I am doing some life inventory, and wanted to see what you reasons were for not pursuing things romantically, whether that be logical reasons or vibe, and how I come across. Won’t take offense to any answers.”

I would love to hear how it goes if you do it!

1. I guess different drugs matter to different people. Shrug emoji.

2. Kitchen table polyamory refers to a style of polyamorous relationships where all partners (and often their partners' partners, sometimes called “metamours”) are comfortable enough with each other to metaphorically—or literally—sit around the same kitchen table. It emphasizes a sense of community, mutual respect, and open communication among everyone involved, rather than keeping relationships compartmentalized or entirely separate. Think "chosen family," but with some extra scheduling challenges.

3. It actually is beyond merely quitting: when I try to vape now, I get debilitating half-day headaches.