Within a span of one week last year, all of my close female friends got dumped, stood up, or rejected.

“How could he?” one friend would ask, and we would all nod our heads in sympathy. Boys are dense at the best, malicious at the worst (or so it seemed). We hugged each other and promised to swear off men — my boyfriend the exception — for a time.

We laugh about it now, but that week almost turned us into man-haters, at least for a semester or two. Thank God it didn’t. 

We’re back into the swing of classes, lectures, parties, and — yes — heartbreak. Something about tossing several hundred young men and women together into a small college campus seems only to amplify the inevitable tensions between the sexes. Add stress, alcohol, immaturity, and — voilà! — things are bound to go badly from time to time.

In the culture we live in, bitterness between the sexes seems the norm rather than the exception. Singers like Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift build entire careers off of angry, angsty music lamenting some hurt or another. Researchers and journalists have documented the trend of Gen Z “opting out” of common precursors to true romance. According to a 2023 survey by the Survey Center on American Life, 44% of Gen Z men report never being in a romantic relationship during their teenage years. That’s more than twice the number as their Baby Boomer grandparents. 

Breakup music has its place, but we can’t remain angry or opt out of building healthy relationships. 

We have the opportunity here when wrongs and misunderstandings inevitably arise to maintain a sporting spirit and grow from the experience. We’re better together than apart. 

We can’t ignore the tensions that will always exist between men and women: in the romantic sphere, but also personally and professionally. Men and women see the world in different ways. Our strengths, insights, motivations, and vulnerabilities are — broadly speaking — pretty different. 

Even here, in a school with a largely healthy dating culture, you’ve probably experienced some kind of grievance at the hands of the opposite sex. 

The easiest thing to do is to hold that grudge, generalize it, and assume men and women are fundamentally at odds with one another. 

The harder task is to seek to understand the others’ point of view, extend them forgiveness, and seek to repair and maintain strong bonds of friendship and romance between the sexes. 

Because even in this fallen world where so much goes awry, men and women need each other — to procreate, certainly, but also to see. 

And together, we can wound each other in ways not possible if we keep our distance, but we can also heighten each other’s joys, successes, and ambitions. We can hold each other accountable. Iron sharpens iron, and good men and women together make each other all the better — more compassionate, more insightful, more humble. 

It’s through those male-female tensions, not in spite of them, that we learn to be better.

The best part is, it’s more fun this way. If we can learn to laugh at our blind spots and follies, and take some things lightly, the world’s an easier place to live in. 

Breakup week was saved by humor, and gradually we came to recognize the good intentions of the men in question. Bitterness faded, and what remained were stronger friendships and a renewed appreciation of the men in our lives.