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After 25 years of marriage, my father had an affair with a woman he met in China and, in a hurricane of lies, left my mother.

At a local bar, a man leans over and tells me “I would totally bang you if I were single.” I slap him on the back, say “Thanks!” and walk away.

Seeing so many men behave like this, I started to believe that all men care about is sex. I began to lose faith in men and actually considered “using sex as an icebreaker,” as Eliott once said on Scrubs.

I had several good male friends who suffered the same disillusionment with women that I had with men. One, an officer in the army, once told me: “Asshole men exist because of asshole girls.” The fact is that neither gender is free of fault. Men cheat because they see women cheat. Women cheat because they see men cheat. Women believe that there are no good men, so they stop looking for relationships and start just giving men what they think they want. Men stop looking for relationships because they believe women will cheat, and since there are so many girls who are willing to have sex with no relationship, why even bother with the relationship? The fact is, that neither could exist without the other.

Fortunately, I knew several good guys who were clearly looking for relationships as well. “I’m not looking for marriage right now, I just want to find a girl for a fulfilling, long-term relationship,” a Harvard graduate and current medical student told me. Even the men I see who sleep with random women secretly admit to me that they want relationships as well. They are just afraid to be hurt again, so they prefer the superficiality of sex with no commitment.

But it’s good to know that, for every smart, driven woman out there, there is a smart, driven man looking for that kind of woman. Some men just want a pretty girl for a night, but some are sick of superficiality and hold views similar to my secret love, John Keats, who wrote in his October 1818 letter: “the opinion I have of the generallity of women–who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a Sugar Plum than my time, form a barrier against Matrimony which I rejoice in.” He later fell in love with and was engaged to Fanny Brawne.

So women, don’t lose faith because of sleazy guys. Continue being beautiful in body, mind, and soul. You will find your Keats. And men, don’t lose faith because of stupid, drunk women. Some day, you will find your Fanny Brawne.

In the end, we are all just looking for someone to understand us. I finally realized that my dad had not been happy in marriage to my mom for the last 10 years. Every day, he had been irate, leaving for work early, coming home late, avoiding financial matters. In some ways, he was even angry at me, because my mother seemed to care about me more than she did about him. He craved that overpowering and all-encompassing self-sacrificing love from the movies, but he wasn’t receiving that in marriage. And honestly, who will? That sort of thing slowly fades within a year. I often wish he had left my mother and myself 10 years ago, when he first realized that he was unhappy. Unfortunately, I think he felt a sense of obligation to see me through college, that resulted in him half-heartedly remaining committed to a marriage he no longer felt happy in.

My father was not the most mature. He did not know himself. Before you can really give yourself to someone else for the rest of your life, I think you have to understand yourself and what you want. Otherwise, you will commit to something you are not happy with, and ultimately, in forcing yourself to stay in an unhappy situation, you will cheat. Cheating will create misery and disillusionment. So, if you’re unhappy, even if you think you’re afraid of being lonely - even if you are avoiding hurting someone else’s feelings - dragging out your unhappiness is ultimately bad for everyone. Break it off before it gets there, that way you can find someone who will make you happy - without all the bad karma attached.

“Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.” –Alan Watts

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