The Ego and the Egg
Dating as a woman in her late 20s is like being handed an egg—quietly, invisibly—and being told to carry it everywhere without dropping it, mentioning it, or letting anyone else feel its weight.
You’re supposed to hold it lightly. Casually. Like it’s not always in the room with you.
Even if you don’t know whether you want kids. Even if you’re not ready yet. The egg is there—symbolic, biological, emotional. A stand-in for the timeline we didn’t choose but are still expected to manage with grace.
Meanwhile, the men we date hold nothing. They show up empty-handed, unburdened by clocks or consequences. They’re not being asked to keep time. They’re asking how much time they need.
This is the quite tension we rarely name out loud: the tension between the male ego and the female timeline.
For women, the clock isn’t abstract. Even if you’re unsure about kids, the choice starts to feel borrowed. You don’t get forever to decide. You don’t get to feel it out indefinitely. There’s a quiet, medicalized pressure that enters your body whether or not you invited it in.
For men, the timeline tends to be emotional. Psychological. Internal. They want to be ready, but only on their terms, which often means after they’ve built the career, healed their wounds, proven something to themselves. It’s not malicious, but it’s not neutral, either.
Because while women are forced to contend with time, men are still debating whether they’re ready to start thinking about it.
And that gap creates a power dynamic no one likes to admit: One person is preparing for. the future. The other is still debating whether they’re ready to start thinking about it.
When a man isn’t ready, the relationship stalls, and the cultural expectation is that women wait. Patiently. Silently. Supportively. Because to name what you want too early is to risk being labeled “too much.” To mention a timeline is to risk being seen as manipulative or desperate.
Let’s be honest—if men risked losing the ability to become parents by their late 30s, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
This isn’t about villainizing men. It’s about what gets lost when their emotional work is prioritized over our biological and relational realities. When their uncertainty is treated as sacred, and our urgency as something to suppress.
I’ve seen so many women shrink themselves in response to a man’s indecision. I’ve been there, too. But waiting doesn’t always lead to clarity. Sometimes it just leads to quiet resentment.
You count the days as they pass by, unsure if you’re being loyal or just betraying yourself.
You tell yourself it’s love, that waiting is a form of devotion. You’re convinced that if you just give it more time, he’ll come around.
Eventually, the weight shifts. The patience starts to feel like self-abandonment, and the hope you once held with pride starts to feel more like a gamble you didn’t mean to place. You start feeling stuck—until you realize the question isn’t will he choose you, but how much of yourself are you willing to lose while he decides?
I know this story because I’ve lived it.
Twice.