Men Come and Go. Heels are Forever.

The Receipts Speak for Themselves

Let me lay out the data for you, because I think it’s important we start with facts. Over the last however many years, I have purchased a lot of heels and dated a lot of men. The heels have, with terrifying consistency, made my life better. The men have, with equally terrifying consistency, given me material for the group chat and very little else. One of these categories is clearly outperforming the other, and yet society keeps gently suggesting I scale back on the one that’s working and try harder with the one that isn’t. I will not be doing that.

A pair of heels and a man both arrive in your life with the same basic promise. They will support you. They will elevate you. They will make you feel taller and more confident and like the most polished version of yourself. One of them is offering four inches and one of them is offering six, and frankly, only one of those measurements is guaranteed. I have never put on a heel and discovered, twenty minutes later, that it was actually two inches and the rest was vibes. The same cannot be said of the gentleman across the table. The shoes, when they say they will be there, are there. Men, when they say they will be there, are sometimes there, sometimes there but emotionally elsewhere, and sometimes responding to your text three days later with a single word and a question mark.

I do not drive. I do not own a car. I do not have any of the financial drains that come with vehicular life, and I have made the executive decision that the money saved goes onto my feet. Some women have a Mazda. I have a wardrobe. Some women justify the cost of a man with phrases like “but he’s really thoughtful,” before listing things he hasn’t actually done. I justify the cost of a shoe by wearing it for three years straight without it once disappointing me. Make of this what you will.

Look, Some of My Best Friends Are Men

Before we continue, a quick clarification, because I can already see the comments forming. This is not an anti-men piece. I am not staring out of a window in a long cardigan vowing to swear off the entire gender. Some of my best friends, my actual closest people, the ones who get the unfiltered voice notes at 11pm, are men. One of them is an ex-boyfriend who has been gracefully promoted to best friend status, and I have informed him on multiple occasions that I fully intend to marry him eventually whether he likes it or not. He has not formally agreed to this. He has not formally objected to it either. We are calling that a soft yes.

But here is the thing. Even those men, the ones I love, the ones who are excellent, the ones I would catch a flight for and have, have still let me down on occasion. Forgotten birthdays. Cancelled plans. Said something thoughtless when I needed something thoughtful. They are human, they are flawed, and that’s fine, because the bar for friendship is different and I love them anyway. But the data is the data. They have, statistically, dropped the ball more often than my Nine West Tatianas, which I have owned for an embarrassing length of time and which have never once cancelled on me, forgotten anything, or said the wrong thing at a wedding.

And look, I’m not stupid about this. Just as I can acknowledge that not every pair of heels is a virtue of comfort, that some shoes are gorgeous on the shelf and an absolute war crime by hour three, I can acknowledge that some men just don’t deliver. Some shoes pinch. Some men dismiss. Some shoes blister. Some men ghost. The thesis here isn’t that men are bad and shoes are good. The thesis is that you have to use your discernment in both directions, and personally my discernment for footwear has a much better strike rate than my discernment for romantic partners. I’m working on it. The Tatianas, meanwhile, are not asking me to work on anything.

My Soles Versus My Soul

Here is the funniest comparison of all, and I want you to really sit with it. I have worn four inch heels every single day, on the footpaths of Brisbane, Adelaide, Sydney, Glasgow, and London, for years. By any reasonable standard, my feet should be obliterated. There should be bunions. Callouses. A claim made against the council for the state of the pavement near Roma Street. Instead, my soles are pristine. Completely fine. Soft and unmarked, as though I had been carried everywhere on a small velvet cushion. The shoes, despite being the most aggressive thing I subject my feet to, have left precisely zero evidence of their presence.

Men, who I have welcomed into my life with significantly less daily commitment than my heels, have managed to leave entire excavation sites on my soul. The Tourettes joke from a first date. The infertility comment that turned into a critique of post-partum bodies, delivered in a public restaurant, like it was a TED talk no one had requested. The five week extraordinary man who turned out to be on a free trial. The “hey, been busy” Sunday text. The one who told me, with full conviction, that I was “a lot.” These are not small things. These are scars in places I didn’t even know were exposed.

So let me restate this for clarity. The shoes I wear daily and aggressively have left no marks on my soles. The men I have allowed in occasionally and carefully have left several on my soul. One of these is functioning correctly and the other is not, and I think you can guess which one I’m choosing to keep buying.

What Each One Actually Gives You

Heels deliver, every single time. They give you height, posture, presence, and that specific click on a hard floor that says, this woman is going somewhere and she is not going to apologise for the noise. They make you stand straighter. They make you walk slower and more deliberately because you have to, and somewhere in that physical correction your entire personality gets a small upgrade. They make you catch your own reflection in a shop window and audibly approve. The shoe is a delivery system for self belief, and it has never once failed me.

Men, in my actual experience, deliver something quite different. They deliver dinner sometimes. They deliver an evening of conversation that is occasionally pleasant. They deliver, on a long enough timeline, a moment of real connection that almost makes the rest of it worth it. But they also deliver opinions about how you load the dishwasher. They deliver the slow shift from “you’re amazing” to “could you be slightly less amazing in public, actually.” They deliver a version of themselves on date one that is not the version you end up with on date eight, and you do not get a refund for the discrepancy.

A heel will never tell me I am too much. A heel will never get quiet on a Wednesday for no reason. A heel will never reframe an entire situation by adding the word “babe” to the start of a passive aggressive paragraph. A heel does the job, every day, without commentary, without conditions, without ever once making me wonder if I should have texted differently. Lulu, for the record, sits on the shoe rack like a small black gargoyle inspecting the merchandise, and so far the shoes have passed every assessment he has ever conducted. He does not extend this courtesy to men. He has, as he so often does, the correct instincts.

One of These Things Is Forever. The Other One Has a Use-By Date.

A good pair of heels, properly cared for, will last you years. Decades, even. You condition the leather, you replace the sole when it wears down, you treat them with the respect they deserve, and they will reward you with longevity. They become so woven into your life that you stop thinking of them as items and start thinking of them as colleagues. They have been to weddings, funerals, first dates, last dates, work events, and one truly memorable night I will not be detailing here. They have done all of this without complaint, without negotiation, and without a single bad evening.

A man, in my repeated and well-documented experience, has a much shorter operational lifespan. They arrive. They participate. They exit, sometimes through the front door and sometimes via a slow disappearance that takes weeks to actually fully process. Even the lovely ones, the genuinely good ones, the ones who do not say something atrocious on date one, often turn out to be a temporary feature rather than a permanent fixture. This is not a complaint. This is just data. The data is consistent. The data is conclusive. The data has informed my purchasing decisions accordingly.

So when given the choice between something that has a track record of years and something that has a track record of, on average, about six weeks, I think you can understand why my budget tilts in the direction it does. Men come and go, and that is genuinely fine, and I have made my peace with the rotation. But my heels stay. My heels have never let me down. My heels have left no marks on my soles, while men have left genuine wear and tear on my soul. The bar is four inches high. So far, only the shoes are clearing it. And until further notice, that is exactly where my attention, my budget, and my full architectural support is going.

You Are Not Entitled to an Answer – Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity

In this episode of Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity, we're unpacking why you are not entitled to an answer. Specifically, we're talking about the strange little corner of modern dating where a few days of app chat somehow becomes an emotional contract, and suddenly a man you've never met believes your silence requires a formal explanation, a debrief, and possibly a follow-up meeting with management.I have two stories for you. One man who talked almost exclusively about himself, ignored the fact that I was sick, and then followed up a week later asking whether I'd reconsidered his "request for clarification". And another who became offended because I didn't respond to his selfie within two hours while I was lying in a dark room with a migraine. Sir. Please be serious.Because here's the thing. Before you've met someone, you do not owe them unlimited access to your time, attention, reassurance, or emotional labour. You don't have to justify why the vibes changed. You don't need a reason they'll consider reasonable. You are allowed to disengage because something felt off, because you changed your mind, because you met someone else, or because you're in your luteal phase and frankly the entire world can wait.Today we're talking about the difference between ghosting and simply disengaging, why demanding closure can become a boundary violation, the exhausting expectation that women should manage men's feelings for them, and why you do not need to JADE, justify, argue, defend, or explain, when you've already decided you're done. Let's get into it.Key Takeaways:A few days of chatting does not create a debt. Matching on an app, exchanging messages, or talking on the phone does not give someone a claim on your attention. Until you've actually built a connection, you are allowed to walk away without submitting supporting documentation.Closure is not something another person can demand from you. Asking once is one thing. Continuing to push after someone has clearly disengaged is not persistence or emotional maturity. It's refusing to accept the answer you've already been given.You do not need to JADE. You don't have to justify, argue, defend, or explain why you're no longer interested. The reason doesn't have to be good enough for him. It just has to be yours.Pre-date silence and post-date silence are not the same thing. If you've never met, disengaging is part of app dating. Once you've shared an actual date or developed a genuine connection, a simple goodbye becomes basic courtesy. Nobody needs a dissertation, but acknowledging another human being matters.Sometimes they don't miss you. They miss the audience. Someone can seem interested while actually being interested in having your attention. Real connection requires curiosity about you. If the only time they become deeply engaged is when you're leaving, pay attention to that.For more visit ⁠BryJaimea.com⁠ or follow over on IG ⁠@BryJaimea

If this post helped, inspired, or made you smile, you can support my work with a tea or tip over on Ko-fi. Every bit helps keep the chaos flowing.