The Men We Secretly Want

The Fantasy We Needed Before We Chose Ourselves

Every woman has that man. The one she doesn’t talk about in daylight. The one who makes her heart race—and her common sense vanish. He’s wrong in all the ways we can name, but right in the way he pulls something out of us we didn’t know we had. Desire is a dangerous storyteller. And we keep listening.

There are men we want—and then there are men we admit we want.

The men we secretly want are another story. They’re not the ones who text good morning or ask how your day was. They’re not the stable, sweet, or emotionally available. They don’t remember your birthday. They don’t try.

But they show up in our thoughts when we’re bored, lonely, or wet. They live in the parts of us that crave chaos, heat, or just something different.

A single best friend of mine has been seeing this electrician for years. She’s obsessed with him for no good reason aside from the fact that he leaves her crumbs—just enough to keep her hungry. She tells me stories about him constantly, each one more absurd than the last. Then one day, she showed me a photo.

An ogre.

Short. Old. Painfully mediocre.

And yet she sacrifices for him like he’s made of gold. She drives hours just to be near him. He tells her he dreams about a self-proclaimed healer and witch—maybe he’s in love with her, he says. I told my friend to leave him, with perfect logic, perfect calm.

But no. He is her perfect kind of drug.

And maybe… we’re all like that.

I once obsessed over a man who would never cross paths with me in the way I wanted. Not really. But maybe it wasn’t him I craved. Maybe it was the ache. The impossibility. The fantasy I built in the spaces where he never truly showed up.

That’s the secret: fantasy always survives because it’s never asked to live.

We want men who can ruin us not because we’re broken—but because we’re curious. What would it feel like to lose control? To not be the strong one for once? To be undone?

The men we secretly want don’t hold our hands—they grip our hips. They don’t promise—they provoke. We don’t tell our friends about them because we don’t want advice. We want permission.

Sometimes I wonder—do we want these men, or do we want to want without guilt?

Because when we meet a man who is safe, consistent, kind… our bodies sometimes say no before our hearts even speak. Not because he’s boring, but because he doesn’t activate the part of us that’s still trying to prove we’re worthy of being chased.

And that’s the real ache. We’re not drawn to them because they’re good for us.

We’re drawn to them because they make us feel something we haven’t named yet.

But here’s what I’ve learned:

The men who leave you breathless with want… often leave you empty.

The men who pull you in with mystery… often disappear just as fast.

And the ones you secretly want… never really see you.

They see their own reflection in your desire. And then they leave.

That used to wreck me. Now, I leave without a trace.

No mark. No afterglow. No explanation.

Maybe I’ve morphed into the man I once secretly wanted—unreachable, untouchable, unforgettable.

Or maybe I’ve just fallen in love with my own well-being more than whether a man likes me or not.

Do I like myself?

Yes.

I love myself.

And so the man I secretly want now…

doesn’t meet me where I broke. He meets me where I rose.