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Welcome to Boy Math, aka the internet’s favourite branch of creative accounting. Here, a ₹10,000 gadget that might make you more productive is an investment in self-growth, but a 20-minute conversation about feelings feels like a wildly inefficient use of time. Every thought piece in this series unpacks how progress is measured in numbers, upgrades, and visible wins, while the uncomfortable inner work keeps getting rescheduled for some imaginary future.

You know you’re screwed when his sentences start with a future tense. At first, it feels intoxicating because this is what women want in 2026; a sense of certainty that shows up not through words or labels but actionable plans.

“We should plan a trip.”

“When we buy our house, we’ll decorate it like this.”

“We should start telling our parents about each other.”

A man who talks in ‘we’ feels safe. A man who slips you into his five-year plan feels, frankly, rare. So, you believe him. You begin to inhabit the world he keeps sketching for the two of you. Wedding jokes stop feeling hypothetical. Your friends call him ‘jiju’ and his friends call you ‘bhabhi’.

And then one fine day, you get a long paragraph or call saying, “It’s not working out. This is over. Let’s not drag it any further.”

The man who could spend six months talking about marriage suddenly freezes when you ask for the bare minimum, like communication, vulnerability, dependency, and commitment. The same person who once said, “I can really see a life with you,” now needs “space to think.”

And why he went from “I can’t wait to be with you” to “I can’t be with you” in a blink becomes a mystery to even Sherlock. The second they're asked for specifics like, “Are we moving in? Are we doing this seriously? Where is this going?,” the romance evaporates into thin air.

Every woman has met this man.

© Phantom Films

The one who seems emotionally literate. Thoughtful. Present. The kind of man who remembers your dentist appointment, sends your best friend birthday wishes, and casually says things like, “I’ve never felt this way before.”

And yet no woman has been able to comprehend this curious case of boy math: why do men plan their whole lives with you and then vanish you as if it was just sandcastles built too close to the water?

Psychologically speaking, this reeks of avoidant attachment when a person has a strong desire to be independent, often characterised as the lone wolf in men, and shies away from forming long lasting relationships by avoiding emotional intimacy. So, the moment they feel ‘forever’ is just around the corner, they retract into their shell and leave you wondering where months and years of love and intimacy have gone.

© YRF

Many men are socialised to enjoy the performance of certainty. Talking about forever feels masculine, grounded, decisive. Not to mention, it also makes them more attractive to women because who doesn’t want a man who is not afraid of expressing himself especially when it comes to building a future?

But true commitment requires vulnerability of a different kind. It requires the willingness to be accountable to someone else’s expectations, to make irreversible choices, to stop keeping emotional exits unlocked. That’s much harder.

So, the future remains safest when it stays hypothetical.

And you know what stings the most? That this man you had centered your life around was braver in his imagination than he was in real life.