Lexicon ·
centering men
verb phrase
- Stated meaning
- Treating a romantic relationship with a man as the main goal, and planning the rest of life around getting and keeping one.
- Operating meaning
- A life's plans allocated against one open position, so that the search for a partner is budgeted ahead of everything it was meant to sit beside, and every line is dated from an acquisition that has no date.
- Origin
- Named after its opposite. The writer Sherese (Charlie) Taylor coined decentering men in a 2019 book, and a 2026 Cosmopolitan explainer defined the practice it undoes.
- Antonyms
- decentering men
July 1 to 3. At a mall on July 1 I told her I was taking myself off the market to focus solely on her, and that I had cancelled my dating apps. Over the next 2 days I spent 420 minutes building her a birthday box of 16 handwritten cards. The phrase was not used, and the conduct was mine.
The phrase entered circulation as the thing another phrase undoes. The writer Sherese (Charlie) Taylor coined decentering men in her 2019 book, and when Cosmopolitan explained the idea in August 2026 (opens in a new window), the writer Sommer Tothill supplied the definition of the practice being reversed: “Essentially, women center men when we orient our life plans around securing a romantic relationship with a man.” The same piece inventoried the milestones it is organized around as “a boyfriend, a ring, a wedding.” No earlier use of the phrase as the name of a practice has been found.
Most of the dating-advice shelf assumes it without naming it. The Rules (opens in a new window) stated its goal in 1995 as “Marriage, in the shortest time possible,” and the coaching, courses and apps that followed are sold against the same goal. A dating coach quoted by Cosmopolitan counted 3 ways of doing it inside a dating life: “going on mediocre dates, staying in ‘just okay’ or even toxic relationships, or stopping your dating life altogether, even when you want partnership.” Her list enters quitting the search on the same line as staying in it.
Under load, the practice is an allocation problem. Friendships, work, the lease and the weekend are each budgeted against a position that has not been filled, and the search is charged first because it is the line expected to pay for the others. Men’s content names the same allocation, pointed at one person, as oneitis, and sells a different remedy. The plan’s weakness is in the schedule. Every line is dated from the acquisition, and the acquisition is the one line without a date.
The term is filed from women’s content, and the file holds it in my column. On July 1 I took myself off the market for 1 person and cancelled the apps, and her answer was 2 characters long. On July 2 and 3 I spent 420 minutes on a box for her birthday, when I had spent 1,350 minutes in her company, so the manufacture came to 31 percent of the relationship. Everything after it was planned around a position that had not been filled. On September 7, 68 days later, I sent the first message of a fourth account from one of the apps I had cancelled.