The chilling reason everyone's sharing that 'New Yorker' story about dating
Have you ever finished a story and thought to yourself: "I just read my life on a page"? That's how many women are responding to a New Yorker short story about a young woman's shitty dating experience.
If you haven't yet read Cat Person by Kristen Roupenian, then stop what you're doing right now and get to it. Oh, and while you're at it, you should avert your eyes this very minute: spoilers abound.
The story depicts a dalliance between a 20-year-old female student, Margot, and a man named Robert she meets while working at her local arthouse cinema. IRL flirting turns into texting, texting turns into a date, and, well, the date turns into drunken fumbling in the dark.
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But, this isn't a love story. This is the story of a young woman navigating the at-times perilous path that is modern dating. At times, she feels her life is in danger. At other times, she wonders what she's done wrong. Her story is one that's been lived by countless other women.
In subtle ways, Robert's changeable disposition makes Margot wonder if her words or actions have offended him. At first, she feels touched by his "vulnerability" but, she also seems to feel the need to atone somehow and make him feel better. And, the interactions are infused with an uncomfortable realism that will speak to the soul of anyone who's ever been treated badly on a date.
Maybe, she thought, her texting “lol r u serious” had hurt him, had intimidated him and made him feel uncomfortable around her. The thought of this possible vulnerability touched her, and she felt kinder toward him than she had all night.
The terrible sex shared between the pair leads Margot to a realisation:
At last, after a frantic rabbity burst, he shuddered, came, and collapsed on her like a tree falling, and, crushed beneath him, she thought, brightly, This is the worst life decision I have ever made! And she marvelled at herself for a while, at the mystery of this person who’d just done this bizarre, inexplicable thing.
After some terrible kissing, and clumsy sex, the protagonist is driven back to her dorm. The subsequent sequence of events will sound pretty familiar to anyone who's grappled the dilemma of not knowing whether or not to ghost after a first date.
She told herself that she owed him at least some kind of breakup message, that to ghost on him would be inappropriate, childish, and cruel. And, if she did try to ghost, who knew how long it would take him to get the hint? Maybe the messages would keep coming and coming; maybe they would never end.
In the end, Margot's roommate sends a text on her behalf letting the guy know she's not interested and doesn't want him to text her anymore.
The story ends with a powerful scene, in which the woman sees the man in a bar. He proceeds to send her a string of texts. At first, the texts are friendly, but they soon take a turn for the abusive
“Is that guy you were with tonight your boyfriend”
“???”
“Or is he just some guy you are fucking”
“Sorry”
“When u laughed when I asked if you were a virgin, was it because you'd fucked so many guys”
“Are you fucking that guy right now”
“Are you?”
“Are you”
“Are you”
“Answer me”
“Whore.”
Some women tweeted that they felt the story captures a shared experience that many women have while on dates with men.
"Now imagining a world where women aren't socialised to placate men's feelings above her own safety, happiness and pleasure," reads one woman's tweets.
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For those of you feeling like someone stole your diary and read it aloud, you're not alone. Countless people took to social media over the weekend to share the exact same thought.
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Just go read it.
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Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
