We first discovered Isabel, @IsabelUnhinged, sitting on a park bench in a TikTok, putting on sunglasses with the kind of resignation that only comes from sarcastically admitting, "maybe the 3rd guy in the friend group is my soulmate." Isabel describes herself as "flawed, messy, and self-deprecating," but aren't we all? Somewhere between the breakdowns, the brand deals, and the millions of views, she fell into the kind of love she used to call boring. This is what happened.
G.You've described yourself as the "queen of man-hating TikTok." How does that reputation compare to your actual relationship experience?
My persona is actually pretty different now. When I first started my TikTok, I was in a genuinely bitter phase of my life. I was heartbroken, young, and coming off a run of unkind men. I was in my early twenties, dating constantly, getting my feelings hurt, and carrying around a backlog of rage that had nowhere productive to go. So, it went online. I never set out to be a dating influencer, or even a content creator in any strategic sense. I was just posting whatever felt relatable in the moment, and at that time, my inner life was almost entirely consumed by dating. I had endless material. I quickly realized that when I turned the volume up and made it more extreme and out of pocket, it would travel further. None of that meant I actually believed men should be expelled from the planet, despite the branding.
G.You wrote that your depth is the reason you're single. What do you mean by that?
What I mean is that a lot of people are conditioned to offer up their interior lives very early on in dating, almost as proof of sincerity. There's this idea that intimacy is something you establish by disclosure or by emotional availability on demand. The problem is that not everyone you're dating has that same depth, or even the language for it. So, you end up in this paradox where the impulse to connect — to be honest, open, fully yourself — doesn't bring you closer to another person. It does the opposite. It overwhelms people who are operating on a shallower bandwidth, or it attracts people who like depth only insofar as it benefits them. In that sense, being "deep" can make you single not because depth is a flaw, but because it's often misplaced.
G.You've talked about being told you're "too intense." What do you make of that now?
I kept running into the same wall — not just feeling misunderstood by the men I was dating, but realizing they had no real interest in understanding me. There were so many moments where I tried to share something that mattered to me. Whether it was my writing, a poem, a film, or a thought about art or philosophy, it was received as an inconvenience. I kept finding myself with the same men. Men who slept until three in the afternoon, watched Jackass 2 over and over again, smoked from dirty bongs, and selected the easiest possible classes regardless of whether they cared about the subject. Their intellectual lives were, for lack of a gentler word, totally fried. Eventually it became clear that the issue was not my depth or my intensity, but the deeply unserious audience I kept insisting on performing it for. In retrospect it's really funny — I was trying to talk about Emily Dickinson with a frat guy whose attention was fully claimed by Fortnite.
G.You wrote that real love isn't cinematic. What did you have to unlearn to get there?
I had to unlearn the idea that love is supposed to arrive fully formed and on fire. For a long time, I equated speed with depth: the immediate spark, the feeling of being pulled into something dramatic and cinematic.
My boyfriend offered none of that at the beginning. He was shy, almost overly polite and restrained. He didn't kiss me after the first or second date. It took weeks for him to open up, and during that time I kept wondering whether the absence of urgency meant the absence of feeling. What I realized, slowly and somewhat against my own instincts, is that some people don't reveal themselves through spectacle. The passion I felt so intensely in the past — the fireworks, the constant affirmation, the butterflies — was often less about connection and more about emotional fast-forwarding designed to collapse distance quickly. Usually toward sex, and usually in ways that centered the man's needs rather than any real knowing of me. What lasts is patience, consistency, and the willingness to let something grow without demanding it prove itself right away.
G.You write about confusing anxiety with chemistry, volatility with love. Why do you think so many women stay close to that kind of fire, even when it hurts?
I think a lot of women mistake stimulation for connection. Men who are kind, steady, or slow can feel dull if you've trained yourself to associate desire with adrenaline. The charismatic, fast-moving type arrives fully formed, flattering and intensely attentive. And when that kind of cinematic man inevitably disappoints or pulls back, the withdrawal deepens the spell. The uncertainty becomes so, so addictive. Instead of taking men at face value, we as women construct elaborate theories to excuse them. We give them tragic backstories, imagine ourselves as the exception, the one who will finally understand them, fix them, and soften them. We invest so much energy and imagination into men who have given us very little in return.
We want to believe that men can change if we stay long enough. There's something almost heroic in that hope. So we keep coming back, keep forgiving, keep explaining away what's right in front of us. It's the oldest scene in the book: the wife walks in on the affair, the husband says, "It's not what it looks like." It is. And, almost always, it's worse.
G.You describe healthy love as warm rather than consuming. How did you recognize it?
I think healthy love can feel boring if you're used to intensity. But it is actually not boring. It's just not that consuming, obsessive feeling where the other person takes over your whole life.
I recognized healthy love when I noticed what wasn't happening. I wasn't anxious. I wasn't consumed. I didn't feel high. The relationship didn't demand that I be endlessly desirable or available. Healthy love endures. It stays warm even when the fire fades. Choosing love carefully means tolerating that unevenness and accepting trade-offs without turning them into dealbreakers. At this stage of life, that feels far more radical than opting out and calling it peace.
For years, Isabel gave her inner world to anyone who’d take it, mistaking attention for intimacy. She read her poetry aloud to boys who looked at her like a screensaver. She stayed up until 3am trying to be understood by people who didn’t want to understand her. Now she knows the difference. In her own words: “Love is a beautiful thing when it’s with someone who expands you, someone whose presence makes you more yourself.”
Isabel Timerman writes on Substack @isabelunhinged and can be found on Instagram at @isabeltimerman.