We've taken a distinctly feminist stance on most relationship matters, and so far we've been OK with that. But now we have to admit that the single life isn't all that great for guys either.

See, we never thought guys had it so bad. After all, we were the ones who had to wait for them to call, get the courage to ask us out, or even just return a casual greeting to give us some hope by finally acknowledging our existence.

And guys had it oh-so-horrible how? By trying to match the list of girls' names written on their right hands with the correct phone numbers written on the left? Our hearts bled. Seriously.

We first thought the best way to avoid relationship stress was to find ourselves a good, old-fashioned, risk-free player. The kind of love-em-and- leave-em guy who could go out, have a good time and not get weird. But guess what happened? He got weird.

After we had a Talk and agreed that neither of us wanted a Serious Thing, he got weird. He got all needy and clingy - the calling, the e-mails and the "Hi! Missed you!" text messages. Who wants a guy who changes his ways when he realizes he wants to spend every waking hour with you? Sigh. We can see why guys hate that.

In an effort to keep it simple, we decided to stick to "just being friends" with our next guy. We even had rules. Nothing that could be misinterpreted as romantic interest. And it worked for a while, too. Until our guy friend suddenly decided to fall in love with us.

It led to an awkward moment when we had to explain how we liked him, but that we didn't "like-like" him. No wonder men can't stand it when we think all their "friendly" attention is really something more. Sometimes a harmless, drunken make-out session between buddies is just that. Nothing to freak out about. Geez.

But that's what we've been putting guys through for years. We've blown their mixed signals all out of proportion. We've given them no choice but to hurt our feelings with the Just Friends speech because we thought that one kiss meant more than "Hey, nice to see you!"

So, on behalf of women everywhere, The Hookup offers this apology to all dating-aged males: Our bad. But, to be fair, you kind of brought it on yourself.

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