When people talk about prom, they usually only discuss all the stress the ladies supposedly go through. But they never fail to leave out men. So what about the guys?

There are so many different high schools, and students come with a catalog of diverse experiences, but in America, prom is the one experience that can be shared with almost every high schooler in the country.

When you think about prom season, you typically think of all the things that girls are stressed out about, but everyone always forgets that the guy is stressing out too and has to prepare just as much as the girl.

First off, the guy usually is the one that asks the girl out to prom. In my opinion, this brings a lot of high expectations to the table. Girls have an unspoken code that ‘it ain’t fine if it don’t rhyme.’

Sure, anyone can slap “Vanessa, will you go to prom with me?” on a 22 by 28 inch poster board, but with a promposal, it needs to follow an ABAB rhyme scheme to have the girl even consider you as one of her many options. So yeah, have fun trying to rhyme something with “Vanessa.” No, I’m serious, please help, she got mad last year when I tried rhyming it with “Schmanessa.”

Stereotypically, the teenage boy, known scientifically as Slothus Maximus, is pretty lazy, so as you can imagine that would cause some issues when you’re doing your best to keep up with your date. But when you take “guy time” away for an entire evening or week, things can get worse.

Also, new video game challenges come out every Friday, so how do ladies expect us to be up the following day at three in the afternoon? That is a true outrage—sometimes boys just have to be boys and have boy time with their boys. Hours of planning is not conducive to that. Also, you can’t forget that Saturdays are for the boys; how do you think your boys will react when they see you with your date all weekend instead of boyin’ out with them?

Clearly, men are the real oppressed people.

When discussing these important issues, it’s hard to leave out the cornerstone of prom, the pictures and coordination with dressing.

As you can imagine, it’s a pretty stressful time for the guy, considering the promposal fiasco and needing to keep up with everyone and their plans, but now you have to make the attempt to match the inexplicably impossible-to-match-dress and surviving the guilt you feel if you mess up. You don’t know how difficult it is to match a chic red dress with an unexplainable purple and white skirt when all of your options consist solely of black and blue.

If you don’t match properly, your prom pictures won’t be quite right. These pictures need to come out absolutely perfect—and that’s going to be difficult when you’re wearing a black suit under the harsh rays of the merciless sun.

Ladies, don’t forget that heat stroke is very possible and us guys are not immune. We may act tough, but try as we might, we can’t beat the sun. While it may cause some discomfort to your date, you will be melting into your shoes, but at least you looked hot, right?

With prom, you’ll be spending money on transportation, food, tickets and the after party. You better not get used to how heavy your wallet is because a lot of your dough might take a sabbatical. Heat stroke must be looking good now, huh?

Now we get down to what can really hurt us and it’s none other than the dollar bills, baby and how we’re running out. As a guy, we feel obligated to pay because we’re trying to show that we care and want our dates to have the best time possible. For many of us, let’s just say our egos are bigger than our wallets.

To all of the boys out there thinking about jumping on the prom bandwagon, I wish you the best. Maybe you’ll find the right girl that makes the heat stroke a wonderful experience. For everyone else painting prom as a girls-only stressor, you need to walk a mile in our hot suit and see how hectic it is.