This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/twoxchromosomes by /u/Candid_Coyote_3949 on 2023-08-24 22:56:16.

I think it is easy to call women who choose not to date men irrational. I am going to share my romantic history in an effort to show how much women go through before resolving to cut men out of their lives romantically/sexually.

  1. TW: my first sexual experience was abuse as a little girl. My older brother was never held accountable and I had to find the boldness as a child to fight him off. So not starting off well.
  2. My first junior high/high school bf made up a rumor that I gave him oral. I had only ever kissed him. I carried a slut reputation (it was the late 90’s) despite having no sexual experience outside of abuse. I only learned about the rumor after we broke up. He had made it up so that his next gf felt pressured to put out because she thought I had.
  3. My first college bf cheated on me with two people within two weeks of becoming official - two that I know of. I lost my autonomous virginity to him week 3, and days later found out about the cheating. Then I found out my roommate was teaming up with him to manipulate all of the women in our social network for entertainment.
  4. My next college boyfriend just wanted a gf and couldn’t articulate what he liked, let alone loved about me. It was just nice for him to have a gf, he said. I thought I was playing it safer with this one as he wasn’t a cheater but he couldn’t connect on many critical levels either.
  5. My first bf outside of college and into a new career and state of residence became my partner/spouse for 11 years.

My self esteem was pretty low by the time I met him, so I took his love bombing as a green flag. I was also used to all men being cheaters and/or manipulators, so I took his openness about previous cheating and obsession with porn as refreshing honesty.

For a decade of my life I lived in misery, in competition with his porn use, and constantly finding evidence of his desire to cheat. I helped him find a job, progress up the salary ladder, helped him save money, while he interfered with my pursuit of joining a band (my passion), made me feel like my body was inadequate compared to barely legal porn actors, and isolated me from friends and family with negative, irritable behavior.

By the time I declared my intention to divorce, he shared that I was physically excellent and he lied about his view of my body, and was upset that other men would potentially sleep with me. He moved a new partner into the home I still co-owned three months later.

  1. My next bf post-divorce hid alcoholism from me until a month in when he had a really bad night of drinking, choked me in a scary way during sex, and then refused to take accountability for his actions. He wrote horrible songs about me and played them for the local music community, completely devastating my opportunity to play music in the scene.

  2. I tried dating someone casually, as anytime I took it seriously I came away with serious trauma. I fell in with what seemed to be a stellar guy and thought we were becoming friends. Turns out he was sleeping with other people while we agreed to be exclusive and not use protection. He put me at risk for STDs and was dishonest for no reason. Then, he moved across the country to a horribly conservative state, and expected me to go with him to support him while he was quietly pursuing a friend on the side with which he fully intended on having an affair (she was in an exclusive partnership).

  3. I moved back home to be with family at this stage of life and wanted to be an engaged aunt. I decided to find a dining buddy to try out the local cuisine and to try a casual fling one last time. I jumped on Bumble to do so. I matched with someone promising and made my intentions clear.

After one date, he love bombed me. Within a week, he introduced me to his family during a situation in which it was very difficult for me to get out of. He pressured for a relationship despite my clear intentions from the start. I explained to him what a serious partnership looks like for me and that he did not live a life or share the values I can confidently commit to but that I am happy to continue something casual. He assured me over and over again that he wanted the same things but just hadn’t met the right person. We decided to try exclusivity and discussed how the next year might look, as he has a son - something I took very seriously.

It all unraveled when I took a trip shortly after becoming exclusive. During that trip my mom had a stroke. He cheated on me with his best friend while I was struggling to get her back to the states and to her doctor. The first time I saw him when I got back, he screamed at me and said I was lucky he wasn’t hitting me. It was clear he had done something because his anger was irrational and so inappropriate. Turns out he was deflecting his guilt for cheating at such an insanely cruel time in my life by making out that I was a person who somehow deserved it. I haven’t talked to that trash can person since.

Call me a bad picker of men but many men have picked me. To some extent, you’ve got to give people a chance to grow and I did that, always to my detriment.

And I just listed the highlights. The speckling of dates I’ve had outside of the longer term scenarios are full of men from many walks of life, identities, professions and hobbies, and the manipulation, porn-centered relationship to sex, lack of self-knowledge around why they want a romantic relationship, etc. was always present.