Over the past couple of months, I’ve been casually dating multiple guys, and sometimes at the same time. One thing that has become pretty clear to me, is that all of these guys have the same thing in common: they’re not so interested in dating me, but they’re very interested in my body. Maybe we can chalk it up to a shitty personality (I guess anything is possible), or maybe it’s because I’m not meeting men in the right places, but something else is very clear to me: I’m sick and tired of guys wanting me, but not wanting to date me.
It might come off as a little vain, but the truth is that I am indeed meeting men who are seemingly interested in me, only to disappear when they get what they want or they’re tired of waiting around. To clarify one thing: I am not the hookup type. I’ve never been one to hook up with guys and call it good. It’s just something I’ve never done. So maybe I should’ve known better than to look for love on sites usually dedicated to finding hookups, like Tinder, but it doesn’t change the fact that this still happens with guys I’ve met in real life and not through dating apps.
What honestly floors me is the lengths these guys will go to for a hookup. I’ve had guys hang around for months on end, just for a hookup. Some of them will spend a lot of time and money on me, taking me to nice dinners, spending the weekend together, and just all around putting a ton of effort into this shit. And when they’re not getting what they want or they’re not willing to go my pace, they bail, and most of the time, without a trace. Yet, every single one of these guys seems to know exactly what to say to hit you where it matters, and before you know it, they’re roping you in. Maybe I am bad at dating, or maybe they’re just bad at getting hookups. Either way, the message they’re sending me is that I’m worth the time and effort for a hookup, but never for a relationship. So why am I good enough for you to screw around with but not good enough for you to want to date?
I go into these dating experiences with honesty, so they know that I don’t do hookups. I blatantly tell them that no, I’m not looking for a hookup, and no, hookups are not my thing. It’s so surprising how many of these men think they’re the exception and not the rule. It’s hard to not get my hopes up, always thinking that I’ve finally met someone who is different and isn’t looking to just use me and then toss me like a disposable camera. They put on good shows, and often times, their flaking just takes me by surprise and catches me off guard.
You see, it’s hard to be an optimist when it comes to dating, but it’s even harder to be a pessimist. If you have your hopes up too high, you face inevitable disappointment. If you’re too pessimistic, guys think you’re negative, and that’s a turn-off. There’s no happy medium, just like when you’re stuck in that weird relationship limbo, trying to maintain that you’re looking for a relationship and having fun, while also not being clingy or making it just a hookup. No one wins.
What all of these guys fail to realize is this: I am more than my body. I am more than body parts and pretty eyes and nice hair. I am intelligent, I am kind, and I am strong. I am hilarious and I like adventures. I am compassionate and independent, and I love to laugh. I am all of these things, and they’re all much more than just my body.
I’d really like to think that not all guys are the same, but so far, no one has proved me otherwise. I’ve gotten to the point where I go into dating a new guy with the mindset of “I wonder how long this one will stick around before he gets bored of not getting what he wants.” To be honest, I’m exhausted. I’m tired of just being a body. And it’s about time that I am treated as more.
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So your “dating a few guys” but not sure why any of the guys want to date you.. I’m wondering when girl totally turned into guys that they can’t even understand why that happens.. Totally emotionally cluesless
All that she wrote and that’s all you got out of it? You’re seriously the clueless one to write such a nasty simplistic response for no productive reason. I understand what she wrote and have seen it myself along with everyone else I know. Men doing this is very common as well as frustratingly pointless. It DOES happen a lot and not just to her. No it’s not my problem if a man decides to think I’m less than a person, it’s his. I know I’d never treat a person in such a way and I expect the same in return. I won’t be there allowing that and I hope others (man or woman) think enough of themselves to not allow it.
Bevy, the author describes men sticking around for months, taking her to expensive dinners, spending the weekend together, and putting a ton of effort into her. That is not hook-up behavior. What she is describing are men who are trying to have a long-term relationship with her and who eventually give up after a lot of effort because it does not progress to sex.
I suspect what is really going on is that the author is a woman who likes to have hook-ups with men she meets on Tinder and then is unhappy they do not keep in touch with her. She is also meeting men other ways and these men try to date her, but she does not respect these men who are trying to date her, and she sexually rejects the men who are trying to date her. The men who try to date her eventually figure out that she has no intention of having sex with them and they leave.
This woman is in a perverse situation where she is only attracted to the men who are willing to have hook-ups with her but will not date her.
I am a man certainly not looking for a hookup. Hell, I need a mental connection before anything else can happen. It is interesting to see the effects that the casualness of many have on the rest.
Most women approach men in NYC wearily for the author’s exact reason (as described by my female friends and coworkers.) And I can vouch that many male friends and coworkers see no reason to commit to one woman. Unfortunately, that seems to taint the interaction and creates fatigue. It is hard to connect with women that say that they’re “not often on the app” and send messages every few days (or weeks.)
In the end, I do think it is a mindset. I would counter the author that there is no middle ground. Trends are real, the experience described is real, but that reality cannot take over the interaction. It is hard finding the “one”, and probably why it is so worth it to most. So in the end, perhaps we should all take care to only put ourselves out there when we are not date fatigued. That way, we can be out there with the knowledge and the reality of trends without the dragging anchor of expected disappointment. More importantly, it lets us be accountable and respectful rather than allow the actions of the many excuse our own disengagement.
– Girls only want to date guys who have abs and big biceps.
– Now imagine a guy who controls himself to such great extent, doesn’t eat anything tempting, works hard at gym everyday, thinks of his body all day every day, so that he can maintain his abs.
– Once the novelty disappears with you and sex, this guy thinks that he deserves to get laid again. Because he deserves reward for all his hard work.
– Why would he stay with you?
– I have friends who sleep with 2-3 girls every week. Girls become their bitches just to have a go at their body.
– Why would such a guy want a stable relationship
You’re obviously going after the wrong men.
On the man’s side of things, not all women are gold diggers either, but if you’re a wealthy man, that’s all they seem to attract (that’s all they complain about). Clearly, those men are going after the wrong women too. If you don’t want to attract men who are only interested in your body, then don’t put your body out there as the main attraction.
What is your definition of a “hook up” – any sex that happens before marriage? The problem is you are sending out the wrong signals, your disclaimer that you don’t hook up aside. When I think of a hook up, I think of meeting a girl at a bar, party, Tinder, etc. and having sex early on, usually without a folluw up commitment. Actions speak louder than words. The fact that you are telling these guys you don’t hook up doesn’t mean anything when you are dating a bunch of them at once (i.e. casually) and you are meeting them on Tinder and other places that signal you are looking for a hook up. You say these men are involved with you for months and you are still not ready. That’s fine, you should never do anything until you are ready, but that’s not a hook up. That’s a relationship without sex. Even guys who want a relationship are eventually going to want that to include sex, and months later is too long for a lot of men. I doubt you are being that direct with them. Saying you don’t want a hook up means you don’t want casual sex early on. Unless you say to them “I am not interested in sex unless we are in love and have been dating months or years” you aren’t really communicating as clearly as you think you are. And if that’s what you want, don’t date multiple guys at a time. If I went out with someone who I knew was going out with a bunch of other guys, I would assume she wasn’t that into me or wasn’t looking for a serious relationship.
Spot on comment!
“What honestly floors me is the lengths these guys will go to for a hookup. I’ve had guys hang around for months on end, just for a hookup. Some of them will spend a lot of time and money on me, taking me to nice dinners, spending the weekend together, and just all around putting a ton of effort into this shit. And when they’re not getting what they want or they’re not willing to go my pace, they bail, and most of the time, without a trace.”
The male behavior she describes sounds like men who are looking for a long-term girlfriend who eventually give up after months of effort because there is no progress in the relationship. No man who is older than 18 is going to stick around for more than a few weeks if there is no sex. Love and affection is what causes a man to be interested in dating and eventually marrying a woman and then wanting to stay married.
For some reason, a lot of women do not know something that their grandmothers intuitively understood. You will eventually lose your man if you do not have sex with him. This does not mean that you have sex with him on the first or second date, but it does mean that you are having sex with him somewhere beginning with the third to sixth date. My advice to any young man would be to move on to someone else if you have been on more than 5 dates and there is no sex.
This author dates men knowing that she has no intention of eventually having sex with them. Eventually, the guys figure out her game and they go away. It is as simple as that.
I wish I could say it better, but I don’t think I can. Good job!
A man would have to be crazy to marry today’s average, self-centered, entitled women. When a man marries a woman, his net worth is immediately downgraded. 90% of the time she makes significantly less than him and is trading what’s between her legs for the extra financial security.
Can I offer some advice? Are you paying attention to who he was raised by at all? What type of relationship does he have with his parents? How does his Dad treat his mother? Who are his friends? There are good ones of us left out there (already spoken for) but you have to do the research.
“Over the past couple of months, I’ve been casually dating multiple guys, and sometimes at the same time.”
“I go into these dating experiences with honesty, so they know that I don’t do hookups.”
Self knowledge level 0:
You claim you don’t do hookups, but you’ve slept with lots of men, some of which you appear to have met on hookup sites. You claim to be all these things that are more than your body, but you’ve shown no kindness, wisdom or intelligence. How smart was it to admit that you dated several men at once when you’re allegedly looking for a relationship?
The fact is that your behavior entirely fits with a woman who wants hookup, but doesn’t want to admit they are hookups. Frankly there is no evidence that you’re good enough to date other than your claims, which appear to contradict the facts.
Keep on doing what you’ve been doing but hoping for different results means you’re clueless (Einstein did introduce a few good ideas). You’re going after the wrong men. Pick a man who’s not interested in you at first but is responsible and showing commitment to his personal goals. Pick a man who has persevered without asking for pity. An independent. Then, take it slow. Go through some difficult situations together. Build the trust. Solidify the bond.
This is important: you must also be a person who shows commitment and be able to face tough circumstances.
If all you want in a relationship/date is puppy love, fun times, cliche romantic gestures, and physical attractiveness, then you’ll never get a lasting outcome. Additionally, trying to change men into your ideal type won’t work, because it’s very rare that people recast their personality. Analytically and selectively pick a person who already resembles the type described in the paragraph.
Correcting myself: “If the things you want in a relationship/date are …”
There’s another possibility that no one has commented on. Maybe the author is lousy in bed. It might sound somewhat shallow but if a guy sucks in bed it doesn’t really matter how much I’m into him. My male friends are happy to tell me that if the sex sucks, hookup or hopeful to date, 9 times out of 10 they bail. I know I do.
spot on!
Firm believer in “you attract what you put out” so maybe work on yourself first? You intimate that all guys are the same cause nobody has proven you wrong which is just an absolutely idiotic thing to say. Mature a bit and maybe you’ll see things change.
Thank you for putting down in words my exact feelings capturing them perfectly. I don’t even think I’m that pretty either; in fact being brutally honest my body is probably the least of attributes which makes this behavior all the more perplexing to me.
Oh, cmon. You solved it in the first sentence. No, i dont want to date someone who is also dating multiple other people.
I agree, If I find out she is dating “multiple people”, that pretty much ends it.
Was this a joke? It sounds like it was a mutual benefit situation. You open with, “Over the past couple of months, I’ve been casually dating multiple guys, and sometimes at the same time.” Sounds like you attract guys under the terms of your agenda…
If you dont want to be a body develop a personality and be knowledgeable and fun to be around.
Not all men are the same. Of course you know that, but holding out moral judgements with the threat of lowering the boom should you be disappointed yet again is to young adults what thoughts of suicide are to adolescents – they’ll get you through a bad night. Should you actually follow through on the threat and decide all men are the same, not only will nobody notice, but you’ll be a cliche. But I’m totally familiar with the temptation.
Anyway, onto the practical: everyone who’s at least a tiny bit experienced in dating takes a “trust but verify” attitude into people that they’re sorta-kinda seeing (you’re very vague about what you define as dating, or being in a relationship, and what guys who are “hanging around for months” are doing if they’re *not* dating you). You may be being honest with them, but they have no way of knowing that. I’ll be blunt here: if someone were to tell me that they don’t do casual hookups, but over the course of getting to know them it became clear they were dating multiple people, I would internally call “bs” on their “upfront honesty”, categorize them as players, and dishonest at that, and that would be the end of any thoughts of them as a serious girlfriend. But I would likely still have sex with them, since I would assume that’s what they were after. Why else date multiple people, after all?
This is how two people can act in good faith and yet leave a situation thinking the other is a villain (I don’t know you, but I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt).
Nobody wants to get hurt, and most guys have a seminal “first girlfriend” experience where they wore their emotions on their sleeves and got their hearts broken. And the way you come across, I simply would not allow myself to be vulnerable to you, making any kind of relationship other than hanging out together and occasionally hooking up impossible.
Date one person at a time. Or if you don’t want to do that, just make sure that what you say and what you do match up. Nobody is going to judge you for seeing a lot of guys in a short amount of time, but dishonesty is something else entirely. Men who have just met you and are atrracted to you are going to be closely watching for signs of sketchiness, and once you’re red flagged as dishonest or manipulative or just not on the level, the window for a serious relationship is closed.
I’m a professionally successful guy, I look ok (let’s say 7 for whatever it’s worth, my female friends say more). I have exciting hobbies, and I’m more than financially stable. My friends tell me I have a lovely personality (I take their words for it) but… I haven’t had any kind of romantic relationship with a woman in over 6 years.
Why? When I’m interested in knowing a woman, she’s usually not because she doesn’t want something serious. Tinder? Like I said, I’m a 7 and even ugly women only swipe right on 9s and 10s
When I read an article like this, the thoughts I have towards you are not kind…
Also, dating multiple people at the same time = hooking up.
You need to reconnect with your father. Some teaching seems to be missing
Without question, everything she wrote is true, and it is completely regrettable. But let me give you a viewpoint from the other side, as a man who craves the gift of full humanity for everyone. I have always been a supporter of gender equality, the equal rights amendment, and reproductive freedom. When I was young, I was a member of the National Organization for Women. But as I got older, I realized that men who provided emotional support to women were immediately and permanently construed as not being potential sexual partners. I had trouble understanding why being an emotionally supportive partner was always a kiss of death regarding a romantic relationship. I had trouble understanding why women repeatedly asked for emotional support, and for time and patience prior to a commitment to a physical relationship, and yet as soon as they were provided those things, they immediately saw me as a platonic buddy and ran off at warp speed to have a sexual relationship with somebody else. I finally was very reluctantly forced to make the difficult decision to not be friends with women. I made this decision not because I am a testosterone driven, sex starved, incel filled with a sense of entitlement, but because I got sick and tired of playing the straight man in a comedy routine. I got tired of being asked to go slow and be patient, but invariably penalized when I did exactly that. I cannot give enough support to this wonderful article, but I would ask all who read it to make room in their lives for the few men who will in fact do exactly what you ask, and give our relationships with you the time needed to bring your hopes to fruition. We deprive you of humanity when we go straight for your body, but you deprive good men of humanity when you quickly bolt to an insensitive man, calling over your shoulder how much you want to be friends with us. You want to go slow? You want to give it time? You want to be valued for your full humanity? You want to have emotional sharing before sex? MEN LIKE ME COULD NOT AGREE MORE. But you have to believe that sensitivity and patience makes a man more alluring, not less.
So … there’s a couple factors here that the author either ignores, fails to recognize, or disregards out of hand that might be the root source of this problem. Many here have glommed on to one: that someone dating multiple people isn’t *really* interested in a relationship, but is in reality “hooking up” and just doesn’t like what she seems to think that means. Others have been drawn to another: that she’s apparently stringing guys along for weeks and months and when the relationship doesn’t progress physically to sex, they leave. I think we can all agree that there are certainly manipulative men who will do and say anything just to hook up with someone. But if this is happening over and over, there’s something else going on here. I would like to propose several others that I’m shocked haven’t been mentioned yet:
1) virtually every single woman on any dating app says “not here for hookups”. Almost all don’t really mean it. What they really mean is: “I don’t want to be seen as a girl who is easy, but for the right guy I’ll definitely hookup.” This isn’t saying that these women don’t want these hookups to develop potentially into relationships, but it is just simply true that they’ll hookup with the right guy, despite saying they won’t upfront. As for evidence, my go-to example is this: if a woman’s favorite Marvel Superhero Chris (Hemsworth, Evans, or Pratt) took her out for drinks and a lovely date and then wanted to hook up at the end of the night, 99.99% of women would be down for it. The problem isn’t that women will not hook up… it’s that they’ll only hookup with extremely attractive, interesting, charming, and/or wealthy men and they want to go on that date to make their decision. Nothing wrong with that, but that’s reality. Our author seems to think she’s being perfectly clear when she says no hookups. In actuality, she’s confusing the matter because every single woman says this, and most will still hook up given the right set of circumstances.
2) Here, our author might be stringing these guys along, or at least that’s what it feels like to them. “No hookups” does not mean “I will never have sex with you” or “I won’t sleep with you until we’re married.” She’s clearly accepting these very expensive dates and weekends and investing her own time with these men, yet she’s confused when after weeks and months men want to progress in the relationship and have a physical/sexual relationship along with their social, temporal, and monetary one? That’s baffling to me. I do not expect anyone put out just because someone paid for a fancy dinner or a weekend getaway or whatever. But she’s foolish to not realize that *part* of the reason the men are doing these things are in the hopes it will progress into a physical and sexual relationship. These men already have friends. And I’d bet they’re not the one always footing the bill when they hang out with their friends. So why are these men spending this money when they’re with her? It’s because they’re fulfilling their role in the societal expectations of dating. And she’s not. She’s withholding physical intimacy… and it sounds like the reason isn’t because she’s not ready, or she’s not interested, or she doesn’t want to sleep with them. It sounds like she has this weird relationship test where these guys have to stick around indefinitely without physical intimacy… but yet somehow be in a relationship with her? It’s a weird expectation and certainly not one that they’re aware they have to navigate just because she puts “no hookups” in a dating profile. And if that’s the case, I completely understand why these guys would feel like they’re being used and strung along. I wouldn’t stick around for it either.
3) Mean as it may sound, she may just be bad in bed. I know that my friends and I have discussed that we’ve not called or texted after a bad hookup. It’s not inherently fatal to a budding relationship, but it’s definitely not in the ‘pro’ column when you’re doing the calculus of determining if you’d like to see someone again. Honest introspection as to how she acts on her dates and in the bedroom are probably a good idea.
A Healthy Sex life should be a part of a relationship, from your words you are holding off for weeks/months before you are having sex with those guys. By holding off for that long ,you are sending the message that you are not interested in sex.. and the guys receive it loud and clear. It would be one thing for you to say that you are going to wait until marriage.. then you would attract that kind of guys.. but if you choose to be part of the normal dating behavior than expect that men like sex and they want to be with a woman who likes sex too.
You are just stringing multiple men along, letting them pay for dates, food, drinks.
You are one of the toxic problems in modern women. That’s just a Foodie Call.
How about you pay for all the dates until sex happens? I’m sure they would stick around then, thinking: Hey at least i’m getting free food.
You are the reason hookup culture exists. Women like you made men decide on new dating rules. That you can come over to my place for sex, and IF it’s good I’ll buy you a beer next time.
See how that works? The whole… Prove to me you are interested in my body and personality before i spend any money on you.
Smart men DO NOT $$$ on used slores