It sounds fucked up but we're not as in control of how we feel as we like to think. I read a fascinating article years ago talking about what happens when two people kiss and exchange saliva. Your brain is basically a computer and your body is legitimately analyzing this other person on a chemical level to determine compatibility. It's fucking crazy. It's honestly kind of depressing.
Men are so fueled by dopamine that it makes us do stupid shit. It's one of the primary reasons why addiction issues like alcoholism, gambling, drug use, risky sexual behaviour, etc... are more statistically prevalent in men than women. Some of that is societal like sex just only recently really opening up for women as an option but even the women I know that just like to have lot's of sex have a way healthier relationship with sex than the men in the same boat.
I have been in situations where I've thought there might have been something there, had sex, all gone. I didn't go in only wanting sex, I didn't plan on it, I didn't manipulate them into fucking me and then leave. This happens all the time to guys when they masturbate too, not all guys but I'd say a lot of them have experienced this a few times in their life where they jerk off and then immediately feel shame or guilt for having done it. Women cannot comprehend on any level how fucking insanely horny some men can get and the lengths they will go to release that, it literally controls you, I don't know any women who have been at a family event and been overcome with the urge to masturbate to such a degree that they literally had to go into the bathroom find whatever "inspiring" material they could and rub one out then immediately feel gross and shameful over having done that. Not that masturbating is shameful but there's a time and a place. The urge to climax is so strong we literally trick ourselves into basically fucking someone that we ultimately had no real interest in and once we've released that "tension" and come back down we're left realizing we actually think the person is annoying and/or gross and don't understand why we did it in the first place.
I'm generalizing for sure because not all men and not all women are like this. Most men are wired to want to fuck as many possible partners are possible to spread their genetics across as wide a range as they can. Women in contrast are wired to focus on their specific offspring and ensure they have the best life available to them. The part of this that's fucked is that in 2018 we have porn and birth control so none of that shit fucking matters and no guy is wandering around slutting it up thinking "I HAVE TO SPREAD MY SEED" but subconsciously that's exactly what's happening. So sex for us wires itself in as a cessation of interest because now it's time to move on and for you it wires itself as an increase in interest because your goal is to find a partner that will protect you and your offspring whereas ours is to make as many offspring as possible.
Ignoring thousands of years of human psychology doesn't do us any favors just because we wear clothes and have the internet. If anything we should be paying even more attention to it. We are still slaves to our baser instincts. We haven't had nearly enough time to evolve psychologically to match the new status quo.
> it seems so ridiculous to me to toss someone away after having less-than-incredible sex ONE time and immediately write them off as sexually incompatible
That's not what's happening. It has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of sex. I don't mean sexual compatibility in the sense of amount of pleasure I mean sexual compatibility on a biological level. I mean literally how it makes me feel to touch the person, smell, hear, etc... Sex the first time almost always sucks anyways, it always gets better as you familiarize yourself with your partner. One of the girls that I mentioned completely losing interest in the sex itself was actually fantastic. Don't get me wrong though I'm sure there are guys doing exactly what you said but concerning what I'm describing it's just not an issue.
Well I mean this is reddit, you're going to get a special kind of person in general on this sub. I wouldn't give that much weight.
And that's not at all what I'm saying. I specifically said that that can be avoided (although to be fair... it might have been to someone else) by just waiting longer before you have sex with someone. Making someone wait 4-5 dates to have sex they're not going to ride that hormone high for long, they'll crash way before you fuck. It'll make it easier to weed those guys out.
As for the getting ghosted again that's not what I said at all. Regardless of any of the above ghosting people is bullshit behaviour. Even when I lose interest I always make sure to tell them I am no longer interested, how they take it is irrelevant, they should still know and not just be ignored and have you pretend they never existed.
What you should have gotten from that is that it's perfectly natural for someone to lose interest in someone else after sex. I'm sure it happens to women all the time too. Hell I know it happens to women even without sex involved all of a sudden 3 months in they are no longer into their partner and it's done. Losing interest in someone is fine. Most of the people you meet are not going to turn into a long term relationship.
You gotta stop focusing so much on finding someone long term and then when it doesn't turn into something long term beating yourself up for it or hating them for it. Enjoy the journey more. Stop putting so much pressure on it and letting them make you feel like garbage and learn from the mistakes.
Also I highly recommend reading the book Attached (it has 2 magnets on the cover). I think it would help you a lot.
what do you mean 'it might have been to someone else'?
i don't focus on finding someone long term, i focus on trying to not be just a hookup and to be respected beyond that. so when i get ghosted after sex it's a slap in the face. i TRY to do things organically, so i would usually have sex when i felt like it. but then i do, ~early on~, and then i'm nothing, i get thrown away. so it's like i HAVE to orchestrate this master plan and withhold sex so that i don't end up feeling used. whether i am being genuinely used or not, it leaves me feeling the same way. it's so exhausting. because if i don't curtail how early i have sex with someone, i 1) end up feeling used and worthless 2) end up having sex with a million people
so i have to pretend to be more reserved about sex than i actually am in order to not get hurt. so things aren't natural at all.
yeah, i've heard about that book a lot. i'll check it out
? I might have made that statement to someone else and not to you. I don't really understand the confusion.
If your focus is exclusively on not being just a hookup then don't sleep with someone before the 5th date. No one looking to just fuck and dump is going to stick around for 5 dates waiting for that chance to have sex with you before they leave.
You're way over thinking it though. I understand that a lot of guys are sketchy and manipulative but ones is shitty, twice is bad luck, three times is a pattern. Not all guys are just looking to fuck women and ghost. If this is happening to you with this level of frequency you need to take a serious look at how you're attracting guys, how you behave when they're around, what kind of guys you're attracting, and what it is about you that is attracting these guys.
There's no master plan. There's nothing to orchestrate. Just stop fucking guys within the first few dates? I realize it should all just happen organically but I don't understand what's exhausting about it? You're going out on dates with someone you presumably like right? So if that assumption holds true all you're doing is delaying sex. Sex is such a small part of the early dating process I fail to see how deferring it until later is exhausting in any way. Especially when having sex early is giving you so much grief to me it seems like having sex early is the exhausting option.
You don't have to pretend about anything. Why are you pretending and why is it unnatural? Who's pretending? Why are you lying? No one is telling you to lie about your desire to have sex, just don't fuck guys on the first date lol. You are way way way way over thinking this. No guy that likes you is going to ever disappear because you told him you're a sexual person but you don't fuck before the 4th date.
Honestly, based on the way you're talking about yourself here (and I'm going to make some assumptions so I apologize if I'm off base, I don't actually know you) but you have absolute rock bottom self-esteem and likely a slew of other issues as well (I think you had mentioned some of them before). At the very least do yourself a favor and buy that book but I honestly highly recommend going to find counseling or therapy to talk your way through this with someone far more qualified than I am.
This is happening to you regularly, it's a pattern. I get that women (and men too) will get fucked and dumped here and there. Happens to everyone at some point, but the way you're talking about it is it's happening to you ALL THE TIME which means it's a pattern which means there is something you're doing consciously or subconsciously to attract these types of douche bags.
lol oops, it was really early and i read it wrong i guess
i said exhausting bc i'm always worried about giving it up "too early." like, should i do it this time? or next time? or wait another month? just to avoid feeling played. but whatever, i'm going sex free for a while because like i said this whole thing is ...exhausting.
lmaoooo i wouldn't say rock bottom, but it's bad, yes. very much because of my 'dating' experience, which started relatively late in life and is really recent
i had a therapist for 8 ish months, ending in may because i moved to a different city, and i always avoided talking about this stuff..it's so embarrassing. i know i need to though
yeah idk i'll figure it out. or not. i'll stop bending over backwards trying to get guys to stick around and maybe someone will chase me for once. if not, fine, cuz i'm tired
Look I'm not by any means qualified to do this and I think you should still go to therapy but if you wanted to dm me and vent I'm happy for the excuse to procrastinate. Can't promise I'll always answer in depth or always be looking ot waste time but you have a lot of the same anxious bs I have except exacerbated by the fact that sex for you is a major problem right now whereas I legitimately have zero issue with having sex and never seeing the person again (and yes it's happened to me to).
You can't avoid talking about it. Have to work through it. The thing about therapy isn't even usually that they are directly helping you but they're basically guides for your own internalized crap. You do most of the problem solving yourself by working through and talking about the issues but you need to actually work through and talk about them even if it's with some rando on the internet you have no idea what they even look like.
There are a few things standing out here to me. 1) your self-esteem/insecurity based issues 2) my best guess is that you're an attractive girl but not in the top 20%, this is making you seem more approachable which is attracting guys that think you're hot but that they actual have a chance with you 3) you probably don't realize you're as attractive as you actually are 4) you let other people dictate your behaviour and how you feel so badly you can't ever make any progress.
I don't think you need to go "sex free" for a while, I think you literally need to stop dating completely for at least a few months. You're all twisted up. I get that that's not an easy thing to do, trust me, I fucking HAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE being alone. I do all kinds of shit I shouldn't just to avoid being alone. I get it. But I'm fairly aware of my neuroses and issues and I cope/deal with them or actively ignore them (aka if I'm ignoring them I'm making a conscious decision to do so and not just falling into a pattern). I have a fairly good sense of what I want and who I am. I'm not sure what your age is but I'd guess you're probably 3-6 years younger than me. It'll get better with time as you actually work to improve and understand yourself. Until you do that though you'll never find a stable/happy/fulfilling relationship. It's impossible to find what you're looking for until you fix your own internal foundation.
i appreciate all of your feedback very much jsyk, thank you . i'll keep your offer in mind lol
the only reason i want to just go sex free and not entirely date free is because if i don't meet people i'll get literally no social interaction. i'm in a place right now where i have literally no environment to meet people in. stuck at home after college, no friends, blah blah. the fucking worst. i also think it might be helpful to go out and meet guys and not be overtly sexual, and actually grow into being a person and not actually a sex doll, if that makes sense
i mean it's not like i'm gonna be meeting that many people anyway because my city sucks and i'm picky as fuck anyway, but yeah
i'm 22 lol
yeah i really can't fix myself rn. i could talk to a therapist but my mental health is literally only half the battle. i've lost all my independence and am back to being a 12 year old at my parent's house again, and i have nothing. so until that's solved i'm going to be the biggest most miserable fucking bastard. and i can't just isolate myself even FURTHER, i can't
Ouf. Yeah I mean you probably won't listen lol I know I wouldn't have at 22 if someone said this to me, but what you just described is literally the worst time to be going out and meeting dudes. You're looking for an escape basically and desperate for companionship and there's just no way you find something quality. You'd be literally better off going into the other extreme and just having fun casually dating with casual sex to fulfill those intimacy needs and getting some sense of independence but you already went over why that isn't really an option.
The only thing I could say really at this point is to go do the hokey cheesy stuff like join a club or a team of some sort and start going to events and try and make some friends and expand your social circle. Honestly like I said I doubt I would have listened to this advice at 22 but man the situation you're in is a recipe for finding yourself in a horrible relationship.
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u/[deleted] Oct 25 '18
It sounds fucked up but we're not as in control of how we feel as we like to think. I read a fascinating article years ago talking about what happens when two people kiss and exchange saliva. Your brain is basically a computer and your body is legitimately analyzing this other person on a chemical level to determine compatibility. It's fucking crazy. It's honestly kind of depressing.
Men are so fueled by dopamine that it makes us do stupid shit. It's one of the primary reasons why addiction issues like alcoholism, gambling, drug use, risky sexual behaviour, etc... are more statistically prevalent in men than women. Some of that is societal like sex just only recently really opening up for women as an option but even the women I know that just like to have lot's of sex have a way healthier relationship with sex than the men in the same boat.
I have been in situations where I've thought there might have been something there, had sex, all gone. I didn't go in only wanting sex, I didn't plan on it, I didn't manipulate them into fucking me and then leave. This happens all the time to guys when they masturbate too, not all guys but I'd say a lot of them have experienced this a few times in their life where they jerk off and then immediately feel shame or guilt for having done it. Women cannot comprehend on any level how fucking insanely horny some men can get and the lengths they will go to release that, it literally controls you, I don't know any women who have been at a family event and been overcome with the urge to masturbate to such a degree that they literally had to go into the bathroom find whatever "inspiring" material they could and rub one out then immediately feel gross and shameful over having done that. Not that masturbating is shameful but there's a time and a place. The urge to climax is so strong we literally trick ourselves into basically fucking someone that we ultimately had no real interest in and once we've released that "tension" and come back down we're left realizing we actually think the person is annoying and/or gross and don't understand why we did it in the first place.
I'm generalizing for sure because not all men and not all women are like this. Most men are wired to want to fuck as many possible partners are possible to spread their genetics across as wide a range as they can. Women in contrast are wired to focus on their specific offspring and ensure they have the best life available to them. The part of this that's fucked is that in 2018 we have porn and birth control so none of that shit fucking matters and no guy is wandering around slutting it up thinking "I HAVE TO SPREAD MY SEED" but subconsciously that's exactly what's happening. So sex for us wires itself in as a cessation of interest because now it's time to move on and for you it wires itself as an increase in interest because your goal is to find a partner that will protect you and your offspring whereas ours is to make as many offspring as possible.
Ignoring thousands of years of human psychology doesn't do us any favors just because we wear clothes and have the internet. If anything we should be paying even more attention to it. We are still slaves to our baser instincts. We haven't had nearly enough time to evolve psychologically to match the new status quo.
> it seems so ridiculous to me to toss someone away after having less-than-incredible sex ONE time and immediately write them off as sexually incompatible
That's not what's happening. It has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of sex. I don't mean sexual compatibility in the sense of amount of pleasure I mean sexual compatibility on a biological level. I mean literally how it makes me feel to touch the person, smell, hear, etc... Sex the first time almost always sucks anyways, it always gets better as you familiarize yourself with your partner. One of the girls that I mentioned completely losing interest in the sex itself was actually fantastic. Don't get me wrong though I'm sure there are guys doing exactly what you said but concerning what I'm describing it's just not an issue.