“I’ve been hurt in the past.”

My god I wish I'd read this when I was young.

Copypasta for posterity:

I used to meet a lot of women who allegedly loved me more than any man they’d ever had previously, but went to great lengths to never, ever have sex with me. They weren’t virgins; many had quite the history with men. But I still never got anywhere. Their reasoning was grounded in woman-logic: "I've been hurt by a lot of assholes in the past, and I really care about you, so I want to do this right" or some variation of that.

If you’re a loser, upon hearing that, you’ll think to yourself, “Oh, joy! I’m totally not an asshole, and she notices that and is rewarding me with a real [non-sexual] relationship instead of a shallow one that’s going to fail! I’m so lucky! I’ll wait forever for such a wonderful person! I should find something nice to do for her right now to let her know how grateful I am!”

Here's how that woman-logic sounds to a real guy: "Other men worse than you have gotten farther with me, in less time, with less of an emotional and financial investment. But because I care more about you, I am making you jump through hoops and making you spend a greater amount of time and resources to get less far with me. Because I care more about you. What? Why are you looking at me like that? This makes perfect sense. Yes, giving less to people I care about more makes sense."

Here's what the girl really means: "I've pegged you for a chump. I don't think you have options with other women, and I don't think you're willing to walk away, so I'm going to frame this relationship on my terms. We fuck when I want to, and that's going to be after I've made you jump through a bunch of hoops to prove you're my little compliant bitch who's going to give me all the time, resources, and validation I want, at will. If you were a real man, you’d have fucked me already, but I’ve cast you for the role of bitch. I don’t care about you. I care about me. I don’t even like you. Sex is reserved for real men. You’re not a real man. You’re my bitch.”

Here’s the kicker: Most women don’t know that they really mean this. They just know that the validation feels good, and that a guy who keeps validating them without sex makes them feel powerful, happy, and better about themselves. When any woman hears the line of girl logic, “I’ve been hurt in the past,” it makes perfect sense to them – she’s screwed up by giving it up too easily before and wants to stop screwing up. By stop screwing up, they mean that she needs to do a better job of withholding sex to bait men into doing shit for her to earn it. They don’t know they mean that, but that’s what they mean.

Only in the eyes of a woman does it make sense to give less to a man that you love more. But that’s the rationalization kicking in. If a woman is giving you less, and making you do more for it, that’s the exact opposite of loving you more. Being stingy with affection is the opposite of love. Requiring an exchange of favors rather than just giving of yourself is the opposite of love.

It’s a difficult truth to admit and to accept, not just for us, but for women, too. I think on some level, they want to love that nice guy who’s going out of his way for them, but they just don’t. They can’t. But they tell themselves that they do, and that they’re just taking it slow to avoid getting hurt like they have in the past. Because they love him more. And if things don’t work out, he’s still a great guy – the chemistry just wasn’t there. And if they slip up and screw some hot guy from work, it was a mistake. They don’t love that guy. They love the nice guy, don’t they? They were just drunk.

“I’ve been hurt in the past and want this to be different,” is nothing more than an insidious shit test. By complementing you, telling you that you’re different from every other guy, that you’re not an asshole or a douche, and that she loves you more than every previous man, you’re off-guard when in combination with all of that praise, she denies you sex. Because she loves you more.