Never go into a negotiation you are not prepared to walk away from.

This was something my dad told me when I was buying my first used car. Since that time, I've gotten a lot of dating experience and I've found that it holds up even better for relationships.

In the early stages of dating men I found this relatively easy to implement, my investment was minimal and it was easy to walk away from LVM who had bad qualities or didn't treat me with respect.

But after I had invested for 6+ months this became a lot more difficult for the following reasons:

  • Sunk cost fallacy: bias stemming from investment of time and effort. The longer I was in a relationship the easier it was to go against evidence that it was not in my best interest to continue because I had already spent effort on it.
  • Admitting I was wrong: I would ruthlessly vet people in the early stages, so how could I have gotten that wrong? I didn't want to admit to myself that I'd done a poor job of vetting men at the start.
  • Giving the benefit of the doubt: if men were on their best behaviour for 6 months I erroneously thought I really knew their character, so when a large red flag appeared I chalked it up to a one-off, or an anomaly to their true behaviour.
  • Ignoring little red flags: I brushed off small red flags at the beginning of the relationship and made excuses for their behaviour (he's nervous, he's a bit socially awkward, he's not emotionally intelligent, etc.), which set the stage for this kind of mental gymnastics to massive red flags later on.

All of these things caused me to ignore my gut and allow LVM to try to negotiate them being "good people" despite their disrespectful behaviour. Not one single time where I ignored my gut and gave a man the benefit of the doubt did it turn out well for me. Not once. I just gave them a platform to gaslight me, emotionally abuse me, manipulate me, and lie to me. And the more I did that the more it compromised my ability to walk away.

And that's what I've learned from these relationships--always, always be willing to walk away. To drop a man like a stone and leave. To not entertain discussions or explanations or pleading, because none of those are sufficient to justify disrespectful behaviour. Like sexist remarks, objectification of women, negging, a callous lack of empathy, lying, entitled and manipulative behaviour, secretly prioritizing an ex, not caring about my consent, and violating my privacy.

People like that aren't worth a moment of my time. Now when I encounter any LVM/NVM behaviour I just say "OK" and leave. Men shouldn't have to explain to me that they're good people--it should be obvious from their actions. And actions don't lie.

In summary:

  1. Trust your gut.
  2. Don't let men tell you who they are, judge who they are from their actions.
  3. Vet ruthlessly throughout the entire relationship.
  4. And always be willing to walk away.