A common phenomena in our modern dating world is a guy who's just going with the flow of things and seeing where things go, meets a girl who's looking for a relationship.

I say if she says she wants a relationship and doesn't want to have sex without commitment, and then they have sex and he decides he doesn't want a relationship or he lied knowing he didn't the whole time he's a piece of shit.

But if all he's done to "lead her on" is a series of mating rituals and she hasn't expressed her view that she's exclusively looking for an exclusive relationship then it's on her, if during the post coital 'what are we' talk things don't go her way. 100% on her.

Opponents of this view say that as exclusive relationships are the norm of mating rituals the onus is on anyone departing from that norm to say so.

I'd agree with that conclusion if the premise wasn't so shaky.

Exclusive relationships are not the norm of mating rituals like providing food, creating intimate scenarios and providing warmth and protection when in ones presence. The normative goal of those behaviours for male primates is sexual relations.

Human beings have existed for about 2 million years. Homo Sapiens About 300,000.

Monogamy was invented 10000 years ago to propagate agricultural societies.

Maybe my argument is shaky I'm not an anthropologist, but I do think that there's enough of an argument to be made that sex is actually the normative position and the onus is on the one who wants a relationship to simply say that.

I'm not saying that, what I am saying is that as it can be argued either way (I think its much more reasonable one way than the other but I'm biased) if neither person divulges their goals at the outset of the courtship, neither is more at fault than the other.

If somehow a girl could trick a guy into a relationship and he didn't say he was just looking for casual sex, sucks for him bruh, and vice versa.