I’ve seen them mentioned on FDS, and I certainly have experienced them myself: men who are in a relationship, yet think they can do better than their current girlfriend. Guys who are always holding out for more, constantly cruising singles bars and OLD, and are happy to drop their partner in a second should they find someone they’re more interested in.

I know that trying to understand low/no/negative value men is a fool’s errand, but I just wonder why so many men do this. I know that in certain corners of the Internet you can read posts by men accusing women of “branch swinging” and “hypergamy”, but I feel like men do this far more often than women.

I’ll say that I’ve had this happen to me twice. Each time was with a guy who made six figures and thought that meant they were entitled to an 18 year old virgin Victoria’s Secret model.

Guy #1 was nine years older and morbidly obese and had a fairly prominent position at a household name tech company. He used his position to entice women, always inviting them to launch parties and conferences/expos, etc. Years ago when I first started talking to him, he invited me to a VERY big product launch party and I turned down the invitation because I had just met him and it was out-of-state. He later told me that I was the only woman to ever tell him no, and that women are always begging him to attend such functions. That he was pretty offended that I didn’t go with him.

We were long distance and after a few months he started dating another girl simultaneously, whom he moved in after 2-3 months. When I found out, he told me that he found her online and that it’s completely normal for guys to constantly look for women to talk to/get into relationships with even when they’re in a relationship. He also said “by the way, we were never in a real relationship anyway—when I said I wanted to be exclusive, I only meant for you to be exclusive because I wanted to keep having unprotected sex with you. I never meant I was going to be exclusive too, how could you even think that I meant that?”

I found out later that the first time I visited him, there was another girl who was in the process of moving her stuff out of his house. At the time I visited, she was back in her home state and came to get the rest of her things shortly after. So he did the same thing to her, except that time I was unknowingly the other woman. He kept “upgrading” women after a few months.

Anyone have any stories they want to share, or any ideas they’d like to discuss on why men do this?