The biggest thing I’ve noticed on the sub is that when you get 5 to 10 replies deep with somebody, they reveal some horrific experience they’ve had with the opposite sex and how it’s jaded them completely from dating, and commonly you sit there either questioning the story because you cannot fathom How someone could be like that so you suspect it’s fake or because you are a good person in your own opinion It’s hard to relate to the story and so you reply with some statistic about how uncommon that person is. I think what’s happening is that we are taking bad experiences and applying the lessons to good people when we should be taking these lessons and applying them to bad people.

I would argue people on this sub are actually likely deep down good daters / people for the following reasons:

  1. The fact you are on the sub means you care about the topic and to some extent, gender relations. Even if you’re so jaded you just want to degrade the other side, you actually believe that degrading does something. You think you’re enacting change, else why would you be here? If you truly felt you were talking to a brick wall, you would leave and go somewhere else. Sure there are people who are here literally just for fun to make people upset, But almost always their story starts with some personal experience. You’re here because you care, and bad people don’t care and only care about themselves and their own needs, they don’t think about statistics.

  2. Most of the time people don’t seem excited about the standards rules of dating and they say are factual. A lot of times the energy comes off as “it is what it is”, and usually either statistics based or some level of evolutionary biology or something. Really you shouldn’t care about statistics, you should only care about your own personal experience because even if the statistics show a bad picture if your life is great, who cares. To me this shows the sub does care about the average experience and the moral/principle associated, which is something that can’t be said at everyone. For how selfish people claim people are here, the fact they use so much statistics, studies, and third-party evidence shows otherwise.

  3. People seemed to have a pretty positive response when people show perspective, and kind of drop the jaded act when they feel understood.

Now that I’ve established likely people here are concerned, good but jaded daters, here’s why I think these people (including me) get with bad partners and then come here to take it out on each other:

  1. I will define bad partners as someone who is completely selfish, in that they are prioritizing their own needs over yours every time. These people are much more likely to be charismatic and tell you what you want to hear, simply because they’re trying to get something that they want. This masks them as good people when you first meet them, and when they turn out bad the initial assumption is not that they’re lying. It’s that you can’t trust other people because everyone may be lying. These people can say the exact same lines as a good person would, but not mean it, and the brain does not like that level of uncertainty and risk and so generalizes.

  2. Good people are often times generous and want to please someone else, which is a target for the person who wants to exploit them. If you’re someone who is high maintenance, neurotic, a cheater, or any other adjective, you will naturally gravitate towards people who can feed that within you. This means that good people are targets for bad people, and they particularly like those with a philosophy around love and dating because that would mean they would put up with this behavior for longer. Additionally, these people are aware of tactics like love bombing, making you feel sorry for them, gaslighting, and other things to continue the cycle. When the cycle finally breaks it, no wonder why good people are exhausted and blame the entire other population simply because they don’t know how to weed out these people Because they are highly skilled.

  3. Bad partners are especially skilled at breaking down boundaries and convincing them that despite your negative experience, they are different, and when they turn out the same, it’ll just reinforce your experiences and opinions harder. It’s terrible, but if you’ve been through a negative relationship sometimes bad partners will seek that out in order to exploit it. I would venture to guess that rabid man or woman hating people on here simply have had this done to them, where they got done so dirty by an individual they can’t help but generalize out of psychological safety.

The final piece is an attachment to these ideologies that we form. Stereotypes and generalities are meant to make us feel safe and that the world is predictable. Many of us here started as good people, but because of bad experiences we are to the point where we would rather be wrong and alone than happy and take a risk. There will always be people here that are taking opinions from online rhetoric despite experience or want to believe something is true, despite only having positive experiences, but I would imagine the population of the sub would be greatly reduced if most of us had good relationship experiences. There’s nothing to debate if negatives are outliers and not the norm. As such, the problem may literally just be here and we are making mountains out of molehills