Just needed to reach out... I grew up in a very liberal culture and have a lot of good, decent male friends from childhood (who subsequently got married, have kids, are great people, etc). So as a result I moved away from home thinking men were essentially good. I guess I was lucky to have a sheltered childhood, but I spent the better part of my 20s and 30s encountering men who I literally couldn't believe could be such shitbags. I couldn't reconcile the behaviours I was witnessing with how I thought the "average" man behaved... I guess I grew up without shitbags in my life, and for that I'm happy but the real world, so to speak, has been a shocker.

Now in my 40s I'm still struggling on Bambi legs with thinking men who want to be friends with me, who seem kind and interested me in a person, and then end up lacking empathy and just want to have sex with me. I think we're friends and they're like the men I grew up with, and then at some point they make their intentions clear, I'm blindsided, and when I decline, they treat me like garbage on a scale I can't even comprehend and then disappear.

It's become clear through therapy that I can't spot empathy... thanks to my parents for that... that I think people with shared interests, particularly men, genuinely care about me because they're spending time with me.... and then fail to notice dissociation, utter lack of concern for my well-being, etc... it's been a real eye-opener....

Anyway I've had a hard time accepting that I should just stop making male friends.... I find that there are a lot of guys who want to be my friend (I'm very social, run meetup events, etc) but yeah.... pretty much 100% of the time they're hanging out with me for entertainment, emotional support and the possibility of sex, and the moment sex is off the table, I get treated unimaginably cruelly, and I sit here shocked and in grief because I genuinely thought I had a friend.

I'm tired, ladies... I'm just tired. The world I thought existed just doesn't... and I can't go through this process of betrayal and hurt anymore... Being discarded by someone I thought was a friend hurts far, far more than getting discarded by a guy I met on Tinder.... I'm tired and I'm done.