I wrote this as a comment in reply to someone who felt like they were struggling ethically because almost all of the women he was hooking up with expected/wanted more after the fact. So here's my basic, field-tested framing for how to think about this, and how to conduct yourself appropriately.

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Make sure you’re NOT sub-communicating boyfriend vibes. This means you're not having a 30-minute conversation about your job in the club or on Tinder. You're not asking her how many kids she wants to have. You're not LARPing as James Bond.

KEY POINT: You also need to be giving off a 110% non-judgemental vibe about sex. THERE IS NO ROOM FOR ERROR HERE. The same woman will treat two men who are otherwise the same in a completely different way if one of them is giving off subtle signs of being judgemental about sex and the other is just completely free-flowing and demonstrating through his actions that he's aware of the social pressure she is under. This was one of my key sticking points early on in my journey when I was still bitter about not being seen as sex-worthy in high school. In hindsight, there were women who clearly wanted to fuck me during my first year of college who I essentially talked out of it without even realizing. She will calibrate to you, and if she thinks you're going to look down on her for fucking you before you take her on 20 dates and meet her dad, she won't fuck you until you take her on 20 dates and meet her dad.

You’re the lover, not the provider. You are an experience, not an investment. Make sure your interactions are truly man to woman. There are a million guides and resources on how make an interaction man to woman, and how to sub-communicate your intent properly. In my opinion, RSD is the gold standard. That’s all it takes for you to be honest. Women aren’t stupid, they don’t need you to spell it out for them. They know exactly what they’re doing when they sleep with that guy they met who didn’t even tell her where he's from, where he works, or any of the other most basic get-to-know-you shit. Honesty, in this case, does not have to be some overt statement.

You don’t have to say “OH BTW IM NOT GONNA CALL YOU AFTER THIS.” The vast majority of women are not comfortable enough with their sexuality (due to social conditioning and repression) to take that and logically frame it as “that's ok because it's just a hookup.” They KNOW it’s just a hookup, but they need that little 1% of deniability to avoid slut-shaming themselves. Let them have it. It is literally cruel not to.

Now, of course, if you’re kind, confident, good in bed, and have your shit together in life, many of them will still try to lock you down as an ‘investment’ despite knowing full well you represented yourself as an experience. THIS IS ON THEM. THEY ARE NOT STUPID, THEY CAN TELL WHAT KIND OF MAN YOU ARE. They’re just shooting their shot, and you can turn them down just like they’d turn down some chode. If you have portrayed yourself authentically as I've described, you've acted ethically and there is zero cause to feel any sort of guilt.

This all plays out heavily in online dating, where many women will claim to be "looking for something serious," as if that's somehow mutually exclusive with hooking up. This was my response to the "what are you looking for" question before I quit online dating: “I like to find out if there’s chemistry first before making any judgment, but I’m always open for the right woman to hit me like a bus and sweep me off my feet.” Why does this work? Because it's true and authentic! I'm never going to tell any woman I'm serious about her before finding out if there's sexual chemistry, and I am genuinely open to falling in love.

The only way you could be misleading women is by giving off heavy boyfriend vibes and then completely shifting gears to being a player the morning after. In that case, they’re expecting more than just sleeping with you because that’s how you’re representing yourself overtly and in sub-communication, and that’s on you. There's absolutely no reason to wine and dine some woman for a month, sleep with her once, and then kick her out in the morning with a bag of stale Cheetos. At that point, you may as well have just hired a sex worker, because you just paid for sex in the form of X dates and Y hours of your time. It's also just needlessly hurting someone. Women LOVE sex. Women like to have casual sex with non-needy men who are clear and congruent to their intent. If you need to pretend to be serious about her to get into her pants, you are bitter, bad at pickup, and being horrifically inauthentic to yourself.