Tell me if you've gotten screwed over by the following man:

  1. Seems more emotionally intelligent than other straight men you've encountered
  2. Opens up about his past, which encourages you to open up about yours. You think you're building something together--he's actually using you for emotional labor and you're exposing your own vulnerability in a way that will come back to haunt you
  3. Classic wokefishing--throws around feminist language, etc
  4. Does NOT immediately pressure you for sex (this one gets a lot of us--he's a gentleman! he really values me for who I am!)
  5. Seems perfect but is actually a perfect chameleon, molding himself into what you want to see based on your feedback--this is that initial emotional intelligence being used to your disadvantage, many run-of-the-mill LVM don't have the perception to do this well
  6. When you're well and truly hooked and have every concrete evidence and emotional indicator of a relationship with him, he "panics" (or whatever), gaslights the everliving f*ck out of you and immediately ghosts/hooks up with someone else/demands you continue with your "friendship" etc
  7. Uses everything he learned with you on the next victim
  8. Thrives on relationship ambiguity, which meanwhile is wearing you down to a nub
  9. Often has a LOT of women friends--you think this means he's the rare man who sees women as people. Reality: he's just learned to outsource his emotional labor without including sex. He's got an Emotional Harem, and you're part of it.
  10. This is the worst part--it's unconscious on his part. There are absolutely straight up sociopathic narcissists who do this by design, but the men I'm talking about are what society would call generally decent guys. They have jobs, ambitions, are capable of genuinely kind behavior, definitely DO treat women better than many men do, ticked all your boxes when you were with them and made you think they were different. They are not different. They are simply LVM with a HVM veneer. They have some good qualities. But the ongoing Emotional F*ckboi behavior is so damaging to us because it can be hard to articulate, leaves us feeling like we were crazy and imagined a whole relationship, and prevents us from calling them out to other women because they would never cheat or watch porn or hit a woman or any of the glaringly obvious red flags. This type is even more subtle than The Nice Guy. But the subtler the gaslighting, the more damaging it is.

You know the MeToo phrase "believe women"? Believe yourself.