So I'm sure everyone has had the experience of the man who starts messing us about and then reveals they're not over their ex of 5 years ago or whatever and they scurry back into the night.

Being in a relationship with the average woman is pretty nice. Unless she has a personality disorder, it won't be too terrible. Even when we don't particularly like the dude anymore, we don't let him starve or stop cleaning his messes. Relationship forums are filled with women having to be told “Stop cooking for him! Stop cleaning up after him if he's being a prick”. Like it never occurs to us to start negative punishments to change behaviour (negative = taking something away). We're usually fixated on rewarding bad behaviour and wondering why he doesn't reciprocate.

Anyway. So she finally dumps him. The experience was terrible and exhausting for her but still pretty nice for him so he's super sad. But the benchmark has been set. His life for the duration of the relationship had a minimum level of comfort, kindness, catering, compliments, being cared for and feeling loved. And he had to do nothing.

So they go dating again and meet women who have no interest in immediately being installed as his bangmaid mommy. He has to put effort in, and he's not receiving anything. This is agony for coddled LVM.

He misses his ex. The good times. The things she did for him. How nice and clean and organized his life was. He never had to think of anything or lift a finger. All he had to do was nod and smile and promise to do better then ignore her once a month. Now this woman is expecting him to do the planning and organizing and giving. So gross. Effort. ew.

They either try to fast-forward the relationship to get that level of comfort and compliments back. Creating false intimacy by treating you how they treated her in the beginning. Generic dates. Flowers. Good morning texts. Trying to get you into their house to see if you'll audition as wife appliance. Forcing that familiarity.

Or they love-bomb as a down-payment so they can get straight into comfortable relationship mode, where he again does nothing. Replicating the destruction of the relationship and being bewildered when another husk of a woman trudges out of his life. It was going so well for him :(

“I just want something casual” = I want wife appliance with no investment on my behalf and you're not falling for it.

“I'm not ready for a relationship” = not if it means reciprocating or putting in effort

“I miss my ex” = I miss that benchmark of familiarity and comfort, and meeting you, and you not giving me that immediately, is too discomforting.