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Recently, I just confirmed something with this guy. After a conversation, he unconsciously admitted that he has lived in a "gray area" with women where he's friendly with women to the point where it seems like he's dating them, but he's not because they never dating in the first place. It's basically a technicality. Often times, the girl gets hurt, because she thinks the guy liked her, but he's just wasting time.
I have got to admit, I fell for this with other men in my generation and I'm beginning to think that all men are indirect with their feelings due to fear of rejection. Thus, they live in this " gray area" and it's like they spend and treat the girl better than others, but upon confrontation, they deny ever giving special treatment.
One thing I realized about these guys is that their fathers all married significantly younger women with a 10+ year age difference.
Again, I ask, has it always been like this, where living in the "grey area" has been a prevalent thing, but nobody talks about it, or is it a common practice in recent generations?
This is one reason why I don't bother with male friends. Whenever I had a male "friend", they would flirt way too much for it to be a platonic friendship yet they would also insist that we weren't dating. I ended up in this weird limbo where I wasn't a girlfriend but also not a platonic friend. I agree that men love these kinds of "grey areas" because it means that they get the benefits of a relationship e.g. emotional labour and possibly also sex but without any of the sacrifices e.g. taking the woman out on dates. It's very low value behaviour IMO.
IMO this "grey area" thing is a more recent development. In the past, men were expected to ask women out and take them out on proper dates. Also women having male friends wasn't really a thing so men couldn't use that to stay in the woman's orbit either.
This type of man has been my personal bugbear in the past and it's just so goddamn common. They get the best of everything with this strategy - for men, having a woman around is a net positive regardless of who she is, they get to remain in their immature cowardly zero-responsibility state, and they can play victim if you get upset when you finally solve the riddle with the answer being "he's just not into you". In my opinion, these men are exactly why you do not chase, persue, or take all of the initiative with men. Otherwise this is exactly who you'll end up with - Mr. Stays with a woman he doesn't really see long term with but he's not going to inform her of his plans because he has zero regard or respect for any woman's feelings because he can't take responsibility for his own.
If it's intentional, that's called future faking. A lot of guys do this, knowing they're future faking because they know what women actually want, but want to jump through bare minimum hoops to get things from us. They don't just GIVE the way women are both inclined and bullied into. I'd err on the side of thinking it's intentional, and yes, aside from violence, this is how they get sex for "free" (there's no such thing as free sex, sex is more than a commodity).
If a man is upfront about actually dating someone then he knows that involves planning and paying for dates.
Unemployed / low employed dudes still feel entitled to women's attention even if they refuse to adult.
Living in the gray area allows a scrote to monopolize a woman's time & stroke his ego from having a woman in his life without ever validating the relationship via actual dates or courting.
This is the perfect way for a male to get all of the positives of having a girlfriend with none of the responsibilities for her emotional or physical well being. It's a game where he's using you and looking for "better." This is a rather recent strategy that started about 25 years ago with the bullshit advent of "friends with benefits." FWB only benefits the male. It gives him a free prostitute and emotional support for no effort, financial investment, or responsibility. Just leave the males who are like this alone. They mean you harm.