Me: “I am looking to date.”Guy Who Met Me on Dating Forum: “ I am looking for friendship first”

"you cant have a genuine friendship when you met someone from online dating or a dating forum." I agree. Mostly I think people who say they want friendship first just dont really understand dating. What you both want is to get to know each other and build a relationship over time, if youre compatible. But when you say youre looking to date, he thinks you mean that you want to skip the relationship building part and go straight into a serious relationship immediately. Probably dont date men who are that confused about what dating means. And definitely dont date men who think women who say they want to date are psychos who want every first date to be marriage.

Translation: I want to have a FWB relationship where we visit each other occasionally for sex.

Your instincts are correct. He wants to manage your expectations down. Also, men who do this are usually cheap and ”just friends“ means he doesn‘t have to pay for stuff.

His intentions are spelled out clearly in this one comment: "long distance hasn't worked out well for me but I'd love to visit you..." He is saying, "I don't do long distance relationships but I will visit OP to have sex with her."

I had to look up the subreddit and it's like a weird little personals page where people can find all kinds of types of relationships with each other. Including platonic ones.

I think this is why I basically stopped everything in terms of finding social and romantic connections online because it's too easy to muddy the waters with it. That and men are pretty much almost never attracted by women they find on hookup apps, dating sites, and online communities like this. It's like that one video I saw several months ago where a bunch of women went to a dating event in some park and it was basically 95% of women there and only 5% of men attending. Like this was a public event where men could actually meet women who are more than ready for a relationship.

Have you've ever wondered why men insist on bothering women in very benign places like the gym, in class, at work, the library or book store, the café, etc? It sounds stupid and backwards, but women who aren't putting themselves out there for an intimate connection = intriguing, high value, and worthy of men's affection (smh). Women who are trying very hard to put themselves out there to meet men and date = annoying, basic, and low value in the eyes of scrotes.

Men always want the women who DON'T want them or men in general. She feels refreshing in a sea of ladies who are very romantic relationship oriented thanks to how common pickmes and NLOGs are. Yeah it's wrong and all, but it's def something I've noticed a lot.

A man who is romantically interested in a woman will want to impress her. This is very not romantic for him to insist on being friends and gives him power from the beginning-he is trying to set it up so that he gets to decide if it goes anywhere else(it will not, or it will be horrible if it does because he is beginning things with a power imbalance in his favor). Like he is trying to set you up to chase him because he knows you want a relationship and he’s sorta like “let’s be friends and I’ll see if you’re good enough for me to want a relationship” I hope that makes sense. He doesn’t seem to be considering that you would be doing the same, after all that’s what dating is is finding out if the other Person is suitable for you. No need to waste time being friends first. You can’t be organic friends from a dating site, that happens from like friends or friends or co workers or something. He’s trying to force something organic I guess? which doesn’t make sense given the very definition of it.

The thing he is not really seeming to grasp is that romantic relationships require the consent of both people anyway on an ongoing basis, and so I am reading this as a guy who has a problematic attitude towards consent in general.

Men who like to fog up the waters and make things ambiguous are bad news. it reminds me of horrible requests I’ve gotten from men for weird sexual acts or to send nudes or something and then they immediately follow that with ”you can say no if you want to” as though I didn’t know already that the word no exists. Like they think we even need permission from them before asserting any boundaries.

they function in a grey area of ambiguity because they know that a confused pick-me will only try harder to win him over when He is unclear about what his intentions are. Confusion on the woman’s part, plus trying to please him, will lead to him getting what he wants from her(free sex) and then he can go say that “I said at the beginning I wanted this To happen organically and she just pushed it to be more! She tried to force a relationship! My dick is so confused!”

Okay y’all, I can confirm he was a LVM because he definitely just messaged with a sleazy comment and called me “baby”. He also said he would love to hangout with me if I’m ever in NYC. **eyeroll**

Dating organically is still dating so this guy is full of it, lol.

These scrotes really have all the audacity. You can take things super slow with low expectations and still acknowledge that you're going out on dates to figure out compatibility. They won't even do the bare minimum so they can bail at any point because you were "just friends" after all.

I think to most women friends = no sex. I don’t think that is the case for many men. It sounds like a nicer way of let me have all the benefits of a dating without the label and possibly effort. It could be sincere, but it’s still a no from me. I can see naturally if you met in real life through connections. You might be kinda friendly first but even then he should make it clear when he wants to date you and court you properly. I would not do datingor boyfriend type things. If a guy wants to just be friends they need to be clearly friendzoned.

Dating = assessing romantic compatibility over a series of activities together. Of course this starts out platonic (no physical intimacy) but there's a clear goal. Some people seem to balk at the word "date" because it implies that there's already a strong romantic connection present. Obviously there isn't when you're meeting someone you've never seen IRL before. However, someone who is already making sure you're not expecting too much commitment before you've even went on a single date is probably emotionally unavailable. He sounds unsure of what he truly wants, so he'd like women to audition for him and then decide whether he really wants to commit to them or not. This is chooser behavior, which is the woman's role, not the man's. You're rightfully turned off by that. Also, like others have said, I'll bet he would be absolutely trying to get in your pants if he finds you attractive despite starting off as "JuSt FrIenDs". To men, friendship means no commitment, to women, it usually means no sex.

Just go ahead and tack on “…with benefits!” every time one of these sea-sponges mentions wanting a friend.

Just agree with him and say, "I'm SO glad that you understand that friends don't fuck! I'm looking forward to getting to know you platonically, and hopefully after 6 months to a year of dating and being just platonic friends, we can see about marriage." Let's see what his game really is.

I honestly would feel reassured by this, because my late second husband and I were friends first, and we got to know everything about each other, took things slowly but steadily, and found out we had most things in common. For a while, because it was a LDR, we were pen-pals but there was always the knowledge that both of us actively wanted an IRL relationship... For reference, this was the early days of the internet in the 90s and he and I lived several states apart; we met on a literary listserv. It worked out for us, because I was MAD to move out of my small hometown, out of my state, very happy to re-locate to Los Angeles. More to see, more to do, better pay, way more liberal.

I think it's up to both people to set expectations first. I would make it clear that I want a loving, monogamous, romantic relationship where we consider each other primary partners, ie bf/gf. Make all expectations clear, and make sure you listen closely (vet) to see what his expectations are. Expect great things because setting the bar high means that if a man wants to step up, you're setting him up for success. The reason the bar is in hell is, IMO, many women don't expect enough.

What I loved about friendship first is, it set the expectation that we talked about everything. We found out we could reveal things to each other, and that we were safe with each other. The more we talked, the more there was to talk about, and that appeals so, so much.

I would LOVE a guy to actually say these words to me. Getting to know each other organically without pressure of sex is a must for me. Why would you want a guy to use you for sex straight from thebeginning? That's like almost all men. This is what makes a scrote a scrote. We want to have a guy slow down and get to know our minds and heart BEFORE our bodies. He is trying to NOT objectify you. This is a rare type of guy.