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So who has been "horrible" in this situation? The girl in OP, the people in the thread giving advice that didn't align with your views? "Horrible" is a pretty strong word, I now reserve such terms for people I run across who are deliberately nasty and manipulative, which thankfully isnt going to be too common. The fact that you label anything in this scenario as "horrible" directly contradicts the last statement in bold.

I don't understand why either of you still tolerates the other. You were not only disrespectful to the woman you assaulted in the club, but your behavior also said 'f-you' to your GF. So you're not in a partnership on the same side; you're adversaries.

Oh, not at all! I just gotta find someone who's at least as jaded as I am! I am perfectly apt at compartmentalising, I am capable of separating vile societal tendencies from individual people, I don't judge EVERYBODY as being horrible, but I do judge as horrible those people who demonstrate themselves to be horrible! Same goes for everything else! I am angry, yes! I am frustrated, yes! But I know exactly what makes me angry, why I am frustrated, and I have no issues with keeping things in perspective.

With all due respect, I think you are far too jaded to be dating right now anyway.

And more power to them, honestly! But, for me, it's a complete and utter mess. And, unfortunately, I can only live my own life:)) Again, points to the same conclusion: any and all methods are pointless other than doing whatever works best for me. I'm not looking to pad my numbers, I'm not looking to speedrun the entire spectrum of probability, my ultimate goal is finding a long-term partner with whom I can have a functional relationship, and who enriches my life as I do theirs. Simple as. Anything which comes short of that is whatever, water under the bridge! Now, where this whole dating thing also intersects with humanity's process of going absolutely Medieval on itself, that's a different story for a different time. That'll never not get me riled up.

You realize it's not that messy for many people though, right? There are just as many who have fun with it and remain relatively low-drama. It's not a mess in general for everyone.

That's exactly my point, I'm done with all of that!:)) Both the "wait x days before yadda-yadda," and the "text the next day and set up a date yadda-yadda" stuff! I'll wait however much I feel like waiting, and I'll set up a date whenever I feel like setting up a date! :)) Thank you, and nothing but the same to you as well!

Well I would say you are looking very scientifically at something that doesn't work that way... But anyway good luck to you.

Well, I think you may have misunderstood me back then, as well. That's on me, because I tend to skip phrases when I'm revved up, but I have had and have no ill will or hard feelings toward absolutely anyone in this thread! I am 100% done with any and all methods! I am just going to do what feels natural and good for me. If it works, great, if not, bullet(s) dodged! Yes, this thread has pushed me into frustration, but it has done so in the sense that I have seen how much of a mess dating is in general, it's been min-maxed to hell and back, and I loathe min-maxing. It's the one surefire way of sucking all of the fun out of the game. So, yeah! I'll just do me, and if anyone else vibes, then that's cool!

Haha ok man. But if you look at the first post I quoted, there is a lot of underlying frustration in that. All I'm saying is it may be worth sitting with yourself or a therapist and getting to the bottom of that rather than relying on and defending some "method" that only get you frustrated and arguing with people on the internet.

Again you're focusing waaay too much on her =)) I genuinely have no hard feelings toward her, she flirted as "just a thing," I reached out, she was clearly disinterested, done! I have taken none of it personally, next time we'll meet randomly I'll drink a shot with her for the bother, and that's that! Edit: I do have a deep dislike of what ghosting indicates, but in this case it's really not my problem, so I don't really care... Genuinely none of what has transpired within the last two pages of this thread has had anything to do with her, things started going partly offtopic when I lost my marbles at the thought that striking up a conversation without proposing a date within 5 minutes would have been enough to kill interest:)) And I'm not even denying that it's possible, it's just that, if it is possible, then it's even more ridiculous, and I wouldn't want to date the kind of people who'd do that. That's all! I actually would like to believe that most people really aren't that shallow and quick to draw baseless conclusions!

Non-judgement is very, very different to bottling up your feelings. It's based on feeling but recognising that the sweeping negative conclusions you come to about yourself or others amd the effect that has on your psyche may not actually be proportional to the situation. For example, if your friend of many years ends up scamming you out of money and then tries to gaslight you that YOU did something wrong (as unfortunately happened to me), it's going to bring up a lot of negative feelings that are pretty justified and deserve to be worked through and processed, as there was a genuine bond there and trust was betrayed and abused. On the other hand if you go to McDonalds and the person at the counter is nice to you at first and then scowls when you ask for ketchup, its really a big nothing and the proportionate reaction is "huh weird, guess theyre having a bad day" and then go on with your meal and forget all about it. But if youre in a place where your self esteem is shaky enough, some people will internalise it and think "see, people are all the same, even the guy at the McDonalds counter hates me!" and start spiraling into negative self-talk. My point is that the thing with this girl is more in the second camp in my opinion. It would be nice if the flirty energy translated into something further, but if it doesnt it really only merits a "Huh, oh well! Thats a shame" and then move on with your life. The fact that it provoked a whole load of thoughts about how you are "so done" etc tells me there is something else going on way beyond the encounter, and THAT's the real issue.

Just shy of two years (couple of weeks short), started back in October, 2019. Well, I guess this also depends on what one defines as a relationship. I've had two 6-month attempts since then as well - only sorta'-count them because we'd established exclusivity from early on in both occurrences.

Oh, but I do that! With certain things. I fully believe no human being has ever been or will ever be perfect, and I understand exactly what being an imperfect human being means. But not everything falls under "imperfection." Some things fall under "pure malice," and it's those things I just can't let pass by. Offtopic, I used to be the exact opposite, I tried to let everything pass by and practiced non-judgement left, right and center, because I was raised to ignore my emotions, my empathy, and my needs. Lemme tell ya', once I managed to get rid of those chains and let loose everything I was keeping locked up, my entire world changed. I'd rather be furious while seeing the truth than feel nothing.

I've re-read, for the third time my original post. I now believe this has been going on for over 5 yrs and all the time she has always accused me of having the affairs, projection I assume. All of this time she has given me chapter and verse of what she's done, but in the guise of telling me it was one of the other girls. She carried this out whilst I sat at home with our youngest son, looking after him caring for him, stuck inside at weekends whilst she went to Brighton or wherever, definitely nowhere where she said she was going as she took the tracker off her phone a good few years back when she got a new phone. And all this time it seems I have enabled her believing her lies, providing a home for her to live in and money for her excursions and dalliances, when other men have just used her like a piece of meat to satisfy their needs. Throughout the last few years she ahs distanced herself from me all of the time, coming home from work complaining of back pain, eating dinner and then going straight up to the bed at 7pm to 'lay on the heated blanket' for her back pain and whilst laying there sexting different men, I would just watch TV downstairs on my own or with my son. Whenever I tried to get close to her she would complain and fight with me about not feeling well and that I didn't want her for anything other than sex. If we went out it was in silence, we once took a car trip for 3 hrs and she didn't utter a single word, not one, she just sat there looking out the window and nodding off occasionally. She once spent hours and hours going at me because one of our friend group, not a big group at all, said that she liked me because I was always chipper and friendly and had a sparkle in my eye. When on her period it was the end of the world, pain, pain and more pain. Nothing I could do our try would relieve her suffering, going out was a complete non starter - unless it was with her friends then she would take some tablets, suck it up and get out for hours on end. The nights out were restricted to twice a month then once a month when I complained, by consensus, these terms were altered when it was proposed and agreed by her that she could go out during the week to meet one friend (turns out that it was the wrong friend) for 'drinks or dinner' and save the big weekend pub crawl to once a month - didn't keep a tally so was hoodwinked over this many times. She also got around the restrictions by saying she was going to a later showing of a film, not really, she told me she saw Wicked three times, when I challenged her she lied again and said that the other times she went to see it that they'd missed it and watched something else instead. There is so much more sickening stuff that she's done, and documented with her text messages to her friend, when on holiday in France last year she feyned illness to get away from sleeping in the same room as me and when I visited her in the night she was on the phone sexting some bloke but complained of insomnia and that she was playing games, she also text her friend asking for advise on how to get rid of me and our son for a few hours pretending to be ill in the day so she could get the pool guard back to our chalet for sex. Last month whilst I was at work in a local town, she was meeting with a man in the same town in the afternoon, it seems if she wasn't at work or at home she was with someone.......

Eh, you're assigning too much importance to some typed words on a screen. I wouldn't read much into men who message you multiple times a day when you aren't in a relationship with them. Some people just really like the attention, but it doesn't necessarily mean anything deeper. Don't lose sight of that. Flip the script here a bit: perhaps you are on your phone too much and have unreasonable expectations of a man who you barely know.

When was your last relationship OP, and how long did it last?

Because without being able to let certain things slide and decide to practice non-judgement and not to take certain things on board, over time you become bitter and twisted and just find more and more evidence to confirm those world views, and any joy gradually fades. As I said before I only say that becuase Ive been there, done that, got the t-shirt. But you can decide for yourself if you think theres some truth in that, or not.

S'all good, this is the afterparty, I signaled I was done two pages ago =)) Anyway, genuinely no hard feelings and thank you for taking the time to offer your perspectives! We disagreed and that's fine! Different strokes for different folks!

You still choose to ignore everything I’m telling you and just keep arguing for pages upon pages about meaningless semantics and totally unrelated heavy stuff. I’m not a girl, but even I feel tired from this. Sorry, man, but I think I’m going to “ghost” you now.

Oh, yep, you've misunderstood my meaning:)) I like big words, they're poignant! :)) And, yes, societal trends are very much tied to what happens randomly at a bar because that's, like, part of society. Genuinely don't see what's so worrying about my messaging, it's a well-known fact that dating has become more and more superficial and that commitment is more and more of a taboo, why would it be unreasonable to assume that a societal trend is somewhat universally applicable? The micro reflects the macro, as the macro reflects the micro. And, this goes waaay offtopic, but... yeah, wouldn't it be nice if we all could die without hating ourselves? I mean, genuinely, what's therapy-worthy with that thought? What's wrong in wanting to be a decent person in what I understand a decent person to be, for myself? Heck, I'd even say that I'm doing a pretty decent job so far, with an acceptable amount of slip-ups! Edit: and, yes, ghosting is a sign of immaturity - I'd sure as heck consider it immature if someone decided to slowly ignore someone's existence just to avoid having to say an uncomfortable truth.

Well, I tried, but she flaked, so...! :)) I've had longer conversations with a random cashier in Germany! :)) No, but I disagree with you in that it'd be as widespread if people actually took some accountability (which, let's be serious, the grand majority are not). I'm not saying a human being can be perfect, but I am convinced that a human being can be SIGNIFICANTLY better than this. What's the point of living, then, if I have to detach my emotions with 3 of every 5 people I meet? :)) And that's where I see the beauty in my set of principles - I do not expect others to follow them, because nobody knows my principles in detail, but they allow me to clearly see when people are being random buttholes for no reason. This has honestly helped me more than it has hindered me.

Calm down. Slowly re-read everything you just wrote. Understand that you literally just confirmed what everyone had told you here: that you overthink things way too much. You’re throwing in big words such as “today’s world”, “immaturity”, and “grotesque”. You talk about hating yourself when you die. This is some serious, heavy stuff. It can’t be possibly applied to your situation, which was just light flirting in a bar, as you readily admit yet for some reason draw some incredibly overwrought conclusions from that. Your insecurity is way too noticeable, and this goes way beyond that one bar incident. Perhaps therapy would be a good move. We aren’t professionals here, we’re just a bunch of people who once came to this forum for advice and now try to give some to others.

I mean on the first point sure but there is a middle ground between opening with a dry "hello" and "go out with me". Getting to the point fairly quickly after waiting for a week is what I think people were getting at. People generally don't work like that. It's a very rigid and "proper" worldview and that's just not how it is. People often behave off impulses and don't even have any idea what they themselves want. They may vocally say they want something and their subconscious drives them to act in a completely different way. Crazy, huh? But accepting that's just the nature of people and detaching your emotions from it is the first step to working well with the world and other people. Flow is how you adapt and end up in the most satisfied states. Hoping everyone else will go by your rigid rulebook is a fast track to misery and frustration.

You did a really stupid thing in that nightclub. If you deliberately touched my partner’s butt like that, I’d probably punch you too. Not to mention that you borderline cheated on your girlfriend. Your girlfriend is understandably mad at you but probably hesitating whether she should break up with you or not. So she channels her anger and frustration into insults. It’s certainly an unpleasant experience for you, but you are the one who messed up. Apologize to her humbly and see whether she is able to forgive you. I can only tell you that if I touched another woman’s butt like that I’d be feeling sorry for that and accept my partner’s justified expression of distaste.