The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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I'm going through another bout of anger over my experiences of "dating" in my 20s.
During, and post-college, the worldview I was presented with by my friends, social circle, and the women I encountered was that the explaination for all behaviors of women was "Feeling Unsafe." If something didn't go well on my date, it was because somehow I made her feel unsafe. If a woman didn't respond well to me flirting with her, it was because she was afraid I was about to assault her. The reason that a woman said "I've got to go to the bathroom, wait here, I'll be right back" was that she felt unsafe and was trying to escape in a way that wouldn't make me fly into a rage. Stood up? She Felt Unsafe. Woman I'm on a date with leaves with another man? She wanted the other man to protect her from me.
In my social circle, women's favorite topic of conversation was how much they hated men flirting with them, speaking to them, or even looking at them. Every outing to a bar was presented as a desperate struggle to Just Hang Out With Their Friends.
Then I got a little older and moved away from my college town. I had two relationships with women who actually HAD run into dangerous men, who had genuine trauma in their history. They didn't talk about Feeling Unsafe, they didn't go through life claiming constant fear of men, and they were universally confused at my low-self-esteem. One of them ran into a woman from my old social circle and was left aghast. "I didn't think all that stuff you said was real, but holy crap, is that what you were running into before you met me?"
Now, at 34 and stuck "dating" again, I just feel emotionally crippled and incapable of putting myself out there anymore; every time I do, I get flashbacks and all the old pain comes back, combined with the new pain of having loved and lost.
This resentment is common for men growing up in the West. 'Feeling unsafe' is used as justification for a whole bunch of bad behaviour from women in the dating sphere. Ghosting is probably the most obvious example. Girls don't want a confrontation so they disappear. In a social setting when asked about this they'll say things like 'I've seen guys flip out so I'm just protecting myself'. Clearly as you've figured out 'I felt unsafe' is a social 'Get Out of Jail Free' card that is played with impunity. Then you're told your a bad person if you even hint that girls would ever play it undeservedly and not for it's intended purpose.
Issues like the above led to a lot of guys on PUA/Red Pill forums going through an 'anger phase' where they detoxed from this sort of resentment towards being gaslit. Some guys got stuck there for a long, long term, but many managed to work their way through eventually.
Basically you need to accept that its common for people to act badly and impolitely in the dating sphere (largely due to the complete lack of social accountability that anonymous/atomised communities provide). It's not your fault and you did nothing to deserve that behaviour (unless you did, but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here).
I should be clear that guys act badly in dating too due to similar reasons to the above. There are actually dudes who physically threaten and sexually assault women and some women actually are afraid of men (although I think the last is a small proportion of the women who use it as an excuse for bad behaviour).
But dating is something you should absolutely take breaks from when you feel the need to. Particularly when using apps which are their own special type of hell.
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