The lady that protests too much

This story of a nice, well-meaning guy getting repeatedly cheated on by a remorseless whore reminds me of one of my good friends. He's a tall, strong guy with a giving heart, an instinctive white knight by nature, which naturally means that he has dated some impressive trainwrecks. I'm not casting any stones here; it's been a matter of no little humor for us in the past, such as the time that there was a front page story in the paper about two strippers being arrested for a fracas at the strip club and one turned out to be a high school girlfriend of mine, the other a college girlfriend of his.

But the problem was that he kept finding himself in sub-optimal situations with these trainwrecks and I kept repeatedly having to tell him "sometimes women say things that aren't true." And he would insist that he was sure that this time that couldn't be the case, because she had looked him right in the eye, or she had told him that she loved him which really wasn't easy for her to say, or she had cried, or any number of a variety of signs that, of course, meant absolutely nothing.

We’d spend hours discussing anything and everything; though the conversations often turned to ethics, motivations, and stories of her past. Among the most commonly recurring were:

• Stories about how the grief and confusion of being raised by a pathological liar taught her to make it a point to always say what she meant, and to communicate at face value.
• Stories about an extremely manipulative ex-husband, who would do things like refuse to stop wearing the ring from his last relationship, and make her feel terrible or insane for any discomfort she expressed — though he was in fact cheating on her as he was making her feel terrible for being worried.
• The pain of spending most of her childhood alone, as well as the injustice of being ostracized from various groups and communities in her adulthood.
• Views on the ethics of infidelity. Which she maintained is inherently wrong even if the person who was cheated on never finds out, because (aside from willfully endangering their partner by way of increased STD risk) if the unfaithful party then has sex with their partner, they are doing so under false pretenses, and therefore without their partner’s consent. That is, sex with a partner who doesn’t know you’ve cheated on them is sex without consent.

There were other strong principled positions, sometimes brought up for their own sake, sometimes brought up in relevant situations, and almost always tied to her past, but they didn’t in any sense make up the bulk of our relationship.

Shit, man, what happened?

I mean, obviously she cheated on me (a lot actually), but why would someone violate their own beliefs on something as important to them as sexual consent? And what’s with all this fear of someone going public? What happened to her strong principled stance of unflinching honesty? Or of owning up to mistakes? What happened to the paragon of virtue I fell in love and set out to help fix the world with?

Well, the above conversation happens a few days after a considerably more painful one, where I discover almost none of the things I loved about her were true.

My immediate response to reading this was: shit, man, what else did you expect? Any time a woman makes a big deal about how important not doing X is to her, that is because she is doing X. For some reason, women think posturing is camouflage, and that reason is probably that so many unthinking men buy into the posturing.

What would you think if a man walked up to you and said, out of the blue: "I think molesting children is VERY, VERY bad. I think it is terrible! I think it is inherently wrong and I think child molesters should be shot! I think we need MORE laws against child molesting and we need them now!"

My first thought would be: "Well, you certainly think a lot about child molesting." And my second thought would be: "Never let this man anywhere near my children."

But for some reason, if a woman goes on and on about the evils of infidelity and how IMPORTANT it is to always tell the truth, the average man concludes that this means that she is faithful and trustworthy. No, it doesn't! It means the precise OPPOSITE! It's bait, cast out to see what sort of innocent idiot is going to bite on the bullshit.

Stay very far away from a woman who wallows in past pain. You want the sort of woman who says: "yeah, so it sucked when I saw my parents eaten by crocodiles when I was six, but hey, what are you going to do? Anyway, that's why I always wear croc-skin boots." not the one who revels in the reaction to her stories of suffering and nobly deigns to accept the consolation you offer.

Also, if you are a man and you decide a woman is untrustworthy, ditch her at once. You will NEVER regret it. Granted, it's easier if you have a few more mares in the stable than if you are LOSING YOUR ONE SHOT AT TRUE LOVE IN LIFE or whatever the hell it is that Deltas think every time they face a breakup with any girl they've had sex with more than twice, but it's still true. And once you break up with someone, MOVE ON. They're not your responsibility anymore. Ironically, you'll have a much better chance of eventually being friendly acquaintances if you cut contact and stop worrying at the wound.