Sarah
I went on a few dates with a guy, and he came back to mine once. We were never that into each other (from my perspective) so when he moved to Amsterdam I was quite relieved. About a month later I came across his online blog, in which he writes about his daily life. Curious, I found the entry describing the night he came back to mine and found that he’d written an account describing how he only slept with me because he wanted someone to tell him he was attractive, and only ‘finished out of politeness’ despite losing interest. He even used my real name in the post. I felt hurt, embarrassed and used, but I didn’t want to re-open communication with him so I just pushed it to the back of my mind. Almost a year later, he messaged me out of the blue to say he was back in town, and felt we had left things on a weird note. I took the opportunity to tell him, plainly and without any accusation, that I’d found his blog post and the way he wrote about me had made me feel hurt and embarrassed. Instead of offering me any kind of apology, he promptly blocked me so I couldn’t contact him again. I couldn’t resist having a look at his blog again (he still hasn’t removed the post about me), and found a more recent entry describing an encounter he had with someone else. This time, a girl came back to his but decided when there that she didn’t want to sleep with him. He describes his anger at being rejected, saying that he wanted to be the one to refuse her – being rejected made him feel unattractive and angry. The next morning she changes her mind and decided to sleep with him after all, and he describes how he only does it in order to prove a point – that she should not have rejected him in the first place. Shortly after this, he sent her a message saying that he felt insulted, and didn’t want to see her again. Then he blocked her before she could respond. This is all detailed on his public blog. The next day he posted a video on his blog saying that he thinks he might have been wrong in how he treated her, but that ultimately he hadn’t been acting maliciously and he could only really be held responsible for his own feelings, not how his actions made others feel. This man treats women as if they are tools for his own validation, and when he is called out on it he responds by silencing the other person. He doesn’t apologise. He just moves onto the next girl. It’s toxic masculinity and blatant misogyny.