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AIBU?

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People who settle

128 replies

Strangerthings12 · 03/10/2026 11:19

I've had a few long-term, short-term relationships, and most of the men have turned out to be absolutely vile.

I've dated all ages, from all professions, all walks of life, but they all turned out to be vile, and most of them are married now, which I simply cannot wrap my head around.

One started to become abusive and was criticizing my size, despite the fact that I was a size 10 and very fit and healthy. He also turned out to be a deeply racist person. Another used to hide food from me in the kitchen - again I was size 10 🤷‍♀️ (not that my size should matter).

Another one, towards the end, said that he didn't enjoy my aura, which I still struggle to understand what it was, because I certainly hadn't changed. I’ve always been a nice and bubbly person and treat people with respect.

And the other one just ghosted on me one day.

These men have gone on to marry women and certainly havent changed, and I just don't understand what makes women marry men like this. I mean, as soon as I started seeing the problems, I left them, aside from the one who ghosted me. But now they're married, and I just can't get my head around how women settle for behaviors like this, because these men don't change.

The racist one went on to marry a much younger woman who is an immigrant. Make it make sense??

I’m not bitter, I couldn’t wait to get rid of these men as soon as these behaviours appeared.

I’m still single.

OP posts:
SquirrelsEatingConkers · 04/10/2026 14:15

Strangerthings12 · 04/10/2026 10:13

And sure - I’m totally fine with these men not seeing me as the ‘one’ - (despite suggesting marriage, saying they loved me, begging for me back months after I left) - but doesn’t make it ok for them to behave abusively because of this

Utterly bizarre logic

They do think that way though, even the good ones.

It's why there is the phenomenon of women "becoming invisible" after they look a certain weight/age. It's why "pretty privilege" is a thing. And why so many men will misinterpret women's friendliness as romantic interest.

Because on the whole, most men don't give women the time of day unless they'd like to have sex with them. Even if they've no intention of actually doing it because they're in a committed relationship and are loyal. Unless a man thinks you're fuckable, you cease to exist in his universe and may as well be invisible.

There will be some exceptions. And there definitely ought to be exceptions to that mindset, where people are at work dealing with customers, but it doesn't always work out that way.

Treating women they like fairly nicely most of the time, but treating those they don't like abusively, is just an extreme example of the same thing.

Same with the middling behaviour, that's only morally wrong, of dating someone they don't particularly like and who they know is looking for a serious long term relationship. Lying to her that they want the same and are interested in her for that, just so they can have regular sex. Then dropping her the minute someone they like better comes along.

And sometimes trying to go back to the one they're not bothered about every time they're single.

Because at the end of the day they don't actually care how women feel about it all. They don't care about that particular woman they're doing it to, at all. So if she'll provide what they want, they're happy. And that's all that matters to most of them.

It's another way women should IMO learn from men. Not the bad behaviour and selfishness, or the way they don't feel any guilt about what they do, but the bit about why. It's because they have the mindset that if they weren't happy in the relationship, if they weren't getting anything/enough from it, they'd walk away and they expect women to do the same. But we often don't, having been socialised to put others first, put up with crap to keep relationships intact, and to ignore how we feel and just carry on.

Just look at how so many men behave with a common cold. Versus how women generally behave. And how women are just expected to put up with periods and menopause and get back to having sex ASAP after birthing a child, because heaven forbid a women feeling less than on top form should take any time for herself to recover until she feels better, especially if it impacts the life of some man somewhere. Nope, we're expected to suck it up and carry on, without even any acknowledgement or sympathy, a lot of the time.

So we subconsciously learn it in puberty and then "suck it up and carry on" ends up being some kind of guidance pattern for how we live our entire lives. I'm sure there are some men doing that too, but a lot aren't.

A woman talks about her ex and it's like: he was a fuck boi, he did coercive control, he was a narcissist, he was abusive, suspected he was alcoholic, acting weird like maybe he was doing drugs, "diagnosing" him themselves with some or other medical conditions and blaming his behaviour on that. Page after page after page of threads on here where women are trying to work out why their partner does xyz and whether they're being unreasonable in disliking it.

Men generally don't do all that. There'll be the odd one here and there, but mostly they just think "fuck this shit" and then step away from the crazy, going off to find someone else to live life with. "Why you break up with your ex?", "Oh, she was crazy!". They're not wasting time figuring out what type of crazy. They're just getting the hell out of there.

IStillHearTheWaves · 04/10/2026 14:20

Strangerthings12 · 04/10/2026 13:02

Such a bizarre interpretation

not bashing women

I’m trying to understand

Oh, the faux MN 'I don't understand...'.

I find that bizarre, TBH. Several people have pointed out that the foreign wife could also be racist and share her husband's views, or that people don't grow up with models of healthy relationships or maybe have a million and one other reasons 🙄

'But that's just me' is rarely ever a non-arsey, non-judgey statement IMO. Give it a rest!

JHound · 04/10/2026 21:03

Strangerthings12 · 04/10/2026 10:13

And sure - I’m totally fine with these men not seeing me as the ‘one’ - (despite suggesting marriage, saying they loved me, begging for me back months after I left) - but doesn’t make it ok for them to behave abusively because of this

Utterly bizarre logic

I agree with this. I hate the behaviour some men have of thinking it’s ok to treat a woman like shit because they don’t her as “the one”. The idea of treating people differently dependent on what kind of future you see with them is awful.

Just leave her alone then!

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