Did you let men you liked, use you for sex, but kind of resent it?

[porridgeisbae]

Inspired by another thread on here.

When I was younger I used to let men I liked use me for sex. I would sometimes maybe think I could convince them to want more from me, but that didn't usually work and I would just carry on being used until they got sick of me.

I would kind of resent it, but let it carry on.

This is different to a couple of other F-buddy set ups in later life where it was a mutual itch-scratching situation (although I did end up in a sexually coercive FWB thing, for which I had to do the Freedom Programme.)

Did many of the rest of you have similar experiences? It was mainly older guys.

@daisychain01 Yep, and morals too.

Unfortunately yes, when I have been dating and not even that long ago. I was looking for casual myself but ended up in way over my head twice, in different ways.

One guy we agreed on casual but I unexpectedly fell for him. I let him use me for way too cos I wanted to be with him and he was so charming and said/did all the right things. But no real effort whatsoever, just bread crumbs. Stupid me.

Another guy, had a FWB thing going which was great at first but he got progressively more rough and disrespectful. Got quite scary in the end to be honest. But I had started to get attached to him too and his behaviour did kill those feelings dead at least.

God my life is a mess. That was cathartic though.

EmmaEmerald

Good for you
im old enough to ignore some views on here

and some good sex is good for you

Asking if others do what you do, isn't relevant.

Do what I did. No it's not relevant as such, it's just a discussion.

it sounds like you had and possibly still have self-esteem problems. Don't you realise that?

Definitely- well, I have somewhat more recent putting-up-with-stuff-I-shouldn'tve problems at least. But hopefully I won't do that again. I did Freedom and read a lot of Relationships board. Had quite a lot of therapy too.

I had some fwb when I was younger and a couple of them started to develop feelings and I ended it, in a kind way, because I didn’t feel the same.

I don’t think anybody should be off the hook here if they continued to have sex with someone who had feelings for them. Let’s not blame ourselves for other peoples arsehole behaviour.

I saw a good matthew hussey video today

good sex , chemistry and chatting does not make someone good relationship material

but when that oxytocin kicks in …..

female hormones ruin me
not mumsnet

@Superdupersomeone Although the stuff with my most recent ex FWB four years ago was mostly 'just' sexual coercion, I did the Freedom Programme in person and on Zoom and found it enlightening. I think if you do it in person it's better than just reading it/writing answers. Might be worth a look https://www.freedomprogramme.co.uk/avsforever.php?

(Meant to quote OP saying MN ruins you ) please don't feel,guilty.

Even his parents came round in the end. Consenting adults, no one vulnerable unless you follow the MN definition where everyone is vulnerable.

Mum knows of two marriages with 25 year age gaps. One guy, his hubby was very ill in hospital - he's recovered now but we didn't think he would. His husband was so broken when we were thought he was going to die...I'll never forget him just clinging to me weeping after a hospital visit.

I did think if I died then my young man would be young enough to start again though...

I hope I don't regret ending it (wasn't for age related reasons).

I have had a sort of one night stand but does it count - we were acquaintances and went on a few dates after, but at the time I thought it was a one night stand. Does that count?

OP you’re not alone, I know a loads of women who’ve had sex hoping their partner would fall in love with them, only to realise they’re being used. (Isn’t there even a saying about it? ‘Women use sex to get love and men use love to get sex’.)

I agree there’s a dark side to the sexual revolution. It’s not right that girls are sent into the world with zero understanding of these power dynamics - this is stuff that used to be considered common knowledge - and it’s usually happening with older men, too. It’s not sexist to point out the differences between men and women when it comes to sex. Consent isn’t enough if you have no idea how the world works.

The sex wasn't the important thing
i was too tired for it most of the time! 😂

It was the love, but as the song says, Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough.

We would be excellent besties but he's bound to get a girlfriend so that's not really practical.

I did the same when I was younger. I always found it hard to say no to sex. I've had sex a lot out of politeness. There are in fact only 2 people who I actually really wanted to have sex with because we were in a proper relationship.

I've actually got myself into some trouble having sex with people I shouldn't because I don't know how to say no. I'll even be thinking 'I don't really want to do this' while I'm doing it. It's not their fault though.

@OhMargaret Yes I was speaking to a friend of my mum's once and said 'I wish someone'd told me what men are like.' She laughed as she'd had to hear from her gran and mum what men are like.

I think it definitely wouldn't hurt young women to have it impressed upon them as they're growing up.

@ManchesterLu Do you find it hard to say no to other things out of politeness? Genuine question.

I can't fathom having sex unless I really really want to.

@porridgeisbae

hmmm not quite. I had plenty of sex when I was younger and ended up feeling hurt / used / confused though.

as a young feminist I had sex when I wanted to, and I was hot a attractive and sexual so when I met someone I fancied I often did have sex with them fairly quickly.

i did love and I’m glad I’ve had the experience of being able to walk into a party and reel in the hot man I fancied.

i did not, however, understand the relationship game.

Dating culture wasn’t a thing when I was young and I wished it was.

friends became friends with someone and then it turned into a relationship but that never worked for me.

I did not grasp that you were supposed to withhold sex from men you’d like to be your boyfriend until you were sure they’d committed to that. And I didn’t really want to.

but then when they parked me in the ‘slut’ box and cased to consider me girlfriend material I was both hurt and confused.

i had a phase of feeling it was me, but actually 15-20 years on and still seeing them around occasionally (and them seeing I AM a great wife and mum) I realise that some of them DID care for me then and ran away from those feelings and now seem to regret their choices.

i know understand how the patriarchy operates in this. If I’d been a male 20 something with the attributes I had: good looking, charismatic, professionally successful, socially confident I could have had both casual sex and relationships with great girls whenever I wanted.

as a female with all of that going for me I was shocked to discover I did not have the agency over my love and sex life I assumed I did starting out as a teen and early 20 something.

in the background I didn’t have any good guidance or someone truly in my corner.

Agree that how your dad treats you counts for a lot.

but I also realised envious female ‘friends’ revelled in my struggles and probably encouraged men that liked me to see me as a slutty mess rather than girlfriend material. Or discouraged me from pursuing things that looking back would have been good for me.

some of them are kind of disappointed I’ve worked it out too.

ferns "as a female with all of that going for me I was shocked to discover I did not have the agency over my love and sex life I assumed I did starting out as a teen and early 20 something."

but we all have agency - that doesn't include controlling the responses of others though.

I did not grasp that you were supposed to withhold sex from men you’d like to be your boyfriend until you were sure they’d committed to that

I get what you mean. I had one bloke say, when I referred to myself as his girlfriend, that 'that's not how you introduced yourself to me' and that I was his 'mistress' i.e. he was using me for sex. I should've walked away right then but I was ill at the time and very lonely.

I think I get what Ferns means. I also thought that men would be interacting with me as an individual and based on how we got on, but there still are (or were?) unwritten rules in place like you don't 'put out' too quickly or you end up in the 'not wife/girlfriend material' category. Depending on your upbringing, these seemed like they were from a bygone era and shouldn't still be a thing, but in the 90s or whatever they still existed and maybe still do to an extent.

I am very surprised by the large numbers of people posting on here to say they don’t understand the OP. It’s particularly odd that some people appear to be shocked or surprised at OPs experiences.

I completely get the OP, I did the same myself (many years ago now) and given the way society works for men and women I really don’t think this experience can be that unusual.

I enjoy sex a lot and in my 20s and 30s felt able to sleep with whoever I wanted whenever I wanted. I thought of myself as pretty liberated. Looking back on it though, I was almost permanently sad about my relationships because the men who I really liked and had sex with didn’t want proper relationships. I enjoyed sex but I was sleeping with them in the hope they would want to take things further, and they never did. I wish my parents had advised me about this and I wish I had known that I could have had some self esteem and waited until I was clear about what I wanted before having sex.

OP. I really don’t think your experiences are surprising. They are a reflection of not having good advice and having low self esteem.

Not really bc I also have attachment issues, so if they didn’t want more than sex, I was ok with that too

OP " I also thought that men would be interacting with me as an individual and based on how we got on"

I have found men do that but my experience is extremely limited.

in a way, I learned from a school friend who slept around so much, it was like a cry for help. She didn't use contraception and had two ectopic pregnancies. By this time I was in my early 20s and the friendship fell apart as I couldn't cope.

she also dropped social arrangements to go and shag whatever guy she had met recently.

I'm increasingly glad my experience is very limited. It's pure maths that I've not been treated badly.

ETA I can't fathom my parents talking about this but they were teen sweethearts.

so true

I’m afraid I was the guilty party in a lot of my ‘relationships’ in this sense. Having been badly hurt by a previous lover, I just used sexual attraction to reel them in, I had a vision of myself as a sort of irresistible courtesan ( I didn’t get paid though, or at least, not in money). Then I used to enjoy it when they realised that they were not the ‘only one’, or that they were being used rather than using…..some wives and girlfriends probably got hurt as well. So I suppose I do understand, a bit, the notches on the bedpost mentality.

I may say that I really regret this behaviour, and I expect to be judged for it. The first night I spent with now DH was the last time I ever so much as kissed anyone else, and that was forty years ago.

I did not grasp that you were supposed to withhold sex from men you’d like to be your boyfriend until you were sure they’d committed to that. And I didn’t really want to.

but then when they parked me in the ‘slut’ box and cased to consider me girlfriend material I was both hurt and confused.

This sounds so old fashioned. You really don’t have to do this.

All my LTRs with men who I’ve fallen in love with have started with a shag. (In addition to many enjoyable short term flings with people I was just having fun with – many of whom are still mates).

@Elvanseshortage Agreed. Am also surprised. To be honest I'm also taken aback by the number of people using this thread to judge/be superior about their past sex lives. Not sure that comments along the lines of "why on earth would anyone ever behave like that" are helpful. Note, to all of MN - calling someone a doormat has never increased anyone's self-esteem.

I slept with men who I wanted more from but who I deep down suspected were using me in my early 20s. So did almost all of my friends. It was rife ten years ago.

I wonder if it's generational, to some extent. I'm in my early 30s. I grew up with the message that modern women had casual sex as much as men did, and that holding out until a man committed made you a bit of a drip/a 1950s throwback. Any kind of "careful of men/they're only out for one thing" advice would have been dismissed as terribly old-fashioned - but I don't remember hearing anything like that, really. I had grown up with the aftermath of the 90s ladette stuff @porridgeisbae mentions. And yes I was then baffled to learn that a lot of my (nice, modern) male peers were following the old-fashioned rules.

I had also grown up watching a LOT of romantic film/TV plots that showed a male/female friendship which was on-again-off-again/friends with benefits/friends who sometimes had drunk sex, and then ended with the characters having been in love with each other the whole time. Turns out that, nine times out of ten, if a man has casual sex with a woman multiple times but doesn't ask her out, it doesn't mean that he secretly thinks she's The One. Who knew! (Not me at 18, that's for sure.)

Yes, I was made homeless when I was 15 so any crumb of attention or anything and I'd do whatever. I was also abused by a friend's dad when I was 15 and like @ManchesterLu I found it really hard to say no after that possibly because I felt it was all I was worth.

It's scary looking back on some of the very dangerous situations that I put myself in. I had sex with men who were openly cruel, sometimes violent, stole from me and humiliated me. Some who denied sleeping with me or those who boasted to their friends. I am ashamed at the number of men who I slept with over a short period of my life.

I also struggled alot with friendships and life in general and was regularly taken advantage of or bullied as I was so easily manipulated and desperate not to be alone. I stayed in violent relationships for years.

My most recent relationship lasted 10 years and I was cheated on relentlessly, used for sex, money, my home and just stayed and let myself be abused and treated like a doormat. Again because I was so scared to be alone. All I ever wanted was to be loved and wanted and I know how pathetic that sounds.

I am now in my early 30s and in therapy to try and make sense of who I am and why. I envy strong confident women so much.