The burnt haystack method

[Haystackhunting]

I have been implementing the haystack method where we literally do not allow our boundaries to be infiltrated. We stick to our standards.
As a result of which there appears to be absolutely fuck all left on the shelf.
So maybe I’m wondering if I’m being a little harsh. I’m starting to doubt myself
Latest one, we go straight away for a drink because I think there’s no point in messaging back back-and-forth once you’ve established that the circumstances align, it’s then about chemistry and looking for red flags
We have a drink. It’s very nice.
I fancy him a bit from what I can see and what I know feelings appear to be mutual
So then last night he phoned me up and he starts telling me about somebody else who is in my profession that he dated.
Apparently, couldn’t get a word in edgeways with this woman and he wasn’t allowed an opinion or an opinion that she didn’t agree with. And was quite angry.
The subject then somehow crept onto politics and he proceeded to angrily not shouted but certainly was extremely passionate, told me that I should never speak to him about politics because he’s intelligent and he’s educated on the subject. Seemed to be implying that he’d wipe the floor with me.
No, I couldn’t give a flying You know what about politics if I’m honest as long as he’s not a reform voter. Which he didn’t confirm or deny.
But I’ve properly got the ick
Is it just me?

BH is a selection process, just like being really picky about who you date. It's getting specific about red flags and deal breakers. You can tailor it to your preferences.

For example, you don't want step kids. So the recently divorced man with young kids, he's an automatic no. He's weeded out. You will not the the woman posting here whose husband has her doing most of the childcare on his custody time so he can fuck off to the gym or wherever. You will not be the bangmaidnanny.

Having their own place when into middle age, perfectly reasonable. So the 50 year old in a house share, weeded out. The man living with ex who can't afford his own place, same. You have no cocklodger problems.

Blocking teaches the algorithm.

I think it's a pretty good tool for avoiding really problematic relationships.

Standards and boundaries are good. But emotions can sway them, the thing i believe we should do is stay focused on openness and honesty and work with correction.

Does correction mean partner as a project?

Not just you. That is a massive ick.

ive done something like the burned haystack for years, I only do online dating where the emphasis is on written language and I was delighted to find recently that most of my screening tools were the same as Jennie's. Completely agree that the point is to screen out not screen in.

I might find it harder to do if I was 29 and really looking for a proper life partner to raise a family with though, instead of, as now,
just a nice companion to enhance my romantic life and not get entangled with financially or practically. I'm sure I would want to go on more dates so as not to feel like it was an arid wasteland.

I’ve raised many many children I can’t cope with another project

💯

100% agree.

OLD is a predator’s paradise giving no more protection to women who are simply looking for a relationship than prostitutes have in meeting their customers and we all know how dangerous that is with the huge numbers of prostittutes who are raped and murdered.

Plus in this ridiculous age of “kinks” (perversions) being celebrated and straightforward sex disparaged by the term “vanilla” men get away with more sexual violence than ever before because they can now claim in their defence that a woman asked to be choked, hurt, or gang raped and idiots on the jury will believe it.

There is no 100% safe method to get to know a new man, even meeting through shared interests etc, because the very nature of men is that they are frequently inherently dangerous to women with their superior physical strength, their uncontrolled and perverted sex drives, their aggression and their egos needing to control and dominate.

Before anybody has an apoplexy, yes I know, NAMALT and your son/ husband/ brother is a paragon of virtue etc, etc but statistics regarding violence to women show very clearly just how widespread this behaviour is.

Men have not only the potential but also the propensity to hurt women in a way which is not equally applicable to women hurting men and if you #bekind blind yourself to that you endanger all women.

Surely, if the haystack is burned, there is no hay worth having?

He seems a bit of a gammon, so trust your instincts.

Think of it as a large pub or club; many will visit, but only a few will truly connect, and that's okay. Remove the weirdos or those you don't vibe with early on to avoid wasting time with someone you just have to tolerate.

It's the needle in the haystack you're looking for.

Why is it called burnt?

That's a tradition of searching for something hard to find 😕 which we all know is more luck than fortitude.

The " The ' Don't settle' method sounds more relatable.

The fact that there are no men left, is not a result of Burned Haystack being wrong, it is a result of there being no decent men, and none of which can meet the minimum requirements of the dating method.

The man in question by the OP has clearly manipulated his profile to avoid the safeguards of the Burned Haystack method, or perhaps it wasn't implemented correctly and he slipped through?

Ideally there would be an AI to filter profiles on the method. Profiles that state "bonus points" are instant red flags, same with spelling mistakes (sometimes I miss a spelling mistake and AI would be able to flag it).

I met my partner using Burned Haystacks!

Not many people use it on here, so you aren't going to hear so many success stories. If you use the Facebook or Instagram reels, which are all free and developed by a feminist rhetoric scholar in her own time to help women fighting the 'techbro' algorithms that let unpleasant and occasionally dangerous men on the apps, then you will see plenty of success stories.

Not all what you think though- many women have either chosen not to date, prefer to remain single than date what's available in their town, and only some are in dating relationships with new men. Jennie did not write this in relation to same sex, poly or kink relationships as that's not what she knew, but recent threads on that also suggest it's helpful to have similar boundaries in those dating situations too.

I'm going to be honest, I get that you wanted to meet fairly quickly and I do too, but if you chatted to this guy for a week by text leading up to the date and examined his dating profile, are you sure there wasn't anything that indicated these red flag patterns? Did you speak about politics? Or values? I really suspect there were clues there, I say this as I've also said to myself, oh well I might was well chat to this guy knowing full well it doesn't meet the Burned Haystack criteria, and it's always ended in tears (or requests for intimate pictures, erm, no).

All the apps are fixed to make people addicted to them, mainly men, who then become frustrated and angry they can't find a woman to do their bidding. I went on Bumble as a lovely male friend of mine became single and found someone very quickly on Bumble and I thought there might be other nice men on there- there were, but sorting through WAS like sorting a needle in a haystack and what I saw massively put me off most men.

The reason it is blocking and not swiping is because it outwits the algorithm, which is happy to just keep showing you the same guys in rotation even though you said no. Jennie has campaigned for the apps to accept when women block men and not to just keep showing us men who are either unsuitable, or offensive. This is amazing and free campaign work to keep women safer.

You don't have to use it though! I blocked a lot of men but dated a few super guys and found someone I'm very happy with. I completely am a believer though as I dated without this method in mid-life and found it very unpleasant indeed and the sooner I came off the apps, the better.

The only criteria I wouldn't bother with which is mentioned here and not on BHDM is height. My mum is in a relationship with a short man, my guy is not that much taller than me and my daughter dates a fantastically hunky but short guy. You are missing a trick if you rule out emotionally healthy, attractive, interesting men on that basis, especially as men know being tall is an advantage on the apps and so there's lots of tall quite arrogant men around. It is a choice, again, though.

Well, it's a light-hearted take on the saying. If you want to find a needle in the haystack, rather than going through stalk by stalk, you can burn the whole thing down and the needle will be there in the ashes.

As I understand it, you block (burn) everyone who doesn't meet your criteria, so they don't keep coming up in your algorithm, which means your pile of hay reduces in size and you end up only with ones that do meet your criteria, your needles.

@Springspringspringagain If you don't want to date short men, then that is a boundary you're setting so then those short men are not "emotionally healthy" as they are already pushing your boundaries, and then where does it stop?

Own house, older children, job, does not support reform are sensible boundaries.

Don't get the height thing.

@CapacityBrown perhaps I didn't express myself properly. There's nothing in Burned Haystacks about height. I personally have found that height is one of the less relevant aspects of partner compatibility for myself, and am sharing that so people can think through how they might also view height given that how we view height is also a cultural construction about what makes a man manly and that women should always be smaller, littler (and say less). If height is a hard boundary for you- stick to your boundaries, I'm gently suggesting they might be thought through.

And I would never date a man who pushed that boundary or any of my other boundaries, it's about you choosing, your choices.

I see the method as completely the opposite of man hating. Its trusting that there are decent, kind men who will make you feel comfortable and not drain you financially or be sexually inappropriate. And it's a method for finding one. Not all men are arseholes but there are a lot of them, this is a ruthless way of not wasting time on the wrong ones.

"I'm going to be honest, I get that you wanted to meet fairly quickly and I do too, but if you chatted to this guy for a week by text leading up to the date and examined his dating profile, are you sure there wasn't anything that indicated these red flag patterns? Did you speak about politics? Or values? I really suspect there were clues there, I say this as I've also said to myself, oh well I might was well chat to this guy knowing full well it doesn't meet the Burned Haystack criteria, and it's always ended in tears (or requests for intimate pictures, erm, no)."

OP might also have missed some clues. The rhetorical patterns can be hard to spot for people just learning them, especially if they are couched in words that look nice, like smile, hug, kind, cosy. I've been reading BH FB for a few months (out of interest, not because I'm dating) and sometimes a post about a profile goes up and I read it unwarily and think, "Oh that's nice, nothing wrong with that profile" and then read the comments. Only then do I spot the Disciplinary/directive or "Build an AI girlfriend" or "I'm the Prize" or "Conditional Decency". I usually spot the obnoxious Test-and-Apologise though.

"Jennie has campaigned for the apps to accept when women block men and not to just keep showing us men who are either unsuitable, or offensive. This is amazing and free campaign work to keep women safer."

Yes, she's amazing! And has found her own needle with her method. He sounds wonderful, and they seem so in love.

"The only criteria I wouldn't bother with which is mentioned here and not on BHDM is height. My mum is in a relationship with a short man, my guy is not that much taller than me and my daughter dates a fantastically hunky but short guy. You are missing a trick if you rule out emotionally healthy, attractive, interesting men on that basis, especially as men know being tall is an advantage on the apps and so there's lots of tall quite arrogant men around. It is a choice, again, though."

Yes, that's also what Jennie says, to give men who have no rhetorical patterns but don't otherwise make any impression - good or bad - a go. That's how she found her needle - they had 5 or 6 dates before the spark ignited for both of them. She says that feeling instant chemistry - butterflies - can actually be an anxious bodily response to your subconscious brain seeing familiar but toxic patterns.

That has always been my experience that short men and ugly men and broke men are all as equally entitled and dangerous and awful as the tall handsome men so you might as well hold out for one of those

So is everyone else. Have at it!

Actually one of the few genuinely nice men I have ever met was short, about 5ft 6.

I am 5ft 9 so a good bit taller than him but I would have snapped his hand off if he had been interested and single.

I also confess a bit of a crush on Simon from tv’s Gogglebox who is definitely short but seems lovely.

Both my ex husbands were tall and the second one in particular was considered very handsome by general standards as well as being extremely charming but he was the ultimate shit in disguise.

Looks really mean nothing.

“told me that I should never speak to him about politics because he’s intelligent and he’s educated on the subject.”

Well, surely that’s all the more reason to talk about it? I couldn’t cope with any man who is so insecure that he has to put boundaries around what can or can’t be talked about, and when he says he’s “intelligent”, is he implying you are not? There’s enough red flags in that statement alone to walk away without looking back.

He sent me a voice note on Friday and I gave him the thumbs up on WhatsApp and I’ve not heard from him since so I think he’s got the message

As for short men, I’m not suggesting for a moment that many of them aren’t wonderful
However, as they are entitled to have their preferences. I am entitled to mine and it drives me loopy when other women and men tell me that I’m not.
When I was actually dumped by the father of my child because he couldn’t get on with my curly hair apparently prefers long straight hair
He’s with somebody now with a long straight hair and she’s got a more receding hairline than he has. I wonder what will happen when she loses it all which is looking like likely

Of course you can prefer taller men. I certainly don't judge it.

But you started out your OP by saying that after applying BH, the dating pool is looking thin on the ground, and this led you to wonder whether you should give that red flag parade a chance.

In this case, it would perhaps be better to broaden your potential dating pool by considering shorter men rather than giving toxic angry creeps like him a second glance.