Would these comments and behaviours be reasonable deal breakers in dating?

[RedflagGreenflag]

I've was dating someone for a few months (met on Hinge, mid 40s)and am reflecting on my standards and self-esteem in the wake of it ending. Which, if any, would be deal breakers or have caused you serious concern?

-made a few silly sexual jokes whilst messaging, before we met eg..I asked him if he played a musical instrument and he made a joke about wanking
-first date in a coffee shop, I removed a long sleeved top as was too warm (had another top on underneath obvs) and he went "wahaaayyy" as if I was stripping
-made a joke about all women having a base level of psycho
-referred to disabled people as "Scopey"
-met a colleague of min at a works do and told me she was "rough" and this is why he doesn't date women from her area
-despite the fact he is on amicable terms with his ex wife, told me laughingly, when she asked for a divorce, that he had called her a "fat old witch" and threatened to take her pension
-told me inappropriate details about his ex including that she was restricted in sexual positions she could do due to bad hip and that she could orgasm immediately from anal sex (he told me this whilst we were in bed by way of praising my comparative flexibility)
-said "You look lovely in your dress; my ex wife never wore them because of her body type"
-met an acquaintance of mine and said "You're naturally beautiful, not like women like that who plaster on the make up"
-when I was trying to encourage him to get o know me better and asked if there was anything he wanted to know about me (cause I had tried to ask him lots about himself) he said "What is the smallest penis out there have encountered?
-told me, in bed, that he had yet to encounter a smelly vagina
-told me he had dumped a woman as her pubic hair was too long (after avoiding having sex with her for weeks)
-shortly after we began a sexual relationship, told me he thought genitals in general were gross and then was annoyed with me when I went a bit quiet and distant for a few minutes after he said that
-first time we had sex, he seemed clueless despite being married before and many relationships. He kissed me for a while and I was expecting some foreplay (I know I could have initiated this but I had lead on taking him up to my bedroom and removing clothes so didn't want to lead ointment everything). Without so much as touching me intimately, he entered me without a condom. He stopped as soon as I told him to and was visibly upset and said he thought I had wanted it as we were naked and he was laying on top of me. He was genuinely upset and I ended up comforting him!
-I disclosed to him that I had been sexually assaulted in a previous relationship. Despite this, he sent me a GIF that appeared to be of a woman being assaulted, face down on the floor and crying..looked like really rough porn but you could only see her face.
-he had some very laddish mates and he said he didn't judge them for sleeping with prostitutes although it was not something he would do. Told me they had all been giggling in the pub about some story about a woman with a massive anus.
-in a weird coincidence, a mate of his turned up at my house to collect something I had listed on marketplace. He arrived 15 minutes earlier that agreed and ex and I were in bed. When ex realised who it was, he got dressed and said hi his mate. he later told me that the incident had been the subject of joking on their group WhatsApp, with one them writing "He was just pulling out of her as he arrived!"

I felt unsettled with him lot. Would the above reasonably explain that? I have very poor self esteem and anxious attachment style and I am trying to work out if there were reasons outside of that which would make others feel insecure in this dynamic. He was affectionate, attractive, a good dad, good to his mum, a professional, kind to animals, funny, lots of friends and very keen on me. He would send gushing messages and romantic songs and GIFs a lot. He seemed quite future -focused with wanting to progress the relationship quickly. He made me feel very chosen. He was not the type to ask me things about how many men I had slept and liked natural-looking women. So there were lots of good things about him too.

Yes - bare minimum behaviour.

Out of curiosity, would you regard a woman taking her own mother to hospital appointments as a sign that she's an exceptionally good person?? I tends to only be men who are congratulated for being normal human beings.

@PetulaGordeno I haven’t yet spoken to the relevant org about options but the nurse did say that one option is to document what happened, mentioning his name, in case anyone else reports him for similar stuff. I don’t know the ins and outs yet or if this would show up under an Enhanced DBS or similar check. I’m just mulling over if it would be unfair to take any sort of action that had the potential to impact his life really. If he deserves that, if what he did was serious enough, if I’ve finally found my anger and stopped blaming myself and am acting partly out of that.

I totally get your point. And no, being good to parents and children should be a given. I was trying to give a balanced view of him and he did seem like a dutiful son. As I said above, he took that woman’s dog to the vet as it was fitting. He spent quite a bit on a birthday present for me too. He wasn't all bad.

Go to the medical professional then and take it from there. I think if it gets documented via Claire’s Law to warn future partners then that is entirely up to you.
Please stop saying he wasn’t all bad. He was hideous.
As mum used to say if I made that excuse, well Petula, Hitler was very nice to his dog. Didn’t stop him from starting a war and murdering millions in the Holocaust.
I think in therapy it’s good to find your anger as well instead of looking for crumbs of evidence that he was human.
Even the worst people in history could be kind and considerate to someone else.

Why the fuck did you sleep with him he sounds rank!

Charming, made me feel very chosen, tall, good-looking, fascinating job, seemed like a loving dad and son, intelligent, articulate etc.

All of these things are a reason to never speak to him again. Any one of them in isolation is enough.

He isn’t a good dad to his kids because he is disrespectful to and about their mother. That in itself makes him a terrible father.

No, I really don’t like lad culture at all. His comments were sort of buried under his charm and attentiveness. I suppose I ignored them and focused on the good stuff. The rape GiF, the worst bit, came right at the end but I felt anxious around him from the start really. I feel daft now, looking back it is more clear where this anxiety came from.

There’s something else I’ve been really struggling to reconcile, and I’d appreciate some perspective. We were back in contact about eight weeks after the breakup, and when he told me that he’d sometimes felt pressure because of the importance he perceived I placed on sex! He kind of dressed it up with compliments first. He said it had been the best sex of his life and that I was incredibly enthusiastic, understanding and patient with his sexual issues.
That has really shocked me because we only saw each other fortnightly. I never pressured him for sex. I had a reasonable expectation that there would be sex and physical intimacy in a new relationship, particularly when we saw each other so infrequently. I did sometimes wonder whether he had some sexual hang-ups of his own, for various reasons I won’t go into.
I think what has really messed with my head is that the person who violated my sexual boundaries in some ways later made me feel as though I was the one who had been applying sexual pressure, when I genuinely don’t think I did. I can accept that he may have experienced our different levels of desire as pressure, but I’m struggling with the contradiction between that and what happened to me. I hate that he has messed with my head like this and made me feel “too much” again.

OP you really need help from someone professional with all this now as it’s clear your mind is struck in a groove with all this.
How can you be too much when you saw him every two weeks?
He was trying to rewrite history.
You know the truth that he was manipulative and mostly treated you horribly. The rape gif being a prime example.
You are running all of this bollocks through your mind and it makes no sense for a reason. Because it is bollocks.
It is called scorched earth policy. It’s what an army does when it leaves a field of battle when it has lost - sets the whole thing alight so nobody else can occupy it.
If you analyse this stuff it will never make sense and will drive you mad.
And I’m sorry but as two grown ups seeing each other once a fortnight it’s not a huge commitment.
You have so much more to offer.

Every single one.

I would not have met up with a man who made a joke about wanking (or even used the word) to a woman he never met.

I think you should do some work on yourself before getting out there again.

The wanking joke was implied rather than explicit. I asked if he played an instrument as we were chatting about music. He replied with something like “Hehe. I was going to say something naughty then but thought better of it!” So he didn’t use the word but the meaning was clear. I should have unmatched then, I know. There had been zero sexual chat before that as I don’t do that with a stranger.

Thanks.I’m waiting for a counsellor to contact me in the next few days. I thought I had moved on but a lot has gone wrong lately and the sexual health clinic appointment sort of brought stuff back up. Plus a recent romantic rejection by someone else.

OP, this man was not a nice man and any amount of energy spent trying to figure out why he was like this or why he said what he said is pointless. He's very dysfunctional, and the only thing you can do is avoid him now (block him) and avoid his type in the future (by rereading the Burned Haystacks book and applying it not just to online profiles but to all interactions, conversations and early dating going forward).

There's no puzzle here, he's dysfunctional, toxic and possibly worse, just block both him and all thoughts of him, you can't square this circle. The poster who said he's just rewriting history to make you feel bad (when he's the one who had issues) is spot on.

Tough one as he sounds pretty much perfect.

This with bells on. Amazes me how many women feel complimented when men shit-talk other women by way of comparison, especially when it’s their own exes who are ‘ugly’ or ‘fat’ or ‘crazy’.

If he’s this loathsome about other women to your face, imagine what he’s saying about you to his mates, when he has zero reason to filter his hatred and misogyny.

He doesn't have one redeeming feature, does he?

This is all so awful, OP, on top of your original list of things he did and said, which was already horrifying. I’m sorry this is messing with your head. It’s definitely all on him, not you, and this ‘poor me, feeling pressured into performing’ BS is a classically manipulative way of muddying the water and making you feel responsible for, and complicit in, the non-consensual things he did to you.

I know you’re reluctant to raise a formal complaint against him in case it affects his career (and the decision should be entirely yours, obviously) but if his career in any way involves professional responsibility for other people (I’m thinking primarily of law, medicine, teaching, etc), there is clearly an increased argument for doing so.

I think whoever let you down recently did you a favour - which is not meant to be harsh. The last thing you need at the moment is another romance - you would be taking all of this stuff in with you.
By a favour I also mean that another horrible man would see your vulnerable state and home in on it. That would just pile damage on top of all this.
Give yourself break from any type of dating. It is the one favour I did for myself and I never regretted it. Otherwise it would have been rinse and repeat.

@EnjoythemoneyJane unfortunately he is in a position of significant responsibility, yes. It is a role that is supposed to come with a high degree of integrity.

My deal breakers when taken without context. Some of them I would budge up to deal breaker if the context around them didn’t excuse them.

1 Saying all women have a base level psycho. Shows he doesn’t see men and women as equally idiosyncratic and sees women as a homogenous mass.
2 Telling me sexual details of his ex. That’s private between them.
3 Dumping someone over pubic hair. Women have hair, I don’t want to shave my whole life.
4 Being shit in bed and penetrating straight from a kiss and without checking first
5 Porn GIF of a woman looking assaulted

He was overly sexualised in his behaviour while also seemingly being sexually inexperienced or, if experienced, without ever asking the women he had slept with what they want or what feels good. This tells me he sees women as sexual objects and not sexual partners.

EDIT: I didn’t put the disabled joke down because I have no idea what it means.

Try not to worry about what he said about your expectations of sex. Any expectation of mutual pleasure would seem excessive to someone who is sexually insecure and only cares about sex for his needs.

Are you a bit slow Op ? How on earth did you stay around that long to listen or put up with that amount of shit talk

I think “Are you a bit slow?” is a nasty and unnecessarily harsh jab at me. It comes across as contemptuous rather than constructive, and I don’t think there’s any need to speak to someone that way.
I don’t think staying in a difficult relationship for too long means someone is stupid or “slow”. When you’re actually living through a relationship, you don’t experience it as a neat list of objectively obvious facts. There can be affection, hope, good times, explanations, self doubt and a gradual accumulation of things that don’t feel right.
With hindsight, I can absolutely see things that I tolerated for too long. But that doesn’t make me stupid, and I don’t think I deserve to be spoken to as though I am. If you want to point out something you think I should have recognised sooner, that’s fine, but you can do that without insulting me.

From reading all your posts you are anything but stupid and the other word I won’t use as it’s vile.