The timing of this story is amazing, just as everyone is buzzing about the Gaiman / consent / "Women have no agency" stuff.
Obviously, David's behavior was fucked up. But it's great how you recognized your complicity and acknowledged that some things your did were also fucked up.
It reminds me of the time I started a relationship with my wife. As she was with me, she continued "dating" some simps she friendzoned in an endless talking stage (back in the day, this meant being friendzoned with no physical intimacy whatsoever, not discussing a relationship after weeks or months of hooking up).
She insisted that they were just her friends, but I was like: "No, they're simps. Sooner or later they will tell you they are in love with you. This is fucked up, you are just hurting them.". Obviously, eventually I was right.
I was sure none of them would physically come on to her, as none of the simps were higher status (boss/teacher, like David). With my pickup artist background, I was assured that the most important relationship for her will be the one she is engaged sexually, and I the only one she had was with me. I know most guys would freak out and become jealous in that situation. But I knew this would be stupid. I was right here as well.
I did nothing about the situation, except for the occasional laugh when she told me what the simps did on their "dates" and gently reminding her it was fucked up. Eventually, she told one simp about the other, and he freaked out. She told the other about me, he freaked out less. Both eventually said that they can't do this anymore and ended it.
I guess sometimes women do this thing in order to get validation, emotional support or practical help (i.e. fix car / stuff at home / drive home from surgery) without minding the consequences.
This is why men should be strongly encouraged not to hide their romantic intentions and to make them clear as soon as possible. It is never a good idea not to.
For one thing, it's unattractive to women, so dinking around for months testing the waters to see if she reciprocates the feelings first before having the courage to make a move is totally ineffective and may ruin his chances in and of itself.
And for another, it allows this situation that you've described to develop, which happens all the time. She insists they're just friends because that's how they're acting. It's brutal all around. Good on you for recognizing it and not being threatened. Because you're right, all that ultimately matters, and the clearest indicator of her feelings, is whose hands she's allowing on her body.
At the ripe age of 33, my sister is now learning the lesson your wife learned back then.
She got the “I'm in love with you” from the guy she thought was her closest friend about a year ago and, after shooting him down, reacted with anger towards him for refusing to stay friendzoned forever and leaving. She felt abandoned and would not take any responsibility for not seeing through things.
So she promptly replaced him and last Christmas got the exact same thing TWICE, by the two guys she now considered to be her closest friends. After that she has finally taken the hint, but still doesn't really know how to change things.
So, to your point about validation, which I agree with, I'd add that it's especially difficult for women who struggle to female friends to get out of this dynamic.
This has happened to me a few times. I don't think it's always, or even often, nefarious the way it is painted. It's not usually about getting something out of them -- a ride or help moving or whatever -- it's just that the woman actually really likes, maybe even platonically loves the man, just not sexually. When this happened to me, I was also truly devastated to lose the friendship. I still am actually, years/decades later. And yes you are right that it is particularly hard for women who tend to get along better with men or have a harder time finding female friends.
Part of it is the guy's fault for hiding their romantic intentions for so long, so sometimes it really is a surprise for the woman, if he hid them well enough. Sometimes it's not though.
Tell your sister to get married. :) It helps a LOT to avoid this. Men are for the most part respectful and won't go there, even in their mind, with a married woman. Not unless she gives him a reason to.
Indeed there usually isn't any malicious intent on either side. 9 out of then it's just both being extremely naive about the nature of the other sex, with the woman genuinely enjoying the interaction as it is and the man thinking it can be a way to slide through the side door. Which, as you pointed out in the other comment, is extremely unattractive, therefore only sabotages him further.
Oh, yes. I suppose getting married would help her better maintain some sincere platonic friendships with men. Those last two came at her just as she broke up with her boyfriend, after all. Unfortunately, she's also been struggling with long term relationships. A few bad choiches on the matter still hunt her.
Man, it’s so hard to read about a guy doing something so embarrassing. At one point I was just like “Blow him up Kate!” but you’re right that life is messy and our reactions are not always in line with a particular narrative.
The two most powerful emotions are grief and love. It’s also true that you mostly need latter to have the former. It’s the grief part that drives you insane; so losing the love or not getting the love can make you do truly crazy things.
I’ve been thinking about this a fair amount as I was writing my latest article which is about the death of a friend and losing love. There was a time in my life where nothing felt real because it seemed that my brain was trying to lie to me about how the world should be when I knew the world I wanted couldn’t exist. That’s a strange place to live, half way in a dreamland and halfway in the real world.
Another tour-de-force of insight. I’m amazed and sort of heartened that David’s marriage didn’t tank after his baboonian antics towards you.
A few slices of commentary:
A) Yes, 99% men have a sexual beast within them in 99% of circumstances. Humans today are overwhelmingly descended from men with this trait owing to its runaway success in the ancestral environment, and still being a strong motivator today. Men literally go through an adolescent phase of “ahhhhh I can’t approach Mindy, she’ll reject me and everyone will know and I’ll have to live in the family basement” *until* this raw sex drive kicks in and overpowers it.
Sometime later, men *may* reach a more mature point of sexual self control. But they must pass through the fires of Mt. Fuckboi first. No man who stays in the pubescent pissypants stage makes it.
B) Did you know that almost all men are taller than their mothers, and almost all women are shorter than their fathers? Exceptions typically involve size-and-growth conditions, dwarfism for the unusually short party and/or gigantism for the other.
As a 5’ 9.5” woman, your dad is mostly likely 6’ 4”, and if you have brothers and uncles they’d be in the range of 5’ 11” to 6’ 7”. Again, ancestral environ: men of average size who mess around with girls whose male relatives are huge don’t tend to breathe much more afterwards.
This can be mitigated with a) knowing that your dad is not that tall/old/infirm/dead/not in your life anymore, and knowing if you have no brothers. (Uncles are irrelevant in the modern 1st world). It can also be mitigated if the sexually aggressive male has backing from his clan. But David had none of these things - his only edge was his sneaky engineering and relying on his peachy aesthetic as plausible deniability. He took a long time to build up “””courage””” based on that factor alone.
3) … I actually haven’t got a three. Bedoobedoobedoo. What happened to your foot?! 😂 Lawyers typically don’t go around kicking things, I think…
Very interesting theory. My dad is tall but not that tall -- I think he was 6'1" in his prime, but now he's an old man so he's shrunk. My height is all from my mom's side. I'm actually the shortest one, among my mom, sister, aunts, and female cousins on that side. Most of them are 5'10" or 5'11". It was my mom's dad who was like 6'5" or something.
But your theory is an interesting one that I've never considered. And, well, David knew that I had zero relatives around because all of my family lives a thousand miles and a several-hour plane ride away.
I do think that I developed a perhaps unreasonable (or naive) lack of fear of men, because my mom was never afraid of them and neither were any of my female relatives. In fact, it made me a bit unsympathetic to women, I regret to say. It seemed to me that they were unnecessarily afraid, or melodramatic/exaggerating. It wasn't until I was well into my 30s that I started paying attention, and realized smaller women get subjected to a lot more threatening and disrespectful behavior. And since then, I've made a point of asking other tall women about this, and they're almost always the same as me -- guys just don't try to bully or mess with them as much. Part of the problem is that a lot of this only happens when no one else is around to witness it, so it wasn't apparent to me. But once I started paying attention, I could see that men would do this to small women even in a non-sexual way -- they're more likely to talk over them or interrupt, for example.
I don't think that any of this is conscious for anyone. It's like how dogs just naturally have more fear of men and gravitate towards women.
Man, everything always ultimately comes down to sex or violence at the core, doesn't it? :/
This is an n of 1, obviously, but I am 5’10”, and I have never been afraid of men either. Like you, I have often felt impatient with women who fear men (for example that whole “man or bear” discourse last year drove me nuts; pick the man! obviously!). Before reading your essay it had never occurred to me that a regular-sized man might be intrinsically threatening to a regular-sized woman, and that my height might be part of the reason I have no fear of men whatsoever. Eyes opened! But I should have been aware that height matters for women’s confidence and for how men treat her, because when I was a high school teacher, I was taller than all but a couple of my male students, and my height definitely helped me be authoritative in the classroom.
Oh, and your other point checks out for me too. When I was in high school, a creepy guy started bugging me, and my dad (6’), brother (6’1”), and uncle (6’) all offered to set him straight.
Yep, I'm telling you, I've been asking tall women about this lately and it's definitely a thing. The other thing is that voice pitch is mostly related to size, so taller women don't usually have as high pitch a voice as petite women, which also helps with projecting authority.
I’m only 5’8” so I’m not sure if it’s impacted my interactions with men that much, but several women have told me they found me “intimidating” on first impression, and I assume the fact that I’m taller than most of them is a factor. My closest female friends have usually been quite tall, often taller than me.
According to the same height distribution calculator I looked at to see where I was, that puts you at the 96th percentile, so yeah I'd say that's tall! There's just not a lot of people outside the big part of the curve apparently, as even being 5'7" puts a female American at the 90th percentile. And only .043% of women are 5'10" or above.
This is weird bc I took a pilates class with 12 people last week and the instructor asked who was 5'8" or above bc she had to adjust the machines if so, and 5 of us were. I feel like I'm definitely around a lot more than 10% of women over 5'7'...I think it must vary by state and also maybe even zip code and possibly pilates gyms attract tall people lol. There were definitely way more short people where I grew up, I was always like 6 inches taller than all my friends but where I live now I see tons of girls my height.
I only ever had one female friend taller than me though. She is 6 feet tall and I always loved hanging out with her and not being the tallest! What happened to you, did you make all your friends on a volleyball team or something? 😉
I don't feel like I'm that tall. My parents are both average height and my younger brother is 5'11" but I did have a tall grandma.
A friend of mine who moved from LA to Chicago was surprised by how tall everyone is in the midwest. It's mostly white & black people here vs. more Asians and Hispanics in California. I would not be surprised if Mormons/Utahns were unusually tall. It seems plausible that higher income zip codes would have more tall people, too.
My best female friend these days is a 6' tall lesbian. I feel very dainty and feminine next to her, it's great. Being really tall seems to be an advantage in the lesbian dating market. When I worked at a hospital and most of my coworkers were tiny Filipino women, I felt like a giant.
I tried playing basketball in middle school, but I was never any good. I didn't continue in high school, but I stayed friends with some of the girls from the team.
I love pilates, so maybe it does attract tall women? I much prefer it to yoga.
My ex was 5'9.5 (also my height) and men were/are definitely NOT afraid to hit on her. Possibly because her punk rock aesthetic made them think = easy fuck + no daddy around.
They absolutely SHOULD have been afraid because both her and I were quick to get violent. But they weren't, they were bold, rude and got physical quickly and would have to be dealt with.
That makes sense. I don't have any tattoos or anything that might signal being wild. I can see the punk rock or other aesthetics counter-acting that factor. Certainly on the very, very rare occasions that I have been visibly drunk/impaired, it's a whole different ballgame, as well. Those are the only other times any guy ever did anything out of bounds with me.
They’re the baseline units of existence - survival and propagation, as entwined as two strands of DNA, of the two sexes themselves. But it’s what we build on top of those foundations, not when we succumb needlessly to them, that makes us more than mere animals.
I don’t think that was his sex demon. The sex demon moves on to someone else unless the man is particularly pathetic. That tracks but dude had money and plausible deniability as to his location, working late regularly, going on business trips, etc. The sex demon would try to pick up more women and eventually go to prostitutes.
It sounds more like an avoidance cope because he felt trapped at home and somehow he latched onto you as the solution. I have had similar experiences when I was very young and inexperienced. Just stupid behavior with women who clearly weren’t reciprocating and I kept pushing for an absurdly long time.
That you made it through and have a relationship is indeed crazy but some people just have more emotional capability. You can clearly handle a lot and even though that was traumatic and totally fucked and inappropriate it was a character building experience and we all need those.
Yes, there's obviously plenty more little details to this, but I had to leave things out so it didn't turn into a book.
One of the many things that weighed on me, and that I watched out for, was the concern that he would do this to someone else. That it either was or would become a pattern of behavior. If that had happened, I would feel terribly guilty about not reporting him.
And also, just as a matter of self-interest, once I became a partner, I can't have that type of risk to the firm. I really WOULD murder him if he tried to pull this on any associates now.
But I don't think he's a sex addict/predator. He's also now about to turn 50, with teenaged children, and was in his 30s with toddlers back then. Society has changed, and we no longer even have private offices, everything is glass, you can see everyone all the time.
He and his wife did have some messed up things going on at home, which I didn't describe because that's not my business. But I think you're correct his romantic delusions were at least in part a way for him to cope with that, like you said. Nowadays they seem quite happy.
My theory: being listed on Hot Lawyers list made him feel like he had a chance. My bet is he never would have tried, had she not appeared on that list. When other people think you are sexy, many men assume that means you are available.
It's possible. It's kind of funny how nowadays that seems almost quaint, in a world where people use OnlyFans or have sex tapes come out without shame. But at the time, the mere fact I wasn't married made me somewhat unusual/dangerous seeming in itself. And that stupid website made it way worse. In 2024, most of our associates are unmarried, a bunch have full-sleeve arm tattoos and wild social media, it's just a different world in several respects.
But good point that he read me as "available", which seems to shift thinking and behavior, even if not consciously.
Your well-told tale resonated with me - I worked for a beer company in my 20s. I don't have to say you wouldn't believe it because you obviously would.
Reading this as a man is frustrating, because I realize that no matter what I might tell you, you seriously are not going to stop believing that all men - meaning, including me - have a potential sex demon and are not to be trusted behind closed doors.
Yes, I've known men like David, and yes, obviously the percentage of men like David is going to be larger than it seems of the surface because none of them want it to be known they are like that. But I'm just going to insist that the amount of restraint I've exercised my entire life has been complete and total, drunk or sober, and really, seriously, people are not all the same.
I don't really think that all men or even most men -- or even a large minority of men -- would do something like this. I think most might be tempted but wouldn't, and certainly wouldn't sober (drinking obviously lowers peoples inhibitions and makes them do all kinds of things they wouldn't sober). Like I said, I work with mostly men, most of my clients are men, and this has not been even remotely an issue with any others, ever. That includes out of town week-long work trips with no funny business.
But the problem is you simply don't know, and can't know, which ones. So if it's 15% or 25%...there's no way to know. There are ways to guess, and strong evidence for and against, but no real way to know. If I was asked to guess which guys might do that in my office, David would not even be on the top ten list. If he was a more sleazy seeming or flamboyant character, it might not have changed my mind about "all men", but he really wasn't. So I'm sad to say that it did in fact make me think "at least POSSIBLY all men".
And for a woman, either when it comes to trusting your own husband/boyfriend, or trusting any other man if you're going to be alone with them, you have to take it into account. I can tell you that there is no way in hell I'd be okay with my husband going on an out of town trip with an attractive single woman, let me put it that way. Or even an attractive married woman if I thought she might be tempted to cheat or had any inkling of less than total devotion to her own husband. Or if I thought there was going to be drinking, really any woman. I'm well aware how alcohol tanks people's standards (for themselves and others).
Totally understandable that it is frustrating for men who DON'T act like this. I get frustrated when women act in a way that I feel is a discredit to my gender and then I have to hear about how women are like XYZ thing that isn't true about all or even most of them. But on a risk-benefit calculation, you unfortunately almost always have to assume it's at least possible.
Right. It's the Schrodinger's Rapist argument--you have to treat everyone as potentially the worst possible example of their gender because even if the probability is low the damage if it happens is so great. (Of course, the people making that argument about men usually don't make it about women, and vice versa.)
Right, very easy to overlook stereotypes when you're not the one being unfairly stereotyped, because for the stereotyper, they're just following an often-enough-true and useful heuristic, but if you're the one being stereotyped, it places a big unfair burden on you, outside of your control and based on the behavior of others, that you now have to do extra work to overcome.
Agreed. Being a guy, I know that whatever Judith Butler may say you are never going to bring the male violence rate down to the female one (and the upper body strength issue is still there), so women are going to be more wary of me than the woman walking by me no matter what I do; that's just the nature of the world.
So, this brought up some bad memories, where I behaved cringe-ily, in at least a similar fashion. Specifically it was the pathetic emails and comments that really brought up those memories.
What you describe as having a sex demon, Aella describes men as being werewolves. My mental model for it is drunk/sober. Sure, it's not alcohol, but lust/love is a heady drug all the same, and causes much of the same behavior and lowering of inhibitions when you're crushing.
I've wished multiple times since I was younger that I was asexual. Nearly all of the bad behavior in my life was due to being "drunk". Whether that was trying to push someone's boundaries, unwanted come-ons, cheating on people I dated, lying to women, it all comes down to an unrestrained libido.
Over the past few years, I've learned that forcibly restraining that libido has made me a much saner, happier man. There's some downsides, but I think they are far outweighed.
That's interesting. The whole time I did just assume he was basically drugged by his own brain chemicals, though never really analogized it to being actually drunk, in my mind. Of course it's not quite like that bc it's a much more alert version, but somewhat the same.
I guess it's one of those life paradoxes that being "love drunk" in the wrong context with the wrong person is just pointless at best and destructive at worst. But in the right one, it's exactly what everyone is looking for, and is very sad when it fades.
I really admire the level of emotional honesty you’re willing to have in your writing. I can probably think of more nuanced thoughts later but for now I just want to say I’m looking forward to Part 3
I’ve done some of those embarrassing things. It’s her story to tell, so in a proximal way I’m glad you can tell something similar but different, with clarity and insight. The question remains, what’s David’s deal, why you and why’d he do it all like he did?
In my story, I felt stuck and probably depressed, isolated, having nothing to lose.
I expressed interest in her first. She was tall, 6-foot. Wanted to move slow so we went on a few dates and that felt pretty normal. I started to feel pressured to move faster, and I think you’re right about the sex demon within. It activated; but I was not with myself. I was used to working in female majority places: libraries, education. That, along with some other ossified limitations on my psyche then.
I’m not going to tell the whole story. But give a hypothesis on “David” or the archetype which I agree, is probably common in how it shows up. It is this: that not integrating the sex demon, like not integrating many parts of the Jungian shadow, can result in its sudden emergence. Domineering fathering, isolation from men, depression, or simply not feeling connected to people at a time can make the man vulnerable to this demon’s emergence.
It reminds me of the recent Nosferatu film. The count was a dead man’s body completely consumed with this demon. He was totally isolated. How did the demon get activated? The female character called out to him. There’s probably a lot of complicate genetic-inheritance stuff in attraction. But the right mix of phenotype in a person expressing the right amount of interest in the right ways, maybe intellectual or maybe creative or maybe emotional or a mix of all that—can snap that demon from its slumbers and suddenly there’s a real woman ready to save him. And the new, seemingly detached reality-shaping begins in the pursuit of that female image.
I have not seen Nosferatu, so I'll have to watch that to fully understand your comment. But with respect to not integrating your shadow side, that does make sense to me. Still, perhaps you just write more about this story. I would love to hear how it feels on the other side of the coin, because I am still at least somewhat confused about some of the seemingly self-destructive and/or pointless things he did.
As pushy and insistent as the guy comes off in your story he must have a very bland, non-threatening demeanor.
If I put my hands on a coworker (or any woman tbh) and she rejected me I'm under no illusions that if I didn't back off *immediately* there would be very dramatic consequences.
Hell, I've had to explain myself for a situation where a woman snuck over to my place in the dead of night in a negligee, completely uninvited.
He's definitely quite milquetoast. Kind of a preppy "nice guy" seeming fellow, not threatening or dangerous seeming at all. When he took me home from the foot surgery it felt almost dad-like, to me.
Several thoughts: (a) All of this is beautifully written; (b) You do a tremendous job of capturing small random details (unrelated to the core of your story) that convey what it is like to work in a large law firm; (c) I really hope for David's sake your identity never gets outed, because I think this would be a pretty embarrassing story for him.
Well that's why it's going behind paywall soon and I don't want that to happen either. Though I've tried to be careful to provide enough details to make the realness of the story feel palpable while also not so many that it couldn't legitimately be many dozens of different people, potentially. Lots of firms and honestly they're all virtually interchangeable. But you're right I may eventually delete these, now that I've gotten them out of my system. 😊
I’m still shocked at your merciful behavior though - especially as an icy, take-no-shit attorney. My takeaway: I can get away with MUCH more than I have with my associates. Thanks for the intel! ;)
“I mean, what is up with that?? I still don’t know.”
The key thing to remember is that men like this have 0 empathy and are hopelessly deluded about how others view them. The fact that you didn’t report him was all it took for him to concoct a fantasy that you didn’t reject him because you weren’t attracted to him, but because he was married or that you had a boyfriend. The incessant emails were to try and get you to confess that you secretly loved him, you just didn’t want to be a homewrecker. You could call this a guess, but this is one of the fantasies I had in high school, and talking with other men, it seems like something that a sizable minority of men do.
In fact, she did reject him but the power dynamics and situation didn't allow her to go for the nuclear option (not meeting him anymore or calling him out every time he starts it again). Without real repercussions they always tend to go back for more. Getting caught by his wife was a blessing in this aspect. (First and foremost for Kate but even for him.)
I think this is a nice tale about how positions of responsibility work as insulation against consequences and how this can reinforce delusion in people. If he was just a fellow associate, I'm sure it would have played out very differently. But then it is also possible that he wouldn't even start this at all then.
Emotionally awkward guys who don’t feel they are getting romantic connection from their wives will sometimes awkwardly flirt with acquaintances. It’s shameful & creepy. But it’s also more to do with romantic connection than simple sex.
Okay, so everyone is offering these very touching anecdotes but I have to go in on the height thing.
If I think about the 6’2” gals I’ve known (a few) and you look at their dating history, you will not find a Mount Rushmore of chivalrous humanitarians without criminal records. The same is often true of the short-stacks. My theory is that if you are vastly outside the normal height range for your locality e.g. either 4’10” or 6’2 in most of the US, you have an increased risk of involving yourself with an abusive and/or unfaithful man. I don’t think this is a short girl problem.
If you played the 5-spot on your college basketball team, I foresee single motherhood and alcohol in your future so much more than a girl who is 5’6” with similar family dynamics.
Horny or otherwise exploitive people make easy work of those who look different. This goes to Diana Fleishman’s idea of getting someone “at a discount.”
Where'd she write that? I've enjoyed her writing in the past and would be curious to see her perspective. Her Twitter's locked down right now...wonder if her and Miller are having problems.
“I’ve discovered that tall women for the most part are not afraid of men in the same way that smaller women are. I think that’s because men just don’t subject them to nearly as much aggressive or threatening behavior.”
He’s so embarrassing
He is a complicated anti-hero with a redemption arc
I would wager that we all are if you knew about our secret lives
The timing of this story is amazing, just as everyone is buzzing about the Gaiman / consent / "Women have no agency" stuff.
Obviously, David's behavior was fucked up. But it's great how you recognized your complicity and acknowledged that some things your did were also fucked up.
It reminds me of the time I started a relationship with my wife. As she was with me, she continued "dating" some simps she friendzoned in an endless talking stage (back in the day, this meant being friendzoned with no physical intimacy whatsoever, not discussing a relationship after weeks or months of hooking up).
She insisted that they were just her friends, but I was like: "No, they're simps. Sooner or later they will tell you they are in love with you. This is fucked up, you are just hurting them.". Obviously, eventually I was right.
I was sure none of them would physically come on to her, as none of the simps were higher status (boss/teacher, like David). With my pickup artist background, I was assured that the most important relationship for her will be the one she is engaged sexually, and I the only one she had was with me. I know most guys would freak out and become jealous in that situation. But I knew this would be stupid. I was right here as well.
I did nothing about the situation, except for the occasional laugh when she told me what the simps did on their "dates" and gently reminding her it was fucked up. Eventually, she told one simp about the other, and he freaked out. She told the other about me, he freaked out less. Both eventually said that they can't do this anymore and ended it.
I guess sometimes women do this thing in order to get validation, emotional support or practical help (i.e. fix car / stuff at home / drive home from surgery) without minding the consequences.
This is why men should be strongly encouraged not to hide their romantic intentions and to make them clear as soon as possible. It is never a good idea not to.
For one thing, it's unattractive to women, so dinking around for months testing the waters to see if she reciprocates the feelings first before having the courage to make a move is totally ineffective and may ruin his chances in and of itself.
And for another, it allows this situation that you've described to develop, which happens all the time. She insists they're just friends because that's how they're acting. It's brutal all around. Good on you for recognizing it and not being threatened. Because you're right, all that ultimately matters, and the clearest indicator of her feelings, is whose hands she's allowing on her body.
At the ripe age of 33, my sister is now learning the lesson your wife learned back then.
She got the “I'm in love with you” from the guy she thought was her closest friend about a year ago and, after shooting him down, reacted with anger towards him for refusing to stay friendzoned forever and leaving. She felt abandoned and would not take any responsibility for not seeing through things.
So she promptly replaced him and last Christmas got the exact same thing TWICE, by the two guys she now considered to be her closest friends. After that she has finally taken the hint, but still doesn't really know how to change things.
So, to your point about validation, which I agree with, I'd add that it's especially difficult for women who struggle to female friends to get out of this dynamic.
This has happened to me a few times. I don't think it's always, or even often, nefarious the way it is painted. It's not usually about getting something out of them -- a ride or help moving or whatever -- it's just that the woman actually really likes, maybe even platonically loves the man, just not sexually. When this happened to me, I was also truly devastated to lose the friendship. I still am actually, years/decades later. And yes you are right that it is particularly hard for women who tend to get along better with men or have a harder time finding female friends.
Part of it is the guy's fault for hiding their romantic intentions for so long, so sometimes it really is a surprise for the woman, if he hid them well enough. Sometimes it's not though.
Tell your sister to get married. :) It helps a LOT to avoid this. Men are for the most part respectful and won't go there, even in their mind, with a married woman. Not unless she gives him a reason to.
Indeed there usually isn't any malicious intent on either side. 9 out of then it's just both being extremely naive about the nature of the other sex, with the woman genuinely enjoying the interaction as it is and the man thinking it can be a way to slide through the side door. Which, as you pointed out in the other comment, is extremely unattractive, therefore only sabotages him further.
Oh, yes. I suppose getting married would help her better maintain some sincere platonic friendships with men. Those last two came at her just as she broke up with her boyfriend, after all. Unfortunately, she's also been struggling with long term relationships. A few bad choiches on the matter still hunt her.
Man, it’s so hard to read about a guy doing something so embarrassing. At one point I was just like “Blow him up Kate!” but you’re right that life is messy and our reactions are not always in line with a particular narrative.
The two most powerful emotions are grief and love. It’s also true that you mostly need latter to have the former. It’s the grief part that drives you insane; so losing the love or not getting the love can make you do truly crazy things.
I’ve been thinking about this a fair amount as I was writing my latest article which is about the death of a friend and losing love. There was a time in my life where nothing felt real because it seemed that my brain was trying to lie to me about how the world should be when I knew the world I wanted couldn’t exist. That’s a strange place to live, half way in a dreamland and halfway in the real world.
Anyway, good article.
Another tour-de-force of insight. I’m amazed and sort of heartened that David’s marriage didn’t tank after his baboonian antics towards you.
A few slices of commentary:
A) Yes, 99% men have a sexual beast within them in 99% of circumstances. Humans today are overwhelmingly descended from men with this trait owing to its runaway success in the ancestral environment, and still being a strong motivator today. Men literally go through an adolescent phase of “ahhhhh I can’t approach Mindy, she’ll reject me and everyone will know and I’ll have to live in the family basement” *until* this raw sex drive kicks in and overpowers it.
Sometime later, men *may* reach a more mature point of sexual self control. But they must pass through the fires of Mt. Fuckboi first. No man who stays in the pubescent pissypants stage makes it.
B) Did you know that almost all men are taller than their mothers, and almost all women are shorter than their fathers? Exceptions typically involve size-and-growth conditions, dwarfism for the unusually short party and/or gigantism for the other.
As a 5’ 9.5” woman, your dad is mostly likely 6’ 4”, and if you have brothers and uncles they’d be in the range of 5’ 11” to 6’ 7”. Again, ancestral environ: men of average size who mess around with girls whose male relatives are huge don’t tend to breathe much more afterwards.
This can be mitigated with a) knowing that your dad is not that tall/old/infirm/dead/not in your life anymore, and knowing if you have no brothers. (Uncles are irrelevant in the modern 1st world). It can also be mitigated if the sexually aggressive male has backing from his clan. But David had none of these things - his only edge was his sneaky engineering and relying on his peachy aesthetic as plausible deniability. He took a long time to build up “””courage””” based on that factor alone.
3) … I actually haven’t got a three. Bedoobedoobedoo. What happened to your foot?! 😂 Lawyers typically don’t go around kicking things, I think…
Very interesting theory. My dad is tall but not that tall -- I think he was 6'1" in his prime, but now he's an old man so he's shrunk. My height is all from my mom's side. I'm actually the shortest one, among my mom, sister, aunts, and female cousins on that side. Most of them are 5'10" or 5'11". It was my mom's dad who was like 6'5" or something.
But your theory is an interesting one that I've never considered. And, well, David knew that I had zero relatives around because all of my family lives a thousand miles and a several-hour plane ride away.
I do think that I developed a perhaps unreasonable (or naive) lack of fear of men, because my mom was never afraid of them and neither were any of my female relatives. In fact, it made me a bit unsympathetic to women, I regret to say. It seemed to me that they were unnecessarily afraid, or melodramatic/exaggerating. It wasn't until I was well into my 30s that I started paying attention, and realized smaller women get subjected to a lot more threatening and disrespectful behavior. And since then, I've made a point of asking other tall women about this, and they're almost always the same as me -- guys just don't try to bully or mess with them as much. Part of the problem is that a lot of this only happens when no one else is around to witness it, so it wasn't apparent to me. But once I started paying attention, I could see that men would do this to small women even in a non-sexual way -- they're more likely to talk over them or interrupt, for example.
I don't think that any of this is conscious for anyone. It's like how dogs just naturally have more fear of men and gravitate towards women.
Man, everything always ultimately comes down to sex or violence at the core, doesn't it? :/
This is an n of 1, obviously, but I am 5’10”, and I have never been afraid of men either. Like you, I have often felt impatient with women who fear men (for example that whole “man or bear” discourse last year drove me nuts; pick the man! obviously!). Before reading your essay it had never occurred to me that a regular-sized man might be intrinsically threatening to a regular-sized woman, and that my height might be part of the reason I have no fear of men whatsoever. Eyes opened! But I should have been aware that height matters for women’s confidence and for how men treat her, because when I was a high school teacher, I was taller than all but a couple of my male students, and my height definitely helped me be authoritative in the classroom.
Oh, and your other point checks out for me too. When I was in high school, a creepy guy started bugging me, and my dad (6’), brother (6’1”), and uncle (6’) all offered to set him straight.
Yep, I'm telling you, I've been asking tall women about this lately and it's definitely a thing. The other thing is that voice pitch is mostly related to size, so taller women don't usually have as high pitch a voice as petite women, which also helps with projecting authority.
I’m only 5’8” so I’m not sure if it’s impacted my interactions with men that much, but several women have told me they found me “intimidating” on first impression, and I assume the fact that I’m taller than most of them is a factor. My closest female friends have usually been quite tall, often taller than me.
According to the same height distribution calculator I looked at to see where I was, that puts you at the 96th percentile, so yeah I'd say that's tall! There's just not a lot of people outside the big part of the curve apparently, as even being 5'7" puts a female American at the 90th percentile. And only .043% of women are 5'10" or above.
This is weird bc I took a pilates class with 12 people last week and the instructor asked who was 5'8" or above bc she had to adjust the machines if so, and 5 of us were. I feel like I'm definitely around a lot more than 10% of women over 5'7'...I think it must vary by state and also maybe even zip code and possibly pilates gyms attract tall people lol. There were definitely way more short people where I grew up, I was always like 6 inches taller than all my friends but where I live now I see tons of girls my height.
I only ever had one female friend taller than me though. She is 6 feet tall and I always loved hanging out with her and not being the tallest! What happened to you, did you make all your friends on a volleyball team or something? 😉
I don't feel like I'm that tall. My parents are both average height and my younger brother is 5'11" but I did have a tall grandma.
A friend of mine who moved from LA to Chicago was surprised by how tall everyone is in the midwest. It's mostly white & black people here vs. more Asians and Hispanics in California. I would not be surprised if Mormons/Utahns were unusually tall. It seems plausible that higher income zip codes would have more tall people, too.
My best female friend these days is a 6' tall lesbian. I feel very dainty and feminine next to her, it's great. Being really tall seems to be an advantage in the lesbian dating market. When I worked at a hospital and most of my coworkers were tiny Filipino women, I felt like a giant.
I tried playing basketball in middle school, but I was never any good. I didn't continue in high school, but I stayed friends with some of the girls from the team.
I love pilates, so maybe it does attract tall women? I much prefer it to yoga.
My ex was 5'9.5 (also my height) and men were/are definitely NOT afraid to hit on her. Possibly because her punk rock aesthetic made them think = easy fuck + no daddy around.
They absolutely SHOULD have been afraid because both her and I were quick to get violent. But they weren't, they were bold, rude and got physical quickly and would have to be dealt with.
That makes sense. I don't have any tattoos or anything that might signal being wild. I can see the punk rock or other aesthetics counter-acting that factor. Certainly on the very, very rare occasions that I have been visibly drunk/impaired, it's a whole different ballgame, as well. Those are the only other times any guy ever did anything out of bounds with me.
They’re the baseline units of existence - survival and propagation, as entwined as two strands of DNA, of the two sexes themselves. But it’s what we build on top of those foundations, not when we succumb needlessly to them, that makes us more than mere animals.
I don’t think that was his sex demon. The sex demon moves on to someone else unless the man is particularly pathetic. That tracks but dude had money and plausible deniability as to his location, working late regularly, going on business trips, etc. The sex demon would try to pick up more women and eventually go to prostitutes.
It sounds more like an avoidance cope because he felt trapped at home and somehow he latched onto you as the solution. I have had similar experiences when I was very young and inexperienced. Just stupid behavior with women who clearly weren’t reciprocating and I kept pushing for an absurdly long time.
That you made it through and have a relationship is indeed crazy but some people just have more emotional capability. You can clearly handle a lot and even though that was traumatic and totally fucked and inappropriate it was a character building experience and we all need those.
Yes, there's obviously plenty more little details to this, but I had to leave things out so it didn't turn into a book.
One of the many things that weighed on me, and that I watched out for, was the concern that he would do this to someone else. That it either was or would become a pattern of behavior. If that had happened, I would feel terribly guilty about not reporting him.
And also, just as a matter of self-interest, once I became a partner, I can't have that type of risk to the firm. I really WOULD murder him if he tried to pull this on any associates now.
But I don't think he's a sex addict/predator. He's also now about to turn 50, with teenaged children, and was in his 30s with toddlers back then. Society has changed, and we no longer even have private offices, everything is glass, you can see everyone all the time.
He and his wife did have some messed up things going on at home, which I didn't describe because that's not my business. But I think you're correct his romantic delusions were at least in part a way for him to cope with that, like you said. Nowadays they seem quite happy.
My theory: being listed on Hot Lawyers list made him feel like he had a chance. My bet is he never would have tried, had she not appeared on that list. When other people think you are sexy, many men assume that means you are available.
It's possible. It's kind of funny how nowadays that seems almost quaint, in a world where people use OnlyFans or have sex tapes come out without shame. But at the time, the mere fact I wasn't married made me somewhat unusual/dangerous seeming in itself. And that stupid website made it way worse. In 2024, most of our associates are unmarried, a bunch have full-sleeve arm tattoos and wild social media, it's just a different world in several respects.
But good point that he read me as "available", which seems to shift thinking and behavior, even if not consciously.
Your well-told tale resonated with me - I worked for a beer company in my 20s. I don't have to say you wouldn't believe it because you obviously would.
Wow, I can only imagine in that context!
Reading this as a man is frustrating, because I realize that no matter what I might tell you, you seriously are not going to stop believing that all men - meaning, including me - have a potential sex demon and are not to be trusted behind closed doors.
Yes, I've known men like David, and yes, obviously the percentage of men like David is going to be larger than it seems of the surface because none of them want it to be known they are like that. But I'm just going to insist that the amount of restraint I've exercised my entire life has been complete and total, drunk or sober, and really, seriously, people are not all the same.
I don't really think that all men or even most men -- or even a large minority of men -- would do something like this. I think most might be tempted but wouldn't, and certainly wouldn't sober (drinking obviously lowers peoples inhibitions and makes them do all kinds of things they wouldn't sober). Like I said, I work with mostly men, most of my clients are men, and this has not been even remotely an issue with any others, ever. That includes out of town week-long work trips with no funny business.
But the problem is you simply don't know, and can't know, which ones. So if it's 15% or 25%...there's no way to know. There are ways to guess, and strong evidence for and against, but no real way to know. If I was asked to guess which guys might do that in my office, David would not even be on the top ten list. If he was a more sleazy seeming or flamboyant character, it might not have changed my mind about "all men", but he really wasn't. So I'm sad to say that it did in fact make me think "at least POSSIBLY all men".
And for a woman, either when it comes to trusting your own husband/boyfriend, or trusting any other man if you're going to be alone with them, you have to take it into account. I can tell you that there is no way in hell I'd be okay with my husband going on an out of town trip with an attractive single woman, let me put it that way. Or even an attractive married woman if I thought she might be tempted to cheat or had any inkling of less than total devotion to her own husband. Or if I thought there was going to be drinking, really any woman. I'm well aware how alcohol tanks people's standards (for themselves and others).
Totally understandable that it is frustrating for men who DON'T act like this. I get frustrated when women act in a way that I feel is a discredit to my gender and then I have to hear about how women are like XYZ thing that isn't true about all or even most of them. But on a risk-benefit calculation, you unfortunately almost always have to assume it's at least possible.
Right. It's the Schrodinger's Rapist argument--you have to treat everyone as potentially the worst possible example of their gender because even if the probability is low the damage if it happens is so great. (Of course, the people making that argument about men usually don't make it about women, and vice versa.)
Right, very easy to overlook stereotypes when you're not the one being unfairly stereotyped, because for the stereotyper, they're just following an often-enough-true and useful heuristic, but if you're the one being stereotyped, it places a big unfair burden on you, outside of your control and based on the behavior of others, that you now have to do extra work to overcome.
Agreed. Being a guy, I know that whatever Judith Butler may say you are never going to bring the male violence rate down to the female one (and the upper body strength issue is still there), so women are going to be more wary of me than the woman walking by me no matter what I do; that's just the nature of the world.
Lulz at Schrödinger’s Rapist argument, and too deep if the more popular Schrödinger’s cat argument was an apt double entendre …
So, this brought up some bad memories, where I behaved cringe-ily, in at least a similar fashion. Specifically it was the pathetic emails and comments that really brought up those memories.
What you describe as having a sex demon, Aella describes men as being werewolves. My mental model for it is drunk/sober. Sure, it's not alcohol, but lust/love is a heady drug all the same, and causes much of the same behavior and lowering of inhibitions when you're crushing.
I've wished multiple times since I was younger that I was asexual. Nearly all of the bad behavior in my life was due to being "drunk". Whether that was trying to push someone's boundaries, unwanted come-ons, cheating on people I dated, lying to women, it all comes down to an unrestrained libido.
Over the past few years, I've learned that forcibly restraining that libido has made me a much saner, happier man. There's some downsides, but I think they are far outweighed.
That's interesting. The whole time I did just assume he was basically drugged by his own brain chemicals, though never really analogized it to being actually drunk, in my mind. Of course it's not quite like that bc it's a much more alert version, but somewhat the same.
I guess it's one of those life paradoxes that being "love drunk" in the wrong context with the wrong person is just pointless at best and destructive at worst. But in the right one, it's exactly what everyone is looking for, and is very sad when it fades.
I really admire the level of emotional honesty you’re willing to have in your writing. I can probably think of more nuanced thoughts later but for now I just want to say I’m looking forward to Part 3
I’ve done some of those embarrassing things. It’s her story to tell, so in a proximal way I’m glad you can tell something similar but different, with clarity and insight. The question remains, what’s David’s deal, why you and why’d he do it all like he did?
In my story, I felt stuck and probably depressed, isolated, having nothing to lose.
I expressed interest in her first. She was tall, 6-foot. Wanted to move slow so we went on a few dates and that felt pretty normal. I started to feel pressured to move faster, and I think you’re right about the sex demon within. It activated; but I was not with myself. I was used to working in female majority places: libraries, education. That, along with some other ossified limitations on my psyche then.
I’m not going to tell the whole story. But give a hypothesis on “David” or the archetype which I agree, is probably common in how it shows up. It is this: that not integrating the sex demon, like not integrating many parts of the Jungian shadow, can result in its sudden emergence. Domineering fathering, isolation from men, depression, or simply not feeling connected to people at a time can make the man vulnerable to this demon’s emergence.
It reminds me of the recent Nosferatu film. The count was a dead man’s body completely consumed with this demon. He was totally isolated. How did the demon get activated? The female character called out to him. There’s probably a lot of complicate genetic-inheritance stuff in attraction. But the right mix of phenotype in a person expressing the right amount of interest in the right ways, maybe intellectual or maybe creative or maybe emotional or a mix of all that—can snap that demon from its slumbers and suddenly there’s a real woman ready to save him. And the new, seemingly detached reality-shaping begins in the pursuit of that female image.
Thanks for sharing this story.
I have not seen Nosferatu, so I'll have to watch that to fully understand your comment. But with respect to not integrating your shadow side, that does make sense to me. Still, perhaps you just write more about this story. I would love to hear how it feels on the other side of the coin, because I am still at least somewhat confused about some of the seemingly self-destructive and/or pointless things he did.
As pushy and insistent as the guy comes off in your story he must have a very bland, non-threatening demeanor.
If I put my hands on a coworker (or any woman tbh) and she rejected me I'm under no illusions that if I didn't back off *immediately* there would be very dramatic consequences.
Hell, I've had to explain myself for a situation where a woman snuck over to my place in the dead of night in a negligee, completely uninvited.
He's definitely quite milquetoast. Kind of a preppy "nice guy" seeming fellow, not threatening or dangerous seeming at all. When he took me home from the foot surgery it felt almost dad-like, to me.
Ok, I knew this story reminded me of something:
https://youtu.be/OTuQ9cKGSdM?si=c9jE3nBL1tJJR3Fg
Several thoughts: (a) All of this is beautifully written; (b) You do a tremendous job of capturing small random details (unrelated to the core of your story) that convey what it is like to work in a large law firm; (c) I really hope for David's sake your identity never gets outed, because I think this would be a pretty embarrassing story for him.
Well that's why it's going behind paywall soon and I don't want that to happen either. Though I've tried to be careful to provide enough details to make the realness of the story feel palpable while also not so many that it couldn't legitimately be many dozens of different people, potentially. Lots of firms and honestly they're all virtually interchangeable. But you're right I may eventually delete these, now that I've gotten them out of my system. 😊
Holy shit ive been waiting for this for so long I thought she was gonna post it like the next day 😭
Haha well I do have a job that takes a lot of time. These take a lot of time to write. 😊
Great follow-up to a great story.
I’m still shocked at your merciful behavior though - especially as an icy, take-no-shit attorney. My takeaway: I can get away with MUCH more than I have with my associates. Thanks for the intel! ;)
“I mean, what is up with that?? I still don’t know.”
The key thing to remember is that men like this have 0 empathy and are hopelessly deluded about how others view them. The fact that you didn’t report him was all it took for him to concoct a fantasy that you didn’t reject him because you weren’t attracted to him, but because he was married or that you had a boyfriend. The incessant emails were to try and get you to confess that you secretly loved him, you just didn’t want to be a homewrecker. You could call this a guess, but this is one of the fantasies I had in high school, and talking with other men, it seems like something that a sizable minority of men do.
In fact, she did reject him but the power dynamics and situation didn't allow her to go for the nuclear option (not meeting him anymore or calling him out every time he starts it again). Without real repercussions they always tend to go back for more. Getting caught by his wife was a blessing in this aspect. (First and foremost for Kate but even for him.)
I think this is a nice tale about how positions of responsibility work as insulation against consequences and how this can reinforce delusion in people. If he was just a fellow associate, I'm sure it would have played out very differently. But then it is also possible that he wouldn't even start this at all then.
Emotionally awkward guys who don’t feel they are getting romantic connection from their wives will sometimes awkwardly flirt with acquaintances. It’s shameful & creepy. But it’s also more to do with romantic connection than simple sex.
Okay, so everyone is offering these very touching anecdotes but I have to go in on the height thing.
If I think about the 6’2” gals I’ve known (a few) and you look at their dating history, you will not find a Mount Rushmore of chivalrous humanitarians without criminal records. The same is often true of the short-stacks. My theory is that if you are vastly outside the normal height range for your locality e.g. either 4’10” or 6’2 in most of the US, you have an increased risk of involving yourself with an abusive and/or unfaithful man. I don’t think this is a short girl problem.
If you played the 5-spot on your college basketball team, I foresee single motherhood and alcohol in your future so much more than a girl who is 5’6” with similar family dynamics.
Horny or otherwise exploitive people make easy work of those who look different. This goes to Diana Fleishman’s idea of getting someone “at a discount.”
Where'd she write that? I've enjoyed her writing in the past and would be curious to see her perspective. Her Twitter's locked down right now...wonder if her and Miller are having problems.
I see you’re talking about Diana and not Kryptogal now. I’ve heard her talk about getting tall women at a discount, ditto for short men.
Ah thanks. I have to say, one of the genuine contributions of bisexuals to the discourse is being able to directly compare dating markets!
“I’ve discovered that tall women for the most part are not afraid of men in the same way that smaller women are. I think that’s because men just don’t subject them to nearly as much aggressive or threatening behavior.”