What is the hardest thing for you when it comes to dating?

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I am in Reykjavik, Iceland now. I met a woman on my flight who became stranded because she didn’t reserve a room, nor did she have a car to rent. I have both.

She seemed reluctant to take me up on my offer to help her try to find accommodations, and to drive her to those accommodations. I specifically stated that I wouldn’t advocate sharing a room with her. She happens to live near me in Suffolk County, NY (two counties over from mine).

She chose to sleep at the airport.

Women are very cautious these days.

We have to be.

I think you're delightful, Kraftie, but I'd take the discomfort of sleeping at an airport over the risk of getting into a car alone with a strange man every time.

She had a reservation at a spa. I hope she got her shuttle connections. She’s leaving on the same flight as mine tonight.

Turns out the spa is less than a mile from my hostel.

I’m going about 35 miles inland to hike to a thermal waterfall. I hope I get up the courage to go in.

^^ Miss Chess ^^

It has been a while since I "met" men in that way as I met my husband when I was 24 and have been married for nearly 15 years now.

I think it is fully possible to have lots of male-female relationships where both parties get to know each other and the desire to have sex with one and another is not the overall defining feature of the relationship. I have had many male friends that I have been friends with for a very very long time (15 years in one case, 23 in another and 20 in another) that have always just been really really close friends. We have both been cautious to protect the friendship in these relationships and at points where boundaries could have been crossed we've BOTH been careful to not do so.

My sexual relationships with people have pretty much followed the same line as that - getting to know people, hanging out with people, grabbing a drink after school / work, meeting at shared interests venues (I was a deep sea diver and I met people on the dive boats for example), and then not enforcing the same boundaries but ending up in a physical relationship. So my advice would be to live your life, do the things you love doing, meet people along the way and give yourself time to get to know them and speak your mind and state what you want and don't want very clearly. I have never ever found myself in a situation I could not say no to or walk away from.

And in my experience, men do not find women verbalising these things off putting. I have been known to ask people to specify EXACTLY in MINUTE DETAIL how they propose to have sex with me before having sex with them and that actually proved quite useful.

On the other hand I am definitely a risk taker by nature. But saying that I have travelled much of the world alone (from the age of 16 - I went backpacking for a year when I was 18 for example) and I have lived in several big cities and moved around them comfortably at any time of the day or night and nothing bad has ever happened to me apart from men occasionally overstepping the mark and trying to kiss me when I am not interested in them (which have easily been stopped by just walking away from the situation) and a few masturbating men jumping out from behind bushes here and there!

Enjoy Reykjavik Kraftie, sounds amazing.

How's Iceland?

That was nice of you kraftieI get why she said no. I've had that 'no strings, separate room conversation' only for the guy to be surprised that I expected there to be no strings. He behaved ok, but I'd clearly confused him by taking his words literally. Yes, isn't it a bit odd to not have booked a room though, what do you think?

It seems almost noöne wants to leave behind once and for all the two fundamental tenets of sexual repression and women as property; to wit:
1) There’s always something bad and dirty about sex, but mainly when other people do it.
2) A woman is worth as much as the sex she doesn’t have. Women need to be very careful whom they have sex with, even if they take the right precautions against sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, and even if noöne forces them to do anything against their will, because it’s not just a matter of enjoying it or not and moving on, like men—they become tainted and can never live down the experience.

I sense that she truly didn’t think of renting a room or a car. Inexperienced travelers who are on layovers sometimes do this.

It’s possible, though, that she “rejected” me because I’m married, or that I told her about my autism (she said she is a special-education teacher).

Either way, I hope she’s okay.

She wasn’t being too cautious. If the risk is between potential rape and sleeping at the airport, I would take the latter.

Goldfish, I think what Chronos meant was the line of reasoning you used would come out with something daft like “Every man is a rapist”, she was not saying she believed that.

My point is, when I meet a man, and he is standing in front of me, I can't determine whether or not he is only after consensual sex with me any better than I can determine whether or not he is after non consensual sex with me.

Women are not psychic. So why assume all men are after sex with me but not assume that all men want to rape me, when my ability to discern if a man belongs to group A is no different than my ability to discern if a man belongs to group B.

I don't think it is practical to go through life making the assumption that all men are after sex with me, whether or not it be consensual or non consensual.

Instead, I go through life acknowledging that it's a possibility that a man wants to have sex with me and he may also pursue that by force if he thinks he can do so.

That is different than assuming all men want to have sex with me and also different than assuming all men are rapists, neither of which assumptions are practical.

She is safer in the airport with the people and security around.

Once a woman gets in to an isolated, confined space with a man, she is often entirely at his mercy due to the differences in strength. Even if he does not try to rape her, he may still try to take the chance to violate her in some way...and a lot of people seem to think a woman taking a man up on such an offer constitues a form of concent when it doesn't, as if she should have known with certainty that he had such intensions.

Because of that, it is kind of a social boundary that it is inappropriate for a man to invite a woman who is unacquainted with him in to a situation where she will be isolated and confined with him in non life threatening situations. Personally if I were a guy in your situation I think I would have offered to get her a cab if I had the money.

If I got in a car with a strange man, and my father heard about it, he would flip out. If I got in a car with a strange man and he violated me in some way, I would have most certainly be blamed for it by a large segment of society who would tell me I should have known better, my father included.

There areca lot of nice guys who act extremely hurt when a woman does not trust them in situations in which she is at his mercy but they are at odds with the dangers women face and society who thinks women should know better than to have trusted men they didn't know, or even men they did know sometimes. I think people really have these impossible expectations of women to just know the good guys from the bad guys and she is always condemned by someone no matter what she does.

Last edited by Chronos on 29 Apr 2018, 1:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.

A woman who would have said yes to you kraftie, would have been seen as naive. Airports are full of cameras and has security.

From the wording of your posts it looks like you kept trying to convince her too, which is a no-no. It would only arouse her suspicions more and make her uncomfortable.

If this guy were standing in front of you, you probably wouldn't get the impression that he's the type of guy to kill women and then go back and have sex with the dead bodies.



But he did. This is serial killer Ted Bundy, crisis hotline support counselor in college and well liked upstanding member of his community. People were absolutely shocked when he was accused of being a serial killer and some even rallied around him.

Sometimes there may be Clues to how a person presents themselves that indicate to us this person has a higher probability that an average of being a dangerous person. But the fact of the matter is most people who are dangerous people don't outwardly appear to be dangerous people. They look like normal people and are impossible to completely avoid so the best others can do is try to avoid potentially dangerous situations

For a woman, that is often not getting into a car with a strange man if there are other alternatives.

That might actually also be the case for men as well and some situations. I once offered a ride to a fellow student in college who lived in the same town I did and had missed his bus. He had muscular dystrophy and could easily be over powered by just about anyway. He declined because he didn't know me and his parents would be upset if he got a ride with a stranger. I did not take it personally because I understood. I'm a safe person but he has no way of actually knowing that with certainty and he is entirely at my mercy when we get in the car and he had other options.

Women can also be wolves in sheeps clothing.



On the left is Aileen Wernous, a serial killer who targeted men out of misandry. There are no photos of her online before she was arrested but in the middle is Charlize Theron who played her in a movie and on the right is Charlize Theron in makeup.

If you would go into a secluded area with a woman who looks like Charlize Theron in makeup, you might have gone into a secluded area with an armed Aileen Wuornos.

She was a prostitute. She claimed that all the men she killed had either raped her or other sex workers while they were working, but who really knows.

Last edited by Chronos on 29 Apr 2018, 1:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I've never really dated, the idea of having to make conversation with a stranger for hours and also sell myself as something they would want just makes me want to run away in shame cause I know I'm going to fail. I struggle to make conversation with people I've known for years let alone strangers who I don't know what they like to talk about. If they go on lots of dates they're going to judge me based on the others and that makes me not want to do it because I know I'm going to lose. Plus I don't know how fast these things are supposed to escalate but I suspect what society considers normal is way faster than I would feel comfortable with. The dating world seems very cruel, people reject you, ghost you, use you for sex, I just don't want to be hurt like that, I don't think I could take it. I've been in an abusive relationship before, I don't trust people anymore, especially not strangers, and I just wouldn't feel comfortable. I just want to be friends with people and if we start liking each other then we can start seeing each other, I don't want to join a dating app and have to compete.

You’re wrong. I didn’t press the issue at all.

I told her I was married. We were going to get separate rooms. In fact, the room was in a different hotel. I was just going to drive her to any hotel she chose.

I think this is a situation where “you had to be there.” You would not say the things you said if you were present.

No. Any potential rapist could pretend he’s married, I don’t even need to explain that. A woman shouldn’t be alone with a stranger in a car, this is basic safety. I think you are wrong, no matter how well-intended you are. I’m not trying to put you down.