Hello, Michael—

Thank you for reading and for letting me know your thoughts. I wasn’t quite sure what you meant by “Is there a foolproof test for people like you?” but didn’t want to just not answer at all and also didn’t want to jump to any conclusions about what you mean. For sure, if you’ll give me a little more clarification about what you mean, I’ll aim to take the time to respond.

I got quite…ticked on your behalf upon reading about your 2 post-divorce LTRs. They really give women (and people) a bad name. It’s understandable—very understandable—that after two experiences where you felt these women tried to take advantage of you that you’d be very suspicious that future women will do that, too. I guess you just have to be cautious in dating that you’re not radiating “I’m suspicious and expecting you will try to take advantage of me!”

I remember after dating one man who broke up with me to go date women very unlike me—fake tan, fake boobs, fake eyelashes—I had to catch myself and remind myself “Not every man goes for that. Don’t keep saying men just like fake women.” Of course there were plenty of men who didn’t, but for a while there I was pretty caught up in seeing men who did. It’s almost like after a bad experience we, naturally, become hyper-sensitive to that and, naturally, become very protective to not let that happen again. But you can imagine when I’m radiating “Men just like fake women!” the future men I go on dates with can almost smell this unresolved fear on me, you know?

It is odd how much stereotyping goes on about men just needing sex, as though they don’t have any more needs for them to be happy in a relationship.

I’m so glad you’ve been able to recover financially and are, naturally, thinking ahead about how to prevent that from happening again.

I am a BIG fan of pre-nups—for any marriage! A friend of mine has been paying alimony to his ex-wife (his first wife) for 15 years tho they were only married for two. I asked why the heck he hadn’t gotten a pre-nup. He said that when he was engaged, and he brought up pre-nups, his fiancée went off on him. For days/weeks, she kept making snide references to it ‘til he just dropped the subject because it wasn’t worth the hassle. This friend is usually so very practical, so I was surprised to hear that he hadn’t seen how the very way she reacted to a topic that was important to him was quite…scary. But…he just didn’t…see that at the time. Hindsight is a powerful lens, for sure. I take it that if you ever take another risk on women again, you’ll stand up to absolutely requiring a pre-nup, right? I think that is quite smart and quite understandable. Just because we might be daring enough to take the risk of getting married doesn’t mean we don’t protect ourselves from financial harm. Just because we’re daring enough to go fight war doesn’t mean we don’t protect ourselves from bullets by wearing armor.