It’s time again for Shortcuts. For every question I’ll give my advice in just a few sentences because sometimes the answer to a person’s question is so obvious and the need to hear it so great that being as clear and frank as possible is simply the best way to go.
I recently started dating a guy I’ve known since high school. He seems REALLY interested in me. He says he wants a serious relationship and he says I’m exactly what he has been looking for. I like him a lot, too. We are both 32. However, there is an issue I can’t seem to overcome. He has over 500 “friends” on FB. And many of those are sexy girls he doesn’t know, and he keeps adding more all the time. So there are 500 now, but the number keeps going up. He says this is meaningless and that he is not willing to take them off; maybe in the future he might consider it but not any time soon. The problem is I can’t see a relationship evolving due to this. I don’t feel I want to be in a relationship if the guy I’m seeing is so ok with adding sexy women to his Facebook. Am I wrong feeling this way? Am I just being insecure?? Is that ok for a guy to do that? — Just Insecure
Sure, it’s ok for a guy to constantly friend sexy women on Facebook whom he doesn’t know, just as it’s perfectly ok for you to say, “Hmm, that’s not someone I see myself being in a relationship with.” You aren’t wrong for feeling the way you do. And as far as I’m concerned, you’d be doing this guy, who is 32 and says he wants a serious relationship, a real favor if you told him exactly why you can’t continue dating him. If a quality woman is what he wants, he needs to let go of the fluff. And if he can’t — if having a bunch of sexy women he doesn’t know on his Facebook friend list is more important than pursuing a real life relationship with a quality woman, then he’s not the guy for you.
I have been with my boyfriend for seven months. Something told me to look through his prepaid phone he used when his main phone broke. I found he was texting prostitutes he found on Backpage. When I confronted him, he said his friend was using his phone and that I should trust him. Then I noticed he was looking up Backpage escort services on my laptop. I’m not sure what to do. He is a great boyfriend — probably the best I have ever had in terms of how he treats me — and I don’t have any actual proof that he is meeting the prostitutes, but I feel it is likely. I kinda depend on him financially, so this is a rough decision. — Dependent
Stop depending on him financially and the decision won’t be so rough.
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If you have a relationship/dating question I can help answer, you can send me your letters at [email protected].
LW1: I dated a guy in high school, but broke up before college. Once we were in college he started adding random hot women as friends on facebook. I found this behavior sort of creepy. Like, why do you need to add random women you don’t know just because they’re hot. And it wasn’t 1 or 2. It was like, 50. However this was when he was 19-20. Not 32. That’s a pretty big sign of immaturity if you ask me. Maybe it’s innocent, and it doesn’t mean he’s going to cheat on you, but I would seriously question whether he’s mature enough for a real adult relationship.
LW2: Just MOA. That’s not even worth it.
I agree totally. I know a 20 year old that does this (they do it so that when these women post sexy pics, they show up in the boys’ news feed). And even when I was 20 I wouldn’t have dated him. It’s kinda like hanging out at a strip club on the weekends. They’re not ashamed that their family and friends know they’re looking at scantily-clad women online.
Re Facebook, I still don’t understand how people use it to meet people they don’t know, whether for dating or sexting or whatever. Does anyone here friend people they don’t know? (And of course people they don’t know from DW doesn’t count.)
I do not. And I don’t accept friend requests from people I don’t know either. DW excluded. Although I met everyone from here I’m friends with.
I don’t understand it either. The only people I don’t “know” are the DW people. Sometimes I’ll get random requests from a friend-of-a-friend or a coworker that I barely interact with and I’ll generally deny those. If I met you once at a get-together for a friend and talked to you for less than 5 minutes, I’m thinking I don’t need to be your facebook friend. Most of my facebook friends are family members.
The only FB friends I have that I’ve never met are either my husband’s family that I have yet to meet, and some DW friends. I won’t even accept friend requests from people that I went to school with, but never really talked/hung out with. I really don’t understand friending people that I wouldn’t want to hang out with in real life.
i guess now that i think about it i have a few friends on FB i’ve never met: family members/spouses/significant others of friends (just a few); DW people I haven’t met yet; some cousins, … and i guess that’s it. … But no friends I don’t know for dating/hook-ups/whatever – that you can do from tinder or OKC or POF etc., right?
I don’t ever accept anyone I don’t know. To the point that my boyfriend’s friend requested me, despite the fact that we haven’t met, and I didn’t accept her request. Why on earth would I want someone I don’t know seeing my pictures and reading about me? Weird.
My ony fb friends (outside Dwers) that I havent actually met are like all kid party related (bouncy castle rental, party halls, etc). But I have them all on a list, and keep most of my profile private from them. But it mkes party planning soooo easy!
I also don’t accept people I don’t know. I think that I friended people I was put into a roommate situation with before I met them, and maybe someone I was going to meet on an upcoming trip that’s a friends-of-friends situation. I think I friended my friend’s girlfriend before I met her? But now I can’t remember.
As I said above, these boys are not generally meeting the women – they “friend” them to get sexy pics in their newsfeed. It’s like looking at Playboy, basically harmless, but they’re doing it in public.
And I mean harmless in the sense that they’re not physically cheating. But it’s not harmless in that it’s degrading and using women as sex objects.
Don’t these women, generally, post their own photos?
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Glad someone compared this to looking at playboy/porn. Almost everyone does it. I guess just not everyone posts about it on facebook.
Yes, they’re posting the pics themselves. But just like strippers, I still consider the result exploitative and degrading.
I don’t think it’s exploitative because the women could easily turn the men down and not be friends with them. I think the women are getting something out of it but I’m not sure what. Maybe looking popular because they have so many friends or getting a great satisfaction out of being so irresistibly hot and sexy that men find her irresistible. Whatever the reason I think the women agree to it because they want it.
oh so it’s like liking someone’s page or something to get their updates? oh like looking at porn or something. that makes more sense. i was thinking people are using FB to meet people, like a dating website, and i didn’t get how that was possible
I know of a few couples who met on fb, I never actuallywondered aout the logistics hha
Oh please ask them and report back! Were they facebook set-up by mutual friends? Did they randomly find each other somehow? Were they searching for people in the same city or small town and happened upon each other? This is fascinating!
yes, all this – get on it, JK!
I’ve known a few couples who started dating because someone was like, “Who’s the cute girl in this picture?” to one of their friends–basically, meeting through friends, just on facebook instead of at a party or whatever. Or “Your friend XXX makes such funny comments, is she single?”
I don’t. I had a friend request this morning from a guy I don’t know and we had no friends in common. I find it creepy, how did he even come up with my name to make the request.
#4 – Why the hell are you “kinda” financially dependent on someone you’ve been dating for only 7 months? What does that even mean?I am feeling judgmental today and your letter actually made me angry. Hey, here’s an idea! Since you are living off this dude’s generosity, let him cheat on you with hookers all he wants – it’s a fair trade. Or have a baby with him; that will solve everything.
haha, come on, tell us how you really feel and don’t hold back this time! fwiw, that part made me angry too.
and i guess what i mean by all of this is this: i don’t get HOW Facebook facilitates the random friends. I don’t care if people meet strangers on the internet, I just don’t get how it’s possible to do that via FB. There’s now way to search people nearby by gender, age, interests, etc. so I just don’t get how it’s done. Unless these are friends of friends you click on?
^oops, wrong reply; meant to add this above.
It´s weird, sometimes I get friend requests from people with n people in common but also you know that “people you may know” thing? That sometimes recommends people I have no mutual friends with as well
A lot of times the strangers who friend me have like 2 or something friends in common. Sometimes I’ve looked it’s obviously a fake account. Those are quite common and people will sell large numbers of fake accounts or buy the fake accounts’ likes on products and stuff.
How do you get financially dependent on someone you’ve been dating for 7 months?
My ex-bf was like the guy in letter #1. He had close to 1,000 friends, many of who were random women, and would “like” any sort of page involving sexy women. It’s embarrassing that I stuck with him for as long as I did. He was 30 when this was going on. I think when I deleted him on FB he was up to 1,400 friends.
LW1: I always find it odd when people friend mass amounts of people that they don’t know (DW excluded of course). I find it particularly weird that he isn’t willing to stop even though he claims he wants a serious relationship and you’ve expressed that you don’t like the behavior. Then again, the two of you only recently started dating. If it’s a deal breaker for you, then MOA. If you don’t, you’ll have to deal with it. My husband likes pages that have pretty much nothing but hot chics, but I don’t especially care… and it’s not actual “people” he is friending.
LW2: MOA. And how are you financially dependent on someone you’ve been dating for 7 months? That seems absurd. My husband didn’t have a place to live (he was just leaving his marriage and was crashing at his mom’s) and had been laid off from his job when we started dating and he still wasn’t financially dependent on me. If I had kicked him to the curb, he would have been fine. Next time don’t move so fast that you end up dependent on someone you barely know.
#2 what ever you do, don’t have sex with him anymore, it’s risky enough and he isn’t worth it.
LW1). Being jealous over some guy liking random hot women on Facebook is THE dumbest thing I ‘ve read on here in ages. And, um, that’s quite a feat. So BRAVO, LW1!
LW2). Desperate people who can’t pay their own bills often have to put up with unpleasant shit from their partners… I get why the prostitutes are so threatening to you though, LW2, as clearly your “great” boyfriend is already used to paying for sex, eh?
As usual, love your reply. It was exactly what I was thinking!
Well, I’m financially independent completely and I’m even eager to pay for a guy who fits my standards when it comes to morality which it encompasses loyalty and honesty always alongside with a lot of more humanly (gender neutral) qualities which in a stable relationship are required. Unfortunately many people nowadays overlook human instinct feelings which are the core basis of our traits but we always try to overlook them and make personal excuses to relate them to some untrue things and call them unnecessary or irrational which isn’t even healthy and causes complexes- it wouldn’t be that difficult if you only knew instinct traits that are implanted in your consciousness,unconsciousness and genes forever and make us act and function as humans. If you see a whole bunch of the same comments about this issue from women that means “how almost all women naturally and distinctively are” that’s a natural trait and mechanism! As we call things like this protecting a relationship not jealousy, it’s just protecting a relationship, family and even our kids. Never ever lower your standards, overlook your partners red flags or threatening signs when in a relationship with anyone just because some mean literate people for any irrational reasons or lack of knowledge which I mainly call it manipulation and exploitation want to make you believe the other way completely in contrary of your true nature!! As long as you’re single you can and allowed to do whatever you like and have more freedom but once in a commitment relationship you sure need to make boundaries and limits as anyone in any relationship needs stability and there are things which easily and obviously cause insecurity in partners and are common and so obvious and we should avoid them if your partner matters to you and have a stable healthy relationship.
I am going to memorize Wendy’s answer to LW1 and use as needed.
I wouldn’t be jealous if a boyfriend friended random women on facebook, but I definitely wouldn’t date him either! It would weird me out and make me think there was something wrong with his social skills. Why can’t he just watch porn like a normal person?
Telling somebody who they can and can ‘t be friends with on Facebook when you’ve “just” started dating is psycho controlling in my book. PSYCHO.
I actually agree with you here. I don’t even tell my husband who he can and can’t be friends with on facebook and we didn’t “just” start dating. I think way too much is invested in the whole online thing.
(blank) x 7 = sixty three ???? What kind of evil is this?! I didn’t know I needed to remember calculus just to comment! (Ok, maybe not calculus, but I hate mathing.)
I agree with you that she really has no place to tell him who and who not to be friends with on facebook. But, she can also decide not to date him for that reason. Also, these are not actual friends, not people he knows in real life. If she was telling him who he could be friends with (on facebook or in real life), this should be a huge red flag for him.
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If he wants to see that stuff, there’s really easier ways to get it that don’t tie your name and face to it. r/GoneWild, or even r/GoneMild if he doesn’t want full-on nudity?
I agree. This issue isn’t her policing who he’s friends with (which is controlling), but being grossed out by his behavior. FB friending numerous hot, naked women you’ve never met is the behavior of a gross loser/man-child.
Oh please. As IF anybody is naked on facebook… Get real.
LW1 – some people just like having lots of FB friends. I don’t get it, but it’s very common. They’ll literally accept anyone who friend requests them and I believe there are women who friend request people all the time they don’t actually know or even know thru mutual friends just to hook up or try to get money from them. I guarantee it’s an ego thing for him. You’re newly dating him so I’d probably cut him some slack. If it gets serious you could mention that it bothers and he’d probably back off, but right now you don’t have the right to. You can definitely stop seeing him but if this is the only obstacle I’d give it some time and see how it plays out.
LW2 – You are financially dependent on your BF of 7 months and you have a problem with him possibly looking for prostitutes? Do you know see the irony in that?
Darn it, “not” not “know”!
They aren’t newly dating. They are newly married.
Some men are attention whores and its very difficult to date them. Some guy got interested in me and acted like he was looking to settle down with someone. He said he wanted someone he could be a team with. Until i saw his FB page w 720 friends,
bunch of women and added a new girl 2 days after i met him cuz it showed up in my feed. Hes 45! I dunno but its a turn off to me. I dont even know him but i want to pull the plug already! I unfriended him right away.
Ask yourself the following questions. Is he adding only women or men too. What is common to all of the women that he adds? Does he add them according to some based interests or not? Would he flip out if you started adding random men? Does he just accept requests from radom women or requests them himself?Surely, sometimes we add random people without a reason, but doing it regularly is not exactly a feature of a mature person ready for an adult relationship. If he is adding both men and women according to a common interest, I see it as perfectly fine. However, if he is adding exclusively women and exclusively based on their appearance, you might have a problem. In that case, he does not respect that fact that he is in a relationship or, in the worst case, he might be playing the field. If he would not tolerate your adding random men, well, then you have got a very unhealthy relationship. Perhaps you should start adding random men too just to see his reaction. If it makes him angry, save yourself the trouble and leave the relationship. Do not ask him to change, he will just do it behind your back. People can not and should not change for other people.The two of you are either compatible or not in this issue. If he, on the other hand, concludes that he does not have the need to add random women to his Facebook circle of “friends, and stops adding them, then you have your problem solved. Next time, be careful with whom you start a relationship. Check whether he has a smimilar social media style before you take him as a boyfriend.
LW2 – Backpage has been implicated in sex trafficking. Some of their advertisers are actually kidnapping women and girls and forcing them into prostitution. And your wonderful boyfriend is perfectly comfortable with using that service. Doesn’t sound so wonderful to me. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/backpage-has-always-claimed-it-doesnt-control-sex-related-ads-new-documents-show-otherwise/2017/07/10/b3158ef6-553c-11e7-b38e-35fd8e0c288f_story.html?pushid=5964bfe84c3909280000000e&utm_term=.5bca99c9c91f
Yup. A guy I once worked with was busted for using the services of a 17-year-old prostitute whose “boyfriend” advertised her in Backpage and would drive her across state lines to meet clients.
I’m going through the same thing. My bf has about 100 of those fake pornographic looking FB “friends” who he clicks off likes and loves. I finally unfriended him because, quite frankly, it’s embarrassing to me that everyone else can see him doing this while he’s in a relationship with me. (We have mutual friends).
I also unfriended because after researching this a bit further, I found that many of these fake profiles are phishing accounts. They sucker the desperate loser in and now they have access to all their info AND access to their friends list and all that info. No thanks!
Like LW1, I also don’t see this relationship evolving much further. For one thing, I’m seriously questioning the intelligence of someone who actually thinks these accounts are real and then commenting on the pics. Also the lack of respect this shows me and our relationship is something that can’t be overlooked.
I’ve been coming back to this article several times. To make this short,I like the live I lead with my boyfriend, simple but he makes me feel safe. He makes me feel much less “safe” or appreciated when he has a friendlist of 3600+ of 90% young hot foreign babes of which many are fake profiles several girls in the friendlist are younger than me I am 23. He is much older than me, but I love him. Frankly I feel irritated that I have to look for advice on the internet and embarassing. I am 23, not super tall but I have good looks. Not perfect, but I have a good looking face and body he says. So why the need to go ahead and accept friendship requests or send requests
I also am thinking when he said that a woman at 40 is old, that he is a ..turd. And his ex sleeping in our home 4/5 days a week. To spend time with his kid that lives with us. Of course she can visit her own child she lives like 30 minutes away ny car but to sleep here I don’t know anymore. Somedays I love him so much every detail even his flaws his cute sounds when he sleeps or is hungry but the whole ordeal is stressing me out..and the fact that I want to be married but he says that marriage leads to divorce. That he wants to marry me but he needs to fix some details cause he wants no debts to fall upon on me which I do believe. But I am scared that he might be taking me for granted too much like I wonder if he would spoil me or cheat on me if he had more money. I love him but I have doubts about his real thoughts and about having pictures of the exes in the drawers
First, a man looking at another woman has nothing to do with you. He will always notice other women. But beyond that why on Earth would you want to be with this man? Do you not see you are being played here? Big time? He sounds slick and has an excuse for everything that you keep buying. Move on. You are too young to be with an old man with kids and an ex wife anyway.
Corianne – run, or walk confidently in any direction that does not lead to him. He is a complete waste of your time and you are going to get hurt. Value yourself, respect yourself and leave.