Comments

1

I can’t help it but my BS detector is going off.

2

@1: I came here to write "fake as all hell" too.

3

I hope you had the best sex of your life with this woman. I hope it felt like heroin and crack and a whippit and a deep throat blow job all in one, and that it left you literally unconscious after every orgasm. That's the only scenario that could possibly justify spending any time at all with this person.

4

I fear this letter writer so this woman if she exists should definitely fear him.

5

Of course women like this exists; she's a piece of shit who brings her kid into this whole mess. Child is growing up to learn that men are just to be used and will do whatever she can to look as good as she can so she can use men just like her mom did.

the OP should get checked out if this chick has been around the block this much you never know what gift she gave you

6

Always fuck your coworkers in front of HR.

7

@ dumnogenus (#5) He says "adult daughter", so at least there's not a kid involved in this mess. But I fully agree about being tested -- that this guy could've kept swapping fluids after all that is not exactly a testament to his judgement.

8

This just feels fake.

9

DO. NOT. STICK. YOUR. DICK. IN. CRAZY.

Also, the whole office clapped. And that man's name? Albert Einstein.

10

"She promised there was no sex with her sugar daddy."

If you say "gullible" really, really slowly - "g u l l i b l e" - it sound just like "green beans".

That was my son's favorite prank for about ten days when he was 8 years old.

11

What if HR believed everything he said? They'd conclude, "Bitch be crazy". And they'd conclude, rightly, "Dude be crazier".

I wouldn't want an employee with this guy's judgment nor his powers of discernment operating a pencil sharpener.

And that she's still employed? At least she didn't go to HR with this, so I'd give her the nod in running her life slightly better. She's doing exactly what (and who) she wants (and getting paid for it)! He was unhappy about many aspects of it but kept coming back for more.

12

Oops. I misread the story - she went to HR first. Guess it more like, immediately after a fight or a shooting, you want to be the first one to call 911.

13

When women lie, it is men's fault for believing them. Good to know. I could beat this drum 4 days a week for a year straight and most of y'all will never hear the beat.

14

This whole letter reads like a coke-fuelled diatribe to me. The relationship sounds like a coke-fuelled mess, too.

Dismissed for some lame reason despite being "excellent" at your profession, LW? Hmm.

15

@13 Do you really not think this guy sounds like an absolute idiot about this situation? Yes, she is awful. Absolutely the worst! And she lied repeatedly. That's the thing, it wasn't some little lie here or there, she was an obvious dumpster fire of manipulation & deceit, and he dove in head first (... literally in this case). Was he wronged? Yes. Was he an idiot? Yes.

Now, I think your larger point has support in this comments thread. All the people who couldn't possibly believe that this is a real letter; i.e. no woman could ever be this bad. Yes. Yes, a woman can be this cartoonishly bad. There are some real POS's out there in this world, gender independent. But some people refuse to consider the possibility that a woman could be this bad. That supports your larger point, IMO.

16

You have been beating this drum for four days a week for well more than a year, Sportlandia.

17

If this is about retaliation, he should let it go, but if this is about providing HR a full accounting of both sides of the story with the hope of getting his job back or some sort of severance, then he should do it.

I don't have trouble believing this, as I went through something a bit similar with a coworker who was much nuttier than this woman, except there was no relationship or desire for one. She screwed up personnel timecards, which I had to spend a week correcting. She was reprimanded...and then informed IAD that I had been stalking her for months. I had not been at all, but it's the kind of thing that's really hard to disprove...except she had no documentation at all, and I had documentation of her actually pestering me!

It still took a couple of months of aggravating investigation, and I had to fight it tooth and nail before prevailing, but I did prevail. With all the sexual harassment awareness (and this was in 2001!), I think HR's are loathe to dismiss such complaints without compelling evidence to support doing so...at least ours was/is. But with #metoo, we sometimes forget that there are a small subset of petty, vindictive and dishonest women out there, just as there are with men.

If this dude isn't lying and wants his job back or some sort of severance, he should go to war on this...if he's telling the truth. If he's not, he should drop it and move on.

18

Dadddy @ 15
While companies may vary, I’d say Dan is likely to be accurately considering today’s corporate America culture.
HR real mission is to make sure the company doesn’t get in trouble. As such, they can’t fire LW for an out of the work place incident, but they now know he is trouble and should be fired.
I suspect this is not the first time the female employee creates some drama, which is why she’s likely to be high on HR’s hit list.

19

Daddy/CMD, yeah. Assuming the letter isn’t fake, it reads like the LW is a few fries short of a Happy Meal and as soon as HR had an opportunity to put him to pasture, they did.

Some key points that aren’t in the letter...if this person is from the US and if so is he from a right-to-work state. If he is, he would have a long and hard road to hoe to prove retaliation. All the company needs to say is, his services were no longer needed. The fact that they may have viewed him as a potential liability is high, but the bar he would have to clear to prove it is higher.

Best thing LW can do at this point is take the lessons from this (don’t shit where you eat, don’t let your dick do the thinking for you, no seriously don’t listen to your dick, and if you realize you’re dealing with trouble there’s no amount of Hot that will make it Not Trouble) and move on.

20

He should fuck the daughter. That's the best way to make this more entertaining.

21

I agree with Dadddy @15 that there's no reason to think she's about to get fired.

What we know is that "her persuasiveness is incredible" so probably she's going to keep on getting what she wants until she fucks over someone more charismatic or much more powerful than she is.

Chase @20, assuming this isn't just a story to entertain us, her children are undoubtedly the most screwed up by their mom of anyone alive and do not need anyone extra fucking with them to retaliate against the mom.

22

You deserve each other.

24

@Lost Margarita: I had flashbacks to the guy who wrote in many years back who like to pay sex workers to do coke and then give them head while they talked on the phone. That was a good one and so is this one. Good ole' fashion Savage Love crazy.

But the thing that I find odd (well, one of the things I find odd) is that the breaking point is giving her head and tasting latex. His rule #1 is protection. She obviously used protection. What's the problem? Look, she might be crazy but sometimes it's worth it to put up with some craziness.

25

@20 - LOL!

26

@24: the issue here was that he tasted the latex before they even headed out to the swinger's club...so he assumed she had sex before she was "allowed" to, given that they're "monogamous". (Ummm, LW? That's monogamISH, NOT monogamous, and really it isn't that, either...because you knew she kept fucking around and pretended to believe her so YOU could keep fucking her, too.

This story is one where LW comes out looking dumb as hell and she looks like the vile slut and pathological liar of the story, but I feel like it's been scrubbed cleaner than it really is. This went on for months, during which the LW (who's clearly not as dumb as he makes himself look) combed Sugar Daddy websites to find her, and catfished her for several days before arranging to meet up and scare the hell out of her. And for what, really? She wasn't doing anything he didn't already know about, and it didn't stop him from fucking her. If I were her, I'd be scared, too. And if you bring this tale to HR, I'm betting they'll see that your behavior and actions lend her a bit more credibility than she possibly deserves. Move on and learn from this, LW. Keep your pen the fuck out of the company ink.

27

Assuming, arguendo, that the letter is real at all, pretty much all of us think this guy is a knucklehead. So why are we taking his word for it that this is a fair representation of what happened?

28

Dear Penthouse Forum...

Does anyone need ANY more evidence of why it's a terrible idea to get involved with co-workers?

29

So... this woman was a bundle of neon flashing red flags from the start, but she said she liked anal so you went "yup, gonna do it." Then she continued to be a pile of rattlesnake noises that somehow rattled the tune of 'You Give Love a Bad Name' and you kept at it for the sex?

... right. LW, there are two very important maxims for dating: "don't shit where you eat," and "don't stick your dick in crazy." Next time, consider following at least one of them.

Also, Sportlandia/Dadddy: no one's saying this woman's good. She's not - she's a dishonest trainwreck. However, she's not the one writing in, LW is - and he needs advice on not following his dick into obvious trouble. If someone gets told not to give all their money to that nice Nigerian prince they met on the internet, we're not saying internet scammers are good, we're saying you should avoid obvious scams.

30

DTMFA doesn't really cut it in this situation, does it? This is so catastrophically beyond that I don't know where to start.

31

My first thought, this is fake. If not, this guy was pretty dense.

Even if she maneuvered UM into a quasi-sugar daddy relationship, it was really low stakes for hot sex with an attractive woman; grocery money and a ride to the airport. Also, I’m guessing she wasn’t the only woman giving condom-less blow jobs at the sex club, so what was on his cock when he was getting blow jobs from strangers. And given that they were attending sex parties, he seems awfully concerned about monogamy in what seems like an otherwise casual relationship.

As for suing his former employer, my advice is to let it go. His primary aim is to confirm his employer will not provide any information to future employers except his dates of service and title. Most companies will do this out of practice to avoid lawsuits. If he really was a great employee, then he should ask his manager or a more senior colleague to act as a reference. Those things should allow him to move on professionally. If he has really good documentation about his relationship with this woman, and stellar annual performance reviews, which could disprove any allegations made against him, it is possible he could get a small settlement the parties could describe as a severance payment, rather than a settlement raising from a lawsuit. However, I think it is a real uphill climb, and could involve more in legal fees than he would receive in compensation.

32

Egg her house, that’ll show her.

33

Sporty @13: Yes, and Dan has never said that when men lie (about not watching porn), women shouldn't be so naive as to believe them. Oh wait.

34

Pink unicorns four days a week! Yay!

35

Again, if this letter is not a fake, UM should sign off as dUMb.

"I invited a coworker to dinner after hearing her whine about cheap men." No red flags, there. What could go wrong?

I think this letter could produce a riotous romantic comedy, if Candida Royalle or Erika Lust were behind the camera. UM could see himself as others see him: one hot mess.

36

UM, on the off chance this letter isn't fake, there are several lessons to be learned here. Two have already been identified: 1. Don't shit where you eat and 2. Don't stick your dick in crazy. I would add 3. When someone shows you who they are, believe them, and 4. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. UM, you had all the information you needed about this woman when she went out on a date with a co-worker, went into great detail about her sexual preferences, then had sex with you without a condom. You then expected monogamy from this person? Really? It just floors me how many men want women who are highly sexual... but only with them. Like Dan says, take a lesson from this experience instead of prolonging the drama. And yes, get tested for STIs -- and maybe get into the habit of using condoms yourself, whether a woman insists or not. The person who doesn't insist on condoms is exactly the person you shouldn't be fucking without one.

37

I'm often thinking whohoo! as well.

38

Seriously Sportlandia, your record is stuck. This guy is a tool and a fool. A fetlife reject by the sound of him.
Like Dur, mate, she played you.
You probably lost your job because you have no functioning intelligence. You can’t even read the signs of play, let’s call it what it is, a con, from one crazy, yet making money from it, woman and probably now her daughter. This woman is a disgrace and be glad you are away from her.
If you want to play big boy games, you’ve got to be a big boy to play them. Smart enough to avoid the mad ones out there.
This all indicates you have become lost, so take this as a very big wake up call and get yourself another job, and be chaste with your co workers. Learn the lesson from this; god wish I hadn’t read it, such mutual exploitation.
Cut it with the retaliation. You chose this cockamamie scenario ever step of the way, own it, and grow from it.

39

This is the biggest load I've ever read, more twists and turns than Game of Thrones... minus the incest, sadly.
He's worried about swapping fluids and yet he takes her to swinger weekends?
She has "adult children" but needs money for groceries?
Her va va tasted of latex?

41

The narrow question is, 'should I lay out the paper trail of my interactions with this woman in front of HR?' and the correct answer is 'no; it won't get you your job back.' More is perhaps manifest--but I'm not sure that more needs to be said.

42

Coworker complained about men before the date, and complained about men during the date. But the guy still decided to risk his career by having sex with her. Afterwards she predictably complained about him too, except this time it was to HR. Lesson learned, move on.

43

Don’t shit where you eat

44

If I could draw, I'd make a comic strip of this--'you taste of latex!' Or should it be him staring off into the middle distance, looking horrified? / astonished? / obscurely aroused?, and 'she tasted of latex!'?. The LW is funny and energetic, not entirely open-mindedly respectful in his view of women, and could certainly write for money ... in some context; if the letter's genuine, he's breadcrumbing us with button-pushing (she finds girl-on-girl gross but, the big liar, is sucking off randos at the swingers' on a regular basis). Sportlandia and Dadddy's case is threadbare: no one could draw inferences about what the generality of het dating is like, or how commenters view it, from this cartoonish fol-de-rol.

45

@29 bdf, psd et al.

Just last week we had a woman write in about her relationship with a serial liar and we we all aghast. How many people said "don't suck crazy dick, everyone knows that"? How many people said "this woman is an idiot and gullible"? How many people said that she deserved the situation she was in with her shitty partner?

Compare that to this thread. Why do you expect him to be more responsible for being lied to than the woman from last week? Why do you expect him to see reality more clearly?

If you think women are weak and pathetic, than you can rationalize the difference in responses quite easily. You cannot if you think women are valid people.

46

Cocky @40: Thank you for at least providing an example rather than just ranting about the obvious existence of pink unicorns which no one else can see. You're correct that there didn't seem to be many "you dated a guy old enough to be your father, what did you expect?" reactions to the woman who had been treated badly. Perhaps "what did I do wrong" type questions do elicit more sympathy than "I followed my dick and it led me into trouble" ones. But if you compare Dan's responses, I don't really see a difference in tone. In both cases, Dan pointed out the LWs' obvious mistakes, gave advice on how they could do things differently in future, and told them they were well rid of the MFs they apparently already dumped. (Though that's not clear in UM's case; for all we know, he's still banging her while trying to figure out how to get back at her.) And in the case of Ms Endometriosis, aside from the man's age, there were not a sea of waving red flags which she chose to ignore. And as NoCute says, there's a huge difference in tone. Ms Endo came across as lonely and sad, while UM comes across as a vindictive horndog who is possibly making the whole story up. Gender isn't the only reason UM isn't getting much sympathy.

47

Sporty @45: Which letter involved a woman in a relationship with a serial liar? That's not ringing a bell.

48

You’re not listening to the distinctions, Sportlandia. No body is saying these sorts of women, and there are many out there, aren’t valid. They are just trouble. This woman has some paying gig going on with some other dude, a grown daughter somehow in the picture. It’s a capital T with people like this.
This LW proves it. He’s frantic.
Everyone is valid. It’s their stories one can chose not to join.
Yes, pick out sexist attitudes if you see them, these are still induvidual people, behaving in certain ways. It’s the behaviour that indicates the response, as well as other notions. That’s why we are here.
Is there a song from The Music Man, about a Capital T for Trouble. Or have I imagined it?
Good to see Randy Rainbow still doing his pieces. What a bloody trooper he is.

49

@47 Of course you don't remember - you don't have integrity.

I'm referring to FEARS, the woman who was in a relationship with a guy who a) "messaged a relative of mine" (and claimed it was his twin brother); and b) had apparently assaulted another woman who he was cheating on FEARS with and c) asked her to insult that other woman

Let's see what you said:
"I feel for this woman"
"[this] points to a possible dysfunctional family upbringing and lack of support."
"SHE wasn't the bad partner!"

Compare that to your responses here.

Anyone else want to compare and contrast their own comments?

50

Our motivation here, Sportlandia, is to help people. To follow the mestro’s lead, as it were.
People write in when they need somebody to show them the right direction, because they can’t find it. They trust Dan, and Dan kindly trusts us.
At that point, when they write in, they are a suffering human../ otherwise why would you subject yourself to our scrutiny, I sure wouldn’t../
so one tries to push thru the barriers, and find a way to help them find some strength to get out of the hole they have got themselves in.

51

(Chase @ 20-- Nicely done!)

Mind if I take this in a different direction? I can't add anything to the who's crazier discussion. I'm interested in the good folks who work in HR. They're the ones I sympathize with. How might they have handled this differently? What would be good policy in the work place? I think on this, and I think I'm stuck.

All Girlfriend had to do was tell HR she feared Used Male to get him fired. (Evidently. We have no proof.) She could have done that after a story with a lot less drama. Hell, she could have done that if Used was truly blameless, if they'd never gone out, and if she only had a friend she wanted to recommend for the job. So I don't like HR's solution of firing Used.

Still, I don't blame them for not wanting to get into the whole thing, for not investigating. Hoo boy is that not their job! They covered their tracks by waiting a month, and I'd have done that too. Anything else would have led to having to have that investigation, having to decide who's right and who's wrong in that drama.

If they'd done nothing, they're not believing a woman who might have a legitimate complaint. I don't want that either.

They could have decided Girlfriend was wrong and fired her bringing the complaint. I can see plenty wrong with too.

What's an HR department to do?

52

@48 correct - nobody is saying "these types of women" aren't valid - they're saying all women aren't valid. We hold 15 year old boys to higher standards than any woman around here. Women, you see, are just passive little dandelion seeds floating through the world, blown in this direction and that, unable to control their destiny or future, and things just happen to them. Meanwhile, men are expected to masters of the universe by the time their old enough to have a hard dick. I mean, I suppose we could rewind the clock 5,000 years and actually live that way, but who wants that? (apparently a lot of you)

53

I was at CMY by the end of the manmade .

54

Sporty @49: LOL! Integrity is linked to memory, now I've heard it all. I have already discussed that letter in response to Cocky @40, who unlike yourself characterised it accurately enough to jog my memory. This woman, who was just 21 if you recall, dumped her motherfucker after the second lie she caught him in. So you think that FEARS -was- the bad partner? I'd like to see your workings there. Please see my post @46 regarding other differences between the two LWs which affected the level of sympathy I showed each one.

55

Sporty, please go get some professional help.

56

@13 You're being too simplistic. Sometimes lying is the fault of the person lying. Other times, it's the person who gets lied to. Depends on the lie. If someone tells you they were molested as a kid and they in fact were not, that's kind of on them, how were you supposed to know. If someone tells you they were abducted by aliens and that's why they needed to make out with that bouncer, well, that one's on you.

This one falls into the latter.

57

Sportlandia, how can you compare these two situations at ALL? One's a pathological liar and a cheat, the other is a pathological liar, a cheater AND an abuser. Beyond detailing his sexploits, nothing except the LW UM's arrangement screams "relationship"; he knowingly involved himself with and STAYED involved with someone incapable of monogamy, "believing" her so he could keep fucking her, (his words), and then borderline stalking her just to prove she did him wrong. The other woman presents herself as a woman with low confidence and shattered self-esteem who had the courage to end things with an abuser she was committed to and resist the siren song...our dear LW, on the other hand, just kept digging himself deeper, things only (presumably) ending when his coworker contacted HR. Tone is everything here, and UM's response was completely disproportionate to his co-worker's behavior.

58

I didn't read this as a fake. Too much chaos, too many things going on. I've known guys like this, guys who were so desperate they would overlook everything because they were so desperate to believe their relationship was perfect and salvageable.

And this woman seems like Petal from Shipping News.

59

Cocky I say the difference here is that the woman with endometriosis wrote this:

"I met a guy who told me he was X and acted like he was X. Then slowly, he started to do and say things that revealed he was actually Y. Finally I discovered he really is Y and we broke up. Now I'm sad and wonder what I did wrong."

This letter goes like this:

"I met a woman who told me she was X and acted like she was X. Then we started dating and she told me she was going to be Y with me. As things went on, she did and said things that revealed she was actually still X. Finally, I discovered she's always going to be X and we broke up. Now I'm angry and I want revenge."

When I was really young I had a job which was stressful and a few of my coworkers used to cry fairly regularly about the stress they were under, and they'd get a lot of sympathy. I likewise felt the stress and emotion, but I'm not the sort of person who cries. Instead, I'd get mad and vent my frustration, then try to engage people in conversation about what we should do about it. Now this is my personal style- I happen to think fighting is nearly always more likely to change the outcome than sitting down and weeping about it. But if you express sadness people give you sympathy but if you express anger people get defensive, tell you to calm down- even if you are not directing your anger at them. Is this response gendered? Yes I think so generally, and over the long run it probably does have some effect on how people consider their own agency. Some of it is learning to be more effective communicators generally, but it is true that I've learned to pretend to be softer, to butter people up, to talk around problems, to keep my expressions of frustrations to appropriate channels, and it's exahuasting to be indirect all the time when my natural tone is to be more direct. For example, even when I know damn well I know something, I pretend I don't know and we are learning together. Anyway that's a different topic so to not get off into the weeds, my point is the difference between how Dan responds to sadness and regret vs anger and revenge. These emotional responses themselves are very likely gendered since we live in a gendered society and you learn to adapt your behavior along those lines whether or not you are aware of it. But that's not the same thing as saying Dan (or posters) give sympathy to women and not men.

It might though affect our posters. I could give sympathetic advice to the other LW because I have likewise had hormonal issues and I know how it affects women. I've likewise been a young woman receiving attention from older men. And she gave a lot of info about her worldview- about her belief in business success, about how she feels empty inside, how the betrayal made her feel, what things she's already tried to do to improve her isutaiton (seeking therapy for example, reflecting on her own behavior) etc. So there was a lot to work with.

With this man, he just says what happened. He doesn't reflect on himself or talk about how he feels. He just talked about what a hot mess this woman was. He seems correct. She is a hot mess. But he gives us nothing else to work with regarding his own experience or feelings other than he was really horny and the sex was good and he is caught up in both really liking how promiscuous this woman is and also expecting her to not be promiscuous anymore. I don't know how to relate to this. I suspect a lot of women don't. I can agree with him that the woman sounds like a piece of work and beyond that, all I can say is the cliched "don't think with your dick dude". I wonder if male posters can relate more- can they put themselves in his situation and offer sympathy and insight? That's on you guys, but half of them are instead just playing "flip the gender" and complaining that OTHERs aren't offering sympathy. If any of you think this guy isn't getting enough sympathy or insight, then by all means show us how it's done.

60

I see nothing in this letter to assume it's a fake. On the contrary, the people depicted seem all-too depressingly real. It's hardly a "Dear Penthouse Forum" letter, as there's nothing sexy in it, and it reads like one long tale of suspicion, pettiness, deception, and retaliation. I can't picture many people wanking to it.

The lw says the batshit drama-queen, lying manmade-rack-siren "goes to HR at our company and says she fears me. Without any violence or stalking or criminal evidence! HR dismissed the complaint as a personal matter but four weeks later I'm mysteriously dismissed for some lame reason."

I'd like to know what the "lame reason" is.

The woman is a train wreck and a liar and user. The lw is a fool and comes off as a petty jerk and a stalker. They both retaliate in ways that are over the top. It's impossible to get a handle on the nature of the relationship--all the stuff about monogamy/safer sex/tasting latex/swingers' parties/unprotected blow jobs/sugar baby/daddy relationships. Complaints and TMI with adult daughters. And he once gave her $200 for groceries!

It seemed pretty clear what kind of person the woman was early on, and he kept choosing to go back . . . and back. Because sex. They both sound like horrible people and I agree with Mr. Ven--they deserve each other, if only to keep the rest of the world safe from them.

P.S. I fail to see why having an adult daughter should mean she doesn't have difficulty making ends meet.

61

BTW I had to read it again to see if I'm being unfair. And I have to laugh again at the parts where the guy literally finds the woman's profile on a sugar daddy site but he believes her when she says she doesn't fuck these guys and that he is her one and only. Also he takes her to a swinger club but gets upset when she does what you do in a swinger club.

I just don't know y'all. I'd like to be insightful and offer sympathy to this guy but the letter shows zero interest in looking at himself or his own life and he gives no insight into any of that. So I just don't know what to say here. He just describes things the woman does. He's motivated entirely by a desire to talk about what a terrible person this woman is and he's asking for advice about if he should get revenge. Best I can do is: Yes, this woman did you dirty. My next inclination would be to look at how she managed to do it which yes requires the dude to stop thinking with his dick. Since I don't have a dick, I find it hard to step into his shoes and offering much beyond that.

I mean, we don't even know how old he is. Let's assume he's young and naive and lonely. Ok, someone should sit him down and have a "young man, the prostitute with a heart of gold is a trope. The dancer doesn't really think your so funny and interesting. A woman who advertises for sugar daddies is not monogamous. Don't have unprotected sex." etc.

As for actual advice regarding the question he asked:

They are already aware it is a personal issue. The revelation that she had sex with you happily or that she cheated on you or lied to you is unlikely to be relevant to anything. If you just want to embarrass her, go ahead, but it's not going to change anything because the behavior that stands out here is that you broke up with her (as well you should have) and then created a fake profile in which you reached out to her pretending to be someone else and then revealed yourself to her later. Based on what you wrote here, my guess is that you probably also used some questionable language. So no matter what sort of sleeping around she did up to that point, THIS is what she's calling threatening- the fake profile and pretending to be someone else. And that's not going to disappear when you show HR that she's also a CPOS or that she's also been horny for you in the past. What it's going to do is make you seem obsessive and dramatic. Which if you want to pay that price to embarrass her and make her work harder for her potentially, go head. But I suggest you also think about how it's going to affect you. Right now, they've let you go for a lame reason. This means they'd prefer the whole thing blow over and it's going to be easier for you to find a new job when you've been let o for a lame reason than if start a lot of obsessive drama around a coworker you used to date. I'd suggest don't burn bridges.

62

@54 no, you fucking doofus. I contend that the responses to UM, here, are inappropriate.

63

Again regarding sympathy...

You discover that someone you are dating is lying to you about being monogamous. In fact, she's an active sugar baby. There's a lot of sympathy to be had here, along with advice- yes breaking up with her is the right thing to do if that's not what you want.

But that's not the end of the story so let's don't pretend. Here's the scenario we ACTUALLY have:

You break up with someone because you discover that she is lying to you about being monogamous. She is actually a sugar baby and she deceived you. You break up with her. Then you decide to create a fake profile pretending to be a sugar daddy, you reach out to her, you lead her on for a while, then you reveal yourself to her (ha ha tricked you, I'm not really a sugar daddy, I'm the guy who just dumped you). Where's the sympathetic side?

64

@60 Emma - I think you're getting in to gumby territory. You can mostly fairly point to rationalizations about why the victim here shouldn't have dressed that way or drank that many drinks, and it works for this case... but it seems like the tough love response relies almost exclusively on the gender of the victim. You know this.

Food goodness sake, folks just be honest. Lava, bull-ass-shit your interest here is helping people. BDF, bull-ass-shit are you arguing for some kind of ethical fairness or gender equity or anything resembling feminism - you're a strict FRA chauvanist. The argument starts and ends with a pants check, everything else be damned. Just own it. What do you gain by lying? It's not like there's gonna be some big vote at the end where we determine a winner and if you make your argument seem more acceptable you be SLOG president. We'll all be forgotten one day except to show up and be like "I remember when they took away links from SLOG" and everyone will be like OMG how did you liveee? So just be yourself, eh?

65

Sporty @62, please read EmmaLiz's comment @59. If this guy had written in to say that he fell in love with a woman and she broke his heart with her lies, he would come across as deserving of sympathy, and he'd get it. Instead he came across as angry and hostile, and just like yourself, he's not getting much sympathy. See how we reacted differently to cockyballs @40 who made essentially the same point as you, but didn't call anyone names. We listened and gave reasoned responses. You, on the other hand, come in guns blazing, like UM here. It's not sexist to fail to feel sympathy for someone who's acting like a jerk. Witness most of the responses to the woman who snooped into her boyfriend's phone and demanded he delete videos of his ex to see that it's jerks, not men, who fail to elicit sympathy.

66

This is what happens when you take Adderall and Red Bull together and I mean more than just the letter itself. Jesus.

67

Lava@38~ "...a tool and a fool..."

...and not very cool. Another T-shirt to be printed!
:-)

68

I see it now...Sporty have you been moonlighting as a Trump tweet-writer?

69

No Sporty the difference is that I don't see a victim here, unless being cheated on makes you a victim. The woman is a lying CPOS. The dude dumped her for it. That should've been the end of the story. Then I'm pretty sure he'd get sympathy.

But then he retaliates. Even though he dumped her. He creates a fake profile, pretends to be a sugar daddy responding to her ad, and leads her on for a while before revealing himself and "shocking" her.

She retaliates after that by going to HR. I think it's likely that she did this simply to get revenge and I'm sorry he is paying a huge price for it- but he did the thing she says he did. From HR's point of view, he's harassing his ex by pretending to be a fake person and contacting her that way. The fact that she cheated on him first while they were dating doesn't mean he's a victim nor does it justify him pretending to be a potential client just to shock her with his true identity.
These sound like horrible people tbh.

70

Yeah. Sportlandia is right. We collectively in this forum have far less sympathy for men in bad situations than women. This is highlighted by several individuals who have close to no sympathy for men in any situation.

71

I'm also sympathetic to the people who've implied that this guy should lay off the coke/adderall/redbull. Sheesh!

72

I'm commenting only on the issue of the harassment investigation on the LW, and his employer's cause for firing him as many of the comments here seem to mistakenly believe that there was no basis or evidence for the allegations. (IAAL who works in this field.)

The LW's admitted catfishing of his ex would definitely qualify as harassment, and she had the receipts. Not severe enough for criminal charges, but since he worked with his ex, their employer had ample cause to investigate and fire him.

73

EmmaLiz beat me to the latex-flavored 69

74

Sportlandia, I actually agree that we are more likely to give women the benefit of the doubt here, but I think that is often associated with the tone of the letters. There is nothing introspective here. The LW is not trying to figure out where he went wrong, or how this keeps happening to him, or if past trauma might be dictating his actions, nor is he asking for relationship advice in general.

This LW in particular, has entered into a relationship of sorts, while ignoring all the red flags, believes many obvious lies in the pursuit of good sex, catches her in the lies and continues (for the good sex), cyber stalks her and catfishes her, and then gets fired in a way that may or may not have anything to do with the woman.

AND HIS ONLY QUESTION IS WHETHER HE SHOULD GET REVENGE!

I posit that any female LW who wrote in solely to ask if she should get revenge on someone would not engender a positive response from us. He doesn't even believe that it will get him his job back (which it wouldn't), he instead asks "should I pull her under the bus with me?"

I don't believe that this has anything to do with robbing women of agency, and everything to do with this LW having no interest in claiming his part in this catastrophe. I tend to be mostly pro growing and introspection and anti revenge, regardless of gender.

And I do believe this letter is genuine. I know several people who have been in relationships similar to this (over and over again), my guess is that this is not the first time this LW has ignored a bunch of signs.

Also, EmmaLiz @61 for the win!

75

Gonna agree that this and 'FEARS' really aren't the same thing. FEARS got into an actual relationship with someone that seemed really nice at first and then found out that the person was an abusive liar, dumped him, and now is sad and trying to learn how to move on and not make the same mistakes again. She doesn't need to be told to 1. stay away from him (she already figured that out herself) or 2. that she should try and learn to get better at spotting people like him (again, she figured that out herself). She just needs to be told that yeah, broken hearts suck, but you've already figured out what you need to be learning from this, so just keep at it.

This guy here found someone who was clearly a woman-of-mercenary-affection from the beginning, whom he only liked for her genitals and how free she was with them (seriously, name one other thing he likes about her other than her asshole and cunt). Later he dumps her after, like, the 50th time she's had sex with someone else (either directly in front of him or by obvious implication) and then catfishes her to prove that she's still banging other people. She reports it, which may-or-may-not have gotten him fired, and he wants to know whether he can go complain to HR about her slutty, slutty ways. He has not yet figured out 1 and 2, so he needs to be told that. He doesn't need sympathy for his broken heart because this affair was solely about his dick.

There's a huge difference between "sometimes you fall in love with someone who turns out to be a bad person and you have to dump them - grieve and move on," and "sometimes your NSA fuckpartner who is also a sugarbaby and rawing tons of other people at the club is... just your NSA fuckpartner who is also a sugarbaby and rawing tons of other and places other than the club. Don't try and catfish her or try to get her fired because it'll just end bad."

They aren't comparable issues.

76

The regular commenters on here are insufferable. Just go get your own on advice columns already.

77

@36/BiDanFan: “It just floors me how many men want women who are highly sexual... but only with them.”

Can you elaborate on what you mean by this statement?

78

@65 Can you not lie for one fucking second? You lie non-stop. I wasn't "guns blazing" @13 yet that didn't stop you from insisting over the course of multiple posts I was simply making things up. So please, end the bullshit and just be real

@74 Tone and gender are hopelessly intertwined. When we've seen men who are more 'regretful' or 'sad', we get "have a fucking backbone" posts. That's why Liz's post is Gumby, she can stretch any situation to rationalize why women should be treated like weaklings and men like ingrates. I mean, yes, it does come down to how an LW presents - as male or female (being outside the cishet spectrum helps, but not as much as presenting as female does)

@75 something tells me that your "fool me twice" rationale is not going to stand up to scrutiny. Is that really how you feel people should act? Or is it going to change radically once the actors change?

80

@Sublime- It's the old thing about "lady in the streets, whore in the sheets".

81

Sporty @78, you're so far off in an alternate reality that it just does not make sense to engage with you any more. I try and I get accused of lying. Even though my words in support of, for instance, the man who was ghosted after not overriding a drunk woman's "no," the one whose girlfriend snooped through his phone and demanded he delete videos, and the one who requested an open relationship in return for marriage are right there in black and white. (Yes, I did your homework for you.) I'm not going to analyse the words of every other commenter but it is simple: If someone seems sympathetic, they get sympathy; if they seem like a jerk, they get criticism. They get a fair reading and they get a response which relates to the question they actually asked. If more male jerks write in than female jerks then that is hardly my fault. There's no point in continuing this debate because you're going to see what you want to see regardless of facts. So, women can more easily empathise with a woman who's been abused by an older man than they can with a dude taken in repeatedly by a "manmade rack." Is that any surprise? Instead of going on repeated rants about how this indicates a widespread belief that women have no agency, which it doesn't, perhaps you can give some balance by offering commiserations to the poor guys, using your own empathy, like the other male commenters here do. Nobody is being persecuted here and furthermore, what the hell do our opinions matter anyway? It's just a bit of fun which you can congratulate yourself on ruining. All I can say is, if I were a woman who knew you personally, I would be very very worried given the tone and the escalation of your vitriol. Seriously, please get help.

82

(Having read the comments)

Is it just me or does this guy seem like a total douchenozzle? The woman may a douchenozzle too, but he's openly admitting catfishing and considering trying to get someone fired because of a tenuous connection between a complaint and his dismissal.

In other words:
- A woman is catfished by a former boyfriend,
- The woman goes to HR and complains that she fears reprisals.
- Man is fired. Possibly unconnected.
- Man plans reprisals.

So her fears are justified by his own evidence aren't they?

Those are the established facts, everything else is hearsay and probably highly coloured by the letter-writer's prejudices. I was kind of surprised not to see Dan shitting on him from a great height.

83

The only party who deserves any sympathy here is the HR person.

84

@83 lol, awesome.

85

I'm not sure if this is a stroke story or a movement-rationalizing MRA fantasy. Or both.

I'm all for casually misogynist, utterly irresponsible men getting played by part-time prostitutes who are really into the sex they have (for money and not), so I have no advice except, "Keep doing exactly what you're doing, and please don't learn anything."

86

@83: Well, since they're all imaginary… :-P

87

Dadddy @79: I'd say you and Sportlandia are pretty good evidence that humans aren't sexist towards women. Also, everything you said was dumb. Men have long been valued for their "brotherhood" while women have been derided as catty bitch that hate each other. Stop making up stupid evo-psych arguments to justify the fact that you hate women.

88

P.S. "I'd say you and Sportlandia are pretty good evidence that humans aren't sexist towards women." That bit? That was sarcasm, to be clear. You're evidence that delusional misogyny is alive and well.

89

Sportlandia, you’re indulging yourself now and we all know how easily Dadddy will jump on the bandwagon. This is your shit and nothing to do with Dan or his answers. Maybe issues with an absent father, only you know what is driving this side track obsession. Deal with this in your own time and maybe with a therapist. You got issues, write a letter, don’t highjack other people’s letters.

90

Focus on helping this man, Sportlandia. You’re a man, you might better understand why he’s behaved like a fucking idiot and lost his job, his livelihood. He’s hopping mad and good on him writing to Dan and opening himself up to these raging torrents, he’s got some sense, before doing something really really stupid.

91

LW, you got seriously burnt, and I’m sorry about that. A big lesson for you, and now you’ve got to cop it on the chin. You were involved in all that, there is no blame. If you want freedom to roam, you’ve got to protect yourself against predatory women. No matter how much you enjoy her sexually. Use your head as well as your cock, in future.
Go find another job, never contact this woman again, delete all correspondence, pictures, videos etc of her.. wipe her way out of your life. Hang out with mates, and find another job.
When you get that job, no matter how many co workers come on to you, in your mind you say No Way Ladies, this boy has learnt the hard way.

92

Did all you claiming we shit on men and support women miss the woman along about her boyfriend's photos/vid of the ex? The response was overwhelmingly negative towards the woman and supportive of the man to the point of advising the man to leave her, with the sole exception being Lavagirl, for which she was criticized by men and women here.

How does that fit into this theory of how we don't support men and don't give women agency or criticize them?

94

@81 - I was waiting for the "you're a lying liar who LIES" bit to make an appearance. So predictable.

95

@51. Fichu. I wouldn't be 100% that all the former lover has said to HR is that she 'fears' the LW. On his admission, he has stalked her on a dating site where she has no pics (or no face pics), claiming to be someone else. Then he revealed himself and angrily confronted her. And this despite being told that she has an older lover (a 'sugar daddy'--but what if the phrase were used jokingly or self-mockingly?) within a week of his first having sex with her.... Who is most palpably behaving in a vindictively self-righteous and out-of-control way here? On the other side, he can claim she persistently lied to and cheated on him ... but these would seem to be nothing but claims....

96

@45. Sportlandia. Women are socialised to accept unsatisfactory relationships with men more than the other way round--are (more often and more heavily on average) told they must find their identity in self-sacrifice, in supporting a man; or told that very basic desires on their part, sometimes for certain forms of sex, sometimes for otherwise human forms of acknowledgment and security, are not valid and can reasonably be deferred in their partner's interest. Obviously this is a gross generalisation, and men are told they have to give up on what they really want, too. And the norms that say, 'give up on what you want and find fulfilment in sacrifice' aren't just a matter of gendered expectations, but also of religious guidance and the dictates of 'respectability' or social conformity.

All the same ... the injunction to be self-abnegating, to doubt yourself, operates differentially--wouldn’t you think? It bites more on het women than het men. You make your comments as if you don't think this is true. As if it's not, in the broadest terms, the background to men and women dating?

97

@61. Emma. You're right--essentially in that the story's funny. UM means it to be funny--surely? If he actually wants advice, the only possible advice is 'don't try to get your old job back--esp. in that you're an 'excellent professional''--and 'don't shit where you eat'.

98

philosophy school dropout @71

"I'm also sympathetic to the people who've implied that this guy should lay off the coke/adderall/redbull. Sheesh!"

Yeah, having re-read the letter, I'm even more inclined to believe that the LW and his ex-ladyfriend have a chemical dependency of some kind. The evidence is circumstantial, but...

There's the jumpy, barely coherent narrative with lots of extraneous detail and lots of stuff that doesn't make any sense. Sexually reckless behaviour with no self-control. Lies, more lies, stalking, paranoia. Remarkably poor judgement and complete lack of perspective. A woman who apparently has a corporate job of some kind, but also moonlights on sugar daddy sites, and ~still~ comes up short for "grocery money" and has to bum 200 bucks off her kinda-sorta boyfriend. Mysterious dismissal for fake reasons of a man who's excellent - excellent! - at his profession. And now a hare-brained plan for revenge.

And these are people in their late 30s or 40s (judging by the "adult daughter"). Sure, it's conjecture, and - individually - most of the points above can be explained by something other than drugs. But my money is on cokeheads.

99

@70. philosophy school dropout. I don't know of any such commenters--people who have almost no sympathy for men in any situation. Whom are you thinking of?

I guess we all bring our own perspectives to the table. I would see a small handful of gender-essentialists who reject the claims of non-normative men and women to articulate either a variant experience of 'being' a gender or a view of relations between men and women that doesn't skew to cishet normative defaults....

100

@98. Lost Margarita. I think my money's on fantasy.

101

@77. Sublime. Eh?--surely it means what it says. Many men are unaccountably unhappy when their highly-sexed partner in casual, open or fuckbuddy relationships--or in the early stages of 'dating'--wants to have sex with anybody but them--but then they want their partner to fuck THEM energetically or adventurously.

102

Traffic Spiral @75

"seriously, name one other thing he likes about her other than her asshole and cunt"

Well, there's a great manmade rack...

103

95- Harriet-- I agree that we don't know what Crazy Girlfriend told HR and that she may have had good reason to fear him, but that doesn't change my question. What's a good policy for HR departments to have for this sort of thing?

104

I bet sporty wrote this in an attempt to gender flip FEARS.. without simply flipping genders but weaving his own gendered thoughts into a new story. It really is a big coincidence otherwise.
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/04/17/39937717/learning-the-lessons-and-moving-on-with-confidence

UM went wrong when he kept dating a sugar baby and could learn from this, just like FEARS should have pulled the plug when she heard about the mysterious twin brother. Both sound like jerks, blaming commitment issues, mysterious new relationship needs, manmade rack, bitch, etc.

The change in the two advices that I would like to see, is some recognition that FEARS was thinking with her pussy, which is normal for women but ill advised with jerks.

And you'll never pull anything other than a jerk while you treat other people jerkily. So she could examine why unequal relationships worked for her and ask herself if she really wants that set of problems next time, try to date some different sorts of people..

First UM needs to get his mind off of revenge and being a jerk in general. And then maybe he can find a woman who's not a jerk too.


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