If they did want other things...if they would value the friendship enough not to drag pointless sexual proposals into it! Some guys are worse about it than others but still!

Yes in my experience this tension worms its way in sooner or later, and no matter how it pans out, it spoils everything. Not all the guys who came on to me were "bad". Some were looking for relationship material and some were just looking for a lay. But it was those two things. They did not spend time with women just to spend time with another person. Through hard experience I learned what probably 75% of the posters here have affirmed; "I want to spend time with you" means "I want to have sex with you". Also through hard experience I learned it is important to have some boundries set about that. Then guys can't take it and they leave. So much for friendship.

That's why I think Knox's comment is funny. He has either had sex with them and discarded them as relationship material or he is waiting for them to change their minds. Now, morally, it's nothing to me if he wants to try on every shoe in the store to see if it fits and if the girls are fine with it...cool. But that's not real friendship.

The evolutionary psychology model is deeply flawed and I do not accept for various reasons. It's bad science, for one. For another, it is used by people with personal and public agendas. In the case of some men, that may be an excuse for their extreme or moderate promiscuity. However, as I posted some time back, monogamy can be argued as easily from a biological drive standpoint, which is what the fundies tried to do with that silly penguin movie. I think people need to decide for themselves what they want. However in my case that decision has NEVER been respected.

I have wanted to take a dirty piece of glass and scar my face with it. Dig it right in there, destroy it completely. Gouge out an eye, slash a lip or something. Seriously, it's driven me that crazy (although it lightened up during the marriage years). Wearing no makeup doesn't help. Dressing dowdy doesn't help. When I get fat and/or old, that will help.

Then instead of guys talking to me to get sex, they won't talk to me at all.

Which, like I said, saddens me. I'm not a Cosmo reading space cadet. Most guys make appreciative clucking sounds about "ohh, I like the smart ones" and some guys say "I don't like the smart ones, you know". However nothing else I have had to offer has ever made any difference one they know that the gash is not going to be theirs for the asking, nor is it for sale. The insults and deception don't help.

Sure, I have had many surface relationships with many decent men and women. But with men, it never manages to get farther, never goes beyond X, whatever personal variant of the "three strikes and out" rule that each individual man has. A puzzle.

I don't want lots of men.

Why can't men accept that and just relate to me as a person?

It seems simple yet it has almost never happened!

I really don't think I'm hot or all that. It's just a problem I have had. I'm of Dutch heritage, very blonde. I have good skin and small features. I'm large breasted. I have a certain "look". I am not tall or leggy, so I am not a runway model type. I have beauty strengths and weaknessness like every girl.

I think it's not just my problem. I know many cute, bouncy, very attractive girls who have eaten themselves into the 300 pound range and consider its being a turn off to men a useful side benefit. One author (Cynthia Heiml?) has written about them. She calls them FFW and AFW (Fearful Fat Women and Angry Fat Women). She basically charges that some women use obesity as an subconscious excuse to keep men at bay.

If there is any kind of truth whatever in this, can we not say that, by and large, men and women are not relating to each other as they should?

Naive, I used to think, wow, these people like me! I'm smart! They like to be friends with me! And then I would find out--really not. They are not interested in me. That's disappointing at least, isn't it? Some women become hard and cynical and play along, some eat themselves into man-less oblivion, and so on. But we are all getting hurt, don't you see that?

And the guys who say it's all just evolution, so whatever, hey, three strikes you're out....

wouldn't it be fantastic if humans could evolve beyond, you know, voles or something? Wait, voles are monogamous, like those fundie penguins. Scratch that. I mean, we are people, we have brains. Bosomy blondes have brains. Some of us like to talk politics and play chess. Without having sex, if you are not the right person. And for this, guys get all angry and start calling names?

I want to have sex only with a man I am in a relationship with. I would't wish to rush into that, neither would I wish to wait years. I am not a religious person. That is just my preference, my personal comfort level.

I would like to be open to friendship with other guys. But it doesn't work. I think there is something wrong with that. Further, I think there is something so wrong with it that it is sometimes very frustrating and I know it is frustrating for other women too.

Sorry if anybody can't see that simple point. I think I know why some people have confused me with the LW. It seems she might have had some experience with the same problem, hence the question.