A lot of relationships seem to be transactional—guys mainly seeking physical intimacy, and girls often seeking financial security. But instead of being upfront (“this is just a hookup” or “this is about support, not love”), many pretend it’s true love.
This acting game breaks countless hearts and leaves people with lifelong emotional scars.
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Because:
– Most people have no clue what they want.
– Most people prefer to see themselves as “open to new experiences and people”, which is a more affirming posture than “I have no idea what I actually want”.
– Realizing what one wants requires introspection, which is intellectually difficult, emotionally fraught, or ego-threatening. [1]
– Accepting that everyone fundamentally wants the same things, which can be reduced to what statisticians call “factors” / “principal components”, rejects the notion that one is special or idiosyncratic. No one likes being a statistic. It does not take long to see therefore that what separates human beings are what Aristotle referred to as “that which comes to us from without”, e.g. personality, health, etc. [2]
– According with the above point, human desire is not authentic; it is mimetic. In plain English: people desire a thing because they observe another desiring that thing. If others appear to desire superficial and ephemeral things then we, too, come to desire such things. There is little protecting us from desiring terrible things if social institutions are eroded, such as the church / synagogue / mosque / temple / agora [3]
– There is risk in revealing one’s wants. Older books often refer to this as “betraying” for a reason.
– The myth of Adonis and the boar, according to one interpretation, serves to remind us that love, in the ancient and eternal sense of the word, is painful. The boar intended to caress Adonis but pierced his chest with his tusk by mistake; sincere love has this form. We refer to it as “falling” in love for a reason. This, of course, is terrifying. [1]
Footnotes:
[1] Byung-Chul Han, “The Agony of Eros”
[2] Arthur Schopenhauer in “The Wisdom of Life” submits health and personality are one and the same.
[3] Rene Girard, “The Scapegoat”
You do know women can be educated, make their own money and support themselves financially, right? You do also know that women enjoy sex? You sound like someone who doesn’t go outside.
“A lot”? My guy, that says more about the people you choose to spend your time with than the world in general. Most people want love, companionship, intimacy and stability.
Because people don’t want to admit self-interest and objectification of the other, as that is an unattractive trait. Could be that people could even fool themselves into believing their own lies out of the shame.
Because everyone is afraid of being judged
I have an even more difficult question based on this!
What is true love?
Most people think true love is that “butterfly, cocktail mix of feelings” you get in the beginning. But that’s infatuation.
For me true love is when I feel comfortable being honest even if it might sting to hear. Someone I can be myself around. Someone who aligns with interests. Someone who is just as screwed up in the head as me. Someone who doesn’t feel embarrassed to do cat sounds to communicate. Someone I prioritize.
If a partner is a burden on your economy, will you just play along because you don’t wanna make it seem “transactional” or do you still have your self respect with you?
Choosing a partner is a choice. You make that choice if it will last forever (as long it’s following set boundaries) or if it will end up in the drain because you put yourself in a situation where you cheated.
But I do agree!. Many suck at communicating and that sucks. Or possibly they don’t even know what they want from a relationship to begin with and fall into a negative-sided comfortable zone.
There are many scenarios in which you might be proven wrong. Wait till you find that partner who is honest from the very beginning!
Cause honesty gives people the ick
Set aside wanting a one night stand for second. Lots of time, we confuse the attention we want to with love. “This person is giving me physical intimacy I love them,” or “this person has swooped in and has stabilized me financially I love them” Also many people dont truely have a grasp of why they are attracted to a person until something else is turning them off. For the people who are trying to get in relationships knowing what they want, this brings one night stands back in, it can scare off potential partners. Someone looking for financial stability will get the gold digger table, those with physical intimacy as their main goal- they only want sex. Finally when first getting to know someone, thats a lot of trust that most of us are not comfortable with even after a long time.
It’s simple- because the other person who they are lying to won’t waste their time with them if they are honest, and bad people lie and cheat to get what they want. Before I met my husband I dated guys who lied to me and didn’t want anything serious, while I was over there falling in love. It ended as you would imagine. Not everyone is bad but yeah a lot of people are.
People who experience these situations just need to learn how to distinguish liars from honest, good people. My husband was honest and genuinely good hearted from the get go. Good, honest, loving people exist. You just have to really pay attention and not put up with BS so that you don’t waste too much time with the bad ones.
True love is by its nature transactional – it involves finding a partner who has the attributes you want, whether physical beauty, money, personality etc.
I’m in a FaceBook local group in my city
“Girls DApps storytelling”
When we ask guys WHY they lie about their intentions of looking for a -LTR they just laugh at us 🙂
They know that their options to get laid would be cut by 90% if they were honest
They want hook ups, with girls who are “serious” because they want to use up women with low body count**
Otherwise they would use other apps
Regarding women: we need security, not just financial
We also need validation to our feelings
If we are not able to find someone, well from time to time we fall for a HookUp
Because it feels wrong when you first meet someone to say “I’m just looking for sex”
They don’t know
the ideal would be to find emotional security and physical intimacy. Everything else one can obtain by working hard on themselves.
Because honesty risks rejection and too many people would rather play a role than face the truth.
In my personal experience?
You can’t be honest with men. You just can’t. They take everything far too literally. If you say you’re looking for a relationship, they basically start planning your wedding on the first date.
They don’t seem to understand that “looking for a relationship” does NOT mean “eager to jump into a serious relationship with the first man I see.”
Then when you break it off, they get devastated, like you actually WERE in a serious relationship. It’s like… chill out man… you’ve only known me for two weeks, and you’re not what I’m looking for. Yes, I want a relationship, but I’ve realized that I don’t want one with you.
You get fewer meltdowns if you soften their expectations, and say you’re not sure what you’re looking for, or you want to see what things turn into.
You also can’t honestly say that you’re looking for a guy who’s great in bed. They ALL think they’re great in bed (but they’re not). It’s a shortcut to a terrible night.
Because if you tell the truth (“I want access to your body/wallet and I’m not prepared to give you much in return”), they’d fine no one. That’s why people often have personal internal tests to make sure the person across them is genuine and not a user.
And users don’t mind breaking hearts, as long as they get what they want.
There are sugar daddy and sugar mommy relationships, but not everybody is ready to be this honest to themselves or ready to actually give something to the other.
“Girls often seeking financial security” brother are you living in the 1800s or in the manosphere
Well, it might be a bit intense at a first date “Hey I want you to worship me from head to toes, and bedazzle me with romance, but wait don’t start yet, I want to feel like I earned it and it is genuine!”
People sometimes lie to themselves too.
Because she rolled her eyes and said no.
Most people do not know what the really want in life or relationship – they are just trying to get even with their peers and nothing else.
His friends got car/house/girlfriend/wife so he also want these things.
Her friends got married/boyfriend/moved abroad so she wants these things.
They do not know what they really want and what will suit them.
Because very few people even think they know what they want, and those who claim to often have unrealistic expectations. Add to that that what you want/need from a partner is certain to evolve and change over the years. There really isn’t a way to know for sure what you’ll want or need from your partner in five, ten, or twenty years’ time.
People evolve. When I met my wife I was just playing around not looking for a relationship.
People lie to get what they want.
Yeah, I think honesty upfront would save a lot of people pain. Too many folks try to force things into the ‘true love’ box when that’s not really what they want.
Plenty of guys will admit to just wanting to get laid but pretty much all those guys will be turned down. If a woman said she wants financial security they will also be turned down.
Such as an example is a girl might choose one guy over another because the guy has a car and a better job than the other guy, who they might actually get along better with. The guy also isn’t going to want to think that he was only chosen over the other guy because of materialistic things.
Basically both men and women want to feel wanted for their personalities.
Last month she broke up with me cause of “financial insecurity”. At the beginning it was different. It was great! The emotions, the intimacy… the feeling of her next to me… until one day she texted me “We have to talk and you have to take your stuff out of my home”. So I went to her home, took my stuff and when I looked at her eyes she was just… looking through me like I was just some common person infront of her. You see like an acquaintance or something. I asked her “why is that? where did I go wrong?” and she answered “I am feeling financial insecure with you. I can’t grow kids like this. I wanna retire on 35 and drink cocktails at the beach and work whenever I want”. You see I live on rent and I have a loan… but I earn more than enough for after pay all my bills on time and my loan there’s still lot of cash remaining. But she did not know that. I said “I just need little time. It will not always be like that” and she just smiled and answered “No” so… that just crushed my heart. Been in depression last year, cause of the girl back then. Just got like… healed and when this girl showed up in my life, my happiness went sky rocket I was like ” Yes! God answered my prayers!” but… after this… so yeah. Ty reader for reading this.
people don’t say what they really want ’cause they’re scared it’ll make them look bad—like admitting it’s just sex or money means they’re selfish. so they dress it up as love and leave wreckage behind. it’s not the needs that hurt people, it’s the pretending. if folks were honest from the start, half the heartbreak wouldn’t even happen. but most are chasing connection without clarity, hoping feelings will fix what truth could’ve prevented.
Let’s be real, how well is being honest in most of these situations actually going to go down? It obviously sucks but most people won’t get what they want by being straightforward too early on – saying it’s just a hookup or that they only want financial support. Especially the latter
It’s not that no one knows what they want but rather people don’t know how articulate what they want into proper terms and context. We often don’t know how to say what we want or need because the majority of us grew up believing that we should always want nothing or that what we do want just simply isn’t important. Many of us are made to feel like what we want doesn’t matter and should make us feel selfish. So, even though most of us might know deep down what we want, we may feel the need to say it differently to make us sound less selfish or perhaps to make us feel better about what we want. And i think that’s the biggest problem: none of us are comfortable with expressing our feelings or needs and wants. They make us feel selfish so we try to hint and make gestures hoping the other person catches on. I learned this the hard way. My partner said to me, “Tell me. Even if It’s embarrassing. Even if it’s maddening for me. Even if it feels selfish. Just tell me.” – It’s easy to feel the things we want but it may not always be so easy to voice them without feeling as though we are going against something we believe to be wrong.
I think a lot of people struggle to be upfront because being vulnerable is scary. Sometimes they don’t even fully know what they want themselves and other times they worry that honesty will scare the other person away.
Because in many cases, admitting that is telling the other person you can’t provide what they want.
I have news for you: a lot of guys are also looking to gain financially. Women are making $ these days, I’m one of them. Don’t think men aren’t aware of that
I pity your love life. “Most men want sex”, “most women are goldiggers”. Wow. You must be happy.
Not the same acting game at all…
Imagine if a woman said:
“I will be with any man I feel is moderately attractive if he can support me, but only until I feel stable and then can divorce him due to boredom and a lack of love for him for a younger, hotter bad boy with spicy drama and take half of everything he achieved.”
Or a guy said:
“I just want to fuck.” (which women also want sometimes)
>This acting game breaks countless hearts and leaves people with lifelong emotional scars.
I agree but it’s better than being alone, I guess?
The difference here is that the stereotype of men being dogs is shared with some women at some points in their lives (they just want to fuck too) but almost every man wants to settle at some point with a good loving and supportive partner, not a “provider” and isn’t willing to pretend for decade(s) just for sex.
In addition, just wanting physical intimacy at a point in time is not a game (is that just exclusive to men? no.) That can lead to a serious and wonderful relationship.
The problem here is that OP thinks that everyone is “ready” for a full life long relationship every time they say hi to someone an thinks every woman in an empathy lacking self absorbed gold digger.
So these two examples are not the same “games”.
Because vaginas do not work that way. It takes a goog story to make them wet.