(Make sure to read this in its entirety before you say "but...")
These past few years my friends and I have had the distinct pleasure of encountering and dating some men who for all intents and purposes fit in the jackass category. There was JazzGuy, who was extremely romantic with me and cooked me dinner on our second date, until his ex-girlfriend wanted him back. Apparently he forgot to tell me that we met a few hours after his break-up. Knowingly becoming someone's rebound fling is one thing, that's a personal choice or whatever, but what he did was not cool in my book.
But wait. There's more. I dated Mr. God's-Gift-to-Women for half a year until, during a two-week vacation, he decided to have sex with some chick on the beaches of Senegal. A few months later, during a returning-of-items meeting, he kisses me and said that he's not really with that woman, because he barely knows her. There were many more of these stories involving this particular guy. He basically won the Asshole of the Year award.
A friend of mine was dating someone a little while ago. One night, over garbled cell phone reception, she thought he had invited her out to a bar. When she arrived, she saw that he was in fact there with some other woman, full-on make out session in progress. This particular friend is one of the coolest women I've ever known; other women would've broken down and stormed out at this point. As it happened she stood her ground, and didn't let the guy entirely ruin her night.
Yet another friend went to an event with someone that she had gone on a few dates with. Halfway through the event he went missing, and as she looked for him she saw him there, right in front of the stage, making out with someone else. He proceeded to leave the event with her without so much as informing my friend that he was leaving.
On and on the stories go. If one confronts these guys about it, they will always have an answer. "I was distraught over my break-up; I met you and you were interesting and I thought, why not? But now I have to give my relationship a second chance." Or how about this: "We were never really serious anyway, I mean half a year isn't very long, is it?" We can also have "It's summer and I just wanted to enjoy myself. We were only casual and I thought that she'd be cool with it." Top that off with "But she was the one talking to all these other people at the party; I felt abandoned, what was I supposed to do? And anyway we were just going as friends."
No.
It's not ok to act in a completely disrespectful way and to deliberately hurt someone else's feelings. And if you did something that hurts someone's feelings and know about it but don't do anything to remedy it, that's deliberately hurting their feelings.
Most of dating involves things not working out in very short periods of time. Things just don't work sometimes. Believe it or not, despite the often-insane approaches women take to relationships (God knows I bash womankind for that all the time), some of us do know how to walk away, and are ok with you walking away. But really, how about some civility, some regard for another human being? How about being honest and honorable for a change? Man up, grow a pair. If you just broke up with your girlfriend and had a rebound date, tell her as soon as possible (preferably before any dates take place). If you think you're God's gift to women, well, I don't think there's any help for you, but just know that even I think that your ex-girlfriend stabbing you with a pen makes a small amount of sense now. If you fucked up, own up, and stop fucking up. Just because you're going somewhere as friends, it doesn't mean you can just abandon your friend. Just because you admit that you're being an asshole, it still doesn't mean it's ok to be one. You don't have to get back together, or continue dating someone if you don't want to. No one should be forced to be with someone they don't want to be with. But I think it's not too much to expect some semblance of human decency.
I know this exists, this human decency thing. I have an ex who has always been good to me, whether I'm his friend, his girlfriend, or his ex-girlfriend. He treats me like a person; better yet he has always and still does treat me like a friend. He doesn't assume I'm going to go batshit crazy just because he's moved on and is happy with someone else now (and guess what? I didn't go crazy). And it's not just to me; he gets along with every single ex-girlfriend because he apparently knows the secret: you don't have to be an asshole to get someone to move on.
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