Exorcising the Sex Ghosts

Specific instructions on employing Burned Haystack to expose and repel them

Group member question:

“Girlfriends and I have struggled in past years with men who are very kind, respectful, and behave like gentlemen (no red obvious flags or intuitive gut feeling alerted), only to then behave in the complete opposite way and ghost if sex is refused or once they’ve had sex. Any tips on how to suss out even the most inconspicuous of bad behaviour in order to avoid being in disappointing or hurt outcomes? I know that there isn’t an answer for everything and no one can be mind readers, but any hints to be aware of would greatly appreciated.”

Here’s how you use Burned Haystack to identify and repel the sex-ghosts:

1. Learn all the rhetorical patterns and apply them brutally. You can go through all of them from the “rhet patts” highlight on my IG profile here.
   

2. In addition to applying and abiding by the rhetorical patterns above (meaning, when you see them, retreat), I would auto-block-to-burn any of the following:
   Leading the messaging convo with a comment about your appearance; Mentioning sex or sex-adjacent things early on AT ALL; Touching you immediately upon meeting you or otherwise “getting in your space” before you know each other; Last minute “date” planning (e.g. the dreaded “You up?” texts at 11:30 pm); Any kind of conversation or interaction that makes you feel “off”; ask yourself if there is a boundary being transgressed; Disregarding (or “forgetting”) things you say (esp. about sex and your feelings about it, but also in general); Labor imbalances in the relationship (e.g. the planning/scheduling is always up to you, you’re paying more than your fair share of bills, you’re always the one doing the driving, etc.)
   

3. Delay sex (I’m sorry). This will lead to incredibly-rapid ghosting immediately, but that’s a GOOD thing in this case. If they ghost the second sex is refused, you’ve now saved yourself a lot of things: emotional entanglements and fallout caused by someone who only wanted you for sex; the risk of disease, assault, manipulation, etc; wasted time.
   
   Let those ghosts go.
   
   Delaying sex will also prevent a significant amount of the post-sex ghosting, for the same reason. Guys who only want you for sex simply won’t stick around.
   

I realize the potential pitfalls/offensiveness of my advice above, so let’s get the counter arguments out of the way:

1. I shouldn’t have to deny mySELF sex just to guard against these guys.

2. It shouldn’t be women’s job to be the keepers of virtue or the guardians of chastity. This is 2024.

3. This is not a sex-positive stance.
   

My responses to these counterarguments:

1. Agree

2. Agree

3. Sex-positivity got hijacked by the patriarchy so long ago that I no longer consider it a valid descriptor (that’s an argument for another piece).

I can agree with numbers one and two and still hold the “delay sex” stance because of two key features of Burned Haystack:

1. The entire Method is wired toward people looking for long-term monogamy. If that’s not what you’re looking for, then none of this matters anyway. The reason it’s wired toward that is not because I believe it’s a superior form of relationship; it’s that it’s the hardest one for women to find on the dating apps and therefore the one most in need of a feminist correction, of an academic application of rhetoric.

2. The Method is pragmatic, not moralistic. There’s no “should” in terms of what people should want or how they should behave. There’s a goal—long term monogamy—and a set of “heuristics” (this is the academic term for the form of applied rhetoric in Burned Haystack; essentially, we have built in rhetorical “tests” (not tests for men; rhetorical tests that allow us to analyze things to accurately gauge a situation, and then we respond accordingly).

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Some women add a line to their profiles (or to early messaging) that says, “Not into hookup culture and I prefer to take things slowly,” or something like that. In a perfect world, this would suffice; we do not live in this world. There’s too much risk that you’ll either be ignored or someone will take it as a challenge. Plus, if you try to establish this dynamic of your relationship too early with words alone then you are putting yourself into a situation to also rely upon their words alone, and the words of a stranger mean nothing. Only actions matter. Continuing to show up in all the ways even when sex is not yet part of the equation is the specific action that matters.

Unfortunately, there is one fix for this, and it’s TIME. You need to get to know someone over time to avoid this (and it’s never 100% avoidable, so please please please do not blame yourself for this when it does happen; you can do everything right and it’ll still happen).

The GOOD thing about the time factor is that if someone IS okay with sticking around and getting to know you over time, the likelihood of it developing into a sustainable relationship is actually much, much higher.

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I hope this article is helpful. Let’s go back to the definition of the heuristic process:
It is “a pragmatic method that is not fully optimized, perfected, or rationalized, but is nevertheless ‘good enough’ . . . [When] finding an optimal solution is impossible . . . heuristic methods can be used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution.”

Applied rhetoric, however it’s applied, is never a perfect science, and thus Burned Haystack methodology is, as a form of applied rhetoric, not a perfect science; we’re dealing with unknown and unknowable human beings with a myriad of complexities and attributes and motivations and histories.

I do think, though, that if your problem is sex ghosts, following the advice here will be helpful. Thank you for reading.