Post-mortem Analysis on a Mistaken Needle

First, quick clarification: I am differentiating here between “a needle but not *your* needle” and “this guy is definitively not anyone’s needle”; in this case we are dealing with the latter.

Below is the text of a e-mail I received from a Burned Haystack group member. After her e-mail I’ll respond with some analysis:

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Dear Jennie,

Remember I wrote to you that by employing your technique I had found my needle? It seemed too good to be true. He seemed perfect for me, emotionally available, intelligent, kind, accommodating, fun and completely committed to my happiness.

Here are a few lines from his Match profile that seduced me:

“My mama raised me right and you will never open your own car door or walk on the street side of the sidewalk with me. I lay my cape in puddles (metaphorically, of course, as I don’t actually own a cape!). Tangled legs are the BEST and I’ll always think you are most beautiful the moment you wake up.

Perfect Sunday morning…..Get up, make us coffee, bring back to bed, fetch NY Times and, of course, give you the front page. I’ll make French toast and turn on Art Tatum. Stroll to the farmer’s market and decide what we’re cooking together for dinner.

You?  You laugh easily and regularly.  You know the difference between "well" and "good", "too" and "to", "your" and "you're".  Whatever it is, you have a "style" unique to you.  You're adventurous!  You'll never say "honey, why don't you ever wear those designer jeans I bought you?".   If you're a mom you're a great mom and your children are not mimes.  You have compassion for others and believe in giving back!  Probably best if you're not into Guns, Harleys or Trump.  No offense intended...there's a lid for every pot.  Right?

I've led a very charmed life to date and only have one need....my person...my last first date.  I know you're out there.”

All sounds great, right? Unless, I missed something very telling in his language? We moved quickly. There were a few things that started to happen though after a couple of weeks that gave me pause. But, I just chalked them up to, “Michele, you just haven’t been with the right man, a man who REALLY loves you.” He started to say this to me frequently as well. He declared his love for me after 2 weeks, revealed his intention to ask me to marry him after 6 weeks, moved his clothes in and changed his mailing address to mine after 2 months, and planned the rest of our lives after 3 months! I went along. I was in love. He also simultaneously became jealous of former husbands and lovers, became possessive, controlling, manipulative and constantly questioned my love for him. Looking back, these were all red flags, screaming red flags, but I couldn’t see them. He even met a few of my friends and they loved him. They were happy to see me happy. I think many of us are so vulnerable to this kind of all consuming attention we can’t see the warning signs. I chose to believe what he wrote on Match and not what I was beginning to see in real life.

Our almost five month romance ended with two deeply disturbing and dangerous episodes of his binge drinking triggered by jealousy and insecurity. The last one resulted in his falling, splitting his head open, followed by an EMS visit, hospital, and the Sheriff’s visit to me. He returned from the hospital. I had all of his things waiting for him in the entrance hall. He refused to leave that night, so I stayed with a neighbor for safety as instructed by the Sheriff. He finally left the next day and returned 10 mins later after crashing his car into a telephone pole! I finally left him at a hotel after pulling more bottles out of his hands, clearly putting myself in danger. He has since been proclaiming his love for me again and promising recovery in AA. I am not responding. With therapy, I have figured out that what I was dealing with was a narcissistic alcoholic. This combination is lethal and very hard to near impossible to cure. They are difficult to spot at first too as they are very adept socially and captivatingly charming.

I was devastated and have been on the floor for the past six weeks, but I have recovered enough to get on with my life, seek help and am grateful to his relative for finding me. I might have been stuck for much longer.

I would like to warn other woman. By the way, I will not go back on a dating website. I am taking a pause from romance and when I return it will happen naturally.

Many thanks again for all your wonderful work,

Michele

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Okay, let’s analyze . . . . . . .

A little over 3 years ago, when I first began to experiment with using applied rhetoric on the dating apps, I published an article titled “Want to Meet Decent Men Online? Write a Bitchy Profile.” Although this was a couple years before I kicked off the social media project teaching Burned Haystack Method™, I was already purposefully burning my own haystack. That article shared my dating app profile at the time, which was a “Top Ten” list of things I didn’t want and wouldn’t accept. Here’s number 7/10:

7. Anyone whose profile is written in “second-person directive” voice that directs me how *I* should be. Here’s an example: “You should be fun-loving, honest, easy-going, and fit.”

The guy Michele met is clearly using “second-person directive.” Let’s take another look at that section:

“You?  You laugh easily and regularly.  You know the difference between "well" and "good", "too" and "to", "your" and "you're".  Whatever it is, you have a "style" unique to you.  You're adventurous!  You'll never say "honey, why don't you ever wear those designer jeans I bought you?".   If you're a mom you're a great mom and your children are not mimes.  You have compassion for others and believe in giving back!  Probably best if you're not into Guns, Harleys or Trump.  No offense intended...there's a lid for every pot.  Right?”

In a more recent Instagram reel, I titled this rhetorical pattern “Designing my AI Girlfriend.” You can see that reel by clicking here.

Here’s what’s wrong with “second-person directive” text or “Designing my AI Girlfriend”:

Men who seem to be “designing” their prospective dates lack a mature and even basic understanding of what it means to be fully human. What we’re talking about with the “Designing my AI Girlfriend” pattern is different than having preferences. Everyone has preferences, but laying them out so specifically and explicitly indicates he believes he can sort of conjure or “order up” a woman, the way one might custom-order a pizza or a truck. This assumption on a man’s part reveals an objectifying conception of women that does not predict he’s prepared to engage in a healthy, real-life relationship with an independent and three-dimensional human being.

To be fair, this rhetorical pattern usually sounds WAY WORSE than what this guy wrote in his profile. It usually sounds way more fetish-y and objectifying than what this guy wrote, so can I say for certain I’d have blocked-to-burn him for this rhetorical pattern alone? Probably yes for me because I take such a hard line, but honestly even given that I can’t say with 100% certainty.

Other than the “second person directive/designing my AI girlfriend” rhetorical patterns, I see a few other rhetorical clues that would bother me, but that don’t rise to the level of an “auto B2B” according to the BHDM collection of rhetorical patterns to block. Let’s look at those:

“My mama raised me right and you will never open your own car door or walk on the street side of the sidewalk with me. I lay my cape in puddles (metaphorically, of course, as I don’t actually own a cape!).”

I get that he’s being a gentleman here, but there are a few pieces of this that reveal a strong heteronormative vibe, which I would probably at least note in terms being a bit too old-fashioned for me. The whole “my mama raised me right” indicates a belief that women do all the child-rearing and that’s as it should be; the “you will never open your own car door or walk on the street side of the sidewalk,” while potentially chivalrous, is too directive of a tone in my opinion.

”Tangled legs are the BEST and I’ll always think you are most beautiful the moment you wake up.”

As I’ve said a million times, I B2B immediately for *any* mention of sex or sexual content in a profile or early messaging exchange. Not for reasons related to morality or religion, but because I believe it indicates a lack of social awareness or failure to grasp current cultural discourse norms, and that concerns me for whatever else it might predict (such as total unawareness of #MeToo and other social movements germane to contemporary dating).

“You'll never say "honey, why don't you ever wear those designer jeans I bought you?"

This line is in the “second person directive” paragraph, and it just feels . . . oddly specific. As in, “this is not a hypothetical example.” So then my next question is, “Why are you still upset that some woman once asked you this and why is it coming out in your dating app profile?” There are too many men using dating apps to grind too many axes and nurse too many wounds (real or perceived) from their past relationships. This manifests as preemptive punishment for the women they’re now hoping to meet, and it doesn’t bode well.

Okay, now that we’ve gone over the profile text, which, again, is NOT glaringly red, I’ll just point to his actions, which the original poster has already acknowledged should’ve disqualified him, so I don’t want to harp on this. Also, who amongst us has not allowed a toxic man to hang around too long? I definitely have. Sometimes we have to learn things the hard way.

In closing, I hope this analysis has been helpful, either directly or theoretically, and I want to express gratitude to Michele for sharing her story. We are all pulling for you, Michele. You have clearly come out stronger for what you’ve endured here, and you will never end up “here” again. Let’s all learn from this experience so that none of us end up “here” again either. Thank you for reading. 💙