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Men, you know I love you guys.  I’ve been friends with you, dated you, heck, I even married one of you, but as much as I feel like I understand the male psyche, there’s still one thing that I don’t understand and it worries me.  Men, can we have a truth moment?

Can we discuss this whole, “sparing her feelings” thing you guys do sometimes?  Now, I feel like I’m EXTREMELY lucky that this never happened to me, and I’m banking that it’s because, (including my divorced husband), I’ve only been in 3 relationships.  But if I wasn’t such a commitment phobic person, then I probably would have dealt with this, like so many other women I’ve known.

Now, I’m not talking about that moment she asked you if she looked fat in an outfit and even though you realized her measurements are getting a little wider around the tum-tum area and you say:  “No, baby, unless you mean your butt, because it looks FAT!”  I’m talking about the behaviors that happen when you start talking to a girl with the intent on dating her, but after you realize that you have no chemistry or you didn’t actually like her you still do relationship things with her, because “I don’t want to hurt her feelings.”

I would sometimes sit baffled while my guy friends would address how they had no more interest in a girl they started talking to but would still go down a physical path with her because they didn’t want to hurt her feelings by saying:  “I don’t like you like that anymore.”  I just… I just don’t understand the rationale behind it. I’ve known a guy who indulged in … diced pineapples, because the girl he was with wanted a relationship with him, and he wanted to make her “feel good” before telling her he only saw her as a friend.  I had a friend who knew a girl was almost obsessed with him, but he didn’t like her, but when it came time to tell her and she started crying he performed some boom-shaka-laka, so he wouldn’t hurt her feelings.  I’ve even heard of guys who have moved in with girls they didn’t like.  Why?  They felt sorry for her and wanted to spare her feelings.

I mean, is the threat of her tears that intimidating that you’d be willing to put off telling her the truth?  Like I’ve expressed, the answer I’ve found in some men is YES!  Now, fellas, I know you might not want to hear this but these acts to “make her feel better” don’t spare her feelings, it only hurts them more, immensely so.

On the unfortunate incidences where I was also friends with the girls as well, I would listen sickly as the women would claim that they just knew the relationship was going somewhere because, “why would he do that if he wasn’t interested in getting in a relationship with me?”  Then I was there as a shoulder to cry on as they retold the story of the guy breaking things off.  “When I asked him why he would sleep with me he would say:  “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. Well, how does he think I feel now?!”

To my fine fellas out there, no matter what you think a girl wants, she definitely doesn’t want a pity relationship.  She also might not understand that you don’t want to be with her at all, or anymore, but don’t let your need to stop her tears be the reason you try to subside her pain by giving her some “physical” comfort.  Honestly, all it will do is hurt her and make breaking things off from her even more difficult.

Don’t spare Kendra Koger’s feelings, just tweet her, at @kkoger

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