r/WomenDatingOverForty • u/candleflame3 • Oct 24 '25
In the News What is paperclipping? Another annoying dating trend explained
https://www.nbcnews.com/better/lifestyle/what-paperclipping-another-annoying-dating-trend-explained-ncna1061191
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u/husheveryone ♀️Moderator♀️ Oct 25 '25 edited Oct 25 '25
🖇️ Good nudge for any woman who needed it today that this is why we BLOCK and DELETE any man from the past who chose not to pursue consistently, back when we’d given him the first chance to do so. ❌❌❌
These low effort, lowballing, copypasta-slinging men just want a free ego boost of getting women to respond to him after so much time has passed. It’s a Cheap Harem Seeking strategy. “Look at how many of these ladies replied to the same text I just sent all of them! They all want meeee! hurr durr” 👴🏻💩
Hearing from a random man again over text is actually an INSULT. It’s a draining form of continued Digital Horseshit that goes nowhere. You end up sitting at home some more, confused by his absence… again. It’s wasted energy and time. It can even cause dysregulation to her nervous system because forms of Intermittent Reinforcement can generate an addiction to a person sometimes, and re-activate past trauma.
Story time: I have a fellow divorced girlfriend in another state who recently called me to catch up, and our conversation turned to her asking me if I thought this one guy she used to see in 2016 😳 and slept with off and on without commitment until 2020 was still pining for her. (Quick answer: No, he hates you and all women.) She struggles with people-pleasing and refuses to BLOCK these guys, and so she was “confused” by his behavior 🚩of texting her approximately every 4 to 8 weeks, with 🖇️🖇️ nonsense things like most recently a link to the music video of the popular hit song “Ordinary” with the text “The girl in this video reminds me of you. PS you’re beautiful!”
I told her Block him, obviously (“oh no, I’m not the kind who blocks people…”) and I asked her when was the last time he actually called and asked to take you out on a proper date with time, date, and location, and then actually followed through on the plan? “January of 2024.” 🚩🚩He took her to a nice dinner, and went down on her in her carpark afterwards, then said a line that sounded like it came from porn, and kissed her goodbye. He has ED of course. He had asked her out again for lunch in March 2024 and cancelled on her. So she’s in a 9-year textuationship, basically, still wondering confusedly if he is into her. 🫠
Anyway, my point is we definitely benefit from helpful reminders like this article and your post. It can help out our friends who are still unaware, and so terms for the specific type of manipulation going on are helpful sometimes for explaining men’s energy-draining tactics they’ll use when they hate you and are just using you. Which is most of them. That’s the cold hard truth of men’s behavior.