On certain forms of social media, it’s pretty much expected that you are going to know everyone on your friends list. Yet, with other sites or apps such as Instagram and Tinder, it is uncommon that people know every single follower personally or even that they know every single person who they follow. Especially when it comes to those people who have thousands of followers, there’s no way they know them all. While on Instagram there is the option to have your profile private, for the most part, everything on your profile is out there for the world to see and anyone with an account can access it.

And yet, I couldn’t even tell you the number of times that I have followed a guy on Instagram and immediately received a message from them asking if I’m “looking to fuck”… and yes, that’s a direct quote that I have gotten messaged multiple times.

I’m sorry, but what about simply following you on social media gave you the impression that I was interested in you sexually?! Sorry to break it to you but I’m not interested in sleeping with everyone that I follow on Instagram or any other platform.

Somehow it seems as though many guys these days will turn anything a girl does into an assumed advance on them. It’s as if all a girl has to do is breath near a guy and he will think “Wow, that must mean she really wants me.” Sorry to tell you boys, if we were actually interested in you we would likely be a lot more direct than simply following you on Instagram.

Now you may think I’m being a bit harsh, but I can assure you that this is not even close to the only experience that I have had where guys often push sex on girls. When I first began dating one of my now exes, I told him that I wanted to take things somewhat slow since I had previously gotten out of a serious relationship. You want to know his response to that? “Okay but I don’t think I can wait more than a few weeks or a month tops to do anything.” That should have been a huge red flag for me to get the hell out of there. I understand that to some people sex can be an important part of the relationship, but I’m also pretty positive that you can go more than a month without having sex.

I know, mind blowing.

Even having been off of Tinder for over a year and being in a happy relationship, I still regularly get messages from people I talked to on Tinder ages ago looking to hook up. They often come completely out of the blue after months of even more than a year of not talking.

When I was still on Tinder, my bio explicitly stated that I was not interested in hooking up with people but instead wanted to actually date. And yet, time and time again the very first message a guy would send me was “But why?” They would then often go on to say, “People come on tinder to hook up not to date.” Many of them though it was absurd that I was looking for an actual relationship on tinder, despite the fact that I have actually had a couple of really successful relationships off of tinder. It was as if many of them looked down upon me for seeking out something more, as if that was some crazy outlandish concept to them.

Another pet peeve of mine is the way guys talk about “the friendzone.” We’ve all heard, at one point or another, a guy complaining that the girl he likes friendzoned him. Yet… we never seem to hear girls talk about the having that issue. Yes, we may complain about being turned down, but we understand that sometimes someone might just not be interested in us. I hate to break it to you, but the friend zone is nonexistent. It is in fact possible for a girl to simply not be interested in you.

On that note, I have had many encounters where I begin talking to a guy and it seems to be going in a relatively positive and friendly direction. I never want to assume that someone is flirting with me right off the bat, unless it is very clear that is their intention, so I am not one to tell them right off the bat that I have a boyfriend. I have heard many guys tell stories where they may try to talk to a girl who immediately has this response. In some cases that could definitely be unwarranted, as sometimes they may just be looking to ask about the homework or strike up a friendly conversation. However, here’s the catch. Often times when I tell a guy early on that I’m taken, his response is something along the lines of, “Woah I wasn’t looking for anything like that.” Yet, when I do wait to tell them until either they ask or it comes up naturally in conversation the response is often one of anger and frustration. They are upset with me for wasting their time and claim that I lead them by “flirting” when all I did was respond to their messages in a friendly manor. There’s really no winning here in many cases.

Of course I know that not all guys are like this. I know many of them who are actually quite opposite. However, the point of this little rant is that it can really suck being a girl, this being only one of the reasons. It sucks having guys expect that everything you do must mean you want to fuck them, and assume that if they are going to put the effort in to being in a relationship with you then they deserve sex in return. When in fact, they deserve nothing from us. We do not owe anyone anything and do not deserve in the slightest to be pressured in any way into thinking that we do.