I feel your pain, dreaming715! I’m only 22 and I’ve already become pretty exasperated with men (I realise not all men are bad, but sadly, in my life, I’ve experienced more bad than good). When I was 16, I was manipulated and brainwashed by a 19-year-old man who seemed ostensibly charming and perfect, made many of those grandiose statements you talk about, then tried subtly and insidiously to force himself on me. When it became clear I was oblivious to what he really wanted (I was a very innocent and naive teenager from an all-girls convent school!), he made a fake female Facebook profile posing as his ‘best friend from South Africa’ who proceeded to tell me persistently that I wasn’t good enough, I had to ‘do more’, I had to ‘stand out from other girls’, that ‘all eyes were on me’ from girls in South Africa who would not hesitate to come to the UK and harm me because they were jealous and knew I was doing ‘badly’. I can’t quite believe how gullible I was, but I drank in everything he told me for a time, then started to get suspicious, but had been so brainwashed, I continued to try to impress him. After not getting what he was clearly after for a month, he broke up with me by putting his relationship status as single on Facebook. It was classy.

Then, when I was 19, my family found out that my dad had been having a classic mid-life crisis affair for 2 years with a significantly younger woman. My mum and dad had seemed so solid, and he so reliable, that this completely shattered and subverted my view of men once again. If my own DAD couldn’t be trusted, who could I trust?!

However, my current boyfriend is a different story. We’ve been together nearly 4 years and so far, so good! I sought to look for pretty much the opposite of my previous boyfriend (who was narcissistic, arrogant, yet jobless, and clearly one-track-minded towards physical intimacy), and it paid off. I think taking lessons from previous experiences and relationships will be extremely important for you in finding someone, as you now have a wealth of experience to help you, so whilst those experiences were bad and upsetting and I’m really sorry they happened to you, good can come out of them in this way. Unfortunately, there do seem to be a lot of men who are mainly interested in physical intimacy, but my current boyfriend and I didn’t have sex until 1 and a half years into our relationship, so there are men who will fall in love with YOU and not just your body. As anita has said, I guess it’s about searching for someone who seems genuinely interested in YOU, your personality, your stories, etc., and to give it time and not to give anything away until you’re sure this individual is not just interested in the physical aspects of a relationship, but in you as a person. Sorry for rambling – I wish you all the best and all the luck because you deserve someone who treasures you.