[Amadou]

I think at least part of the problem stems from society's expectations of the "role" of men in relationships. Right or wrong, men are still largely expected to be pursuers but the rules are not well defined - often different women will have different ideas of what is appropriate which makes the whole thing clear as mud.

One approach is to avoid it all completely, to act as if everybody within a professional context is completely asexual. I think that approach really only works for robots and people who have zero social interaction with other people at work. It's unrealistic, so back to square one with the ambiguity of being human around other humans.

We end up with a cognitive dissonance born of competing and vaguely defined requirements and expectations. That's a recipe for frustration in any context - add the emotional and hormonal aspects and its going to be really stressful for a lot of guys - and that stress is going to come out in unpleasant ways.