Signals and meanings

If you had asked me about relationships eight years ago, I knew it all. What things meant, how people subtly signalled emotions and desires, etc. My discussions of relationships with other people, more experienced than I, confirmed that my understanding of relationships was reasonably accurate.

Then a few things happened. Between my second and third girlfriends, I spent three years with a girl I shall refer to as my psycho-ex, or, more clandestinely, BWS. Those who know me and knew us will know exactly of whom I speak.

Things that were asserted to me as being true during that time include:

• If someone does stuff for/with me (e.g. cook, clean, have sex), it does not necessarily mean anything.
• The fact that someone may, on rare occasions, refer to me and her as a 'relationship', does not necessarily imply that she considers us to be a relationship; the term may simply be shorthand for something which she doesn't feel like explaining.
• The fact that someone is willing to come over on the spur of the moment to have sex does not necessarily mean that she wants to be with me in any other way.
• The fact that someone loves me in a romantic way can be totally consistent with her not wanting a relationship with me.

In sum, those things which I used to consider to be normal signals or indicators, really mean nothing.

Hence, I currently find myself in the following situation:

• I have a few female friends who regularly french-kiss me (presumably this means nothing about their level of interest in me).
• I have a girlfriend who doesn't view sex as an essential component of a relationship.
• There are girls who are eager to have sex with me, but find no reason to talk about their feelings when they do (or they do so in an obtuse, equivocal way, from which no conclusion may be drawn).

Yesterday, something caused me to pause and think. Is something here f*ck3d up? I mean, is the world really this crazy, where I can have intimate sexual relationships with girls who (presumably) aren't interested in having a relationship, but are eager to see me? Or is this eagerness, and the fact that they insist on making food for me, a sign of something else? Eight years ago I would have interpreted all of this as meaning one thing. But after my experience with BWS, I take these things lightly, as meaning nothing, and simply continue to meet these girls as friends. If I think there might be something that I am missing, I simply out-and-out ask: "are you (or were you) interested in me?". When I have asked this question, I generally get a "no" (irrespective of whether we have been close or not, emotionally, or close or not, physically). Is this like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, where the act of measuring changes the phenomenon, i.e. the act of asking crystallises a "no", although in her mind it may have been a "yes" up to that moment?

Based on what I have learned since 2004, this lake of meaning makes sense. But based on what I thought pre-2004, and on what people seemed to agree with me on, something here doesn't seem quite right.

Now, I know I am thick; moreover, since BWS screwed with my mind, I no longer take things at face value, and naturally assume that roughly 50% of what women say and do is lies. But there is something nagging in the back of my head: a I misinterpreting/ignoring/missing out on/simply not seeing signals that girls want to be with me, and thereby missing chances to find a meaningful relationship?

Any guidance guys? Is my current interpretation of female behaviour correct? Or am I just emotionally broken?