In the context of mental health and getting your various social needs met (which this is all about), I'm going to avoid talking about right and wrong. Yes, there is consent and all that, but if you spend all your time thinking about this it's pretty easy to ride the line while still engaging in harmful (to both yourself and your, um, mark) behaviour.

If you're asking this on a terminally online communist forum, you've probably already tripped my description above. I'll try to keep things relatively clinical, but be aware that I'm only able to do this because of the interpersonal separation I have from your situation.

I think young men are more likely to be prone to this sort of behaviour for a few reasons. The behaviour itself stems from attachment trauma followed by a neutering of social means to feel secure in your attachments. To expand on my hypothesis for why young men are more likely to suffer from this:

• Men (and boys) are more likely to have emotionally surface level relationships. This is a cultural thing (which I'm assuming about you, no matter). Masculine relationships tend to focus on hobbies and material life changes, there's a lot less discussion of feelings and relationships. Why this is the case doesn't really matter, what should matter to you is that you are not getting a lot of social needs met by these relationships and thus see romantic relationships as your only way of seeing those social needs met. You can't change the world or even just Western Masculinity, but you can work on your personal relationships to make them more emotionally open.
• Men are seen as "more manly" for being in a romantic relationship than women are seen as more "womanly". Therefore, men have a higher drive to be in a mediocre relationship than women do. Ironically, this means its easier for women to actually stay in a mediocre relationship. This also means men are more desperate for a romantic relationship at all.
• Men have different expectations in dating. Women do have an active role, but especially at the start its less explicit. The immediate risk of rejection is higher and less able to be rationalised (I see a lot of people here mentioning rejection sensitivity). While women are at much higher risk of being victim to abusive or violent behaviour, but I could see some men not wanting to raise the risk of rejection (again), and wind up being clingy in an otherwise "fine" relationship.

There are also a number non-gender-specific things that encourage this behaviour:

• Rejection sensitivity is present in a few mental affects. ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder are both examples. BPD (borderline, not BiPolar, which I constantly think even though I know it's not) itself leads to:
• Attachment Trauma. Your early relationship experiences inform how you feel and behave about later relationships. If your parents were negligent or flaky or randomly violent, it's likely parts of your brain fear rejection and abandonment way more than is healthy. This feeds into all other points pretty universally.
• probably others idk I'm drunk

Now, I don't want to say that any of these are "wrong". You don't have to self-flagellate because you want a partner. What IS important is being aware of whichever feelings are affecting you and causing these behaviours which likely are not (in the long term) helping you achieve your social needs. Are you afraid of abandonment or being alone? Are you afraid of being laughed at by your male peers? Do you want more hugs and cuddles than you are currently getting, or afraid of losing access to the current supply? etc etc. Once you understand why you are behaving a particular way, you can then work on the behaviour realistically.

I also realise that therapy gets recommended a lot and that it's not always realistically accessible. I also don't really have a good prognostication for each thing, sorry. Not at the moment anyway.