After a brief courtship, and I use that term loosely, with this guy I was seeing...I'll call him Fun Times, I had a rather profound conversation with my very close girlfriend, The Doc. I could not understand why this guy was so adverse to any mention of commitment and relationships! She told me to think about this concept—Women, for the most part, get to decide when it is time to have sex and Men, get to decide when it is time to be 'in a relationship'! This really resonated with me because I had never quite thought of it that way but, in my experience, it has proven to be very true.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder what comes first. Traditionally, you would believe that a solid relationship should lead to sex. However, if you are brutally honest with yourself, you know that this concept is becoming increasingly more antiquated. This is the typical, Chicken before the Egg dilemma. How do you achieve the relationship before the sex, when some men won't get into relationship without a sex 'test drive'? How do you achieve the relationship before the sex when so many women have been taught to believe that good sex is the way to get him and better and more frequent sex is the way to keep him?
On the flip side, if you subscribe to this 'Say When' concept, then the way women covet their bodies and sex is equal to how men covet their time and commitment to relationships. So, a woman continuously 'encouraging' (aka pressuring) a man to make a determination on the status of their relationship is the equivalent of a man pressuring a woman for sex before she is ready! In this society, we deem a man like this to be a villain! He would be an insensitive JERK! But what do we call the woman, who has the same level of intolerance?
This is a heavy concept because I sit on the fence. When I was hanging out Fun Times, we would talk about the idea of relationships often. He made it clear to me from the very beginning that he was not necessarily looking for a relationship right away. He wanted to have fun and see where that takes us. I agreed with him about having fun and moving slowly. However, I also let him know, with assertiveness, that this, in no way, means that he gets an infinite amount of time to make a decision. But, if he in turn said to me, "I am okay with us waiting awhile to have sex but I'm not going to wait FOREVER!"; would that have been okay? Or would it have sounded inconsiderate and more like a warning or even a threat? Hmm...
As the friendly 'dates' start to add up, Fun Times seemed to get more touchy feely. The innocent pecks became deeper kisses and eventually he just put it out there that he wanted me naked and he wanted me naked NOW! So, what better time than that to discuss what we type of 'friends' he wanted us to be. As soon as I mentioned the dreaded R-word he tensed up and somewhat fell out of the mood! He felt pressured! See, he wanted the sex but had no intention of the relationship right then. At that point, I wanted sex too but him not wanting the relationship made me feel like I was giving away free samples in a grocery store. So, he likes the sample but he's just not going to buy today? Maybe he would come back another day but there was no insurance, so we had to pump the brakes! We pumped them because now, I felt pressured to have sex to get him to even consider the relationship. And as I've said before, I am not trying to run up my numbers for nothing! All sex will be on MY terms! (and that is exactly the point)
Since we all want things on our terms, be it sex or relationship...how do we come to an agreement with others? How do we state our intentions without making our partner feel pressured? Can you put a timeline on when you should succumb to a sexual rendezvous or when you should change your status to 'in a relationship'? And who get to choose when time's up?
Thank you for taking this journey with me! Relax, Relate, Release...
—The S.B.
No comments:
Post a Comment