I think I might know her...

More than once, I have been shocked into silence by the following conversation with an otherwise liberated, progressive female friend:

Composite Friend: "So, Joe stayed at my place last night." (sly smile, requisite blush)

Me: "Wow, so things are going well, and fast, yeah?" (politely surprised)

Composite: "Yeah, our first two dates were so much fun, and then last night.... ahem, well, I'm just so lucky to have such a romantic boyfriend."

Me: "Oh... er... 'boyfriend'... wow!.... so you guys are officially a couple already, eh?" (barely concealed surprise)

Composite: "Of course!..." (shocked stare) "...I only sleep with one man at a time."

I find myself choking on their naivete. Did they bother to ask the designated "boyfriend"?? I've never had the guts to ask any follow-up questions.

Anyway... maybe that's this chick's problem?

Oh, sorry, forgot the foregone conclusion:

Composite: (2 weeks later) "I haven't heard from him in a week, I don't know why, blah blah blah blah..."

Me: (commence therapy session #72)

I see that all the time too.

Reminds me of this quote I read recently. "We eventually see the obscure. The obvious usually takes us a lot longer."

i've had to tell friends that i refuse to listen to their relationship drama if they come to me with the same type of story more than once. I ask them- why are you telling me this? you know better. so what's your point? suffice it to say, i don't have many friends. ;) i find that a lot of people don't really want to change or for their life to get better. they want to continue doing whatever it is they are doing and everything around them is supposed to change. seeing as that concept is preposterous, i try not to waste any time on it.

It's a hard call, but I figure 'that's what friends are for.' Love does funny things to the brain.

But I confess to avoiding love-life-talk with certain friends, because otherwise I would start pulling my hair out, and they might notice. :)

I think I'll solemnly intone Yggy's quote instead.... good one!

Almost every relationship question can be turned around with a simple, "Why do you want that?" I'm not trying to be too Zen about it, but we really do create most of the situations we're in. The root cause if always something we desire. The people that don't get that will never be able to change.

The only thing I would add, though, is that for some people it's a game. Part of the fun I guess is that they're gaming themselves.

When I read Blown Aways letter all I can think is they go out 4 or 5 times the men see no possibility of any sexual activity in their futures and stop calling.

So, would you prefer to score at the potential expense of awkwardly disentangling from her 'boyfriend' expectations afterwards?

Genuinely curious.

I always assume these 'boyfriends' of my friends are knowingly humoring the misapprehension long enough to get laid, without realizing the Pandora's Box they just opened....

If her problem is abstinence, then she's obviously shopping the wrong crowd. I had plenty of first dates, several second dates, and the occasional third-or-more date. However, even so, I found a pretty decent number of guys willing to date without promise of early sex, and eventually married 2 of them.

I never had to disentangle my own expectations of a relationship from that of a guy just wanting a piece. They never had to deal with a crazy woman who thought she owned them just because they got a piece.

If they're getting some and dropping her once they score, she needs to quit putting out so quickly. If she's abstaining and they hit the road after just a few dates, she needs to find a new place to meet guys. Or she needs to be more upfront what her expectations are sexually, so they won't just assume she's repressed and hates men if she won't put out.

it all depends on how you look at it-- by that I mean how she looks at her life.

"It seems that every time I start to date someone, we go out a few times, get along great, have tons of fun, and then he just quits calling for no reason..."

Is this even true? It seems to me that every time it rains, the subway takes longer to pick me up. I don't know if that's an objective fact though! Maybe they're not getting along great, maybe they're not having tons of fun-- hell, maybe she's not even going out with anyone. ha!


"My more romantically successful friends say there are all these rules that you have to follow to keep a man, like playing "cat and mouse," pretending to be busy all the time, making him chase after me, pretending to be only somewhat interested in him, etc."

Define "romantically successful"? My guess is that would mean finding the person of the dreams. Why would you want to jack him around? If you're either that stupid or that gutsy to press your luck, well then you deserve what you get. Others might say romantically successful is marrying a 90 year-old oil tycoon. Again though, the LW doesn't know exactly what she means.

"It seems like a lot of work to me and doesn't really help much since I keep getting blown off. I am 33 years old, so my attitude is to just tell a guy that I am interested and skip all of the stupid games. So far, neither way works."

She admits here that they're "stupid games." Really, she's just super confused at this point! Hey, I'm not saying life is all wildflowers and honey all the time, but anybody by now should see how this woman has created her reality, and more specifically how she's put herself at the middle of this maze. Anybody can throw her a lifeline (e.g. advice) but she created this mess so only she can figure out how to get out of it. Literally, no one else in the world but her knows LOL

"What does it take in today's society to make a relationship last more than a few dates?"

There are as many answers to this as they're are people to ask. But the structure of this question is even a little odd. She's presupposing that some condition needs to be met in order for a relationship to continue. This condition is predicated on some feature of "today's society."

I'm out of time but it's clear just how much this chick is actually in control, even though she tries to pass it off as being helplessly at the mercy of external forces.

Ugh. My first thought was to share that once you find a worthwhile person to date... all those games fly out the window. I feel that's true. At least it worked for me.

I finally found a guy who had all the same goals, aspirations and expectation as I... and together we learned, "It's everyone else who is nuts. They almost had me convinced it was me!"

and I'll admit, I was never the kind to sleep with every man I dated - so men seemed to disappear quickly.

BF and I have been dating a year, still abstinent and still adoring and respecting each other. Neither of us has ever been with someone who gets us/one another/ each other so well.

My advice to my friends still in the dating game is that, unless you've had "the talk" do no assume that you're together or that he/she isn't dating and/or sleeping with other people. It's funny, but it seems that many women want to discuss the status of their relationship with their SO when it's not really all that necessary, but don't want to discuss it when it is.

It's been my experience that if a guy really likes you, whether you sleep with him or not in the first couple months won't have an effect. So if you sleep with him and then never hear back, he wasn't really that in to you. (Or if he was, he's crazy enough to decide that he doesn't like you since you went and had sex with him too soon and that's best not dealt with.) This is one of the many reasons I think that the "rule" are stupid. Sure, using them may score a person a few more dates because of the allure of the chase, but they won't get a person any closer to a meaningful relationship.

I know several of these types of women.

I've always thought that they ought to wear clothes made out of dryer sheets.

They reduce static cling.

Shopping the wrong crowd is right. I think I know the male version of her. He's in his mid-30's now. He looks good on paper - nice looking, decent job, lives in an ok area, has his own place, college educated with little debt. But he's gone from dating for fun to wife-shopping and yet has not changed his venues. He goes to the bars and picks up the young 20-somethings and expects to find his wife there. A 22-year old at the bar with her friends isn't husband shopping. The longer he stays in that crowd, the farther he gets from elligible boyfriend and th closer he gets to creepy old guy.

He's also out there too much. No girl is going to take him seriously as long term relationship material if she finds out he's got another date with another girl lined up for the next night. He's so focused on being "out there" to meet people that he runs through them way too fast. If it doesn't click right away, he's off and on to the next chick. I wonder if the letter writer is putting out the same vibe - so focused on the potential future that she's not really there on the date.

PhysicsGirl:

My advice to my friends still in the dating game is that, unless you've had "the talk" do no assume that you're together or that he/she isn't dating and/or sleeping with other people. It's funny, but it seems that many women want to discuss the status of their relationship with their SO when it's not really all that necessary, but don't want to discuss it when it is.

But what are you supposed to do when having "The Talk" seems to be what's scaring them off?

I posted this in another thread but it's applicable here too; this reminds me of the letter a while back from the girl who'd been dating her boyfriend for 18 months and finally got around to talking marriage, only to find out that he had a weight requirement for her. She could have saved herself months of agony and wasted energy by bringing up the subject earlier, which has been cited as being "desperate". What's a girl to do? Me, I've always felt that if you have to ask, you already know the answer. True compatibility and a similar mindset are usually pretty obvious.