I'm a 27-year-old woman, dating again after a six-year relationship. I slept with a guy on the third date and was dismayed when he didn't spend the night. It didn't feel like just a hookup, and it wasn't a work night. Is this just how people date now -- going home immediately after sex -- or does this mean he's not serious?
--Confused
There are two ways to solve this problem. One is to say, "Hey, I'd really like you to stay the night." The other is to hide his shoes and keys.
The "half-night stand" -- avoiding the early-morning walk of shame, often via middle-of-the-night Uber -- is being proclaimed the new one-night stand. The truth is, the just-post-sex adios isn't exactly a new phenomenon; it's probably just more prevalent, thanks to how easy smartphones make it to swipe office supplies, Thai food, and sex partners right to your door.
As for why this guy left, it's hard to say. Maybe he's gone for good, or maybe he just wasn't sure you wanted him to stay. Maybe he sleepwalks, sleep-carjacks, or can't fall asleep in a strange bed. Or maybe he's got some early-morning thing -- seeing his parole officer, walking the goat, or (more likely) making the bathroom smell like 12 dead goats.
Your fretting about what the deal is suggests you might not be as comfortable as you think about having sex before there's a relationship in place. You may unconsciously be succumbing to a form of peer pressure -- peer pressure that mainly exists in your own mind -- called "pluralistic ignorance." This is social psychologists' term for when many people in a group are personally uncomfortable with some belief or behavior but go along with it anyway -- incorrectly concluding that most people are A-Okay with it and thinking they should be, too. (Basically, "monkey assume/monkey do.")
Consider how the millennial generation is supposedly "Generation Hookup." Looking at survey data from Americans ages 20 to 24, psychologist Jean Twenge actually found that people born from 1990 to 1994 (millennials) were "significantly more likely" than those born from 1965 to 1969 (Gen Xers) to say they'd had ZERO sex partners since the age of 18. (Fifteen percent of millennials went sexless, versus 6 percent of Gen Xers.)
And if millennials were clued in on pluralistic ignorance, the number in the "no sex for now" column might be even higher. For example, biological anthropologist Chris Reiber finds that women seriously overestimate other women's comfort level with "hookup behaviors" (from "sexual touching above the waist" to sex) in situations "where a more traditional romantic relationship is NOT an explicit condition of the encounter."
Figure out what actually works for you emotionally -- whether you can just say "whatevs!" if a guy goes all nail-'n'-turn-tail or whether you might want to wait to have sex till you've got a relationship going. That's when it becomes easier to broach uncomfortable subjects -- so you won't have to wonder, say, why he's running out at 2:27 a.m. You will know: It's not you; it's his sleep apnea and how he likes to go home to his CPAP machine rather than die in your bed.
Resolve an argument, please. How often should married people be having sex to have a happy marriage?
--Married Person
It is kind of depressing if the last time you screamed in bed was two months ago when your husband rolled over in his sleep and elbowed you in the eye.
However, consider that more of a good thing is not always better. For example, having more in the boobage area is generally great -- unless that means having three. Well, according to social psychologist Amy Muise and her colleagues, once you've got a relationship going, sex works kind of the same way. They find that having sex once a week is associated with greater happiness; however, more sex than that doesn't make for more happiness, and it can sometimes make for less.
The researchers explain that many people are exhausted and feel overwhelmed, so "the pressure to engage in sex as frequently as possible may be daunting and even stressful." But, interestingly, comparisons with one's peers -- positive or negative -- also color how people feel. Sociologist Tim Wadsworth finds that, beyond simply having sex, what really makes people happier is thinking they're having more of it than everybody else.
Having sex just once a week can keep the spouse with a stronger sex drive feeling satisfied enough while keeping the less lusty spouse from feeling like a sexual pack mule. This, in turn, helps keep resentment from taking over your relationship to the point where you go around grumbling that the last time somebody got into your pants, it was because they paid $3.79 for them at Goodwill.
Two of my girlfriends just got divorced. Both recently admitted to me that they knew they shouldn't have gotten married at the time but did anyway. Just this weekend, another friend -- married for only a year and fighting bitterly with her husband -- also said she knew she was making a mistake before her wedding. Can you explain why anyone would go through with something as serious and binding as marriage if they have reservations?
--Confused
Consider that in most areas of life, when you're making a colossal mistake, nobody is all, "Hey, how about a coronation-style party, a Caribbean cruise, and a brand-new blender?"
But it isn't just the allure of the star treatment and wedding swag that leads somebody to shove their doubts aside and proceed down the aisle. Other influences include parental pressure, having lots of married or marrying friends, being sick of dating, and feeling really bad about guests with nonrefundable airline tickets. There's also the notion that "marriage takes work" -- meaning you can just put in a little emotional elbow grease and you'll stop hating your spouse for being cheap, bad in bed, and chewing like a squirrel.
However, it also helps to look at how we make decisions -- and how much of our reasoning would more accurately be called "emotioning." We have a powerful aversion to loss and to admitting we were wrong, and this can cause us to succumb to the "sunk cost effect." Sunk costs are investments we've already made -- of time, money, or effort. The "sunk cost effect" is decision researcher Hal Arkes' term for our tendency to -- irrationally, ego-servingly -- keep throwing time, money, or effort into something based on what we've already put in. Of course, our original investment is gone. So the logical approach would be deciding whether to keep investing based on whether the thing's likely to pay off in the future.
A way to avoid the sunk cost trap is through what psychologists call "prefactual thinking" -- thinking out the possible outcomes before you commit to some risky course of action. Basically, you play the role of a pessimistic accountant and imagine all the ways your plan could drag you straight down the crapper.
But don't just imagine all the awful things that could happen. Write out a list -- a detailed list. So, for example, if you sense you could be making a mistake by getting married, don't go all shortcutty, like "get divorced!" Parse out the itty-bitties, like "figure out how the hell to find a decent divorce lawyer"; "get lost on the way to the lawyer's office and stand on the side of the road weeping"; and "start working as the indentured servant of a bunch of sorority girls to pay the lawyer's retainer." Yeah, that kind of detail.
Making potential losses concrete like this helps you weigh current costs against the future ones. This, in turn, could help you admit that you and your not-entirely-beloved might have a real shot at happily ever after -- if only the one of you in the big white dress would bolt out the fire exit instead of walking down the aisle.
I'm a 32-year-old guy using dating apps. I was in a long-term relationship that ended badly, and I'm not ready for anything serious right now. I get that many women are ultimately looking for a relationship. I don't want to ghost them if they start getting attached, but saying from the get-go that I just want something casual seems rude and a bit presumptuous.
--Conflicted
Not everybody likes to spoon after sex. You like to slip out of the house without being noticed.
It isn't presumptuous to explain "from the get-go" that you aren't ready for anything serious; it's the right thing to do. Lay that out in your online profile (or at least in your first conversation) so women are clear that you're an aspiring sexfriend, not an aspiring boyfriend. Consider, however, that research by anthropologist John Marshall Townsend finds that even women who are sure that casual sex is all they're looking for can get clingy afterward -- to their great surprise. Townsend explains that women's emotions evolved to "act as an alarm system that urges women to test and evaluate investment and remedy deficiencies even when they try to be indifferent to investment."
Ghosting -- just disappearing on somebody you're dating, with no explanation -- is dignity-shredding. If a woman does end up wanting more than you can give, you need to do the adult thing and tell her you're ending it. Sure, that'll be seriously uncomfortable for both of you. But keep in mind that bad news is usually the road to recovery, while no news is the road to randomly running into a woman everywhere, including your shower.
My girlfriend of six years is breaking up with me. My question is: How do I let our friends and my family know? I'm thinking a mass email telling my side of the story. Then I wouldn't have to have the same conversation over and over with different people.
--Glum
Sending a mass email is a great way to get some piece of information out to everybody -- from your best friend to 1.4 million people on Twitter to three random drunk dudes who really shouldn't be on their phones at their boss's funeral in Estonia.
The ability we have online to dispense a little information to a whole lot of people, immediately, effortlessly, is about the coolest thing ever -- and the Frankenstein monster of our time. As I write in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," because all the groovy new digital tools are so fun and easy to use, we often "fall back on what's technically possible" as our behavioral standard. Our chimp-like impulse to just click already derails picky-wicky concerns we might otherwise have, such as "Hmm, wonder whether sending that might get me, oh, you know, fired, ostracized, and sleeping in a refrigerator box on the corner."
Consider that anything you email can be rapidly shared -- and shared and shared and shared. For example, novelist and professor Robert Olen Butler emailed five of his grad students the sad (and rather creepy) details of the demise of his marriage, asking them to "clarify the issues" for other students who wanted to know. The email quickly made the rounds in the literary world and ended up in The New York Times and on Gawker, where they "clarified" that his wife had left him to become one of four women in "Ted Turner's collection."
But even a less tawdry, less tycoon-filled breakup email may go more viral than one might like. Anthropologist Jerome Barkow, who studies gossip, explains that we evolved to be keenly interested in information that could have some bearing on our ability to survive, mate, and navigate socially. As Barkow puts it (and as is borne out by others' research), gossip about how soundly somebody's sleeping is unlikely to be as spreadworthy as whom they're sleeping with.
However, our propensity to spread gossip may be both the problem with emailing your news and the solution to getting it out there. Consider going old-school: Ask a few, um, chatty friends to put the word out to your circle, answer any questions people have, and let your wishes be known (like if you aren't ready to talk about it). All in all, you'll get the job done, but in a much more controlled, contained way -- one that reflects this bit of prudence from political writer Olivia Nuzzi: "Dance like no one is watching; email like it may one day be read aloud in a deposition."
I've been seeing this woman for two months. I really like her. She's made some mistakes -- two bad marriages, some promiscuity, running from debts -- but she's determined to change. My friends think she's bad news. But our relationship -- though mostly sexual so far -- has been terrific. Shouldn't my intuition count more than my friends' opinions?
--Fretting
When you're deciding how to invest your life savings, you probably don't say, "I'll just take a moment to ask my penis."
Well, your intuition is about as reliable a judge of your girlfriend's character. Intuitions (aka "gut feelings") are conclusions we leap to -- automatically, without the intervention of rational thought. Our mind flashes on this and that from our past experience, and up pops a feeling. The problem is, we're prone to overconfidence that our intuitions are correct -- mistaking strong feelings for informed feelings.
Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein find that certain people's intuitions are somewhat more likely to be trustworthy -- those who repeatedly encounter the same situation, like a surgeon who only does appendectomies. Her hunches about a patient's appendix are more informed because they come out of repeated experience and because she presumably gets corrective feedback when she guesses wrong (though, ideally, not from a monitor making that awful flatlining sound).
But Kahneman tells the McKinsey Quarterly, "My general view ... would be that you should not take your intuitions at face value." In fact, you need to go out of your way to look for evidence that your intuitions are wrong. In this case, it will take time and challenges to her character -- and your actually wanting to see whether she acts ethically or does what's easiest. In other words, your hunches can tell you things -- things that need a lot of post-hunch verification through applying higher reasoning (which, again, doesn't simply mean calling upon any organ that's higher than your knees).
February 7, 2017My girlfriend found a certain little blue pill in my jeans pocket, and her feelings were hurt. I explained that I'm as into her as ever; I just need a little extra help because I'm getting older. However, she's taking this personally. How do I reassure her?
--Rhymes With Niagara
Back in seventh grade, erections were easy to get -- especially when you were standing in front of the class giving your oral report on Harriet Tubman.
A penis is generally at its peppiest when a man's in his teens and 20s (before genes and/or years of bad living narrow the arteries from superhighways to single-file footpaths). That's because erections are blood flow-powered -- ultimately, anyway. They start in the brain in response to a thought or something from the environment -- like being touched or seeing the hot neighbor bending over in yoga pants.
Nitric oxide gets released and starts a chemical reaction that relaxes smooth muscle in the penis, allowing blood vessels to dilate: "Open up! Party time!" Then, sex researcher Dr. Robert Kolodny explains, "an increased amount of blood flows into the penis, where it is trapped in three spongy cylinders that run the length of the organ. The resulting fluid pressure is what causes the penis to increase in size ... and to become rigid."
There's an elastic fibrous membrane -- the tunica albuginea -- that keeps the blood in the penis. And this thing being leaky -- kind of like a submarine hatch with a bad seal -- is just one of the things (along with narrowed arteries, anxiety, endocrine problems, smoking, and diabetes, among others) that can cause a penis to stay floppy or get wilty.
Using a pharmaceutical erection helper is basically like calling in a plumber when the shower pressure isn't what it used to be. It doesn't make a man the least bit more attracted to a woman or more into sex than he'd otherwise be. It just relaxes the smooth muscle and increases blood flow, making the, um, cadet more likely to report for duty.
Explain all of this to your girlfriend. Then tell her how beautiful and sexy you find her, and tell her again. And keep telling her -- with regularity. Men don't quite understand how much this means to a woman. When a woman believes her man finds her attractive, it helps her feel loved and secure. That reassurance -- combined with being clued in on the mechanics of the manpart -- should help your girlfriend understand that there's no reason to take your pill popping personally. The pipes just need a little help; it isn't the penis version of "Groundhog Day" -- with the little feller peeking out, deciding the landscape is hopeless, and going back into hiding.
In "senior dating," how, and how soon, do you suggest I disclose my ED? I'm 77, and this woman I'm seeing is 60ish.
--Man Of Yore
When I was 13, I could read a book from across the room. These days, it's sometimes hard to make out the words on those ginormous highway signs unless I let my Leader Dog take the wheel.
Lucky for me, nobody snickers that I'm less of a woman because I have less-than-perfect eyesight. And it's pretty stupid that we attach that baggage to the aging penis. We don't expect a 1939 Studebaker to drive like a 2016 BMW. (And hey...where's the backup camera on this thing?!)
To say you aren't alone is something of an understatement. In reviewing survey data from men 75 or older, UCLA urology professor Christopher Saigal found that 77.5 percent reported experiencing some degree of erectile dysfunction -- the inability to "get and keep an erection adequate for satisfactory intercourse." And 47.5 percent have a complete inability to achieve liftoff. (P.S. This isn't exactly a secret to women who date 70-something men.)
Unfortunately, the reality for aging penises goes poorly with the ridiculous belief many people have that intercourse is the only "real" sex. However, sex therapist Dr. Marty Klein observes that ultimately, "what most people say they want from sex is some combination of pleasure and closeness." You can give that to a woman -- even if, at 77, everything on you is stiff but the one part you'd like to be.
That's what you need to convey. But don't sit there in the bright lights of the diner and be all, "Let's talk about my penis..." Wait till there's a makeout moment, and after you kiss a bit, pause the action. In telling her, consider that you set the tone for whether your situation is some shameful thing or "just one of those things." Humor tends to express the latter pretty well -- like "I have a pet name for my penis. It's Rip Van Winkle, because he's been out cold since the Bush administration."