Expiration Dating
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.
Definitely recommending to put something on the profile.
Some women are just into casual stuff too. Some are into something longer term. But you *really* want to let women who are into the longer term stuff know to avoid you.
Will it mean that you'll get fewer responses? Sure. But that means you're not getting responses who will walk out on the first date after you tell them it's just casual, or get really pissed off because they learn you only want something casual after they've gotten emotionally involved.
Lia at February 22, 2017 1:00 PM
Some women will also be relieved! It's amazing how many men hit online dating assuming all girls are into Deep Meaningful Stuff. A friend of mine who is largely gay but likes to fool around with guys occasionally had a very blunt ad on OKCupid explaining that she's a lesbian, she has a girlfriend, she even has a preferred "every so often" dude, but she wouldn't mind meeting the occasional casual guy for no-strings-attached fun.
She was telling me about this and about how weird it is that so many straight men seemed to take this as code for "I am looking for a serious emotional entanglement." She pulled out her phone to show me and shrieked. She'd just gotten a message from a guy saying he was looking for the perfect woman to lose his virginity to, and become her slave. To which all one can say is, dude. Just . . . dude.
Anathema at February 22, 2017 1:12 PM
I think any woman on the hut is gonna at some point run into a dude with a slave fetish.
Nicolek at February 28, 2017 1:52 PM
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