For my New Year's resolution, I committed to not having sex for the first six months of the year and then another six months from whenever I start dating someone. I've never been good at waiting. In fact, the longest I have ever waited is a month and the shortest (and perhaps more typically) is a few hours. In early January, I met a guy, and I've been seeing him weekly, though I think I'm being friend-zoned. He is attracted to my polar opposite (short blondes) and has shown no sexual interest in me. Yet, we continue meeting up, and he even buys me dinner and drinks from time to time. Am I wasting my time, or is this how long-lasting, meaningful relationships start -- as friends first?
--Reformed But Confused
You could tell guys you require a lot of foreplay. Like from winter to the end of spring.
The third-date rule for having sex isn't set in stone, but most guys won't go for the 30-date rule, which means good men you want may take themselves out of the running. You also shouldn't strain your arm patting yourself on the back for sticking to your sexual famine edict thus far, considering that you've succeeded in not having sex with a guy who shows no interest in having sex with you. Chances are, this guy is just running low on the type he is into -- short blondes -- and realized he could treat you to meals or go alone and spend the evening making witty remarks to his dinner roll.
There actually are good reasons not to have sex right away, even for those of us who don't come from a culture where virgins get traded for a bolt of cloth and herd of goats. Research by anthropologist John Marshall Townsend suggests that even women with no interest in a relationship that lasts beyond sunup are often surprised to wake up finding themselves pining for more. This is possibly due to the effect of oxytocin, a hormone associated with emotional bonding that's released in men and women through hugs, cuddling, kissing, and especially orgasm. In males, however, sexual activity boosts testosterone, which plays the part of riot cop, refusing to let oxytocin up to its receptor. There's a dearth of studies on these hormones' effect on post-sex bonding, but experience should tell you that men who have sex before they have any emotional attachment tend to make like the Roadrunner shortly afterward (though usually without the "meep-meep!" and the Acme anvil falling on your head).
The answer isn't putting an arbitrary time lock on your ladygarden. Instead, try something new -- the grownup-wanting-a-relationship strategy: prioritizing long-term goals over short-term romps and assessing whether a man is right for you with the organ equipped with brain cells. You need to come up with standards for what you want in a partner and take time getting to know a man so you can see whether he meets the essential ones. You should also inventory all of his less-than-ideal qualities and see whether you can live with them. Do your homework figuring out who a man is and you'll find that you just know when it's the right time to have sex with him -- even without anybody holding Senate hearings on whether to restore visitor access to your vagina.
The girl I'm dating is pretty, funny, and exciting to hang out with, but I noticed that she always poses for photos EXACTLY the same way: left side to the camera, hand on hip, head slightly dipped, smiling slightly. On her Facebook page are dozens of photos like this, same smile, same pose. It seems to be incredibly shallow to need to stage every photo the same way. Should I see this as a red flag?
--The Boyfriend
The reality is, inner beauty alone usually isn't enough, which is why Estee Lauder got rich selling face cream and not books by Gandhi. Women, especially, are judged by their looks. Chances are, your girlfriend recognizes this, along with how indelible a photograph can be these days, in The Age of Uploading. The thing is, you can clean out your closet and burn shoeboxes of photos; it's harder to clean the Internet's closet of that shot that makes you look like you eat oats out of a bucket. In figuring out a photo face and sticking with it, your girlfriend has some company. (Google "people who make the same face in every picture.") As for whether you have anything to worry about -- from either shallowness or insecurity on her part -- look at the big picture: whether she shows an active interest in you and your welfare or whether she's too busy prepping a pose for the paparazzi waiting for her outside Pizza Hut.
My boyfriend of nine years is extremely messy, while I prefer things tidy and clean. Cajoling, asking, and flat-out begging him for consideration and help on this hasn't worked, nor have tactics like establishing certain areas for clutter. He contends I'm too picky about how he cleans. He says this started when we moved in together, eight years ago, and I rewashed dishes he'd washed. He says he then stopped trying to do much cleaning up and hoped I'd tire of doing everything myself and learn a lesson. I was shocked and hurt by this attitude, especially since he's otherwise a good and loving man who does many sweet things for me. Neither of us wants kids, and I love him dearly, so I'm contemplating something you've written about, being in a relationship but living separately. Could this possibly work after living together for so long?
--Worried
You just have different styles of mess management. You can't sleep if there's an unwashed glass in the sink. He likes to let housecleaning wait until it's a toss-up between tidying the place and trying to get away with arson.
Animals get it. The bunny does not shack up with the thing that tears small furry creatures apart with its teeth. And here we humans are, all top-of-the-food-chain snobby about our ability to reason. Yet no sooner do we fall in love than we start looking to sign a lease together, bright and optimistic about the dreamy home life the neat freak will have with the guy whose idea of housecleaning is picking up a 3-year-old magazine off the floor so he'll have a "plate" for his pizza.
Because you happen to care about what we generally value -- order over chaos -- you made the assumption that a devotion to neatitude is The One True Path and should be as important to him as it is to you. It just isn't. (Chances are, he doesn't even notice the messes.) Your distress at his passive-aggressive withdrawing of effort is understandable -- as is his feeling that if he can't tidy up right, why bother tidying up at all? The thing is, people will often support their partner in goals they find meaningless or even dopey, but not when their ego is under attack -- verbally or in the form of dish-rewashing. When a person realizes their partner doesn't respect them, they tend to take one of two paths: chasing that person's approval or retiring from seeking it.
Still, in the moments you aren't running after your boyfriend with a wheelbarrow and a broom, you love the guy and he loves you, and you seem to have something together. You do need to repair the hard feelings between you, starting by admitting that you were both expecting the impossible in trying to live together. Next, pledge to discuss things that bother each of you instead of silently seething about them -- for, oh, eight years. And yes, probably the best way for you to stay together is to live apart. After years of living together, it's easy to see this as a failure. It's actually anything but. You're just making your relationship love-centered by removing all the subjects that cause perpetual disagreement -- like why anyone would waste time cleaning until whatever's growing on the coffee table starts hissing at you when you reach for the remote.
I had to leave town when prospective buyers were coming to see a used water pump I was selling. My wonderful wife cheerfully agreed to sell it for me. I showed her exactly the parts that went with it. A guy bought the pump, but I saw that an extra box of parts, worth about $100, was also gone. Do I ask my wife where it went? Can I forgive her without an apology?
--Annoyed
Prepare to get laughed out of marriage counseling after you grumble to the therapist that what's missing from your marriage is $100 worth of junk from the garage. Tempting as it must be to spend the weekend waterboarding your wife for answers, a wiser approach when somebody tries to do something nice for you is to reward their intentions, even when the outcome is less than ideal. Your wife's intention -- to help you by standing in for you -- tells you she's a loving partner. The outcome -- an extra box of parts apparently growing legs and sneaking off into the buyer's car -- tells you she may not be the shrewdest salesperson and maybe takes too kindly a view of human nature. Sadly, all relationships come with trade-offs. You have a decision to make -- whether to settle for cheery wonderfulness or dump your wife for a woman who can help you open a used-car lot or get rich swindling the elderly by telephone.
My boyfriend works at a hardware store and can fix things, and in the past six months, his sister and her husband have asked him to install their new kitchen faucet, mend their fence (with the husband's help), and assemble a lawnmower. They are lawyers and could afford a handyman. Instead, they feed him a crappy $15 meal, despite knowing that we struggle to make ends meet. They do invite us to dinner parties, and he lived at their house rent-free for six months when he moved here for college. He generally isn't a pushover but says, "You're always supposed to help family." I also think he enjoys helping them, but when your family has far more money than you, shouldn't they be helping themselves? When I bring up their taking advantage of him, it always causes a fight because he won't see my point of view.
--Frustrated
When you're invited to somebody's home for dinner, good manners dictate that you bring something, but maybe a bottle of wine or a pie, not a shovel so you can dig the hole for their new septic tank: "Dinner will be served after a little light plumbing."
The way you see it, unless a person's relative is Jimmy Carter, he shouldn't be inviting them over for an afternoon of home improvement. Well, that's how it works in your boyfriend's family culture. Their way isn't wrong; it's just different from your way. But perhaps because you're focused on the tumbleweed blowing through your bank account, you're succumbing to "confirmation bias," our tendency to cling to information that confirms our beliefs and shove aside information that doesn't, like how these two previously "exploited" your boyfriend by letting him live rent-free at their place for six months. Chances are, this has more than paid for his occasional handymanning. And while he's got a way with a screwdriver, I would guess that if he had a legal issue, sis would help him and follow up with a hug instead of a bill with a threat to ruin his credit if he doesn't pay within seven days.
The issue you should be worried about is tucked in at the end of your letter. It's your style of conflict resolution, which appears to be, "There are two ways to see an issue, my way or my way." This is a viable strategy if you've just mounted a successful military coup on a small Central American nation. It's far less effective when you're in a relationship with a man who is able to open doors and walk through them carrying boxes of his stuff.
Every relationship comes with unsolvable problems. Identifying this as one of them should help you stop badgering your boyfriend to change, which will only change your feelings for each other from loving to resentful. You should also figure out the fears behind your stance. (Money worries? The worry that "family first" means he won't be there for you?) Telling him your fears will allow him to listen and reassure you in a way he can't when you're nagging him to stop being there for people who matter to him. Ironically, evoking his sympathy is also the one way you might get him to stop automatically saying yes to "We'd love to see you, little brother!" and then the inevitable Part B: "...because the washing machine is making this sound like people being tortured in hell."
I've been seeing this fantastic guy, "Eric," for three months, and we're starting to feel like a couple. But a year ago, before we met, I made out with a friend of his at a party. I don't want Eric to find out and think I hid anything from him. How should I go about telling him?
--Uncomfortable
What barely happened in Vegas should also stay in Vegas. Yes, you and your boyfriend's friend had that special sort of attraction that leads two people to leave a party and never bother seeing each other again. Assuming there's no danger you'd run off with his friend, running off at the mouth would just give your boyfriend an icky visual to replay in his head and probably an icky feeling to go with it whenever you and his friend are in the same room. It's also unlikely that anybody would disclose this to your boyfriend, and even if they did, what would you be guilty of, pre-cheating on him? ("A year ago, my third eye was acting up, and I failed to foresee meeting you before I got a little drunk and made out with somebody you knew.") In general, it's best to avoid offering anyone details from your sex life unless they are your gynecologist or could catch something from you that would lead to a visit from a guy in a beekeeper suit from the CDC.
Are guys scared of politically active women? My boyfriend of two months just broke up with me over my support for animal rights, and I've generally had difficulty keeping boyfriends because of this. This boyfriend was bothered by two incidents. In the first, I got into an argument about zoos with one of his friends at a party. Another time, we were driving alongside a car with a pro-hunting bumper sticker, and I rolled down my window and shouted something to the driver. I'm trying to do good -- protect creatures without a voice. Does that mean I don't deserve a boyfriend?
--Yes, I Stand For Something
Men tend to like it when a woman screams passionately, but it's less sexy if what she's screaming is "McDonald's is murder!"
But, wait -- you're trying to do some good; don't you "deserve" a boyfriend? You, like the rest of us, deserve not to be run over by a truck. The Declaration of Independence also spells out that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" stuff we're all supposed to get. That's right; you have a right to chase happiness. It doesn't get delivered to your door. ("Sign here, please.") And the reality is, every requirement you have for a boyfriend and every, well, nonstandard practice you have (like Wicca, being a serious Civil War re-enactor, or a hobby of throwing fake blood on people in fur) narrows your options. The size of a person's dating pool is determined by their level of hotitude factored with how hard they are to be around. (An annoying 9 might still have many romantic opportunities, though with limited staying power.)
And just a guess, but for at least some of these guys who dumped you, maybe the problem wasn't so much your support of animal rights as it was your lack of boundaries in expressing it. Even a guy who's with you in principle on sticking up for Bambi and the lab rats might not be comfortable with your transforming every social gathering into an animal rights protest rally. Also, consider that there's a difference between speaking your mind and yelling it out the window at someone who has announced in writing on their vehicle that they are likely armed.
In other words, you can refuse to ever bend your principles, or you can have a man in your life. This isn't to say you have to start wearing snow leopard legwarmers and eating baby seal McNuggets; you probably just need to divide the world into political and social forums. Social forums would be reserved for pleasant cocktail party conversation -- even if a guy is gnawing meat off a skewer and you long more than anything to stick him in the eye with it and say, "See how you like it!"
When you start dating somebody new, ask him what his comfort zone is regarding your activism, and either respect the boundaries he needs or be honest if you can't or won't. If you come to see a relationship as a party of two, each of whose needs matter, there's a good chance you'll find a guy who'll at least be there to bail you out of jail -- maybe for years to come -- until you two finally retire to the country to run a lentil rescue. (Some say they scream when you drop 'em in boiling water.)
I'm dating a guy who's in the neighborhood of perfect. The problem is his nose. He picks it. Semi-frequently. He isn't doing major digging, just more inner nostril scraping than I'm comfortable with. I don't want to tell him he's grossing me out, but I also can't deal with witnessing regular daily nose-picking.
--Yuck
If you're inspired to buy something for your new boyfriend to wear, it should be a sweater that shows off his broad shoulders, not a nose guard to keep his finger from scampering up to Booger Hollow. If his excavations aren't largely absent-minded, chances are he has some rationalization, like that it doesn't count as nose-picking unless it involves more than a half-inch of finger. Well, it counts for you, and you need to let him know. To send the message with a minimum of humiliation, wait till you catch him in action, and use a light touch: "Checking that nobody's made off with your sinuses?" or "Do you store passwords up there?" This should be one of those cases in which a guy is quick to take the hint -- lest you be too grossed out to have sex with him. Sure, when you're dating somebody, you want to know what's going on in their head, but you really don't want to see them up there rooting around for it.
On a business trip, I drank WAY too much with some work friends and ended up kissing a random girl I met at a bar, despite my having a girlfriend I love very much. I feel horrible. Until now, I'd never cheated on a woman. Is it crazy to want to tell my girlfriend? It was kissing only, and I never saw the girl again. Plus, I barely remember it. I am planning on proposing soon and don't want us to have any secrets.
--Ashamed
Honesty is not the best policy. Judicious honesty is. That's the kind of honesty that keeps you from telling your girlfriend that her mom is a shrill harpy, her best friend has amazing boobs, and you actually haven't stopped peeing in the shower.
Getting away with something might feel good in the moment, but in time, it goes over like itchy underwear. Ruining the drunken make-out fun is one of the evolutionary underpinnings of human society, our evolved fairness-monitoring system that made it possible for us to live cooperatively in groups. This system is basically an internal accounting department, tracking who owes what to whom and using our emotions as the enforcer. When somebody's chumping us, say, by not putting in their fair share of work, we're goaded into getting mad (and then getting things even). Conversely, we feel guilty and long to right the balance when we're the one breaking some agreement (like by treating monogamy as if it comes with days off for national holidays and photocopier sales expos).
But is letting your girlfriend in on your lips' browser history the right thing to do? Maybe; maybe not. Chances are, you tell yourself that you'd be confessing for your girlfriend's benefit, that she deserves to know. Well, maybe she deserves to not know. Maybe what's really driving your desire to confess is the weight on your conscience and how telling will lessen your load. Sorry -- you did the making out; maybe you should be hauling around the unsettling feeling about it. (Think of it as your pet anvil.)
What should determine whether you tell your girlfriend is why you kissed the girl and whether the past is a harbinger of what's to come. If you're a bad bet for remaining faithful, disclose this so your girlfriend can decide whether it's worth it to her to put herself in harm's way. If, however, this was a drunken one-time thing, why cause her unnecessary worry and pain? Keep your big wandering yap shut and lighten your guiltload by doing what you would've if you had told her -- making amends. Do kind acts for people in need and basically be a fantastic boyfriend to her. (Be careful not to go noticeably overboard. A dozen roses on some random Tuesday is "Oh, you shouldn't have"; 100 is "Wait...what the hell did you do?")
And finally, to ensure that this remains a one-time event, come up with some standards of bar-time engagement for yourself, like maybe that you need to switch to Shirley Temples after two beers. This way, you'll be prepared to act like somebody's boyfriend when temptation sidles up to you at the bar. (There's a reason they call it "sloppy drunk" and not "making wise relationship decisions" drunk.)
I just started dating a sweet guy who loves taking me to nice restaurants. (He knows I can't afford restaurants, because I'm in grad school.) Well, he's not rich, either, but when the waiter pushes sparkling water, he always says yes, and the same goes for cappuccinos, desserts, side dishes -- all the extras. It's lovely enough that he treats me to dinner; I don't want him to go broke doing it.
--Frugal
A guy on a date is in a tough position when the waiter comes over and essentially asks, "Can I offer you some sparkling water this evening, or will you be drinking out of the faucet like a dog?"
Sometimes a guy will say yes to all the extras because he is a foodie and likes to have the deluxe experience. But the average guy is just afraid of coming off cheap, making him easy prey for every waiter upsell in the book. The woman he's with can counter this by being the one to lead with the frugalities, like "Tap water works fine for me!" and "I actually don't eat that much...I'll just have the entree," when the waiter pushes the caviar-dotted baby vegetables watered with the tears of Tibetan monks. If you do this, you'll reassure the guy that he's the big draw for you and not the free dinners -- perhaps allowing him to devote his attention to you instead of checking his phone to see whether the bank has cleared the security deposit for your desserts.
