Nobody should have to feel whether it's from their own pressure or another persons that they have to secure further interest and dates with sex. That's frickin outrageous! They're just not that special!

While reading yet more tales of They Bailed / Started Pulling The Slow Fade After I Said I Wanted To Take My Time Before Sleeping With Him/Her, it occurred to me that the type of person who goes from super-interested to crickets / unable to be pinned down to a date and time for the next get-together, is someone who carries on as if getting to know someone is a commitment in itself. What the what now?

It’s the idea that they’re so busy and so not wanting to ‘waste’ any ‘unnecessary’ time that they’d rather just speed up the audition for the non-existent relationship part. And it is non-existent because the type of person who will fade out because you’re not ready to start being sexually intimate isn’t truly looking to get to know you and isn’t looking to have a relationship, after all, if it’s that easy to be written off, they were never in it anyway. They also lack patience.

Sex isn’t an automatic precursor to a relationship although some people will dangle the possibility of it so that they can get what they want in the present – Future Faking.

Some people think that they are getting to know you by having sex with you when actually, they’re just having sex. You could never expect to have a stable and mutual relationship with someone who actually thinks that what they know about your character can be gauged from giving you a good ‘seeing to’. I mean seriously, what does a vagina or penis say about someone? In fact they don’t say anything and they’re not good judges of character. Just asked someone who is ‘hooked’ on the sexual connection with somebody who needs a character transplant!

Now I’m not denying that some people hold out the sex to leverage a relationship, but actually, lots of people don’t. When someone is short-sighted enough to lose their dating mojo because you’re not sleeping with them, they’re assuming that you already want a relationship with them. Now you might do, but actually, you’re probably not in a position (excuse the pun) to decide at that point.

Dating is a discovery phase – you might discover on a few more dates that you don’t want to proceed. And you know what? I’m going to say it: I suspect that in some cases it’s the fact that you might get to know them further and not want to proceed why they try to push the sex issue earlier on.

While thinking about this earlier, I started laughing because I realised that it reminded me of when you put down a deposit in order to secure something, like at DFS, a sofa company in the UK that seem to have a permanent ‘half price sale’ which means that the sofas are not actually the full price, or when you put a deposit down and then spread the payments out over a set period.

A lot of people have sex even if they would rather wait a while because they think that they’re ‘putting a deposit’ down on a relationship and even doing a show of faith, like “OK, you want sex and I want to show you that I like you so that you can relax and get to know me” – er, OK. They think that if they don’t put it down now, that someone else will snag this relationship that’s ‘on offer’. The reality is that it’s more like someone will snag the sex that’s on offer.

If you fall into this trap, you likely end up feeling robbed or at the very least a little compromised because for a lot of people, sex either means something or at the very least leaves you feeling a bit vulnerable afterwards. That, and you may also have fallen into the trap of assuming that you were at least assured of a good shot or even a guarantee of a relationship.

Dating is a discovery phase that requires effort and that in itself can act as a ‘deposit’ if and when you decide to progress it to a relationship in the future.

If you don’t put anything in, you don’t get anything out of it. If you put a little in and then carry on like you’re owed, it sours the interaction. I’m not buying all of this time poor bullshit because it says a lot about where we’re headed with dating that some people are so afraid of effort and being vulnerable that they expect a ‘return on investment’ from just going on a few dates.

It’s just a date. Since when did people become so tight with their time and effort?

It’s like “I’m on the clock here! We’ve had three dates and if I don’t get my ‘medicine’, I’m gonna start to feel like I’m wasting my time here!” And don’t fall for the “We’re both grownups” ploy because if that were the case, they’d be allowing things to proceed organically instead of calling last orders for sex.

We’ve got to lose this idea that a relationship is ‘on offer’ and that we’re competing for a part that if we don’t pony up the sexual goods upfront, they’ll choose someone else that will and give away this relationship that in spite of the fact that we may 1) hardly know them or 2) already have seen signs that they’re not for us, we seem to be hankering for.

Nobody should feel, whether it’s from their own pressure or another persons, that they have to secure further interest and dates with sex. That’s frickin outrageous! They’re just not that special!

Hard as it is to hear, don’t go down the convincing and negotiating route. Don’t justify. They’ve let their position be known as have you (I doubt these ones are in the Karmasutra….) and if you not wanting to sleep with them yet is going to scare them off, then let ’em be scared off. If the subject comes up, keep it light and breezy and move the conversation on. Let the dates be in neutral places and certainly don’t go back to one another’s places on early dates. Be cool, calm and confident and don’t go “Oh OK then” and cough up the sex when you think that they’re fading.

Remember: You’ve done nothing wrong.

*There are people out there who don’t need a sex deposit in order to continue dating you and yes it might take you dating several people before you meet one. Those are the people who at the very least share similar sexual values to you and are a bit more ‘big picture’. Some people will bring up sex but will respect your wishes. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to wind up in a relationship with them but at least on that front they’ve respected your position. For the rest of them, just keep flushing, just keep flushing.

*Note, you will meet more bailers and faders if you’re dating online. Hide of rhino needed and Columbo skills. Basically keep your feelings and imagination in check with someone who you’ve met on a dating site until you’ve had enough ‘real life’ experience of them and steer clear of anything that has a short sign up process / hook-up feel.

Your thoughts?

Updated 29th October: An audio version of this post is now available on Soundcloud.

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