6. Stop trying to teach old dogs new tricks. Trust me, you haven’t got time to revolutionise the wheel.
No matter which way you look at it, everything finds its way back to boundaries and values and part of getting to a better place in life both on a personal basis with your self-esteem and also in your relationships, is learning to accept people and their values for what they are so that you can work out if this is something that’s worthwhile continuing to spend energy on. Even when someone’s values are shady and you know better, this doesn’t give you the right to expect them to take on your values. You need to know your limits, be able to recognise when you feel good or bad, and don’t coast on other peoples values or try to enforce change.
If you have to school them on how not to behave like a dog in heat and treat you with respect, you’re setting yourself up for pain. It’s important to stop trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole.
When you’re with a guy that values getting laid as often as possible by as many different people as possible, why embark on Mission Impossible and seek the ultimate validation of trying to get him to only sleep with you?
Is a man more special and of greater value because he used to want to shag around with a lot of people but eventually with a lot of persuasion, he’s agreed to change his ways?
When you’re with someone who says ‘Yes, I want to be with you but I believe in open relationships or regular threesomes’ – if you don’t believe in it and it goes against your value system, why stay?
When you’re with someone who treats you like an inanimate object, dry humping you without thought for your sexual needs, touching you without care, riding you like a pony that they don’t care about, or using you as someone to practice their sexual dark side with, they’re telling you a lot about how they feel about you, especially when you factor it into the context of how poorly the relationship is working or how bad you feel about yourself.
As women we have to stop playing the teacher, the fixer/healer/helper and recognise that when we have to teach someone basic skills to value us and treat us with care sexually, it’s a rocky foundation to set the relationship on as you start out on the premise of being devalued and have to seek validation.
If someone consistently treats you like a piece of meat and contextually, when you factor the sex into the bigger picture of the relationship, your needs are failing to be met and your living outside of your values, you’re wasting time that you don’t have.
7. You have to stop chasing the ‘feeling’ created by sex and stop living in the moment or clinging to ‘moments’.
I get it, sex feels good and even when someone isn’t up too much in other departments, it’s easy to convince ourselves that because we feel so good during sex that you just need to extend that feeling for longer periods of time and across your relationship.
Unfortunately the very premise of things being focused on sex is very short term thinking.
When you’re with a guy who enjoys ‘hooking up’ with you, he’s thinking about now and getting his needs met, and not living beyond that moment. He assumes that because his needs are met, he’s living in the moment and he’s showing you who he is irrespective of anything coming out of his mouth that not only are you living in the moment too, but that you know the deal and you’re OK with it.
He’s very ‘of the moment’ reaping the short-term benefits but leaving you with at best, a medium-term hangover. He doesn’t think about the consequences and to be fair, neither do you. It’s time to pause for thought and think beyond the now or the short-term because one of you has to and you are the only person responsible for you and living out your values.
It’s not thinking beyond these ‘feelings’ and the ‘moment’ that is a sexual pitfall for you and these guys are relying on this thinking, your libido, and your confusion about emotions and sex and reaping the benefits – they exploit the opportunity.
There will always be sexually opportunistic people but you do not have to provide the opportunity.
If only some of you really thought about things, put aside the sexual feelings, put your feet in reality, removed the fur coat of denial, and the rose tinted glasses, you’d think ‘Woah…hold on a flipping second! Haven’t we been here before? I know the pattern – no good will come of this. I feel good now and crap later.’
For the average woman that loves a Mr Unavailable or an assclown or keeps going back to the scene of the crime, a lot of it is about recreating a feeling no matter how long ago that feeling was experienced or how much pain is experienced in between.Sex does and can feel good but the way sex makes you feel is not something that’s sustainable all day, week, month, year long.
Remember sexual communication is not emotional communication and it’s important to distinguish the two because if you don’t, you’ll continuously disappoint yourself trying to translate sex into emotions.
Be careful of dangerous optimism where you cloud out the reality and entirety of the person because you’re opting to focus on the feeling or the nostalgia you feel for the ‘moments’.
There is a difference between feeling good sexually and feeling good emotionally and it is easy to kid yourself with your vagina and your over active imagination that the feelings created by sex or the supposed attraction and chemistry you feel, can correlate to the rest of the relationship. Trust me, in fact, trust yourself and your past experience – they can’t.
8. You decide your value, not ‘them’, so if you don’t want sex to be the focus, don’t allow it to be the focus.
I hear from women who don’t understand why they are involved with insubstantial men who are only interested in getting laid, the size of their breasts, weight, age etc. A bit of digging and more often than not, these same women really place a high value on appearance and their sexuality and it’s what they lead with and look for in other people. If you want to be valued for more than sex, you must value more than sex and value your own qualities, characteristics, and values that add the real substance to a relationship.
You will come across conflicted if you’re sex focused yet complaining about not being respected or valued for your more substantial qualities. You’re also double standarding…yourself.
If you spend most of your time having sex with someone or talking about it or arranging it, trust me when I say that they’re in no danger of finding out very much about you and the character you want them to value so much. If sex dominates, let’s say 90% of your interaction, it’s safe to say it’s sexually based.
You’re not having sex in isolation – you’re contributing to it too so there’s no point steering the ship into the sex seas and then wondering why it’s still floating there instead of in relationship waters.
If you trade on your looks and sex appeal you communicate that these are the two prime things that you value and you will inadvertently (and at times consciously) draw in superficial people. Much like how we correlate common interests to the whole person and assume things about them, we assume that someone that possesses the appearance and sexual qualities that we value in ourselves will be a person that we love and will love us back, but that’s giving too much credit to two things that don’t determine compatibility.
On the flipside, just because someone does seem to only value the sex or the sexuality, this doesn’t mean that this is what your value is. This is why it’s important for you to know your value rather than you effectively going up and down in the ‘value markets’ depending on who you’re involved with and how they treat you.
If that someone’s mindset is sexually focused, it’s what they value and until they shift that perspective, you could substitute you with another woman, and it’s still what they’d value. Yes it’s personal but the best way not to let yourself take it too personal is not to stick around trying to make them value you in a different way.
If you value substance and they value superficial stuff, then you know already that you do not share a similar value system. This is OK – it leaves you free to move on.
9. Do not justify, do not explain.
One of the last guys I dated had the displeasure of hearing me say ‘I’ll be damned if I’m going to explain or justify myself as to why I don’t want to sleep with you’. Saying ‘NO’ is more than enough.
Any decent guy, even if he’s got a hard-on big enough to poke your eye out, will respect your position without creating an expectation of an explanation.
Society seems to have taught us that we have to be near apologetic when we don’t want to get down on the first date or sleep with someone just because they want to even if we don’t. We feel sorry that we’re not ready, that we feel uneasy, or we just don’t bloody well feel like it, and then we go against that feeling to ‘please them’ and devalue ourselves in the process.
Stop explaining why you don’t want to have sex – who are you trying to convince? Them, or you. Get behind your own convictions and sexual values.
You’ve got to stop feeling like not wanting to shag somebody you hardly know warrants a major explanation because by explaining, you are potentially opening up a dialogue, when you could decline, move on, and have your boundary set. If you keep explaining and discussing, you have Women Who Talk and Think Too Much.
10. Make sure how you see sex is how they see sex – shared sexual values.
If you see sex as an intimate act between two people in a relationship or moving towards a relationship, do not assume that the other person shares the same beliefs without sanity checking yourself. Why do I suggest that you check with yourself?
Anybody can say anything that they want to but if you listen to yourself and are aware of their actions and how you feel, you can take some first steps to recognising whether you’re with someone who you share common sexual values with.
How do they talk about you? How do they talk about women? Their exes? Are they making sexual comments about stuff that if it happened you’d be uncomfortable with? How comfortable are you?
The biggest test: If you have a pattern of being involved in casual relationships or with assclowns and Mr Unavailables – how much of what you are feeling is familiar?
Whatever feels familiar, examine it and take it as a warning signal that you may be inadvertently slipping into your regular pattern.
How you think, feel, and act is not how they think, feel, and act, and when you make blind assumptions without assessing the true situation and the true person. You cannot do this if you’re assuming and correlating stuff based on how you think and see things.
Once you’ve checked with yourself, also don’t be afraid to ask the questions that you need to in order for you to feel comfortable about whether you are genuinely sharing common sexual ground.
Your thoughts?
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Another fabulous post Nat………..this stuff should be taught to young girls (and boys, before they turn into AC’s) in school.
I agree, and it needs to be taught BEFORE high school, shoot, maybe in the 7th grade. High School was when I became…well, yeah. We’ll leave it at that.
“There is a difference between feeling good sexually and feeling good emotionally.”
Priceless N! I longer no settle for sex when I know I deserve and want to be loved. Not getting a lot of sex nowadays, but after the nut then what?? I’m just so tired of this same sh*t different guy. Doesn’t matter whether the r lasts 2 months or 8 years. No common values= no meaningful connection. Thank You!!!!!!!
You’re right Isis No common values = No meaningful connection
Thank you for reminding me.
Wow. This is GREAT. 🙂 Thanks for reminding me of the fact that “No” is my favorite word. I used to be one of those who explained and justified everything. It’s a hard habit to break, I’ll admit, and I’m still working on it. But it gets easier every day.
(I know a woman who embodies every single pitfall in this series. She’s too far gone though, so she wouldn’t listen to or understand ANYTHING on this blog. What a shame. Oh well, not everyone wants to be saved.)
Great post NML, my Dad who was an assclown, taught this girl well. Granted sometimes I feel like the lone ranger, however how I feel about myself has helped me stand my ground, even in just personal friendships.
i do agree this should be taught and i have often said that
its common sense but at the same time women put it under somewhere and lose it, only to find it after its too late
great post and very true. i agree while it is important to know your values it is even more important to enforce them. i have been in that place many times where what i wanted or needed wasn’t being met and it always frustrated me and i blamed their lack of a, b, or c for the problems we had. and i was actually communicating the exact opposite about myself than was intended to the guy by letting them get away with atrocious and presumptuous behavior regarding sex.
a hard on big enough to poke your eye out LMAO good one, good post..another winner NML
I’ve found myself in an interesting situation….. I’ve been dating a guy for 3 months, and we had the relationship discussion over the weekend. He stated clearly he would like to be in a relationship with me, however he would like it to be an open relationship. Open meaning; we are both able to see other people on a physical level. This wasn’t a big surprise to me and it doesn’t actually contradict my values, however I’ve never done this before and I’m unsure what questions I should be asking and what boundaries need to be place for something like this work. I haven’t agreed to anything, as i need thinking time, but I believe this person has integrity and is being very honest about what he can give me. I feel respected and valued while with him, and I’m confident and secure about myself, is this enough to enter into such an arrangement?? any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Don’t you want a man who would never want you to sleep with someone else because it would drive him crazy?! I couldn’t imagine having this arrangement. Let alone trying to build a relationship with somebody who I would wonder if he met someone or slept with someone any moment he was not with me. Sorry this would be a deal breaker and I think you will be headed for heartbreak if you get more attached and then he decided to sleep with someone else. If you love someone then I would not want to share and they would not want to share you.
Don’t think about what he wants. He’ll do what’s best for him. You have to do what’s best for you. What do you really want? How do you feel about being in a relationship where he can sleep with you — and with any other woman he wants? And you’re free to sleep with any man you want. Suppose he said that he didn’t want an open relationship. Would you still want an open relationship then? Are you looking at an open relationship as a permanent lifestyle, or as something you might like to try for a time?
@Ninja Girl, think of this three months down the line when he’s coming back to you the day after he’s just had someone else…will you truly be ok with it? Think of the differences in this as an idea and the practical pain it might cause you. Then decide if this is him respecting you and you respecting yourself. I may be wrong but I think this guy has a big piece of cake, he wants to eat it and he want’s to keep it. Take care of yourself at all times.
Ninja girl,
you’re on dangerous ground, and the fact you feel hat you need to ask what other people think should be a warning sign to you that you feel good reason to be uncomfortable with this.
As someone just said, would you be thinking of proposing this kind of relationship with him if he hadn’t been the one to bring it up? Doesn’t sound like it.
Are you both going to sleep with other people, or just him? Are you going to go out looking for people to sleep with just to keep up “you end” of the arrangement. What’ll it be like if he is sleeping with a few other people and you are not? Are these other people going to be okay with it all? Will they be told the truth? What if someone gets pregnant? What if he brings you a unwanted “gift”? (STDs?) What you going to feel like knowing when he gets out of your bed he’s headed for someone else’s later that day? Is he going to shower in between beds (??!!)
In short: this is a recipe for disaster. Why on earth would any man think this is a good idea for any woman? Why would any man think you are the woman who would be okay with this? Maybe you should ask him what it is about you that makes him think you’d be fine with some crap arrangement like this (quoting NML)
This man doesn’t give a fig about anyone else but himself or he wouldn’t be suggesting you join the queue of women hanging around so that he can take his pick from the line-up whenever it suits him. Talk about a right bloody cheek. Tell him to get lost.
That’s my advice, for what it’s worth.
P.S. Ninja girl.
The long and short of it is he is asking you if you’d be alright being one of his booty calls.
Maybe stop making excuse for him? He is open and honest… and respectful…?? doesn’t sound very respectful to me… forget all what he “seems” and “sounds like” and focus on what he is asking of you and that he thinks this is good enough for you.
I agree with Fearless on this one. You are making a lot of excuses for a man that you need to ask us about in the first place. If you were truly comfortable you would not being feeling, well, uncertain.
Walk away from this dude, he does not seem very respectful.
you may be confident and sure of yourself now, I’m doubtful you would be after a few months of this “arrangement” he has come up with.
Next he’ll be asking you for threesomes, orgies, etc.
Call me oldfashioned, but that is not the kind of girl he (or any man) thinks of marrying.
Hi all. I am sooooo grateful for this website. I use to feel so alone and confused! Since finding this website I realize that I am not alone is my journey to loving myself and letting go of ACs. It’s funny how many songs are playing on the radio that basically encourage us to stay stuck and put up with these EU ACs! I laugh now and shake my head when I hear them because I am beyond that now. Whenever I feel myself backsliding, I log on and read a post. Again thank you my sisters who I’ve never met. I feel close to every one of you having lived most of what you are posting. Be well and continue loving yourselves!
‘Whenever I feel myself backsliding, I log on and read a post.’
Yes this is the beauty of this site , it speaks to something within us that we know is true, yet contradicts so many things we have been taught – either by society or the EUM. My personal problem was being brought up with the’ turn the other cheek / WWJD philosophy,’ which allowed me to have endless patience with a needy, all take and no give EUM.
I find it so helpful to remember how bad I felt when the EUM was a part of my life as, in my naivety, I was waiting for him and the situation to miraculously get better.
I am getting to be at peace with the fact that you cannot have a healthy relationship with a person who wants or prefers to be ill, If they are not aware or willing to work on their deficiencies there is no shame in walking away from finding yourself a nurse or caretaker in someone’s unstable life.
I have a 90 day warranty… I don’t have sex with a guy until he passes 90 days of us getting to know each other. Plus this also puts my feelings in check. It states “to me”, “Sherry, is this an infatuation? or is this because you haven’t had sex for an eternity and you just want to get laid and you want to know if you can and still know how to do it? 🙂 Or this is going down the road to something more substantial… like love?” It works for me, the only downside is that lately, I haven’t had sex. LOL But, it does set my boundaries and it gives me time to see if this guy is someone I want to go down the road that I’ve been looking for. It gives me the chance and time to know if me and the guy I’m dating share the same values or if he has any values at all. It also shows self-respect, that I’m not just one of his “shags” or someone he puts a knotch on his post with my name on it.
Sherry
Great post! The value issue seems to be what gets in the way of serial ‘victims’ of assclowns. I met someone a few months ago, everything felt great, except that at some point I had to use his laptop to make a restaurant reservation and then poof, a pop-up of an adult dating site appeared on the screen… his login id registered and all and all… so I tested, thinking well maybe now that he has me he doesnt go there anymore…pfff. A couple of days later, I created a fake account on that website and invited him for a hot and steamy encounter on Thursday night. *note Thursday night was when we were supposed to go to the restaurant I had reserved. To my surprise, or not so much he accepted and a couple of minutes later called me (the original me) to cancel the date because he had to work late! Lol…. so he went to the ‘date’ and of course fake me wasnt there. Im cured! I hope.
oh this is funny, and sad, and funny, and sad, clever you : -))
Some might argue… how awful that you did not trust you man, boo hooo..
but, nobody keeps a log on annoying pop up unless it is something they are actively using …so I’d say that when presented with a big red flag, you trusted your gut more than him, and then acted on it, instead of shifting to fantasy excuses for the guy
and I think thats exactly what NML is preaching here
thanks for the laugh !
Agina–
I am so impressed! WOW!
Yes, I know, bad girl, I did have a pang of guilt when I did that… but that faded fast. You see, the dating site pop up wasnt a ‘meet your soul-mate’ site, it was an adult sex dating site… that wasnt a red flag but a deep purple banner!
He called several times to go out again but I am now not only ‘working late hours’ but having to travel a lot, or whatever comes to mind, I have made it clear that I am unavailable 🙂
I have put myself in soooo many lousy situations in the past, well today, none of that, instead, i chose situations that HONOR me.
Agina,
That is such a cool story. You were so smart. Good for you.
Id on’t know why my original comment (that I was impressed) did not go through, but I also wanted to add, now, that you should NOT feel guilty. Why? Especially when this guy didn’t feel guilty about cancelling plans that you clearly took a lot of time to make! Lucky escape! He’d rather be witha “virtual” woman than a real one! CRAZY! SICK, too!
Oh that is pure gold! Good on you! I don’t see any reason to be guilty for following your instincts when the opportunity presents. To ignore such a huge red flag and give him the benefit of the doubt would be stupid.
Ninja_girl, he is pushing to see how far he can go with you. Set a boundary by saying “hell no” and cutting off all contact.
Thank you all for your feedback. I am still unsure what I will do. I am aiming to make a decision based soley on my needs and wants. Do I believe in the “conventional” relationship? No. But am I willing to share someone? Unsure. To be continued.
Great post! I love this bit:
“If that someone’s mindset is sexually focused, it’s what they value and until they shift that perspective, you could substitute you with another woman, and it’s still what they’d value. Yes it’s personal but the best way not to let yourself take it too personal is not to stick around trying to make them value you in a different way”.
I relate to this so strongly that I have been so conditioned to an ‘arms length’ relationship with all the significant men in my life. But true intimacy is not sex. It’s if they care about YOU (and vice versa). Want to make sure that things are working for you. Call you by your name rather than refer to you generally. Want to be with you and only you as a partner. So why I am afraid to show the real me and make it completely personal, that I am also living in avoidance and being scared to accept solely one other person that is right for me as a partner? Thanks for the insight NML, Dianna
This article is pure gold for me today… I have been double standardising myself…. I felt with the last guy I had slept with him far , far too quickly…let the moment take over.(standard three dates in) , after two years of celibacy…c’mon I was horny as hell…. he was saying all the right stuff.The focus should have been on the building blocks of our relationship. Did what he said to me reflect in his overall actions? The relationship was too sexualised. Every time I left him I felt empty inside, all the love words in the world didn’t cut through that feeling…. I craved the bedroom intimacy when he should have been intimate with me in terms of sharing, future plans ,commitment,resolution of problems. We had absolutely no voice contact for days on end, just texts and beautiful e mails. He ultimately saw me as a piece of ass. This was confirmed in how he broke up with me. I ‘m ashamed to write this…but have learned a salutory lesson. Thankyou for your insights NML X
Aw, Leslie. Don’t beat yourself up about it. I don’t see anything wrong with having sex early (and “early” differs according to who you ask) but I think for us ex-fallback girls it’s a good idea to wait for longer than we’re used to. We are still practising making good decisions for ourselves, and that gets muddied when sex is thrown into the equation.
Yes, the over reliance on texts and emails is a total giveaway. At least that’s a danger sign that’s easy to spot!
Leslie,
Just so you know, I didn’t sleep with my AC until almost 3 months into the *relationship.*
After we had sex, he didn’t call me for three days, and the full-on hot/cold, now-I-love-you, now-I-dont, AC dance began.
I think the cycle begins whenever they feel as if they’ve won you; whether you sleep with them the first night or the hundredth.
Likewise, I don’t believe that if makes any difference to any real, normal, emotionally available guy if you go to bed early together in the relationship or not.
It’s just that you can’t always differentiate between the two in the beginning, so it’s safer to wait and see who he reveals himself to be.
Before my AC experience, I wasn’t aware that guys like this existed. In retrospect, I could have seen the signs, if I knew.
Feel better, Leslie.
And be sure that while you take responsibility for your own behavior, you never take the blame for his.
Best,
Over It
In re-reading this article and the comments, more gems keeps popping out! This would have to be one of my favourite articles.
Thanks ph2072 for “No” is my favorite word. I thought I was such a strong person, almost too strong and single minded sometimes. I would go along with other people’s wants thinking that was what flexibility was all about. But where are my boundaries? All about not wanting to get rejected, not what I want! After reading “No” is my favourite word, I know what I need to do. Keep perspective and say NO to everything a man presents that doesn’t sit with me.
Sure, get to know him, go with the flow, but if I don’t feel sure – then it is NO. He will either deal with it or he won’t. Either way I won’t be emotionally invested in someone who is not right for me value-wise, or who isn’t taking the necessary actions to sort their life out.
NO three-way relationships for me. NO weird hoops to jump through. NO excuses why we can’t spend time together. NO ongoing mismatch of words and actions. NO sex before I’m ready, going along well together and in a committed relationship…. dare I say NO sex before marriage as I want children with my life partner. NO time wasters.
Life’s too good and too precious to be compromising my boundaries. Not saying my boundaries are always ideal, but in a genuine relationship all things that need to will grow. Rather than bending myself if he isn’t aligned, just say no and prepare to walk away. If he’s still there at the end then he’s the one for me. I am going to practice my NOs until my life looks like how I want it. NO compromises any more! Yay! Thanks, Dianna
Over it/Leslie
Yep, waiting very often triggers their “chase” response. So you have to be vigilant and ask yourself “is he genuinely interested in ME as a person, or is he just into the chase”?
Sometimes, you misjudge it. They are deceitful and smarter at playing the game than us. Or they genuinely believe their fancy words until crunch time. But they do eventually reveal themselves. In which case, dust yourself down and move on.