Over at Advice from a Single Dating Expert, Evan tackles the age-old issue of when it’s the right time to have sex, and surmises this grey area very well.

As a woman, your job is not to come up with an arbitrary number of dates, like the U.S. coming up with a pull out date for our soldiers in Iraq. Your sole responsibility before having sex is to figure out if he’s interested in YOU or in SEX.

I repeat: Your sole responsibility before having sex is to figure out if he’s interested in YOU or in SEX.

If you don’t know the answer, don’t have sex. If you think you know the answer, then have sex. And if you can’t handle the emotional consequences of making an occasional mistake, you probably shouldn’t sleep with anyone until you’re in a committed relationship.

The difficulty that many women find themselves in is not only do they follow their libido, but also they think that having sex will help them to leapfrog to a more cemented relationship.

In my forthcoming book about emotionally unavailable men (yet to be titled) I explain the dilemma of sleeping with a guy too soon. “There is an egotistical conflict going on with men (the whore and the Madonna conundrum) but it doesn’t stop them from having sex with women and essentially setting them up in a trap. At the end of the day, if you’re not going to respect a woman and you think that there is a strong likelihood that you won’t want to pursue anything with her, why bother to sleep with her? Because they can.

Sex and women are becoming more and more dispensable so if one woman ‘slips up’ and gives it to him ‘too easily’, there are a plenty more where she came from. He doesn’t allow for the fact that he has actually led her to think that he is OK with it, after all it takes two to tango, and he certainly doesn’t consider the fact that he’s just as much a party to creating the illusion of a false connection. In many cases, these men are chancing their arm to see how women react to their advances, and the reality is that with men like this, you just can’t win. You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. Sleep with them and they relegate you to the easy bin and treat you like a casual sex companion even if they allow you to think that you’re more; or don’t sleep with them and you get consigned to the hard work bin. Even if you do ‘hold back’, there are some men egotistical and twisted enough to keep pursuing you till they get what they want, only for him to move you to the easy bin afterwards.”

In addition to Evan’s suggestion, I suggest that you: Don’t mix the business of understanding a man’s intentions with the pleasure that comes with sex.

Whether a guy is interested in you and whether a guy is interested in shagging you are two different things. One guy wants to get to know you as a person – the other is looking for a quick route to checking out your va-jay-jay. Deep down you know what type of guy you’re with so exercise judgment.

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