Dear Evan,

I have a problem with my boyfriend and our sex life.

I want sex more often than he does. I have never had this problem before in other relationships and its starting to make me feel rejected.

We have sex two or three times a week, but the other day I wanted it again in the morning (we had it the night previously) and I came onto him and he pushed me away saying he had just been in the shower.

I’ve always been told I’m attractive and have never had any problems with men before so I don’t know why now. We’ve only been going out for about 7 months and in the beginning (before we slept together) he was really eager, but a couple of months down the line it’s all slowed down. He’s even told me I’m the best sex he’s ever had so what’s going wrong? I don’t know how to handle it.

Sarah

Dear Sarah,

I get this question as much as any other question. Except for maybe the “He’s just not that into me” question, which takes on many forms.

But I haven’t tried to tackle it until now, because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. I’m no Dan Savage/Sari Locker/Dr. Ruth sexologist. I’m just a guy who’s dated a lot and spends 90% of his waking hours talking about dating, sex and relationships. So take what I say with a grain of salt.

You didn’t say how old you are, Sarah, and that’s relevant to the conversation. Because a man’s sex drive – and testosterone level - is highest when he’s 18, and a woman peaks in her late 30’s. (If I’m off, forgive me.) What this means is that as our hormones slow down, we meet up with women who’ve never wanted it more. You can see how this can cause a problem.

You’re equating his sex drive with his attraction to you, and they’re not entirely correlated.

Instead of taking his lack of desire personally, I’d take it to heart when he says you’re the best he’s ever had. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going to want to have sex as much as you. You’re equating his sex drive with his attraction to you, and they’re not entirely correlated.

Plus, one’s sex drive is highly individualized. For many, sex is best when it’s exciting and new. Once you’ve been together for seven months, the attraction may still be there, but the excitement may not be. This is why some men turn to porn, and others, to infidelity. Lust may be enough to start a relationship but, in and of itself, it’s not enough to sustain a relationship. Are there some couples who have extraordinary sex lives? Sure. But there are many more who, after a long day at work, just want to go to sleep.

And that’s another thing to consider – sex, done properly, is a lot of work. It’s fun work, no doubt, but in order to do the proper foreplay and pleasing and switching positions and stamina thing, you need a lot of time and energy. And frankly, we don’t always want to be all adrenalized and sweaty at 1am, especially if we have to wake up at 6:45am….

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Dear Evan,

I keep losing relationships when I say that sex isn’t right outside of a marriage. I used to think that women have more self-control than men, but have since realized that we are all humans.

Is it ever possible to have a year-long relationship without sex? Even the most conservative girl I’ve met gets heavy on that after a while. I feel pressured. They ask questions like "will we be doing that (whatever is the action in the movies) in future?"

I think maybe I’m the problem. I’ve been called frigid, gay (am not), etc.

There’s so much more to life than sex, right? Maybe I should look for intelligent scientists.

Jon

Dear Jon,

You sound a bit like the guy who insists on buying flowers for women on first dates. He seems like a really nice guy, but what he doesn’t get is that his views are out of step with the majority of society.

So it’s not a matter of whether he’s right or wrong; it’s a matter of whether his behavior is effective or ineffective.

When you lead your question with “I keep losing relationships when I say that sex isn’t right outside of a marriage”, you make it abundantly clear that your moral stance is quite ineffective. That doesn’t make you wrong. That makes your choice a highly questionable one as far as most women are concerned.

And, as I am wont to do, I’m going to use this platform to ask readers to consider if they have any hard-wired minority beliefs that prevent them from making a connection. Again, I’m not a moralist; I’m a pragmatist. Just because a guy tells me that his mullet hairstyle is the purest expression of how he likes to look, doesn’t mean that wearing his mullet in his online dating photo will help him woo the ladies.

Just because a guy tells me that his mullet hairstyle is the purest expression of how he likes to look, doesn’t mean that wearing his mullet in his online dating photo will help him woo the ladies.

Lest you think I’m joking – that’s a true story. I had a client four years ago who was a grown-up 70’s rocker who teaches guitar lessons. Nice man. Very passionate. But in his insistence on “being himself”, he pretty much eliminated every woman who tossed her AquaNet out the window in 1989. Same goes for my Jewish client who loved his dreadlocks, and was surprised he didn’t get much attention on JDate. Somehow he was shocked that all the Ivy League women who want to marry doctors and lawyers weren’t flocking to his unwashed nest of hair. Doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy – it just means he had to make some tough choices: Keep the hair and lose the women. Or lose the hair and get the women.

Since I’m not a psychologist, I’m not gonna worry in this space about WHY you’d opt for abstinence. That’s between you and your clergyman. All I can say is that the number of people aboard the no-sex train is increasingly small. So as I see it, you have two choices:

Keep beating the drum that says sex is wrong outside of marriage and continue to wonder why most women keep running away, OR:

Get off your moral high horse and start sexually servicing these women the way they want to be serviced.

If not, someone else will. I guarantee that.

 

I’d like to hear your take on how a guy can smoothly handle the condom issue early in the dating relationship (assuming things get hot and heavy on the first few dates – before the “safe sex talk” comes up). 

For example, on the first few dates, the guy is not sure if he is going to ‘get lucky’ or not with the woman he’s dating. 

If things start to get intimate early on, the guy is going to look pretty tacky if he just whips a condom out of his pocket when it’s time. The woman would probably think, “The jerk must think I’m always easy – the he put a condom in his pocket EXPECTING sex!”

So what’s he supposed to do to make this go more smoothly? If he just whips out a condom out of his wallet, she’ll probably think he’s looking like the promiscuous high school football star. 

The guy could just not bring condoms on the early dates (so it doesn’t look too obvious that he’s just out for sex), and hope the woman has one in her belongings or at her place. But then the woman could be thinking the guy is not very responsible, and he’s leaving it to her to bring the goods.

Perhaps the guy could put some in his glove compartment and tell her, "Hey, I didn’t know we were going to get intimate on this 1st (or 2nd) date, but I do have a condom in my glove compartment, I think."  It would chill the sudden hot intimacy while he has to dash out to his car, but how else does a guy not look like a jerk in this whole process if things get unexpectedly sexual early on? 

Thanks.

Jim

Dear Jim,

First off, kudos to you for asking this. It’s not only a fun question, but an original one, as well.

Second, you’ve clearly thought this through, although I’m quite sure I don’t agree with your final conclusion.

Dashing to the car to retrieve a rubber from the glove compartment? I know you were going for some sort of compromise between prepared and unprepared, but this isn’t it. Might as well turn on Jay Leno and pour two glasses of milk, because your mood has already been ruined.

So let’s discuss the two alternatives you brought up and allow me to counter with one that you don’t seem to have considered.

You’re right about the perception of the guy who carries the condom in his wallet. I did it myself for years and got nothing out of it, except for a bunch of wallets with raised ring outlines. And, as you acknowledged, it comes off as a bit too slick and tacky. While being prepared is usually a good idea, the negative connotations outweigh the benefits of preparedness.

The other idea you came up with is not bringing condoms on dates, in hopes that the woman is prepared. This is a far better scenario, and I don’t believe that it indicates that you’re not responsible. Rather, it indicates that you didn’t expect to be in the position to have sex.

But what I want to posit with the rest of this post is a mind-blowing new take for men on how to deal with sex and early-phase dating.

Don’t do it….

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You saw “When Harry Met Sally…” but have you lived it?  I have. Once had a wicked crush on my best friend from eleventh grade. Lost touch, got back in touch, lost touch again. We hadn’t seen each other in four years when we reconnected after college, but when we did, we slept together. It was everything I’d dreamed of, but it was so…foreign…and somehow, wrong.  We stayed in touch for years afterwards – but we never ever got together again.

The thing about friendship is that you’re dealing with an established commodity. It’s not like meeting a cute stranger, swapping spit, and giving it a whirl. The stakes, in this instance, are a lot higher, because there’s actually something to lose. 

Now I’m sure you know a couple of longtime friends who got together after a dozen years of dating the wrong people and now they live happily ever after with their three kids in Sheboygan, WI.  It happens and I’m sure it’s close to an ideal situation.  I mean, after all, who better to be your partner than someone who knows you as a friend first? But this is the exception and not the rule. 99 % of relationships fail, otherwise you’d be married to your Spin the Bottle boyfriend from sixth grade. So if all relationships are fraught with danger, yet who better to navigate it than a trusted friend, what can we conclude?

Well, we know that sex is complicated. For some, it’s a lustful response to something visual. For others, it’s a tender, wordless expression of affection. Some people have sex. Some people make love. Women also have the added pull of the “cuddling” hormone oxytocin, which bonds them emotionally to men and makes unattached sex even more difficult.

Factor all this into the loaded variables that come with friendship. 

Maybe he’s been pining after her for years, playing the dutiful best friend. 

Maybe she’s spent all her time dating jerks and never bothered to consider him before.

Maybe they live in different states.

Maybe they work together.

Maybe they’ve never hung out socially before.

Maybe they spend a lot of time together already. 

Maybe their relationship is a secret.

Maybe their friends always joked about them but she said no.

Maybe she tries his last name on for size.

Maybe he pictures her naked….

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Evan,

Please help me. I have a friend who sleeps with every guy she meets/knows, including my guy friends. The problem is that she literally just sleeps. She prefers to sleep next to a male, so if we are out at a party/bar or at a friend’s place just having drinks, she will start talking to a guy and wind up sleeping in his bed with him.  She is always on the prowl for a new relationship and she insists this is a good “test” to see if these guys are genuine, but gets extremely frustrated and angry when the guy starts making moves on her in bed.  She is a beautiful girl and wears pretty revealing clothing so she has no problem getting attention from guys, but once she gets them into bed she wants to have these deep conversations with them and then go to sleep. I love hanging out with her but when it comes time to go home I just can’t get her away. I never know what to say to her about it and I really need a male’s point of view on this whole situation. Is this acceptable or is she just being a huge tease?

Sincerely,

Victoria

Dear Victoria,

You can’t see me right now, but I’m on the 16^th floor of the lovely Affinia Hotel in New York City. If you were to stack 200 mattresses up from the street to my window to measure how big a tease your friend is, you still couldn’t do it. I’m amazed, astounded and somewhat amused at her ginormous "teasiness".

Now let’s get one thing straight – I don’t think that if a woman comes home with a guy that she is “asking for it”. No one “deserves” sex because he was charming at a bar or paid for a nice meal. On the other hand, there are some basic unwritten societal rules. And it seems that your friend is carrying her very own rulebook and wondering why no one else is playing the same game.

In principle, she remains just. She doesn’t want a man to want her exclusively for her body. But in administering this ridiculous (and somewhat cruel) test, she’s bound to bring out the worst in people. Most of us can recount a long night spent chastely talking to a stranger until the wee hours of the morning. Those evenings are special, and can arise organically from any number of circumstances – a wedding after-party, a party where everyone else has gone to sleep, a red-eye cross-country flight. But to pick up a drunk guy at a bar, go back to his house, and expect him to keep his hands off? Your friend is inviting herself to be assaulted. …

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Hi Evan,

What about when a guy DOESN’T want to sleep with you? I had been dating a guy I met from an online dating site for a little over a month. We were really good together, had a lot in common, had a blast anytime we were together. The second night he stayed over, he asked if we could sleep together. I was hesitant about it, since before that all we had done was kiss. So he apologized for asking and said he wanted me to “make him wait”. The next time he stayed over, I said I didn’t want to wait anymore (hey, I’m only human!) but he said he still thought we should wait…he said how most of his relationships had been purely physical and he didn’t want that for us. He ended up staying over a couple of more nights, but we never slept together.

As much as I would like to believe he wanted to wait because he really liked me, that theory was thrown out the door when a couple of weeks ago he pulled a 180 and quit returning my calls and texts for 3 days. And then TEXTED me finally to say he wasn’t “ready for a relationship”. But that’s a whole other story…

Melissa

I can hear your frustration, Melissa, but I gotta tell you: I LOVE receiving role-reversing letters like this.

Women who complain that men are too clingy, men who get upset when women don’t call them after sex, women who make more money than men.

Next on Jerry Springer: Men who don’t want to have sex.

I’m sorry. This isn’t a silly matter at all. What it instantly brought to mind, actually, was a plot line on HBO’s new series “Tell Me You Love Me”. There’s a married couple on the show that hasn’t had sex in a year. You’re an individual who hasn’t slept with a guy in a month.

Okay, so they’re not that similar.

You didn’t really ask me a question, Melissa, so it’s hard to give an answer. But I will give you my opinion, which, not surprisingly, might challenge yours.

I think the guy did the right thing.

I think you should be thanking him.

I think it would have been a lot worse had he slept with you and stopped returning your calls.

Sure, his breakup skills could probably use a bit of polish, but really, this guy acted with total integrity. Unlike every jackass who has ever slept with a woman he had no intention of committing to, this guy refused to do so. So apart from blowing you off by text message, how has he done anything wrong?

I dated someone last year for two and a half months before we had sex. Why? Because I wasn’t sure that I wanted her to be my girlfriend and I didn’t want to hurt her by sleeping with her and bailing. I’m not saying guys like me deserve a medal, but wouldn’t you say that there’s something conscientious about waiting?…

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The end of Wednesday’s blog post brought up a very important topic; perhaps the most common question I get asked by women whenever I give a speech:

How do you know when it’s okay to sleep with a guy?

I discussed this back in March, but most of you weren’t reading then. So forgive me for recycling, but my views haven’t changed, and you definitely want to get in on this discussion…

No doubt about it: The first time a woman beds down with a guy she’s crazy about is an exciting and special time. Still, the question remains: When? Well, it depends. Some women are happy to get down to business the night they meet; others will wait weeks or months before doing the deed. Whatever a woman’s decision, we had to wonder: Does the double standard still exist today? In other words, if a woman knocks boots with a guy too soon, does she automatically nix her chances for long-term love—or is that old-fashioned nonsense in today’s modern-day dating scene? To find out, we grilled three women about the ups and downs of when they get down to business… and what they said may surprise you.

My two cents on the whole thing?

Men are sexual hypocrites. They push women for sex, then blame them for having sex. They’re particularly stuck on the idea that if a woman hops into bed with them quickly then she must have done this with lots of other men as well. This lowers her value in his eyes. After all, if everyone can have her, she can’t be all that special, can she?

On the other hand, I also know from personal experience that if a guy is crazy about a girl, and they move really fast, all the rules go out the window. In fact, this is the way MOST of my relationships have started. But then, I’ve always been determined not to be hypocritical when a woman has the same lack of morals I do. I love women with loose morals.

The sex question is a popular one because it comes up in every dating situation. However, there’s no set timetable or finite number of dates that will let you know when it’s time to give it up. I know one woman who was told by an “expert” to wait 10 dates before sleeping with the man she was dating. The guy dumped her her after 7. …

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