I’ve been single for awhile. I measure this by sober sex, and I haven’t had sober sex in a longggg time. This, for better or for worse, is by design. After years and years of being in long-term relationship after long-term relationship, I pulled the emergency break on fully committing to one woman. I’m almost 27, and the next long-term relationship I’m in, I want it to be the last. I’m not not having flings, it’s just that I’m refusing to be exclusive with you until I can potentially see you yelling at me for smelling like cigar smoke and coming home way too late from poker night with the boys in twenty-ish years.
And it’s with this behavior that I find myself in good, nay, great, authority to tell you this: if you think you don’t need to have “the talk,” you’re eight flews over the cuckoo’s nest. I used to be like you. I used to not think you needed to DTR (define the relationship). Because it’s quite true that there’s a critical point in a relationship where it may seem like it goes without saying that you’re exclusive. Which, for better or worse, means you’re a couple. You’re together all the time, it seems ludicrous that either of you would have the free moments to even engage in flirtatious behavior with a member of the opposite sex, let alone having sex with someone else. I used to not think these DTR talks were necessary. But then maybe I got my heart broken too many times, and now I think DTR talks are absolutely hundo P necessary. Or as I like to call them: DTFRBIYDHWSSE talks.
Define the fucking relationship because if you don’t he will schtup someone else talks.
The older I get, the more clearly I begin to understand the complexities of sexual relationships. There’s this murky AF grey area within the first handful of months and if you don’t communicate well with your partner, it can – and probably will – come crashing down like the ending of an episode of Curb. It’s the part of the relationship that it’s very clear to both of you that you’re very much probably a couple or at least getting wicked close to being exclusive. I’ve realized that personally, communication at this juncture of the relationship is critical. Because otherwise, if I just kind of wing it, you can wind up calling me Alicia Silverstone because your boy is clueless. And if we don’t end up having “the talk,” I’d inevitably do something stupid, it’ll piss you off, and it could be devastating. Or maybe you’ll do something stupid and it’ll break me. This stuff goes both ways.
I was recently walking to a yoga class with a female neighbor of mine, and we started talking about a relationship she was in. She kept asking me if I thought that this guy she was seeing was her boyfriend. After she laid out all the evidence, we decided “yeah, of course he is.” Had they had any talk yet? No. But she was sleeping at his place multiple times per week. She’d met his family. He invited her to vacation with her in fucking Switzerland. But, BUT…I still told her she should probably just have a quick chat, make sure they were exclusey-goosey, and that would be that.
She was kind of skittish about having “the talk.” She said it was awkward and if she had the talk at that point in the relationship – where they were hundo p already dating – it would come across as strange. This made no sense to me. It bottled my mind. It’s so easy to just be like “hey dude, I’m not fucking anyone else. Are you? No? Great because if you were it’d hurt my feelings.” It’s so. Damn. Easy. It’s easier than my sister after a few shots of tequila. (I’m kidding. I don’t have a sister. And if I did she wouldn’t be easy. Maybe she would be actually. Who knows?)
It’s ultimately your choice to do this. But why even keep the window open for him to have a drunken night with his buddies and wind up in bed with some floozy homewrecker? Yes, at some point in a relationship, even if you don’t have the talk, and he fucks someone else, he’s an asshole. But guess what? Men are scumbags. We’re assholes. We have penises that have a mind of their own. We think with our dicks WAY too much. Even the best guys make dumb decisions with our hang-downs.
One of the last girls I was having sober sex with brought “the talk” on me. I was, at that point, getting over a girl whom I loved and who had cheated on me. So I was NOT ready for another relationship. And I told her this. Told her I wanted to keep things casual, at least for the near future. She was semi-cool with it, at the time, and I even told her that I wasn’t sleeping with anyone else, which was true. But soon after I found myself at a party with a South African goddess, and well, bingo bango bongo, it
wasn’t true anymore.
The point is, it’s reckless and irresponsible not to be open and honest with your partner when the relationship is beginning to pick up some steam and it’s very clear that at least one of you is beginning to develop feelings. Even when you think “the talk” is unnecessary and it’s just unspoken that you’re exclusive, fucking double-check. It takes two seconds and could save the relationship one day..
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BostonMax
You can usually find me slinging pure heat takes about The Bachelor and Trader Joe's over at PGP (PostGradProblems), and bee tee dubs, DMs are open
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