The night before our coffeedate and ten days after I’d first made his acquaintance he told me over the phone about a woman he’d been interested in a few months back. “The first date was just awful,” he said, sketching out a scene which, if it had happened to me, would surely merit inclusion in AAG’s Top Ten Odd Dates1 “I really should have left after the first half-hour but I stuck it out to be a gentleman.”
Ah, I’ve had those, I said. So I assume there was no second date?
“No, I didn’t want to be abrupt,” he said. “We went out once again even though I knew it was a bad idea.”
Why in the world would you waste your time like that?
“I didn’t want to be a jerk,” he said. “I thought I owed it to her.”
I pulled out my sternest teacher voice. XXXXX. Don’t ever do that to me. If you’re not feeling it I’m a big enough girl to handle the truth. I do not need pity-dates.
Hesitantly he agreed. “It doesn’t seem very polite though,” but somehow overnight the idea must have caught on for when I awoke the next morning I found a text canceling our date and since that curt missive I’ve heard from him nary a word.
Of course we all know of my winsome personality, bewitching smile and shiny, shiny hair, so none of those things could possibly account for his abrupt change of heart. I have to wonder if something else was to blame, and if that something else had to do with the direction our conversation took immediately after the exchange related above.
You see, I’d met this man through a straight-laced dating site, one which traditionally pairs off thin, Christian women with men seeking a lady with “good family values.”2 But he seemed different; he had liberal political leanings and (I thought) enough dating experience that he wouldn’t completely lose his head over my colorful history.
We had several quite lovely conversations before he inquired if I had profiles on other sites; when I answered honestly he immediately, and much to my surprise, created a profile on my favorite pervy site. Despite my best efforts to steer things back into safer waters, after that point all he wanted to discuss was sexsexsexsexsexsexsex. I tried to emphasize that while I was very3 interested in the physical part of a relationship I was not, at this moment, looking for just a fuckbuddy — but by then I think it was too late.
On the night in question he asked about my plans for the weekend. “Are you going to the party that’s listed on the site?”
I might, I said. You’re going to be out of town, correct?
He was, he said, but offered no more details before turning back to my possible engagements. “Do you think it’ll turn into one big orgy?”
I very seriously doubt it, I said. That’s really not how it works.
“Well, do you think you’ll get naked?”
It’s possible, I said. I’ve known some of these people for years and I love them. But it really depends on the atmosphere and my mood.
“I’m just not sure how I feel about that,” he said.
I’m confused, I said. Are you suggesting that I shouldn’t see other people when we’ve not yet even met?
He offered no definitive answer to this question.
Are you prepared to follow the same rule, I asked, remembering that he’d told me (I hadn’t asked!) about the other women he was currently courting, and after he hemmed and hawed a bit about that we bid each other goodnight and honestly? I wasn’t all that surprised to find his text the following morning.
Because of this episode and others all too similar in nature I’m left with the conclusion that it is not in my best interest to disclose my pervosity so soon. In the future perhaps I shall simply refuse to entertain discussion of anything remotely salacious unless it is to give off the impression that the only sex I’ll tolerate is man-on-top, lights-off, once-a-month. Then it will be a pleasant surprise to find out later that I’m open-minded instead of a source of distraction (or abject terror) in the tentative early stages.
Dear Reader, what say you to this plan?
Honesty is the best policy. It’s trite, but true. Communication is also key in relationships you want to sustain.
In my experience, it’s better to invest less time in incompatible potential partners and focus attention on viable ones (platonic or otherwise).
I have a history, I have experience, I am curious and want to live life. The fastest way for me to lose interest is express that your experience is limited. I’m sorry but I’ve lived decades, most of those have included a sex life, if someone seems not to have a healthy one, then I won’t expect “we” will.
I love that last paragraph. I’m going to print it on a t-shirt and on my resume!
I think if you do that you’ll just get even more involved with people who turn out to be totally wrong for you.
You’re meeting a lot of guys who have shopping lists for women on these dating sites. They expect certain things, and when they get something different, they get all weird. That would happen no matter who you were, or what your level of pervosity was. Being honest about who you are, and being a little bit of an outlier sexually, probably just means you flush out the weirdness sooner, whereas others don’t find it out until later relationship stages.
I flush out the weirdness sooner…I like that!
You took the words out of my mouth. :-)
To me there is something totally ass-backward here. (No pun intended.) If you’ve not even met for coffee, why in the hell is anyone asking pointed questions about your sex life?
I’m not advocating stifling who you are and what you want at all, but wouldn’t basic social etiquette come into play here? Would he ask those questions of a woman face-to-face at a bar or grocery store? I’m thinking he felt safe behind his keyboard, so the social gloves came off.
In any case, you avoided wasting your time with someone clearly not worthy of it.
I see your point, but I also give a lot of credence to FurryGirl’s take: “I don’t understand normal people mating rituals. Why would you go to great pains to romance someone before determining sexual compatibility?”
https://twitter.com/#!/furrygirl
I’m with Shell here. There must be something I’m missing about the timeline here – or something I just don’t get about online dating. Let’s see if I’ve got this straight: there’s a problem with a *potential* *daytime* date over the possibility that someone might be at a sex party in the near future?
Whoa!
Yea, I’m guessing you need to stay off of those straight-laced sites! If that’s the way you lead up to coffee, you’re far over that crowd’s head.
I’m having high school flashbacks reading this. Honestly, you’d think at some point they’d grow out of this shit. Sex has it’s own time schedule.
I fall squarely in the “normal” category, and I don’t understand this either. Can’t you just like someone and see what happens? Or just say, “Are you game for some strictly recreational sex, forget the getting to know you stuff?” The worst thing that could happen is you get a no. Big deal.
Well, it’s all about what you’re really interested in. If you actually want a sex-positive, possibly poly relationship, then you should ask for it. Hiding what you want, pervosity included, seems silly — no vanilla guy who refuses to pick up a Hint is going to suddenly transform into a magically Clue-Wielding Prince Charming.
To the end of actually going where the good fish (not the stupid fish) are, I’d actually get off the straight dating website and go to okCupid. It’s possible to set compatibility filters there — to reject people who are under 75% compatible, for example — and the website itself seems to be more alterna-relationship friendly.
That out of the way, if I were looking for a relationship, I still might not mention AdultFriendFinder straight off the bat — not because my date might make judgments about my character, per se (though if they did, good riddance), but because disclosing that invites questions as to what your safer sex practices are. Those questions are really not appropriate to ask without knowing that you’re going to sleep with the other person. So that leaves polite dates worrying about how to bring up the topic, and non-polite dates rushing into being nosy, and neither tone is a good one for a getting-to-know-you sort of thing.
OKCupid seconded. I found my super, super kinky ex on there. I love dating people who are even kinkier than I am – seems to keep things interesting. And as a longtime internet dater, I also second all the commenters who advocate being up front about kinkiness to start with. It flushes assholes out quickly – you do of course have to deal with the random propositioning – but it also flushes out the people who are sex-positive and awesome and looking for people who are similarly unafraid.
While I technically agree with most of what was stated here on the “be honest” side, since you noted that dude was all about sexsexsex once he found out about your other profile and you WEREN’T looking for that, I find nothing wrong with letting it be discovered on its own time (and definitely would not mention being on AdultFriendFinder). I have dated multiple guys from OkCupid — including my current lovely boyfriend — and I’ve found that if sex was a PREDOMINANT theme in the conversation (and not just a sidebar), guys were weird about it. (Mostly in the “oh, she likes sex, she’ll be an easy lay and I’ll have a new fuckbuddy” sense, which was annoying since that’s not what I wanted, regardless of how much I like it.) I didn’t talk to my current boyfriend about sexual practices at all until we started getting to the makeout-and-get-gropey section of the relationship, and then I found out dude was fantastic at talking dirty and ready and willing to be adventurous in the sack. So don’t discount a guy just because you don’t talk about the dirty five minutes into the first conversation….some are just the male version of a “lady in the street but a freak in the bed”. ;)
My main problem is the idea that it’s okay for him to be a manwhore, but OHNOES! AAG might like a lil spice in her bed, too!
Feh. Can’t hold someone to standard X when you won’t hold yourself to it. That’s dumb, and hypocritical.
And a peeve of mine. Which is why my new bf lets me play with his butt :)
I wouldn’t trumpet your perversion. I find it confuses men and causes them to act like the twit who wanted to see you having sex on webcam. A poly-ish, pervy-ish, mature, loving, awesome guy will understand. But someone who has the potential to be that guy but just hasn’t had enough sexual adventure in his life may not. Guess it depends on who you want.
What Sera just said, but with enough of a reality taste to not be misleading the guys.
Plus – make them think your all straight laced prude and the only ones who will stick are the types that expect that in a women.
No reason to throw it all out there right away, but lots of reasons not to hide stuff.
Yeah, those two said it better. :)
Trust me; women get just as weird as men. I am essentially straight, but cross-dress and am bi-curious/BDSM curious. As soon as I mention my kinks, I can almost hear the mental doors slamming shut. That’s the problem with casual sex; it never really is, and it can never be entered into casually.
I wouldn’t say never, but it’s certainly more difficult that some might think.
Don’t hide your pervitude! Give it as much airtime in your profile as you’d want it to have in your first conversations with someone.
I met my wonderful boyfriend through OKCupid. My profile talked about my goals, interests, personality, etc. – and briefly touched on the fact that I’m dominant, kinky, and into gender-bending. Most guys (surprisingly!) sent me perfectly respectful messages that acknowledged my proclivities but focused on who I am as a person. Some guys, of course, couldn’t leave that one little sentence from my profile alone and just wanted to hear all about my sex life…so I knew to avoid them.
My boyfriend’s profile was very similar to mine: he hinted at being submissive but said he’d only discuss it once he’d really gotten to know someone, and he mentioned that he crossdresses. The rest of his profile was great, too, but knowing he was a submissive little girl-bitch was the real capper for me. If he hadn’t said those things, I might have overlooked him.
Honesty is truly the best policy.