What does a first kiss mean these days?
Picture this. You are on a first day. It’s going so well. You have a ridiculous amount of things in common. The humor is flowing. You are starting to understand in your body that you would like to kiss and touch this person some time in the very near future.
The date keeps going. You are both staying longer than you thought you would and things are getting flirtatious. But alas, it’s getting late and even good dates must come to an end. This person walks you to your car or drives you home and then the moment we’ve all been waiting for–the kiss. Will it be amazing, awkward or awful?
Mmmm….it’s subtle, lip sucking, no premature tongue injection…wow, this is good. Okay…thank goddess.
So what happens, next? Second date, right?
Or a week or so of texting, or sexting if that’s your thing, but unless something strange happens most likely your lips will be intertwined again.
The fateful second date day arrives. You are excited and curious what will happen. You wonder if you will make out? Will the connection deepen? Sometimes the wondering turns to hoping and you already pulling for this person to become the one. Oops, that’s called premature infatuation. It’s a very serious condition that afflicts millions. Myself included at times.
Why do we hope that strangers will become our everything so quickly? Wouldn’t it make sense if we instead hoped that they reveal all red flags and incompatibilities as quickly as possible so we can get an authentic understanding of our potential as a couple?
Our minds and bodies are very sensitive to confirmation bias–meaning we look for what we want to see. If we are actively hoping they are the one, guess what, they are going to start to look like the one pretty quickly. Add some juicy new relationship energy chemicals to that, an oxytocin cocktail if you will, and damn, you are screwed.
Your rosy colored sex glasses have just garnered you a highly skewed reality that could take months or years to unravel. Ugh. This is why dating gets a bad rap.
So, I had a second date last night. The first date was epic, the texting was promising, but I know better than to hope for the best because long ago a mentor taught me to “hope for the worst.” Don’t worry, this isn’t as pessimistic as it sounds. As I described above, it’s just a failsafe to ensure you don’t get hijacked by confirmation bias and biology.
I invited this man over. I informed him via text that he could come over as long as he was clear that his penis would not be entering me. He responded “Lol. Ok…” and then “I’m cool with whatever. Why the restrictions tho?”
Hmmm, red flag. AND in the context of his humor and in the normalization of second date sex, this wasn’t a red flag for me. I answered “Yeah, I just want to be clear about that because I had a bad experience a week ago, where someone didn’t respect that. Sex is sacred to me, I need to know you better to know that I would want to share that with you.”
He replies, “ Word. Sorry to hear that.”
Okay, decent response, excited to see him again.
So about ten minutes into this second date, I knew he wasn’t for me. He’s a admittedly “a talker.” But he probably talked 20 minutes straight without coming up for air or asking how my day went. But he’d just gotten off work, maybe he was just tense? My empathetic nature always want to understand why people are how they are. Things mellow a bit, but he keeps talking surface level about tons of people I don’t know. None of this is making my yoni smile and while my forays into deeper waters are helping our convo, I feel like he keeps pulling us back up to the surface.
I’m getting tired or bored. Or both. I want him to leave. I should probably tell him we aren’t a good match. But as I have been learning in this crazy #metoo age, men’s egos can be fragile and rejecting them can have dire consequences. So, I think I’ll wait to get him out of my house before revealing this. This is a safety matter and if you are a guy reading this who is thinking I’m crazy, I can get a hundred women to tell you right now this is a real thing. So sad that it is, but it is. We are trained to keep the peace and not ruffle masculine feathers in conscious of subconscious fear of evoking an aggressive or violent response.
So, he’s catching on to my signals that it’s time for him to go. I finally have him putting on shoes, moving toward the door. Now, we’ve had a great few kisses on our first date and despite my logical determination that we aren’t a good fit, I’m still curious what would happen if we kiss. Am I just tired and having a bad day? Has that ruined our chemistry? Haha, the things women think about themselves. At this point, he thanks me for “managing expectations” in reference to me telling him there would be no sex ahead of time. I appreciate his gratitude, but I think to myself “damn, when you have one good date and give good text, is that next logical expectation sex?” I kind of think it has become this to a lot of people. No judgement, I’ve been one of them on occasion. But in this moment, it’s mind boggling to me.
I go in for a hug and pull back for a peck or two. By peck two I’m certain this isn’t for me, so I go back to hugging. He asks if we can cuddle. I say no. We are still hugging, but now he is trying to kiss my neck and I’m starting to extricate myself from this hug subtly, but guess what? His arms are tight around me, and my first attempt to free myself doesn’t work. I try again, he’s squeezing harder. Not in a menacing way, but a severely thirsty one. Damn, am I really going to have to try to pull back a third time?! Yup. Okay, I’m free now.
He says, “Oh you going to push me away like that? Haha?”
I say “Umm, well yeah, I was done hugging you. Goodbye.”
I think “Yo, motherfucker. I shouldn’t have to. Have a nice life. What the fuck? Do guys think we are just being coy? We have to be nice and polite so you don’t get offended or violent, and somehow state and defend our boundaries clearly at the same time. We are emotional human beings with sexual needs trying to figure this shit out too. And guess what, asshole? Trying to pull out of a hug 3 times, is 2 times too many. You might be a man in his forties with a career. You might be semi-woke. You might even think you are a fucking feminist. But you are just like so many who still have so much to learn….”
The door shuts behind him.
Damn, if only thought bubbles could speak.
This is what dating is like in 2017 ?!?!?!?!? Is second date sex the new norm? Are date rape and forced hugs a universal and continual experience of womanhood? Are men going to wake up to the subtle ways they push boundaries in pursuit of intimacy, sex and power?
Thanks for reading.
Love,
Your intrepid Tinder dater Lalita, reporting from the #metoo trenches.
Be safe out there.
