Sexy Times Complication

After being out of the "scene" for so long, there is one thing that I've gotten particularly bad at. "Ending" a no longer working "relationship". I "air quote" because most of the time they aren't even really relationships per say. Most of the time, they are friendships that mixed with too much wine and hormones and a scary movie set the tone for sexy times which led to multiple sexy times.

But after a while, especially if you aren't in the right head space, I find that at some point you are just ready to move on. This is where I always get myself into trouble.

I have girlfriends that are VERY guarded with their feelings and extremely skilled at playing the game. They have told me a dirty little secret that I didn't know and that is that sometimes playing is not necessarily a bad thing. It seems to be a very adept self preservation mechanism to avoid getting hurt and also allows a little bit of distance between you and the subject of your sexy times.  I was telling my friend Victoria a while back that I wanted to end things with a boy to which she responded that I should just stop taking his calls and not engage in communication. I was dumbfounded at the advice! How could that be?! It didn't seem kinder, it seemed cruel. After all, I would never want anyone to ignore me from one day to the other.

But then it hit me. She is right. If you are keeping a safe distance, not over divulging your life story all at once and not going from zero to sixty in four dates and a sexy time, then you reserve the right to kindly say goodbye by not saying anything at all. This was a revelation to me. Here I was enduring torturous "break ups" with men I barely knew all the while resenting them for making me go through the agony of hearing their sob story. The truth is, there is no "reason" as much as you want to give them one. Sometimes, you're just not ready, something just doesn't feel right and you reserve the right to politely and quietly move on. I'm now a big fan of this approach.

That is of course until I realize, that this is not in my nature. I was discussing this very thing with my friend Brooke over lunch yesterday. Brooke is beautiful, lights up a room, wonderfully kind and the type of girl any guy would die to be with, but somehow she too admitted to me that sometimes, when we meet someone we like we have a tendency to just go for it, instead of really slowing it all down and not getting overly involved with one person.

So maybe multiples is truly the way to go. Maybe that is the strategy to making sure you don't get overly involved with one person and then have an intense break-up that you never intended to have with your friend in the first place.  Maybe a good safe distance is in order. My friend Matthew pointed out to me once that being overly available is not jut a physical thing, but an emotional one as well and there was something to a slow discovery.

Of course, this is much easier said than done, but I think our hard to get comrades may be on to something here. Be as easy as you want when you don't want anything, but if you really want something, be it a job or a man, perhaps taking a step back and being a little coy wouldn't hurt. After all, that's a lot of other sexy times you won't be having if you end up in a relationship so proceed with caution.