Spouse: blah, blah, blah, local rules and regulations in the city we’re visiting.
Me: Really? Have they already implemented that here?
Spouse: I don’t know. We can find out.
Me: How? Pull out your smart phone in this bar and use the Google?
Spouse: No. Just ask the guy next to you.
Me (furrowing brow): Why would I do that?
**********
Much as I’m a believer in equality/tolerance/just letting people be who they want to be, life experience seems much different for men than for women. Especially when it comes to dating and sex.
The common misconception by people looking in from the outside is that in heterosexual open relationships, it’s the guy who’s out there getting variety, and the woman who sits at home sulking waiting for him to come back home to her. Nothing can be farther from the truth. The truth is that in nonmonogamous relationships, women have the upper hand (the spouse had a cogent explanation for this that I’ll try to get him to post at a later time). And it makes us relate to people differently than men do.
It’s overstated, but still generally true: men fear women will laugh at them. Women fear men will kill them.
In day-to-day life, though, I--a woman--really just fear that if I express even the slightest interest in a man as a human being, I’ll have a hell of a time convincing him to leave me alone when I want him to, which will likely be very soon after I start engaging him. And that makes me very, very choosy about the people with whom I initiate interaction.
Explanation by the spouse: that’s because men--the traditional initiators of interaction--are so used to instant rejection from women that they have to latch on to any glimmer of hope they get from the opposite sex.
Back to Poly: So that puts us in a catch-22. The guy next to me at the bar had, in fact, tried to initiate contact with me. But I specifically came to the bar with someone (my spouse), and I wanted to focus on connecting with that person. It was late, I’m a morning person, and I didn’t want to be out all night entertaining this new guy and having that heart-to-heart with my spouse (why not just talk at home, you might ask? Well, it turns out that whenever we try that, our lives are so full we end up just falling asleep, so we need a crowded bar to talk. Spouses are soporific). Plus, statistically, I’ve gotten a surprising quantity of, well, surprise from purportedly well-meaning men who have a hard time understanding that my willingness to say hi to them does not indicate anything about my willingness to sleep with them. Or my willingness to hear their life stories. That puts consequences on me, whether it's just working harder than I want to politely try to get out of the conversation multiple times, or something more overt, like watching the hurt come up in the guy's eyes when he realizes he's being let go. Or very occasionally, an actual verbal backlash. At any rate, life is much, much easier when I just don’t engage, and yes, that makes me one of the many snobby women that people complain about not giving anyone the time of day.
So I gave the stranger at the bar a silent, weary smile and turned my back to him. And yes, he was sitting alone at a bar, looking lonely and like he wanted a conversation. And my spouse empathized.
According to the spouse (Poly wrote this based on conversation after this incident, and the spouse edited): a single woman is much more socially accepted into a group of random people, whether a heterosexual couple (women are non-threatening, and a new guy might want to steal the woman away the guy who’s already in the couple) or a larger group that takes a bit of body-language shifting to include one more into the conversation. In an extreme case, sex parties often allow couples and single women, but no single men (Poly’s honest but naive question: if I’m polyamorous, can I just bring a lot of men with me and then there won’t be any single ones?). Statistically, “straight” women’s sexuality appears a lot more fluid than straight men’s: Sex at Dawn and my girlthing both agree that women might be more concerned with how they’re going to get their cup of coffee the morning after their first female-female sexual experience than with an existential crisis of their sexual identity. And that seems to translate to social groupings as well. Women can be great friends with women, whereas strong man-on-man friendships are looked upon askance in Western society, and that reduces the social risk/reward ratio of including new women in even a Platonic group over including a new man. After all, the best reward a man can get from another man is a social acquaintance, whereas there’s potential for great friendship if not sex from a new woman. The extreme risk of including a new man in a group is--as stereotyped--death to a woman, whereas the worst risk of including a woman is laughter at a man. The one-penis policy that applies to a large number of heterosexual open couples carries over to social groups as well. And that makes life as a single man particularly lonely in a way that I as a married/happily over-sexed/independent woman really can’t relate to.
The good news is the guy next to me struck up a conversation with the couple on the other side of him. Though I could see the sense of weariness or pity in the woman’s eyes, as well.
So as is often the case, I’ve identified a problem and haven’t any clue of a possible solution. But I’m working on it. And if you have ideas, I’d love to hear them. Questions, comments, and ideas always welcome at polysaturated@rocketmail.com.
Me: Really? Have they already implemented that here?
Spouse: I don’t know. We can find out.
Me: How? Pull out your smart phone in this bar and use the Google?
Spouse: No. Just ask the guy next to you.
Me (furrowing brow): Why would I do that?
**********
Much as I’m a believer in equality/tolerance/just letting people be who they want to be, life experience seems much different for men than for women. Especially when it comes to dating and sex.
The common misconception by people looking in from the outside is that in heterosexual open relationships, it’s the guy who’s out there getting variety, and the woman who sits at home sulking waiting for him to come back home to her. Nothing can be farther from the truth. The truth is that in nonmonogamous relationships, women have the upper hand (the spouse had a cogent explanation for this that I’ll try to get him to post at a later time). And it makes us relate to people differently than men do.
It’s overstated, but still generally true: men fear women will laugh at them. Women fear men will kill them.
In day-to-day life, though, I--a woman--really just fear that if I express even the slightest interest in a man as a human being, I’ll have a hell of a time convincing him to leave me alone when I want him to, which will likely be very soon after I start engaging him. And that makes me very, very choosy about the people with whom I initiate interaction.
Explanation by the spouse: that’s because men--the traditional initiators of interaction--are so used to instant rejection from women that they have to latch on to any glimmer of hope they get from the opposite sex.
Back to Poly: So that puts us in a catch-22. The guy next to me at the bar had, in fact, tried to initiate contact with me. But I specifically came to the bar with someone (my spouse), and I wanted to focus on connecting with that person. It was late, I’m a morning person, and I didn’t want to be out all night entertaining this new guy and having that heart-to-heart with my spouse (why not just talk at home, you might ask? Well, it turns out that whenever we try that, our lives are so full we end up just falling asleep, so we need a crowded bar to talk. Spouses are soporific). Plus, statistically, I’ve gotten a surprising quantity of, well, surprise from purportedly well-meaning men who have a hard time understanding that my willingness to say hi to them does not indicate anything about my willingness to sleep with them. Or my willingness to hear their life stories. That puts consequences on me, whether it's just working harder than I want to politely try to get out of the conversation multiple times, or something more overt, like watching the hurt come up in the guy's eyes when he realizes he's being let go. Or very occasionally, an actual verbal backlash. At any rate, life is much, much easier when I just don’t engage, and yes, that makes me one of the many snobby women that people complain about not giving anyone the time of day.
So I gave the stranger at the bar a silent, weary smile and turned my back to him. And yes, he was sitting alone at a bar, looking lonely and like he wanted a conversation. And my spouse empathized.
According to the spouse (Poly wrote this based on conversation after this incident, and the spouse edited): a single woman is much more socially accepted into a group of random people, whether a heterosexual couple (women are non-threatening, and a new guy might want to steal the woman away the guy who’s already in the couple) or a larger group that takes a bit of body-language shifting to include one more into the conversation. In an extreme case, sex parties often allow couples and single women, but no single men (Poly’s honest but naive question: if I’m polyamorous, can I just bring a lot of men with me and then there won’t be any single ones?). Statistically, “straight” women’s sexuality appears a lot more fluid than straight men’s: Sex at Dawn and my girlthing both agree that women might be more concerned with how they’re going to get their cup of coffee the morning after their first female-female sexual experience than with an existential crisis of their sexual identity. And that seems to translate to social groupings as well. Women can be great friends with women, whereas strong man-on-man friendships are looked upon askance in Western society, and that reduces the social risk/reward ratio of including new women in even a Platonic group over including a new man. After all, the best reward a man can get from another man is a social acquaintance, whereas there’s potential for great friendship if not sex from a new woman. The extreme risk of including a new man in a group is--as stereotyped--death to a woman, whereas the worst risk of including a woman is laughter at a man. The one-penis policy that applies to a large number of heterosexual open couples carries over to social groups as well. And that makes life as a single man particularly lonely in a way that I as a married/happily over-sexed/independent woman really can’t relate to.
The good news is the guy next to me struck up a conversation with the couple on the other side of him. Though I could see the sense of weariness or pity in the woman’s eyes, as well.
So as is often the case, I’ve identified a problem and haven’t any clue of a possible solution. But I’m working on it. And if you have ideas, I’d love to hear them. Questions, comments, and ideas always welcome at polysaturated@rocketmail.com.
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