Dear Betty and Veronica...

LateBloomer, you're on fire. What with the seandr and his bmx doing ollies fantasy and this one, I feel like we're all witnessing your renaissance. It must have been a very good weekend.

So whatever happened back then? Did she follow the advice?

They never follow the advice.

I feel that, "use your words," should have been included in that advice...

This shit sounds like out of a sitcom. News flash everyone: If you want something, and don't say, look in the mirror.

"My anger comes from his timing." = "My anger comes from my timing."

Like not telling him before the sex, or the previous week.

@4: ZING! Also, almost certainly true.

@7: Yep. Very astute.

Aw shucks, nocute. I could do with a renaissance--here's hoping. And it was--very good. Glad to hear yours was, too.

@4 - I remember this one and I do actually wish we could get a follow up.

@7 +1 I think she's got trust/committment issues (attachment really, as in ability to be emotionally vulnerable) and was POed he'd flipped the tables on her.

Ughers to the phrase "taking things to the next level"? What about ughers to "reach out"? That one always makes me want to vomit. Whatever happened to "contact," "call," "get in touch" or "talk to"?
Stop it with the "reach out," people.

@ 11, ugh to "ughers."

@12: That too! :)

"Reach out" is a linguistic leftover from our prehistoric cephalopod ancestors, who used to communicate by extending a suction-cupped tentacle and altering its color to signal our feelings. Evo psych!

More seriously, I wonder about "My anger comes from his timing." I'm pretty sure that's never true; the mythical method for dumping people without making them feel rejected doesn't really exist, so we're not actually angry at the dumper for failing to use that method.

Pretending it's about how they dumped us gives us some emotional opportunities that just admitting "Getting dumped sucks" doesn't, though, which is probably why it's so tempting. If she even was getting dumped, which I guess we don't really know.

It was interesting reading the old thread. I feel a little sorry for Ms Cute. In another thread, her basic position of neutrality would perhaps not have been the closest to pro-LW position of the bunch, and she'd have taken less grief for it. And several posters who are no longer among the assembled company had a fair amount to say.

I'm mainly wondering now when Ms Sissou and Ms Grizelda began to modify their opinions of Mr Hunter (if they consider that they have).

Mr. Ven--I hadn't considered going back and reading the original thread--I never do, but probably should when Dan runs an old letter.
Wow--I did take a lot of heat (I also didn't know how to make italics then!). Rereading, I stand by everything I said except that in the intervening years between 49 and 52, my attitude about casual dating that will lead nowhere and sex shifted remarkably. Probably due to the dearth of candidates for "real" relationships (a reference to an earlier thread--I guess I mean "boyfriend candidates" or "primary partners"--don't crucify me, please LateBloomer. Especially because now I have a boyfriend).

The guy dodged a bullet. She would never have forgiven him for cheating on her. (is there any doubt that's what she thinks?)

That thread also reminded me that it's important to try out a variety of condoms, and that that's not common knowledge. Men who hate condoms: Not every type of condom works for every set of junk, so try out different kinds; you might only hate some condoms.

@vennominon
Happy to oblige. Some two years ago, I came to the realization that the signal/noise ratio of Hunter had somewhat improved. I remember posting about Hunter's morphing from troll to human. While he used to only attack posters and retreat, he began to sometimes post material about himself. From then on I had more patience for him.

Miscommunication is the pitfall of many blossoming relationships. In a way, if communication wasn't properly established in the early stages, there's little hope that this pairing of two people were suited enough to each other communication-wise to make a relationship hold long term.

About miscommunication, I have a question : supposing a male receives a message from someone (male or female) he doesn't seem much interested in, saying 'I'm beginning to fall for you, I don't think it's a good idea, I hope you'll meet someone more suited to you', would he be predominantly mad at the cold shoulder given, or predominantly flattered at being found seductive ? I don't know if the recipient being male makes any difference, but it could well do.

So nobody here thinks it's a dick move to sleep with someone (that you have an ongoing relationship with) with the knowledge that you are going to dump them as soon as you get your rocks off one last time?

@20 sissoucat

I would be flattered.

@21: There was a lot of arguing about that in the previous thread about this one. Two things to keep in mind is that casual relationships are casual, and this one was casual by her choice. The second thing to keep in mind is that we don't know anything about what he did or didn't know, or what his intentions were, or what the point was of the conversation he wanted to start, and neither does the LW, and that this is also by her choice.

So we're left with the things we do know. Keeping someone on a string isn't an actual contract, and a person you shot down doesn't have any obligations toward you that you don't have toward them. Unless they both agreed that there would be no talking after sex, of course, but I feel safe in assuming they didn't.

I'm with 17; the guy dodged a bullet.

I'm thinking about the ways I'd feel differently if they were teenagers, though, rather than mid20s.

@the_ghost
Thanks for your reply. I, as a woman, would have been flattered too, but I was wondering about what a man might have thought.
@bigyaz
Obviously the lw first thought it was this kind of dick move happening, but since she cut short his explanations she'll never know if he was really doing the dick move or if he was about to say something completely different. I agree that if he was on his way to leave their fwb arrangement, having sex before walking on her was cold. There's supposedly 'friend' in fwb. When my ex fwb came to tell me he was now in a commited relationship, he brought me flowers and kissed me on the cheeks, which surprised me, then he explained 'I've met someone'. As a result we're now friends without benefits.

@20: A lot would depend on who I was, who it was from, and what our relationship is like. Are we assuming a romantic context of some kind? 'Cause if she's my boss, then she's just gotten both of us in serious trouble. If she's my subordinate, she's just gotten at least one of us in that same trouble. If she's that cute girl on the subway who likes to flirt, that's different. If she's an FWB, then it's complicated, and I'd feel flattered, but would still want to end the FWB relationship.

If she's a total stranger, then... well... I'd be pretty amused. And probably tell her that I think the message went to the wrong person. If "she" is a man, then I'd feel flattered, but would understand if my friend didn't want to hang out for a while.

Not all of these are hypotheticals. I imagine it could be very different for someone who wasn't a male, particularly if it's from someone who's mostly a stranger--it seems like there could be a lot of creepy undertones there.

Dan was soft of this woman.

My advice would have been something like, "Don't reach out to this guy. Not because he violated you or did something shitty, but because your are completely in the 'bicthes be crazy' zone and this guy is lucky to have you crossed you off his list of potential relationships."

To review: He asked for a relationship; you said no, "purely casual." He did exactly what you asked, even respecting you enough to NOT share details of other dates (which is what casual is). Then, after sex one day he BEGINS to share some casual-relationship-affecting news with you and you go nuclear on him, because you had a different script in mind that you never told him about. And "nuclear" is exactly what you did by kicking him out, because you destroyed his opportunity to explain/negotiate/apologize/discuss, and you destroyed your own opportunity to discuss/scold/express hurt/negotiate. Mutual destruction.

This is such insane, reactive, crazy bullshit. You got what you wanted but when he deviated from the script you had playing in your mind--the one you never shared with him, so he could never know it--you went batshit on him.

And BTW, in a casual relationship, fucking somebody before you share news is not insulting unless its about an STD. Its a CASUAL relationship! Many more people are inclined to say at the end, "How about one last..." or "Can I see you one more time..." than are inclined to say at the beginning "I want a full report if you are starting to seriously see anyone as a prelude to any contact we might have in our CASUAL relationship."

But you didn't say either did you? Because in your Bitches Be Crazy world you somehow expected him to know what you meant by "casual," until you went nuclear on the guy who just tried to do right by you.

Wow, this woman missed her chance. Dating is challenging in 2015. And if you find a man who's emotionally mature enough to be able to tell you he likes you and would like to have a relationship with you... You TAKE HIM UP ON THAT! You say, "I'm not sure if I'm ready to have an official relationship with you at this point, but I would really like to see you exclusively too, and see where this goes."

Then you continue to date and if you like him even more, you make it official and keep dating. And if you don't feel strong chemistry after dating for a while, you end things - no harm, no foul.

I suspect this woman is someone who is only interested in unavailable guys who treat her like shit. I'm a gay guy and I see this same dynamic with gay men. It's maddening, and I hope she learns from this.

I think Dan gave good advice. I'd call and tell him if it doesn't work out with the new girl, I'd be open to trying something more serious. I don't find it surprising at all that she asked him to leave, I agree that he should have brought up anything that could change the way she felt about him before sex, not after. Shady. Maybe not great to get attached to.

Sissou - If the purpose of the text is to flatter, I think there are less confusing ways. If the purpose is to show possible sexual availability, I think it could work ok I guess. If the purpose is to show you're not interested, I don't think it works.

OK, I'll come clean, I did send that text to a younger coworker, with whom I've been pretty friendly lately. There's no power situation, we're equals, but at differing times of our lives. He's looking for a nice girl and a family down the road, I'm interested in fwbs, but I can't tell that openly without blowing my reputation at work. I can't understand why I wrote that message, other than it just felt like the absolute right think at the time, and I've come to trust my hunches. But I still can't figure exactly what it means. And I wonder whether I unwillingly could have hurt his feelings. Not that he's acting hurt since.

@29: In that case, I'd lean even more heavily toward "flattered" than anything else. Unless he was seriously interested in you as that nice girl to start the family with (and thought you were interested in him in the same way) I can't imagine it would hurt his feelings to be told "you're really attractive and I like you a lot, it's too bad we're headed in different directions" or something like that. And I'm inclined to believe that if he was looking at you as a prospective life partner, he'd probably have given some indication of it, right?

With the disclaimer that I'm only familiar with how this works in the US, so there might be cultural differences I don't know about.

Did it cross anyone's mind that when the FWB had sex with LITL that last time, that he was cheating on the new woman he was seeing? And that's really weird to have sex with someone and then tell her that you've met someone else and are seeing the other person.

@27, that would have been a great thing for her to say at the beginning, but we know hindsight is 20/20.

So she screwed up but is mad at him? Nobody should date her, everything is somebody else's fault apparently.

@31: "Did it cross anyone's mind that when the FWB had sex with LITL that last time, that he was cheating on the new woman he was seeing?"

It did now. The LW might also have been cheating on a new boyfriend with her FWB. The new boyfriend isn't in the letter at all, so either one is equally well-supported. The LW or the FWB might also have been in the middle of robbing a bank, stopped for sex, and maybe she threw him out because the police were arriving and she didn't want him to get caught. We can pretty much make up whatever, can't we? The letter doesn't explicitly say they're not bank robbers, so the reasons for assuming it are about as good.

Maybe they're time travellers from the future, and by "I met someone" he meant he'd just met someone who becomes a historical figure eventually, and she threw him out because they'd already agreed not to mess with history. This is actually more fun than rehashing the argument from 2012, so I'm in.

"And that's really weird to have sex with someone and then tell her that you've met someone else and are seeing the other person."

It would be really weird, yes. He didn't do that. Maybe he was going to. Maybe he wasn't. Maybe it's the time traveler thing. What did happen was that he might have been trying to start a relationship conversation, or something, and she threw him out preemptively.

Don't you think that the guy was jumping a gun ...one lay and he wants to get serious ? (Traits of a control freak) They're both better off starting with something / someone new and learning from this mess. But were I she, I would apologize...she really did have a lot of nerve.

Thankfully Dan's attempt to coin (or mainstream?) the word "ughers" did not catch on.

On the previous thread I liked the observation that when the relationship is casual one assumes that any given encounter could be the last. That’s kind of the definition so if that’s a problem for you, you aren’t ready for casual sex.

Also on the previous thread was lots of discussion of condoms which reminds me: uncreative, are you still there? Because in an unrelated thread you said that penis-in-orifice sex in particular tends to transmit nasty diseases and that we therefore need to be just as cautious about unknown STIs as known ones because any novel one transmitted that way is likely to be fatal. So. At my age about half my partners have unreliable erections. They don’t get hard at all or maybe they swell up a bit, or maybe their erection doesn’t last or it’s only sometimes. Condoms aren’t an option but they can usually still come. In my place, how worried would you be about semen that wasn’t pounded directly into an orifice by a penis?

Also also in the previous thread EricaP was asking about condom use in OS LTRs being required by women as a prelude to divorce and was it symbolic of the withholding of intimacy or something more practical? I'd say that if I weren’t having sex very often or not enjoying it much I might not feel like continuing to take on the risks and hassles of birth control. If you aren’t bothering to show me a good time then I won’t bother to make it easy for you.

@35: "Don't you think that the guy was jumping a gun ...one lay and he wants to get serious ? (Traits of a control freak)"

JFC, "one lay" and wanting to be in a relationship in the person? Maybe he simply likes her.

Alison @ 37 - I'm not uncreative (miss her voice though), but you're on a topic I've been thinking about lately. Having started my current relationship with a guy agreeing not to use condoms because of the unreliability of sustained erections, I still occasionally find myself wondering if I should have held the line more firmly (heh heh), given the possibility of disease transmission. It's hard to go back, though, and asking for proof in the form of negative test results would seem like questioning my partner's veracity now.

@39: "asking for proof in the form of negative test results would seem like questioning my partner's veracity now."

If it would make you feel more at ease, there's nothing wrong with asking. If they're decent people, they would accommodate you. Plus hey, you could promise something nice and flirty in exchange, perhaps?

Offer to get tested together. Responsible people who care about each other are willing to do that.

Yes Still Thinking @39, what undead ayn rand and Chase say.

Just explain that you find that you’re feeling uneasy because you’re used to practicing strict hygiene and all of a sudden you aren’t at all. It doesn’t feel like you and can he help you out by getting tested with you.

You don’t have to make it about him.

I agree, get both of you tested. It's easier to get tested before there's any sex, or uncondomed sex at least.
As for pre-divorcees using condoms with a cheating or suspected to be cheating partner, it's a matter of both sound hygiene and contraception. A kid is not welcome when a divorce is looming on the horizon, while in a healthy marriage an unexpected kid's arrival can always be accomodated for.

@Eudaemonic
Actually, as an older divorcee with kids I'm steering clear of people looking for a life partner. My kids are enough work as it is to complicate our life further with someone who'll expect me to care for him too. And who may be jealous of my kids... or who'll berate my parenting abilities. No, no guy is welcome inside my monoparental family unit.

@37: "Also also in the previous thread EricaP was asking about condom use in OS LTRs being required by women as a prelude to divorce and was it symbolic of the withholding of intimacy or something more practical?"

I thought Seeker's sample might be heavily skewed for reasons of "divorce attorney." He'd see couples that are getting divorced and be able to look at their history, but wouldn't see the couples who might have similar history but aren't getting divorced, like that marriage counselor who saw a lot of sadism in relationships and decided it was normal, even after mentioning that he only saw people who had decided they had really serious problems.

Which is not to say I disagree at all with Seeker's observed trend, just that for all we know there could be millions of couples out there in which the wife suddenly started insisting on condoms but didn't later start a divorce.

His observations seemed good, but yeah, his guesses about why were just guesses. Could've done better at specifying what was an observation and what was a hypothesis.

@44: Yeah. And I felt safe in assuming that if he'd been eyeing you as someone to raise a family with, you'd already know it, probably. If he knows you've already got kids, that didn't seem like a risk, so I'm pretty sure you're in the clear. Dude probably just feels flattered.

Eudaemonic, yes, it’s a lovely example of a just-so story. Asserting something and imagining a story to explain it without first determining whether the assertion is factual. I was interested that Seeker’s imagination went straight to symbolic motivations when from my point of view there are so many more practical ones. (Possibly because he sees condoms as symbolic, not practical?) Similar to Allen Gilliam's imagination goes straight to explaining all kinks he doeasn't share in terms of neurotic pathology that needs to be cured, not indulged.

Sissou - He's looking for a nice girl and a family down the road, I'm interested in fwbs, but I can't tell that openly without blowing my reputation at work. I can't understand why I wrote that message, other than it just felt like the absolute right think at the time, and I've come to trust my hunches. But I still can't figure exactly what it means.
I think you're feelings are telling you that he'd be good romantically for you. Or your feelings could be inaccurate for some reason, like it's springtime, or it's been too long. In which case I'd go out and bring a guy home so I could think better. Be safe!

Sissou - I also think he understands you like him from the text and it's his move. But that he is not expected to make one. I think it was a sweet text.

oh yeah, i was in this guys shoes once. only, i did not tell her right after a sexual encounter. the reaction was the same. in hindsight, i still am not certain the casual woman was actually serious. i think she was hurt because i chose someone else over her. i think she wanted options, and to string me along until she made up her mind. she suddenly gave me this big story how she was falling for me, but i felt like she was trying to make me feel like i made a mistake, or something, so she could feel better about it.

Philophile
I think it could be springtime hitting on me. I'm totally safe, alas, and quite unable to bring someone home for sex, since I have to know a person for quite some time before I feel safe enough to even think about sex. Unknown males absolutely terrify me.
Thanks for the reassurance. I needed it.

Dancing, making out, if you have someone you can cuddle with maybe, these can help take the edge off of springtime's call I think. If you spend some time getting your heart rate up in public, the chances are greater of meeting a nice pair of eyes that may get your heart rate up in private :)

Oh I mean take a jog, go to a club, yoga class or dodge ball league or whatever. Not public sex. In case that wasn't clear. Although..

I don't really get all the comments on the original thread (and a few here) about how terrible this woman is and how Dan was too easy on her. She missed out on the chance to have a relationship with someone she really liked, and she has only herself to blame, but it seems like a fairly standard relationship misstep. By the time she realized what she wanted, it was too late, and she missed out. Hopefully she can learn and avoid making the same mistake in the future. The guy probably feels bad about how it ended, but I suspect he got over it and simply focused on his new relationship.

@32 DanielleinDC
It did not strike my mind as cheating because we have no idea what he was going to say before she threw him out. All we know was that he was starting to get serious with someone. We have no knowledge about exactly how serious it was, and whether monogamy was part of the equation yet. We don't even know why he told her. Some possible reasons would make doing it after the sex somewhat dickish. Others would be perfectly reasonable.

@53: "I don't really get all the comments on the original thread (and a few here) about how terrible this woman is and how Dan was too easy on her."

Eh, she's not terrible, but it's probably just annoyance of having it happen to others in their own lives, that a person only expresses interest AFTER the person has someone express real and true interest in them. It comes off as flaky and insincere. If this guy hadn't gotten out, she'd still be feeling "meh" on the relationship or at the very least, wouldn't have communicated her true feelings.

Our sympathy tanks run low when someone blames the other side for their own poor communication skills.

@46: Just to nitpick, which we're kind of doing: If I say "I notice that my neighbor has three extra cars in front of his house on the first Friday night of every month; he probably has a regular Bridge game," and other people notice the same pattern but have different theories--say, you think no, he's in a barbershop quartet, not a bridge game--the first part of that statement has a qualitatively different level of meaning than the second.

I too thought it was weird that he went to something symbolic rather than practical (even though in this particular instance I don't see that much difference between the duelling interpretations). Perhaps I was too-readily ignoring the speculation that followed the observation--since observations are inherently valuable, and speculation isn't.