My brother has been asking me for dating advice and insight to the women he is dating. I find this hilarious because I am awful at dating. I am really good at reading people and knowing why they do things, but I can’t apply it to my own life. I haven’t dated in a decade and don’t really have a desire to do so since *waves broadly at the world around me*.
I fired up the apps when my brother started dating just to see what was out there. I didn’t fele I could give solid advice if I was just talking out of my ass. I mean, I’m wililng to do it beacuse I’m quite good at it, but I prefer having sometthing solid to back me up.
He called me late last night to talk about his dating woes and figure out what went wrong. He has three dates this weekend, one of them a second date. He was saying he wanted to have a big pre-sex talk about sex, which, yeah…..
Look. I am pro-sex. I am pro talking about sex. I agree with him that as a society, we don’t talk about sex openly enough. You have no argument with me there. However, any woman who is in her fifties has probably had many men start out with ‘Let’s talk openly about sex’ as a way to worm his way into the woman’s pants. Or cajole her to do something she may not want to do.
My brother is as honest as the day is long. He cannot lie, execpt maybe by omission–and even then, it’s only little lies. You will know how he feels, even if he doesn’t explicitly say it out loud. His countenance gives him away, and he has no poker face. What’s more, he’s not good with the nuances of emotions, so he can’t always tell when what he’s saynig is going over like a lead balloon.
I tried to explain to him that women get hit on all the time in many different ways. It’s sad because, yes, it would be better for everyone if we could talk openly about sex. Yes, we would all be better off if it weren’t such a taboo subject. But, in the world we live in, women get punished way more than men do for being open about sex.
I don’t think he really understood what I was trynig to say. I didn’t want to bust out Schrodinger’s Rapist on him, but I may have to. The problem is that he only sees things from his point of view. Which we all do, but because he’s a dude, he can’t fathom what women have to go through.
I tried to explain that while it’s good to have an honest sex talk before you have sex with someone, as a female-presenting person, I would be wary of a guy who just started waxing poetic about sex on our second date. Especially if I wasn’t feeling it yet.
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