Dating Theory

This past weekend, I spent a few hours in bed with a guy that I'd been trying to meet for a long time.  I'd first contacted him online back in the beginning of the year, but then I had to go to Florida to handle some matters for my mother's estate, and I'd been a bit overwrought and then a lot busy, and I just dropped the ball.  But I contacted him again a couple of weeks ago, and after he accepted my apology, I floated the possibility of a date, and he'd said that he was very busy (Maybe it's the same everywhere: I don't know.  But in the DC area, when you ask any guy how he's been, the answer is always "busy.") but that he would like to meet me, and that we would have sex on the first date.

I had some reservations about his pronouncement.  I think sex on the first date is a fine idea, but in my experience, a lot of guys get pretty freaked out by sex on the first date.  They assume, I think, that because you want to fuck them, that's really your only (or at least primary) interest in them.  Or something like that: who really knows what guys think?  Most of them don't really understand themselves, and if they do, they won't tell you.  I have long since ceased to get angry over this state of affairs, but it's nonetheless a fact.

In any case, this guy gave me his phone number, so I called him Sunday, and he explained to me that he always liked to have sex right away because people are at their most unguarded right after sex, so you have the best conversations then.  Also, he said, he always knows within ten minutes of meeting someone whether or not he's going to be romantically interested in him.  Dating, he explained, is like buying a house.  You know right away whether or not you want the house.  Anything after the first ten minutes with a guy is basically just an extended home inspection where you determine the flaws and decide whether you can live with them.

What he said made a lot of sense to me, but I mentioned to him my experience of guys meeting me, having great sex with me, and then freaking out because (gasp!) we had sex on the first date, and he said, "Those guys are fucked up, and you don't want anything to do with them, anyway."  He also said that his way was much more efficient.

On some gut level, I agree with this guy's theory.  I (and I think I'm remarkably un-fucked up, though I acknowledge that I'm not objective) never freak out because I had sex with a guy on a first date, and I always feel like I have the best conversations post-coitally (or intra-coitally, of you talk during or go for a second round) precisely because everyone's less guarded.  And God knows that coffee or dinner can be a very painful first date experience if the guy is a putz.

On the other hand, I've noticed among my friends and among guys online what seems to me to be a tendency to dismiss guys out of hand for what strike me as remarkably shallow reasons. And I remember thinking that the advice I read somewhere to never write a guy off until after the third date made sense, at least if the first date isn't an unmitigated disaster.  Men often have a lot of hidden depths, and they are often very bad at communicating them.

Anyway, this guy's forthrightness was very refreshing, and after twenty minutes or so on the phone, he invited me over for a shower, sex, and conversation, in no particular order, and about three hours later, we agreed that we could probably be good friends but that there was no serious romantic potential.  And getting to that point involved a significant amount of fun, though perhaps not as much fun as one might have getting to a different conclusion.

So efficient, yes.  Fun, yes.  Probably not for everyone, though.  As well as that process might work for me, I try to keep in mind that what works for me won't necessarily work for other people, and there might be some great guy out there that I could get into a relationship with but only if I wait until the third date to bed him.  If I even want a relationship that is.  Sometimes I think I do, but then again, I have a perfectly good house already, and it did very well on the home inspection.