Sunday Boyfriends and Casual Dating Insight

Reading an awesome new blog I stumbled across, Dirty Knickers, I was surprised to see a recent entry that echoes most of my own current desires for/in a relationship. It's good to know there are other like-minded women out there. (her motto, btw, is: “I like to air my dirty opinions in public. I guess you could say it's cathartic.” How can Frank not like that? Pretty sure that's what's keeping me sane.

Certainly I understand her desire, I have my Standby, who fulfils almost every single need that Samantha Ellis mentions she is looking for in her blog entry, My Quest For The Sunday Boyfriend. Those needs would be “stimulating conversations, a similar sense of humour and [...] spending time together which wasn't just physical”[1]. My own amendment to that would be that, if we are not being physical together then we should be doing something interesting together (conversation, activity), otherwise don't bother. I don't want someone hanging around me just because they have nothing better to do and they don't know how to spend time by themselves. Now that I think about it I may want an even more pared down version of The Sunday Boyfriend. Which I have. (though if you look up Sunday Boyfriend in the Urban Dictionary, it has a slightly different, albeit not by far though, description)

If she were in the same city as myself I'd offer to share mine, I don't need him on Sundays; I need him when I need him. Generally Thursdays.

Other things Samantha mentions also coincide with recent irritations that have led me to conversations with my girlfriends about men and their perceptions of the attention we bestow on them, whether it be expressed through gifts, compliments/flattery, an intimate touch/look; it doesn't mean we are “envisioning the pair of [us] as little edible people adorning the top of a wedding cake, during sex or otherwise.”[1]

As she says:

“I enjoy having sex with someone for the emotional connection as well as the physical one. And while detaching yourself from certain emotions is one thing, feeling like a giant hand is quite another. Hey buddy, did you know that connecting with someone in the moment is about more than just penetration? And just because a person maintains eye contact with someone while they're having sex does not mean they're envisioning the pair of you as little edible people adorning the top of a wedding cake?

I have two personal illustrations; first, a mild irritation, where the man got confused after spending a lengthy duration (2 days straight) with me during a holiday season, enjoying each others company in many obvious and different ways, including playing scrabble, watching documentaries, going to brunch... furthermore he figured since I spent a large amount of money on him for a fancy meal, that this also meant I was looking for something exclusive.

Listen. Being nice to a guy can mean a variety of different things, depending on the woman. I like to think there are others out there who have a similar viewpoint as myself. We/I not being of the disalluded fairy-tale ilk (clearly), we won't say that we don't believe that there might be a match for us out there somewhere; one who can meet our sexual, intellectual, emotional needs (I'm not talking girly romantic emotions either). Having said that, a females attention does not mean you are, or we think you are, that match.

In addition, there may be a selection of woman who enjoy treating “their men” well for other "odd" reasons. They may get off on doing things for them, giving them small gifts, making them feel special in creative and fun ways, even in the absence of any real permanent, or romantic feelings on the part of the woman for the man. This has to do with another sort of topic, not for this entry.

This simulated intimacy, as mentioned, can carry over to the bedroom too, wherein an intimate touch, say the absent minded holding of fingers during an intimate act, or a look during the act of sex, can be misread by the other if they are concerned about the woman being emotionally attached to them. This is a concern in the back of the mind of the one who wants to make sure they're not being misread.

This leads to my second illustration, where an absent minded linking of fingers during an act with ...a man very hard to describe in one sentence...sent waves of concern/paranoia/insecurity through me, causing me to pull my hand away quickly, hoping that that act also did not lead to misread signals. Why should the casual dating female be worried about this?

Misread signals lead to inevitable conversations on defining the relationship (in most cases), and let's be honest, nobody wants to do that more than once - a discussion, I find, seems inevitable at some point, which I guess is good if there is open communication between partners (which I am a supporter of in all relationships, friends and otherwise) - but that doesn't mean I don't think it's a pain in the ass; and if it's not the right time for the discussion then it's a bigger pain in [my] ass; or alternately misread signals may send a signal to a casual lover that it's time to end the contact, in attempt to prevent further "attachment".

Getting back to ironing out the wrinkles in this, to get a better understanding of a new frontier of relationship styles, and how the people involved get their needs met without complication, boil it down to a very basic explanation that probably applies to most casual female daters (not this one, exactly, however BUT everything I mentioned applies), these simple acts, like special attention, small gestures of tender physical contact, private exchanges, the creation/illusion of intimacy; it's all about building a connection (even an artificial one), to make being taken away by the moment that much more spectacular, is what a good encounter is all about.