Is Anal Sex On The Third Date Considered Taking Things Slow?

 

Tell me…..is anal sex on the third date now considered “taking things slow?”

I have the great (mis)fortune of being one of those girls with whom a man feels comfortable discussing his sex life. In, like, graphic terms. Having slutted around myself in my twenties and because I write a column about sex & relationships, I truly believed I had heard and seen everything.

Well, this story was the first to actually render me speechless.

A close male friend of mine up in Boston was detailing his recent weekend activity. An avid Match.com dater, he usually had two to three dates per week. I’d wake up in the morning and find one or two Match.com “Take a look:  This person could be your match” e-mails he would send to me asking for my opinion. After awhile I noticed a pattern. Almost all of the profiles this guy would send to me for my review were of…. how do I say this delicately….. psychos. So I really shouldn’t have been surprised when he told me how his date that particular weekend happened to be a 30-year-old virgin who lived with her brother.

On their second date she revealed that she was a still a virgin. She sprung this news on my friend in bed, while they were naked. Undeterred, and probably sated by the head she gave him, he decided to keep seeing her. She e-mailed him after their 2nd date, apologizing for not telling him sooner that she was a virgin and insisting that she “never” did anything like that before. It wasn’t her style, she said, to get physical with a guy that quickly. Especially with a man she met online and only had been out with twice.

I stopped my friend mid-sentence.

“Hold up. You’re not telling me that you believe that, are you?

Because she’s most definitely lying.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Honey, that is the oldest lie in the book. That is most certainly not the first time she did that. If it were, she wouldn’t have waited until after you were naked and in bed to tell you she was a virgin. That was intentional. She knew, at that point, you’d probably be too horny to turn her down. She’s trying to get you invested in her so you won’t dump her. And that e-mail she sent the next day? Classic give away. When a woman says she’s “not like that” nine times out of ten she is. I’m telling you, cut this one loose now.”

My warnings went in one ear and out the other. Date three was planned.

She asked if he could stop by his place that following Friday night after she went out with friends. Awesome. She was making herself a booty call. He said yes. She came over….and proceeded to let him have anal sex with her. Mind you, anal sex was her idea.

“Doesn’t this feel a little..wrong to you?” I asked.

“Wrong how? She said she wanted to do it.”

“Yeah, but…shouldn’t that have been a little…alarming to you? This girl, 30 years old, a virgin, gives you head on a the second date, e-mails you the next day and says she usually takes things slow, basically makes herself a booty call to you the next night…and then proceeds to let you have anal sex with her. No bells go off in your head when you break it down like that? You don’t feel even a little bit predatory?”

He didn’t understand what I was suggesting. Of course he didn’t. He had spent all day screwing some girl up the butt. Three times!

I can’t decide whose behavior unnerves me most. The woman’s, because there’s something so vulnerable and weak and desperate about her. Or the man’s, for being so blind and uncaring of this woman’s potentially damaged emotional state.

I realize that we are all supposed to be accountable and responsible for ourselves and our choices. You’ll get no argument from me there. But, and maybe this is just me, does this woman sound like she’s capable of being responsible for her own well being? And are you really going to tell me that this man, who is pushing 40, doesn’t realize that the woman was obviously trying desperately to please him and keep him interested?

Where’s the line of accountability for both of them? Should he have turned her down and sent her on her way? Or should he, because “he’s a man,” be expected (and therefore “justified”) to take the woman up on her offer?