Sometimes Honesty Is Actually an Insult
February 27, 2011
Here’s the scenario:
Person A goes out with Person B. At the end of the night, Person A tells Person B that they’re just looking for something 
casual and would like to have sex with Person B.
What people need to realize is that saying “I just want sex” is not honest, it’s lazy. Seduction requires effort and motivation. They’re putting NO effort into it. That implies that they simply don’t care about the outcome. That “honesty” is also counterproductive so you could even deduce that they WANT the person to say no and is looking – consciously or unconsciously – for a way out. I’m more sexually aggressive with women when I don’t care about the outcome. That often ironically results in “success” because some women are turned on by the confidence. Then, when a woman comes along that you like, you tiptoe around her and she thinks you’re a weakling douche. Law of nature, I think. You can totally understand it and still not be able to do anything about it. – Stu
Is this kind of honesty refreshing..or is it insulting?
Your Thoughts?
Categories: Dating, First Date Sex, Hook Up Culture, Sex
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...And That's Why You're Single 
If I was a girl I would be insulted. Men are only honest when they literally do not give a damn about you another words he finds you not very attractive to date.
A huge turn on to me but probably not for other girls who fall for this is a lack of smoothness. If someone seems nervous or stumbles and seems to really worry about you having a good time its a higher chance he’s geninually interested.
If he is being crass or cocky or invading my personal space then it means he really doesn’t care if he is offending me. Some girls may mistake this with being
“swept away” alah romance novels but someone who does this doesn’t know anything about you more then I’d hit it to try to win you over. A girl who keeps mistaking this as “good attention” just ends up being the sucker that gets these guys numbers up and inflates their self esteem while lowering the woman’s.
Yep, a very common problem as noted by Stu. Other thoughts:
1.) This is a yet another sh*t test no win proposition for many guys. Most guys? Not too ‘smooth’, especially when younger or more inexperienced. Or even older & inexperienced. Hence the ’round about ways’ of getting down. Slow & slower. Until someone else more eager picks up the ball & runs with it. Then they control the game.
2.) Ergo the guys who Are ‘very smooth’ or who pass such secret & magical ‘bang etiquette’? Are more likely to be the ‘players’ or those who’ve had a good deal of experience with ‘dating’/OTS/many GFs/harems. (Or again are likely to be not seriously considering the gal for a LTR, and just ‘practicing’).
3.) Conversely, it may also be that you’ve got a #2 but he’s good looking and/or tall enough to pull it off as he’s got many options.
4.) So again, really a no win for much of anyone. No one really values ‘honesty’, and there’s no ‘trust’ engendered, or required or demanded of anyone. For anything. It’s all a game of various levels of subterfuge. No wonder the guys would rather just stay home and play such games from the comfort of their own couch, and/on line with buds. Create a very complex game that’s nearly impossible to ‘win’ with high expenses, nebulous ends, uncertain goals, no end to unknown ‘hidden’ rules & improvised regulations, and the guys will opt for simpler entertainments every time.
But yeah. Another piece to the ‘puzzle’ of why.
Unrelated: On Fashion, I was at a meeting about a week ago when a kid, <20 walked in wearing a very close approximation of that green jacket monstrosity pictured there. I instantly recognized it as 'vintage' & belonging to a very elderly man. Said man appeared soon enough to ask the HS kid when he wanted to be picked up. As luck would have it, I knew him, grandpa. It's like that in a small town. Cheers, 'VJ'
If a guy just wanted sex, I’d be glad he was blunt. Sure it’s tactless, however (while knowing exactly what she’s getting/not getting), it would give a girl the power to decide what she wants to do. Although, as others said, it lacks smoothness, it’s better than someone shoveling shit, diguised as thoughtfulness, just to get you in the sack. I certanly wouldn’t find this approach refreshing, nor would I be offended. I would be thankful that I wouldn’t have waisted my time.
Um…*wasted my time…* I’m literate, I promise.
I’ve been told I’m very smooth, and I’ve used this bluntly honest line a few times. It came from a good place in my heart, as I genuinely wanted to give the girl a chance to decide for herself. It has worked very well for me.
Stop this passive aggressive shit already. If you try to be smooth, a girl might think you are interested in a long-term relationship or there is at least potential. Not every woman is sophisticated or could read the signs. When they find out, after wasting a good amount of time on you, that you are only interested in sex then that is when you have to deal with the tears, the broken heart etc. I think a little honesty from both sides would make dating much easier.
The main problem I see with this…even girls who are okay with just having sex seem to balk when it’s spelled out for them in blunt terms. It’s like hearing it outloud makes them second guess their decision.
It would only be insulting if person A was already emotionally invested, and deduced (accurately in this case) that person B had already decided they were not worthy of a relationship. I understand why, in that case, person A would be insulted, but that doesn’t make the approach insulting, as it is way too soon for person A to be emotionally invested (assuming this is the first date, which the scenario isn’t clear on, but it seems to be the case).
Otherwise, the directness is refreshing. It doesn’t leave any room for person A to think it’s something that it isn’t. It gives person A the power to decide whether this is a situation that he or she wants, based upon accurate information. It can be flattering, if person A was wondering whether person B was sexually attracted to her. It’s as close to the honest truth as one can expect in this situation, and one I wish more persons B would adopt.
Don’t say you “just want sex” after a really nice date which you paid for. I don’t need to be fed in order to get horny…Don’t ask me how my life is and what I’m up to for the weekend and don’t call/email to meander your way into more sex. Just fucking ask me. Time is precious and if all you want is sex just say so…anything else will gray the area. And gray is such a hard color to see through…
where’d you get my picture?
Unfortunatley (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), people are “in a hurry” and “managing options” so they want a “quick yes or no” etc. so they can move on if they have to. Personally, I don’t like it but many people apparantly do.
(See below)
Cellphones, Texts and Lovers
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times
Since April 2007, New York magazine has posted online sex diaries. People send in personal accounts of their nighttime quests and conquests. Some of the diaries are unusual and sad. There’s a laid-off banker who drinks herself into oblivion and wakes up in the beds of unfamiliar men. There’s an African-American securities trader who flies around the country on weekends to meet with couples seeking interracial sex. (He meets one Midwestern couple at a T.G.I. Friday’s.)
But the most interesting part of the diaries concerns the way cellphones have influenced courtship. On nights when they are out, the diarists are often texting multiple possible partners in search of the best arrangement.
As the journalist Wesley Yang notes in a very intelligent analysis in the magazine, the diarists “use their cellphones to disaggregate, slice up, and repackage their emotional and physical needs, servicing each with a different partner, and hoping to come out ahead.”
Often the diarists will be on the verge of spending the evening with one partner, when a text arrives from another with a potentially better offer. To guard against not being chosen at all, Yang writes, “everyone is on somebody’s back-burner, and everybody has a back-burner of their own, which they maintain with open-ended texts.”
The atmosphere is fluid, like an eBay auction. This leads to a series of marketing strategies. You don’t want to appear too enthusiastic. You want to invent detached nicknames for partners. “Make plans to spend day with the One Who Cries,” a paralegal, 26, from the East Village writes. You want to appear bulletproof as you move confidently through the transactions. “I have a Stage Five Clinger on my hands,” a TV producer writes. “He asks me to hang out again this coming Sunday. I do not respond.”
People who send in sex diaries to a magazine are not representative of average Americans. But the interplay between technology and hook-ups will be familiar to a wide swath of young Americans. It illustrates an interesting roadblock in the country’s social evolution.
Once upon a time — in what we might think of as the “Happy Days” era — courtship was governed by a set of guardrails. Potential partners generally met within the context of larger social institutions: neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and families. There were certain accepted social scripts. The purpose of these scripts — dating, going steady, delaying sex — was to guide young people on the path from short-term desire to long-term commitment.
Over the past few decades, these social scripts became obsolete. They didn’t fit the post-feminist era. So the search was on for more enlightened courtship rules. You would expect a dynamic society to come up with appropriate scripts. But technology has made this extremely difficult. Etiquette is all about obstacles and restraint. But technology, especially cellphone and texting technology, dissolves obstacles. Suitors now contact each other in an instantaneous, frictionless sphere separated from larger social institutions and commitments.
People are thus thrown back on themselves. They are free agents in a competitive arena marked by ambiguous relationships. Social life comes to resemble economics, with people enmeshed in blizzards of supply and demand signals amidst a universe of potential partners.
The opportunity to contact many people at once seems to encourage compartmentalization, as people try to establish different kinds of romantic attachments with different people at the same time.
It seems to encourage an attitude of contingency. If you have several options perpetually before you, and if technology makes it easier to jump from one option to another, you will naturally adopt the mentality of a comparison shopper.
It also seems to encourage an atmosphere of general disenchantment. Across the centuries the moral systems from medieval chivalry to Bruce Springsteen love anthems have worked the same basic way. They take immediate selfish interests and enmesh them within transcendent, spiritual meanings. Love becomes a holy cause, an act of self-sacrifice and selfless commitment.
But texting and the utilitarian mind-set are naturally corrosive toward poetry and imagination. A coat of ironic detachment is required for anyone who hopes to withstand the brutal feedback of the marketplace. In today’s world, the choice of a Prius can be a more sanctified act than the choice of an erotic partner.
This does not mean that young people today are worse or shallower than young people in the past. It does mean they get less help. People once lived within a pattern of being, which educated the emotions, guided the temporary toward the permanent and linked everyday urges to higher things. The accumulated wisdom of the community steered couples as they tried to earn each other’s commitment.
Today there are fewer norms that guide in that way. Today’s technology seems to threaten the sort of recurring and stable reciprocity that is the building block of trust.
I don’t usually agree with David Brooks politically, but he’s onto something here. However, this fits into my “dating is dead” theory: we don’t have a community pushing marriageable/commitment-minded people our way as in prior generations; we have more open attitudes about sex in general (which makes an “I just want you for sex” conversation possible without an offended slap); our pool is potentially so much larger, with the advent of online dating and the ability to meet those who we might not ever encounter in real life; and we have so many stimuli competing for our attention, with so many means of instant gratification now available.
So the “what’s it going to be: the sex track or the relationship track?” conversation is one that is fairly newly possible to have openly, and even though it can be fraught with emotional consequences, having it take place via text or email makes it easier to face, even if it’s not so warm and fuzzy. Some might say that’s good, because it’s more genuine; some would say it’s bad, because it’s less romantic or grounded in a trustworthy foundation. Otherwise, text is just the channel selected for a conversation that should take place sooner rather than later with everyone one meets where attraction is present.
While I engage in casual sex I also have no problem stating when I want something with more of a commitment…whether it be via text or email or face to face.
Regardless I find that at some point a conversation will have to be had. I try not to wait. I like to know the rules of the game before someone calls “Foul”
Further to what Stu said, I think Moxie presents a false choice between “honesty” and “insults.” In fact, saying “I only want to have sex with you” is not really honesty. Sure, it’s MORE honest than saying “I want a relationship” but it’s still communicating something other than what the guy means: namely, “I DO NOT CARE.”
It doesn’t mean the guy is “sexually attracted” to you. It doesn’t mean the guy wants to date you. It doesn’t mean the guy even wants to have sex with you. Why? Because, if he wanted to have sex with you, there are much more effective ways to accomplish that rather than to risk insulting you. No. It means “I’ll say anything and I don’t care what you think.”
Here’s a thought experiment for those who think this is even potentially refreshingly honest. What if, after the date, the guy says: “I don’t think you’re particularly attractive and I don’t care whether we have sex but if you really you want to, I’ll have sex with you provided there are no strings.” Are you insulted yet? Because that’s what “I only want to have sex” means. That’s honest.
Look, if a woman said to me after a first date, “I only want to have sex with you but nothing more” I would f*ck her six ways from Sunday but I’d still be insulted.
Look, if a woman said to me after a first date, “I only want to have sex with you but nothing more” I would f*ck her six ways from Sunday but I’d still be insulted.
Classic.
Look, if a woman said to me after a first date, “I only want to have sex with you but nothing more” I would f*ck her six ways from Sunday but I’d still be insulted.
Why? You’ve made it pretty clear in a number of posts that you’re perfectly fine with casual sex and are not looking to be in a relationship, and that you don’t want women deluding themselves to the contrary. The best way to prevent that from happening is to have a mutual agreement that you’re both only looking for sex, or that you’re both looking to see if a relationship can develop.
Too many people equate “honesty” with cruelty, so that they can justify being dishonest or disingenuous. In other words, if telling the truth is considered dishonest because it doesn’t go far enough to encompass every random thought in your head, then you don’t see yourself under any obligation to be honest at all. I’m calling bullshit.
Why would I be insulted? Because presumably, the woman in question would not have been reading my postings here for the past 5 years or my mind. It doesn’t matter that I might be receptive. They don’t know how I would react at all. And, they’re making the calculation that I might react badly and they don’t care.
Same for you. If the guy thinks he’s out with “Paula, commenter from Ask Moxie” than I could agree that it would not be an insult to approach you in the way you say you would like to be approached.
But, that’s the point. It’s not about YOUR reaction. Who knows what your secret preferences are. Maybe you secretly like to be called a dirty whore, but that doesn’t mean that a guy that calls you that intends it as compliment, even if he’s being honest about his feelings. An insult doesn’t become less of an insult because you choose to interpret it as something else.
Because of that, when a guy tells a woman he doesn’t know that he’s “only interested in sex and nothing more” he is COMMUNICATING something to her that is DIFFERENT than the literal meaning of the words coming out of his mouth (and irrespective of whether you, in fact, happen to enjoy being insulted.) It doesn’t change the objective reality.
People don’t say every thought that comes into their head because they are generally socially aware. The only scenario in which it is not an insult, is where the person is utterly, socially incompetent.
People want to call it “honest” because, in my view, that is prefrabale for them than the painful reality which is, unfortunately, frequently cruel. They focus on the less painful words and deliberately blind themselves to the underlying communication.
“You’ve made it pretty clear in a number of posts that you’re perfectly fine with casual sex and are not looking to be in a relationship, and that you don’t want women deluding themselves to the contrary.”
Wha? I don’t care whether women delude themselves. If anything, in real life, I count on it. But here, I just try to help with actual honesty. I’m not making moral judgments and I’m not here to gain moral approval from you or anyone for my decisions. I don’t care. I simply report what I observe.
DMN, if I understand your argument correctly, it’s that “nobody knows that DMN/Paula are people who appreciate honesty and/or in certain situations are content with a sexual relationship in the absence of commitment, so anyone who proposes that is being insulting because of the way the world is (i.e., most people would consider it an insult so anyone who would propose this intends to be insulting rather than creatively seductive).”
DMN, your comments deciphering guy code have frequently been helpful in dealing with the way the world is, and I often find myself agreeing with you and giving you thumbs up. But this, I just don’t buy.
When I deal with someone in real life, I try to make very clear, very early on, that I expect honesty, and I want to figure out as soon as possible what the nature of the relationship is going to be. I’m happy to let a relationship that’s meant to be unfold, but if someone is not interested in a relationship, then I want to know that so I can move on to someone else who potentially might be (or have NSA sex if that’s what I want to do).
So someone saying to me, “Paula, I’m just looking for something casual but I would like to have sex with you” is perfectly consistent with how I would expect to be treated in a situation where someone does not want a relationship with me. That tells me where his head is at and doesn’t permit false hopes, and if he does it in an inelegant or insulting way, then I will take that into account when determining whether NSA sex is something I would consider.
I expect people to say what they mean and mean what they say, and I think if you don’t expect that in life, you don’t get it. You may not always get it anyway, but that’s not a reason to surround yourself with people who are only going to lie to you.
why should a woman be insulted if the guy just wants sex??
that is ridiculous.
I’m still not understanding the insult either. What I find insulting is acting as if there is more between us then just sex…call a spade a spade.
In the above scenario, he says he just wants sex at the end of a date. He has evaluated her during the date – as we all do to each other – and determined that she isn’t worth more than a half-assed attempt at sex. This has happened to me before, and I most certainly was insulted. I think I felt insulted because I realized I was actually being rejected. A guy who ends a date with, “It’s been fun but I’m not interested in anything serious… wanna bang?” does not care whether he will ever see me again.
On the other hand, I travel a lot for work and note that on the hotel bar scene, men will buy me a drink and straight up ask whether I’d be interested in having sex with them. This does not leave me feeling insulted in the slightest, because the idea doesn’t come to them after evaluating me on a date.
We should just assume that all guys want to have sex with us if we aren’t morbidly obese so basically stating they want the minimum and not taking any care to be tact about it is very insulting.
Vox, I understand your distinction and agree that there’s somewhat of a difference in the two situations.
However, I’ve found that there are guys out there who only want casual sex — it’s not a rejection of the woman they’re with but just where their head is at (pun intended.) They “date” because they think they have to in order to open the door, and pretend they like someone in order to get her to sleep with them.
So someone in that situation (which is a lot of guys, especially between the ages of 25-35), who after only one date reveals his true intentions, is refreshing in my opinion, because he’s not engaging in deceptive behavior in order to get laid.
What happens when a guy is a great fooler? He pretends he’s interested in a realtionship, the gal opens her heart to him, and, after a while, discovers all he wants is sex. Then she’s hurt.
While it may appear to be tacky to be so honest about your preferances up front, a guy who says “I’m really attracted to you, would you be interested in being intimate” is kinder. He is spelling it out, lowering her expectations.
Frankly, I don’t respond to this (I’m a realtionship gal), but I know women who would.
At least that way the woman is making an informed choice. I think it is way better for the guy to be honest that he just wants sex and nothing else. That, to me, is better than a guy who just wants sex but PRETENDS he wants something more, just to get laid. If the woman wants to still sleep with the guy knowing it will mean absolutely nothing to him (other than her being a receptacle for his sperm), then that is on her!