Battle of the Sexes
In a man’s mind this scenario is not a mere dream; it is a reality, using the right strategy. You see, I’ve found that men take a “war strategy” approach to love such as: get her before she gets me, never reveal your position, don’t fire until fired upon, and a surprise attack is the best advantage to have over your opponent. They believe using these strategies will ensure victory, but like all men going to war they know there is a chance they will lose or in this case have a conversation like this…HIM: You know Susie, I think we should take this relationship to the next level. What do you think? SUSIE: Now John, you already know I think of you as more than a friend… you are more like a big brother. Someday I want you to be a groomsman at my wedding. Wouldn’t that be great? Aren’t you glad we’ve never had feelings for each other? I mean us dating would have been a nightmare, don’t you think? HIM: Yeah. That would have sucked. The strategy somewhat worked; the enemy does not know his true position. It is a small victory, not the victory he hoped for but a victory. This is why I hate this question because for the woman it is a surprise attack. His full forces are advancing and you sent your army out for manicures and pedicures! You have been fired upon, and having been surprised, you only have two options: either confront the enemy or run like hell. Unsurprisingly, I have always chosen the latter of the two and ended up in an uncomfortable conversation more like this…HIM: “I think we should take this relationship to the next level. What do you think? ME: “I’m sorry, what? I wasn’t paying attention.” HIM: “I think it is time we try taking this relationship to the next level.” ME: “You know what? I totally forgot I have to do something today, um, I’m going to go. I’ll call you later though, soooo…O. K. Bye.” Moments like this bring me to the second reason I hate being asked to upgrade a relationship. #2. It’s just weird!! I’ll elaborate with a little example. Say you meet a guy in high school, college, or at work and you become “friends.” You become very comfortable with one another and you talk to said “friend” about how you hate boyfriend A, then boyfriend B, and boyfriend C was the worst! You confide in said “friend” telling him that you have had it, you will never find Mr. right and from now on you are replacing men with me time. It is at this moment said “friend” decides to say (you guessed it) “MAYBE WE SHOULD TAKE OUR RELATIONSHIP TO THE NEXT LEVEL.” That one awkward moment hits you like only one other awkward moment can, when you go on a bad date and the guy insists on walking you to your door. You think oh crap he’s going to want to kiss me. What should I do, all the while he’s rambling on about how much fun he had blah, blah, blah. At this point you just pray he shuts up and goes home. All of a sudden he starts leaning closer with that head tilt and everything starts moving in slow motion (but in a bad way). Suddenly you realize he’s about to make contact so you turn your head to the side at the last minute and give him the cheek. Then you have to pretend that you didn’t know he was going to kiss you, which is a total lie and you know he knows it is a total lie, so you both just stand there. Then you feel like you should say something so you mumble the first thing that comes to your head like “so…it’s really late” or “all right…well, good night” and you try adding a yawn or some weird gesture like holding up your key or giving him a little wave so he knows you are serious. Until he leaves it feels like you cannot breathe. Yeah, having a friend of many years ask you to “take your relationship to the next level” feels just like that. Now, why would a man put you and himself through a moment like this? Here is my theory, I call it the “Donner Party Syndrome,” or D.P.S for short, because much like the Donner party turned the people in their wagon train into a potluck dinner, in times of extreme loneliness or sexual dry spells, men turn girl-friends into girlfriends. So to avoid moments like this, get your male friends laid by someone else on a regular basis, and they will never hit on you. There is only one problem with this theory that I’ve relied on since high school…it’s WRONG! Which is weird because I thought my theory was airtight until a recent incident revealed a very large hole. Not too long ago I decided to play matchmaker with two friends of mine. They seemed to have a lot in common: same age, bad divorces, a good sense of humor; and both are really creative. So, I email my friend Rick (whom I hadn’t spoken to for a couple of months) to play catch up. I tell him I’m engaged, ask him if he’s seeing anyone…normal catch up stuff. He replies he isn’t seeing anyone at all. I respond, “Great, because I want to hook you up with a friend of mine...we’ll have to get together and discuss.” He writes back, “Sure, we can get together next week.” I reply, “O. K…until then, stay single.” I log off and head out of town for a week to a place where time stands still and DSL, TiVo, and call notes do not exist…my parents’ house. So it takes me a week to get Rick’s response: “Stay single, why? Are you getting cold feet?” I think ha, ha, ha, that Rick! What a kidder. I hit reply and write, “No cold feet here. I want to set you up with my friend, remember?” His response is, “Oh, I can’t. I have a girlfriend. We’ve been dating for a couple of months and I think we are in love.” Now this baffles me. Why didn’t he tell me he had a girlfriend when I originally asked him? So, I turn to the one person that is used to my crazy life experiences, Matt. (He’s the fiancé.) He reads the emails and says (rather smugly I might add), “Well, it is pretty obvious to me. He thought you asked him if he was single because you wanted to hook up with him, or something, so he said yes. Then when you clarified that you wanted to play matchmaker with your friend, he told you about the girlfriend. Basically, he was hoping to hook up with you.” I was shocked. How can that be? That’s not right. That doesn’t coincide with my D.P.S theory that male friends only hit on female friends in times of dire sexual/intimacy emergency. If he has a girlfriend, why would he need to sleep with me? While I was pondering this question another of my male friends, Jeff, calls. I tell Jeff what Rick had done and Jeff offers the same explanation as Matt. So it’s true! Now, the question was does every guy think like this? There was only one way to find out: a nasty little experiment with Jeff as the subject. For the record, Jeff has a girlfriend seventeen years his junior and we have been friends for a little over a year, no chance of D.P.S. here. I begin by asking him, “You think men and women can just be friends?” “Yeah, sure,” he says. I reply, “Then how come every guy I’ve ever been friends with has hit on me at least once?” He interrupts with “every guy except ONE.” “Oh yeah,” I say, “my gay friend never hit on me.” “No,” he laughs, “I was talking about me.” “Whatever!” I shoot back, “If you could sleep with me, you so would.” He replies, “I have never hit on you and I know for a fact that I would never sleep with you.” Hmmm, a huge blow to the ego but interesting, maybe Rick is a fluke. I trudge on “Why wouldn’t you sleep with me? Is it because you think I’m fat?” (Incidentally, accusing a man of calling you fat always throws him off guard because men know women are super sensitive about it. Normally, if you weasel that into any argument you’ll get what you want. It works a lot like crying.) Jeff says, “No, I don’t think you are fat. It’s just that you aren’t the type of girl you mess around with.” “What does that mean? Is that a nice way of calling me unattractive or something? Guys have been telling me that since high school and I still don’t know what that means!” To which he replies, “You are the kind of girl a guy marries. You don’t want to just mess around with a girl like you, ‘cause if you make the wrong move, you lose the friendship. So you have to decide to go for it or just be her friend.” Even though my guy to girl friend ratio has always been around 3:1, I had never heard this before. What’s a girl to do? Get more information, of course. “Really, what makes me a girl guys want to marry? I know it’s not because I can cook.” Then he says, “I don’t know….you are just a fun, laid back, cool person, and a guy can picture hanging out with you for the rest of his life. You see men have categories they put women into.” “Really,” I say acting surprised, “what are they?” --Warning you are about to read a section of the very elusive and secretive guy code, prepare yourself-- The categories men classify women in are as follows: (A.) women they want to sleep with; (B.) women they hope they can sleep with; (C.) women they are willing to marry to sleep with. This information blows a hole into my D.P.S. theory, just when I thought I had men figured out. However, getting this information is a victory, not the victory I expected, but a victory. We women no longer have to be blindsided when our male friend asks, “Can we take this relationship to the next level?” We have men right where we want them in our crosshairs. Now you understand what he really means and once a man reveals his position, what you choose to do with this information is entirely up to you. You can (A.) accept his proposal on your terms; (B.) run like hell; or (C) use it to your advantage. After all, a man will do anything for you if he thinks he will have a chance with you someday. I know it sounds awful, but then again all is fair in love and war. Written by Jessica Mouser |
It doesn’t take me long to size up a man. Within ten minutes my mind places him in a category either “friend,” “make out buddy,” or “boyfriend/husband material.” However, I have often wondered if men put women into the same categories. When I was still naïve, I believed they did until one day a friend of some years asked me to “take our relationship to the next level.” I wrote the whole experience off as a fluke but soon each of my guy friends followed suit, all trying to upgrade our relationship from friend to girlfriend with the dreaded question “Can we take this relationship to the next level?” Of course I had a problem with this for two reasons. #1. I don’t know what the hell that means! It’s one of those bad relationship catch phrases (like “I love you but I’m not in love with you”) that men use as emotional camouflage to hide behind. It is all about strategy and this is their check. All they have to do is sit and wait. However, unlike chess, men are looking for a checkmate. It’s as if a man believes the conversation will go something like this…HIM: You know Susie, I think we should take this relationship to the next level. What do you think? SUSIE: Oh Yes! I would love to be your sex slave! And can I cook and clean for you too, pretty please?
