Who’s More Likely to Use Honesty As a Weapon – Men or Women?
Name: By: Curious | | Location: Jacksonville , Florida |Question: I was in a 5 year (off and on)relationship with a guy who lied and cheated on me for essentially the whole relationship…I was really committed during the entire time. I already know, that was extremely foolish of me. So we lived together for about 3 of those years, but I ended up moving back to Florida (he lives out of state) because I felt he just couldn’t get it right. So we’ve been friends, if you could call it that, for about a year now and to be honest I’ve really just been afraid to commit since then. I realized that he was not going to changed and that I wasn’t in any state to go back into a serious relationship so I decided to just explore myself and I ended up getting really intimate with a woman. We’ve been seeing each other for about 6 months now and I really enjoy spending time with her, however I don’t see it going anywhere past what it is now, which is really just a (girl)friend that I can cuddle up with and take out from time to time. She is younger and extremely flirtatious.She also still sees one of her exs and even has openly admitted to still sleeping in the same bed as them when she goes to see them. So being as it may I decided to not put all my eggs in her basket and so I also still see my ex and have even had sex with him a few times. I guess my question is, do you think it’s wrong to straddle the fence so to speak. In my mind I feel like neither one of them are loyal or trustworthy enough for me to commit. So I have made no commitment to either of them. But I am starting to feel like maybe it’s wrong and should I let both know that I am seeing and being intimate with them both.
|Age: 23
I don’t think your situation is any different than if you were dating two men. You’re not exclusive with either. So what you do when you’re not with them really isn’t any of their business.
In terms of “straddling the fence”..are you referring to dating more than one person or dating both a man and a woman without choosing or identifying yourself as “straight” or “gay?” If it’s the latter, unless you’re filling out some form or census, I’m not sure you have to assign a label to yourself or limit your sexual or emotional preferences. You’re exploring and figuring out who you are and what you want. You can do that at 22 or 52. My suggestion to you is to just let yourself be open to things and see what feels right for and to you.
It doesn’t appear as though the people you’re being intimate with are getting too attached to you. If they were, then that would be the only situation where I think full disclosure is necessary. When someone comes out and informs a partner that they’re dating someone else, it usually comes off passive aggressive. Why do they need to know? Better yet…why do you want them to know?
While out with a friend recently, we joined in on a conversation with a group of women next to us at the bar. One woman was saying that a man she had met online, with whom she had one date, told her on their 2nd date that he was seeing other people. She did not ask for this information. He offered it. The woman wondered aloud why he would do that and accused the man of playing a game. My friend, a man, said to her that it was more likely that he was just being honest. Foolishly so, but honest. He said that many of the times women think men are playing games, they really aren’t. They’re just being clueless. They think they’re telling us something we want to know. If anything, he said, it’s women who use “honesty” as a blunt object.
I’m not sure I agree with that.
Another woman from the group next to us piped up and shared that she had been on three dates with a man and, after the third date, he invited her back to his place. She told the man yes, but with the caveat that she wouldn’t be sleeping with him while they both were dating other people. Only she wasn’t seriously or even consistently dating anyone else. Surprise, surprise. He never called her again.
“I was just being honest. I wasn’t going to sleep with him if he was dating other women” she said.
“No…” I said. “You were playing a game and he called your bluff. If you wanted to know if he was sleeping with anyone else, you could have just asked him. Although, if he was smart, he’d have lied. That’s the kicker. We ask questions we really don’t want to know the answer to, and half the time we’re not even getting the truth.”
My friend chimed in and said that if a woman told him she was dating other men, depending on the context, he likely wouldn’t call her again. He did say that if she told him she wouldn’t have sex with him while he was dating other women, he would call her again.
“I can respect her reasons for not wanting to sleep with me when she knows I might be sleeping with other women” he said. “But telling me she’s dating other men feels childish, likes she’s trying to make me feel threatened. If i don’t ask, I don’t want to know. Come to think of it, even if I do ask, I don’t want to know.”
I enlightened him a bit and said that plenty of men like to overshare in order to get a woman to up her game. The difference, I think, can be summed up in this Tweet:
Its not that you “don’t play games” as much as you’re really, really bad at them.
I tend to think that men are more successful at using honesty as a weapon of mass destruction.Only because men, and this is just my opinion, are more emotionally detached and can therefore make bold statements and not care about the outcome. Where as women are more invested in how the man reacts, which is why their attempts at “being honest” back fire.
Your thoughts?
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