Sex and the Single Girl: The Unmarried Woman's Guide to Men (29 page)

Unlike the really sexually deprived unhappily married man who falls for a single girl and falls
hard
, the reasonably contented husband with “straying privileges” is pretty rough on a single woman. He is usually no more faithful to a girl friend than to a wife.

You don’t
like
his being this way and neither do I. (We were
educated
not to like it and not to accept it.) But to be trite and cliché, this is the nature of the beast. Man is
not
monogamous no matter how much religion and social writ tell him he is. You don’t like your adorable Persian kitty dragging a maimed, half-alive pigeon into your living room but that’s the nature of Persian kitties. Do you renounce all cats?

Naturally, you are prey to
all
erring husbands with or without a straying excuse simply because you are
there …
cool, sweet, pretty and unencumbered!

If given half a chance, the man frustrated by lukewarm affection at home will fall madly in love with you. And he will want you to love him as he has never been loved by his wife … want you to be his adored one, his passionate one.

Heaven knows a married man on an all-out I Love You campaign can be one of God’s most persuasive creatures. There’s a warmth and earnestness about him. He holds nothing back. A single man is afraid to go that far for fear of being hauled off to the license bureau. A married man has built-in brakes.

He says what you want to hear—not that you are an enchanting diversion of the moment but that he is miserable at home, that he would
like
to marry you, that he would saw off his foot to have met you first!

He forgets that there’s very little in a mere torrid love relationship for you—that you can get physical ardor from a dozen men. But you are probably just as unobjective in your thinking when you convince yourself that a divorce and subsequent marriage to you would solve his problems. Do you have any idea how much a divorce
costs
?

In spite of the fact that the area around married men seems loaded with mines, I believe they
have
a definite place in the life of a single woman—as friends and confidants, occasionally as dates and once in a great while as lovers (if they live thousands of miles from you and promise only to visit once or twice a year!)

Presents, Please

“
I
can’t give you anything but love,” is real depression-era stuff. There must be
something
else he can give—a book of poetry, one perfect rose, if he’s a struggler; a vicuña coat, if a tycoon. Don’t expect a Thunderbird from anyone just because you have bestowed
your
most priceless gift.

The more you can think of the relationship as a mutually rewarding one and the less you picture yourself as a poor, pathetic little Match Girl, the happier you’ll be.

The situation of the kept girl is not under discussion—we are talking of “love affairs”—but let’s not be stuffy. Who’s to say how long any of us would decline an offer of emeralds, chinchillas, and a portfolio of A.T.&T? Fortunately, or unfortunately, the problem never comes up! Any lesser offer … well, that would be like trying to buy a Picasso on postcard money.

As for combining a love affair with financial gain (being helped out with the rent or afforded a mink-trimmed bathroom), that’s awfully tricky too. I’m inclined to agree with my pure-minded psychiatrist friend who says, “Sex is too precious and valuable a commodity to be sold or traded. It can only be successfully shared.”

A lady’s love
should
pay for all trips, most restaurant tabs, and the liquor. That’s simply good affair etiquette.

In a married-man relationship there are subtle differences. There is no equal footing. If it is a liaison of some duration, if he is comfortably well off and you are a struggling ballet dancer, I think fairly handsome presents are in order. Presents can’t make up for everything or even
anything
, but they can help ease the pain of inequity that exists in an affair between an unmarried woman and a married man.

Married men can be very defensive about presents. “
Pay
for her love,” he scoffs. “Glenda wouldn’t want anything like that. She loves me for
myself.
”

There is no easy way to handle this reckoning. The oblique way is undoubtedly best, for even the
hint
that something more might be expected of him than his extravagant enjoyment of your beautiful body will cause a sensitive married man great pain.

A friend of mine said to her married lover, “Darling, I’m thinking of getting a used Volkswagen to drive to work. I hate to move much closer to my office because it would be inconvenient for you to see me. Besides, I must be honest and admit it would be wonderful to have a car to go to the beach in or take to the tennis courts on weekends when you can’t see me. I have three hundred dollars in cash now; and, if you would lend me seven hundred, I could get a very good used Volkswagen at Motor City. I could pay you back thirty dollars a month.”

This speech happens to have a lot going for it. It is flattering. She wants the car so that she can continue to live near him. She is letting him off the hook for times when he can’t see her. She has made some effort herself toward the luxury. And she has decided on the amount he can handle—not an outrageous figure. Her token offer to pay back (which, of course, will never be accepted) helps him rationalize to his ego that she’s a nice loving girl not after his money. He’s going to have a hard time squirming out of her request because how can he reason that any girl—especially
his
girl—would be better off riding the bus?

Not all married men are rich, of course, but they too should be doing lots of extra giving in
some
area—even if it’s just helping a girl paint her back porch. The state of her bank account really has nothing to do with it.

Affair Aids

When an affair
is
in trouble, there is probably no other pain comparable to it. The remedies and bromides that seem to rout other sorrows—debts, job setbacks, family squabbles, inferiority complexes—have no effect whatever on trouble with a man!

Even a reasonably serene woman can find herself wracked with wall-to-wall insecurity. She fights herself all day and half the night not to call her lover to ask if he still loves her and if everything is still all right. The worst of it is that she knows when she calls, and he dutifully says he
does
and it
is
, it won’t do a bit of good!

The news that there’s another woman, when
you’re
the other woman, can plunge a thousand samurai swords into your viscera.

What
do
you do when you can’t give him up? (You tried that
last
week!)

Go for help—all you can get—at these first-aid stations:

They are marvelously kind because they’ve been along this route themselves, and they are tireless listeners. Their viewpoint is anything but objective, of course, because it’s all for
you.
(A man, incredible as it seems, has his side of the story too.)

Lean hard on your girl friends and go over and over the story as long as it gives you any solace to talk about it.

He’s even better than a girl friend in many ways—more constructive, shrewd and realistic. He won’t feel so sorry for you and feed your self-pity. He can usually size up the situation pretty squarely and even explain what is going on in your lover’s pulpy brain, because he too is a man. He will also point out why you
don’t
want this guy for keeps even when you think you do. And all the time you’re weeping on another man, in the back of your head you know that at least
this
man is a darling.

A girl I know has wept all over one of the smartest attorneys (married) in Beverly Hills for years. He obviously is in love with her himself, but he has often kept her from getting too maudlin or ridiculous over someone he knows isn’t worthy of her.

Kick and scream at
him
if you’ve had all you can bear. Obviously this is not during the first few months of your relationship but after it has dragged on and on. A temper tantrum may not get you married, but acting the loving little stoic won’t either. Honest anger can clear the air.

I know a “loving little stoic” who finally threw a bucket of ice cubes and icy water at her lover during a seemingly mild argument. He thought she’d flipped her lid. She had been pretending to herself she wasn’t angry because he was spoiled and unfaithful, but inside she was seething with rage. Out it came—later than it should have.

Cry and kick and scream alone if you’d rather he didn’t see you. Have a tantrum if you can. Throw beanbags against your fireplace. Shred an old towel. It’s
okay
to be mad. Your ego has taken a terrible beating, and a physical outburst of violence may relieve the pressure.

This is the greatest if your emotional trouble is of long duration. It probably is no accident that you become involved with one heel after another. A few visits to a psychiatrist may help you get perspective, and perhaps you do not need the full treatment.

Friends tell me their ministers are kind and compassionate, but don’t go if you aren’t ready to be told to stop the affair. What else can the clergy say? Sleeping with anybody you aren’t married to is against the precepts of all conventional religions.

Church itself is a wonderful place for solace and quieting the spirit, and you can go
between
Sundays, too.

The Ultimatum

Hardly any bachelor wants to get married. Even the most adorable, non-phobic one has to be gently but firmly prodded into matrimony.

If the truth be known, many of your married girl friends whom you thought were the pursued darlings used everything from vapors to bloodletting to get their man. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.

There’s no question that it’s often a matter of timing. Some men can be bloodlet by an expert (it being understood this is usually in the form of delicious little home-cooked meals including his favorite dishes, as well as being walked hand-in-hand past furniture stores) and resist to the death. At some other period in his life this same man may succumb to a far less persuasive bloodletter.

A man ought to be able to make up his mind about you as wife material within six months of your meeting. Give him the benefit of the doubt and say a year. After that it must be conceded you are facing a hardened veteran.

There are many moves you can make to stir him up a bit, but they will probably not get you wed.

When you declare you are devoting too much time to him, he will magnanimously offer to let you go out with other men. What is he risking? How can you possibly have a decent fling when your heart is still in his coat pocket? And no matter how many admirers you recruit for your “I’ll show
him
” performance, how impressed can he be when you are still sleeping in his pajama tops?

Continuing to see him but withholding sex is not getting him to the altar either. And I give you two weeks!

Not answering your telephone several nights in a row may give you a small thrill of revenge but will it really change the basic
him
into a devoted, dependable, marrying guy?

If you are determined to marry him, you will probably have to take a stand. And the stand can only be effective if you
mean
it … if you are determined to leave him and stay left if the answer is “no.” Threats are totally useless.

Sometimes it takes a long time to get to the stage where you’d honestly rather live without him than accept friendship on his terms one more hour. And sometimes it takes several ultimatums before you can stay gone for good. Don’t hate yourself! One day, one of your ultimatums will stick and/or
he
will.

It’s Over

Affording an impossible man is very much like living beyond your means any other way—paying too much rent, taking too many taxis, wolfing too many eight-dollar, three-martini lunches. And after you have overspent emotionally for a long time, you may decide that your extravagance just isn’t affording you enough happiness units to justify its cost.

Very often his reluctance to marry may seem the principal issue, but marriage is not the real problem at all. Possibly you are both neurotic, or not enough alike, or too much alike, or a hundred other affair-destroying conditions exist.

No matter how difficult the man, a single woman often dreads letting go of a long-time beau for fear she’ll never find a replacement.

Such anxiety may be justified in a married woman contemplating divorce, because husbands and daddy-replacements are admittedly hard to find. But a lover … particularly one who is grinding you up in little pieces … you can
always
replace. You wouldn’t
believe
how easily!

And maybe it doesn’t sound very reassuring, but you can care just as deeply, just as everlastingly again … and live to be just as unhappy about
him
!

The Recovery

Suppose the anguish has finally outweighed any joy received, and the affair is finally ended.

The end of a serious affair is in many ways like a death, and I believe a decent mourning period should be accorded it … a period in which to be utterly, flat-down-on-your-back miserable.

Friends who would hustle you out to play volley ball or to see what new instant men you can scrounge up at the local pub probably do you an injustice. If you anesthetize yourself with activity and fail to suffer properly at the time, you may have to go
back
and suffer at a later date.

I would suggest you don’t even try to fight misery for at least a week. Have girl friends over or go and see them each night if you don’t want to be alone, but don’t force cheerfulness.

I remember when Karen parted from the love of her life after four years of togetherness—just three weeks before Christmas. No one knows why these farewells fall right smack in the middle of Christmas, but they often do.

Karen was responsible for most of the Christmas shopping for her boss. She bravely plunged in although she was no more in command of her senses than a zombie.