A glass of Merlot takes it hold…

If I’m being as honest as humanly possible, I would have to admit that I miss the erotic touch from a man that I physically and emotionally crave, or the comfort of coming home to someone who’s as wrapped up in my well-being as I am. Those are things that even the independent woman in me wants, but I’ve been single for so long now that I can’t remember if those things are worth the compromise and sacrifice that a relationship takes.

Here’s my romantic history in brief. From high school up through the months after graduating college, I was a serial serious relationship gal, with the most supreme of relationships resulting in an engagement that never came to fruition. After a few bitter and judgmental years I found Dave. I loved Dave but Dave did not love me back – he barely appreciated me and we stopped having regular sex – so I cheated because I desperately wanted to be desired. The cheating broke me so I ended it, though that turned out to be a strange and sad experience, because in the process I learned that I didn’t want to lose him, but that he was fine with losing me. The whole ordeal again soured me on relationships.

Two years post Dave, I feel like I’ve reached a state of personal relationship zen. Neither am I in search of or opposed to a relationship, I just am. I’m doing my own thing, and I desperately want that to be a professional win for me.

I don’t know why, but every time I’ve been serious about a man I’ve let that relationship dictate way too much about my life. Maybe it’s that realization or some other fucked up flaw, but each man that I’ve become emotionally connected to since Dave has been unavailable in more ways than one.

To say that I wasn’t slightly comforted by these men and their respective off-limits vibe would be a lie. I was extremely conscious of the fact that I could never fully have the type of life-draining relationship with these men that I’ve had in the past. It just wasn’t physically possible. Did I use them for affection or attention? I think it was a mutually beneficial pity party that always ended badly for both parties. One person always begins to care more, and that’s when trouble starts to brew.

So here again I find myself on a Saturday night with no love interest and really no perspectives on the horizon. The peace I have is derived from knowing that I’m not waiting for any calls or trying to decipher the subtext that is man’s way of expressing his interest, I am just me being me.

Two glasses of the previously mentioned Merlot, Jon Foreman’s, The Cure for Pain, is playing, and the air is thick with reflection and solidarity…”So blood is fire pulsing through our veins. We’re either writers or fools behind the reigns. I’ve spent ten years trying to sing it all way, but the water keeps on falling from my tries.”

I just want something that works, but society wants me to settle down, get married, and have babies. Heck at this point I think my parents would gladly settle for a bastard grandchild in lieu of the nothingness that they’ve come to expect. Extended family seem to think it appropriate to always ask about a significant other. There never is one to report.

“It’s not as if New York City burned down to the ground when you drove away…are we breaking up? Did my heart break enough this time?” – Rilo Kiley, Breakin’ Up

It feels good to be free. Unavailable men, ex-fiances, abusers and controllers, they’ve all been eradicated from my life, and this independent woman wants to rejoice in that fact. But why am I still craving the carnivorous lust of a man who can’t stand to be in the same room with me without ripping off my clothes. Sexual frustration? Maybe. Human disposition playing a cruel joke on yours truly? More likely. Quixotic social preconditions influencing my thinking? That sounds right.

Let’s just say I’m one narcissistic creative junkie (remember the wine and music quotes?) who needs an outlet. I’ve chosen writing to be that outlet. Someday I’ll choose love.

Bottle of Merlot finit.

*Photo courtesy of Greg_e on Flickr

Remember this guy? Well he had completely escaped my mind too, until this evening when he called twice.

Why he called, I’m not too sure, though it’s probably safe to assume that his intentions were less than pure. What I do know is that we haven’t spoke in the two years since the last incident. His words were ominous at first, “Jenn, how’s it going? This is pretty awkward for me…,” and even though we didn’t get anywhere near the deed, I was scared shitless. Guys, I beg you, do not start voicemails with the “this is awkward” line.

The message didn’t get much better from there. He trailed off at times, obviously distracted by the dizziness of a drunken call that he knows he’ll regret in the morning. I make stupid decisions all the time, but just because you have the nerve to call someone who repeatedly blew you off, doesn’t mean you should. Don’t humiliate yourself like that. Just don’t do it.

If I come across as rather bitchy and unfeeling, it’s because this was a man who had made his appearance and subsequent disappearance in my life. It’s like the episode of 30 Rock with Steve Martin, a long forgotten chapter in an otherwise great story. Of course the voicemail did best that horrific 30 Rock episode, because quite frankly, I actually laughed when I realized why he was calling.

And in case you didn’t know, booty calls are bad form if a. you’ve never gotten booty before or b. it’s been more than 3 months since the last booty was had. Life moves quickly, and single people move on. Now you know (though I’m pretty sure you didn’t need me to tell you that).

On a side note: Is it completely coincidental that I’ve been ravenously craving updating this blog with juicy tidbits, and the guy who is the subject matter of my most recent post calls me (two years later) to leave me a random voicemail? I call it a sign. So even though I can’t promise daily sauce from my love live — there’s really not a whole lot to report these days — the strong female in me needs this release this right now.

Flickr photo credit: chilene

Being open makes me a target, a target for all my jilted former lovers, a target for people who pretend to be my friend in public spaces but openly mock me or attack me and do so in a way that isn’t too difficult to decipher. We all get older, even the bullies on the playground, but the playground just morphs into different realms, it never disappears.

So while I contemplate how best to satisfy my saucier side, I’ll recount a relatively innocent story. Everything you read is true, not a sensationalized version, but a colorful description of the absolute worst kisser to ever have the opportunity to plant his lips against mine.

I met T at a bar in Mission Hills. I was standing outside inhaling the cancerous fumes from my Camel Silvers (yes I did smoke at one point in my life) when an olive-skinned, muscular man with a face that distinctly reminded me of my baseball crush, pitcher Jake Peavy, walked past me and blatantly gave me the once over with his eyes. I suppose he liked what he saw, and on a purely superficial level, so did I. T was wearing a Padre hat, wife-beater, and jeans. His aura screamed man, and my vodka soda-less self went inside to consume a beverage in the hopes of getting warm enough not to care that his body language and outbursts inside the bar were definite signs that he was already swimming in a sea of beer.

Over the course of the next few hours, I drank to dumb myself down to T’s level and we eventually got to the point where we could talk. It turns out that T was my age, putting himself through school, and rooming with the other T who was trying to bed my best friend. I wasn’t quite drunk enough to ignore that T reeked of liquor and beer, couldn’t utter a sentence without slurring it, and had trouble standing upright. When he asked for my number, I had enough self-respect to shut him down. I used the ever popular line, “maybe we’ll run into each other again.”

A week later we did run into each other again – at the same bar – under the same circumstances. We started to make it a point to run into each other. After ending a relationship with a man who took very little care of his body, I convinced myself the slightly stupid man with an impossibly toned body deserved a chance. Of course he totally blew it. T and the other T were supposed to meet up with Angie and I for drinks and then do a double date dinner. T and the other T showed up late, pounded shots of tequila, and never found the energy to leave the bar – but I did, and I made a scene in doing so. I embarrassed T in front of his friends by rejecting his advances and leaving without saying goodbye. Even hammered I couldn’t believe how disgusting his behavior had been.

Several weeks later, after several avoided calls, T managed to convince me to meet him for a drink. This time around T seemed surprisingly sober, his body looked better than ever, and he even appeared to keep up with my witty repartee. We started doing the touchy flirty thing. He touched my leg, I grazed his; I stared a little too long into eyes, he stared a little too long at my breasts. At 2am bar time, T asked me if I wanted to see his pad. I was in the mood to make-out, so after I said my requisite line “I’m not going to have sex with you” to ease my own anxieties, we left the bar to head to his place a few blocks away.

The 2 minute car ride over was riddled with awkwardness – I think I was sobering up and slowly regretting my lapse in judgment. At T’s house he gave me the tour. It was a two story house, shared by four men, who obviously were undisturbed by the utter chaos of the house. T grabbed a beer for the both of us, and we went outside so that he could smoke. Clarity pierced my muddled brain. I couldn’t ignore the obvious. The backyard was littered with empty beer cans shedding light on T’s personal devils – alcohol and cigarettes. I was getting prepared to offer some bullshit reason for leaving when T grabbed me and pulled me closer to him. As T preemptively stuck his tongue out, I shut my eyes and hoped for the best. My mouth was suddenly accosted by a warm, wet, sloppy mouth, and a tongue that wanted to explore the entire depth of my mouth. I instantly tried to coach his horrendous kissing technique by rejecting his tongue at every turn with a closed mouth. I’m not sure why I didn’t just walk away; any and all sexiness had evaporated from the equation, but I stayed long enough to learn that there was no way to teach T to kiss better. Along with the proffered verbal guidance that backfired, I tried to demonstrate, with tips, how I enjoyed kissing, but T is not a quick learner, so he continued to try and assault my lips and mouth with an overzealous tongue that couldn’t seem to decipher the difference between my lips and the rest of my face.

There are more horrific details to the story, like the unkept bathroom with at least 5 spiders who looked anxious to bite me as I peed, or the bedroom that smelled of stale beer, but let’s just say the evening was unforgetable in the worst kind of way. I waited until T passed out, which thankfully didn’t take very long, grabbed my purse and snuck out as fast as I could. I never saw T again, although I heard through the grapevine that he was disappointed and surprised that I wouldn’t return his calls. I just didn’t have the heart to tell T that kissing him was nauseating, and obviously none of his previous dates had done so either.

My single status has been teetering between available, semi-available, and soon to be unavailable since my last serious relationship ended in March of 2007. I’ve yet to find anyone worthy of the sacrifices a real commitment takes. In the not so distant past, I did, however, get pretty darn close to wanting to take myself off the market for someone who could have been pretty darn special to me. That didn’t work out quite as I had envisioned. Although the intermittent tears, tears more for a bruised ego than a broken heart, have long since dried, I got close enough to conjure recollections of one of the very nasty side effects of co-habitation – weight gain.

I’m by no means a lazy person, and right now I’m operating with small windows of free time that I can either choose to spend socially, blogging, in bed (sleep or otherwise), or at the gym. I try to find a balance where I don’t feel socially depraved, fat, tired, or starving for a blog post. Take that juggling act and throw in another ball, in the shape of a man, and you’ve got a circus act that leaves magic to the imagination. I know I’m not alone out there, and I also know that sometimes finding time for a workout is impossible, even when there’s a little bit more time to go around.

We’re Letting Ourselves Go, but Why?

Something just isn’t right here. There are those miraculously fit women who never gain a pound, but the majority of us pack on the winter weight, even if it is summer, as we approach domesticity and seal ourselves inside the monogamy envelope. What’s going on here? Is it a time thing? Is it a question of priorities? Are we just too comfortable being coupled up? Are we unhappy…unsatisfied…starved for sex and attention? I think there could be truth in any of these reasons, but the underlying reason behind all of these excuses is that…

taking care of our bodies is work, and once we’ve landed the boyfriend contract, the incentive to put in the work becomes as desirable as returning to blind dates and bad first dates.

Settling in to the Fat

I’ve never been in a relationship where I was able to maintain my ideal weight, but I’ve also never been in a really phenomenal relationship. Is that the key? Are we settling for relationships that don’t inspire us to take care of ourselves? I think so, and I’m 100% confident it’s not a problem unique to women.

Men settle. Women settle.

When we’re single, our idealism is tempered with realism and we set standards and say to ourselves, “the next person I date will be x, y, z, and then some.” Circumstances, however, change everything. We meet someone who doesn’t live up to our criteria initially, we get to know them, and we like them; letting the little things go seems natural, obligatory, and right. So we sacrifice a little, and settle for something less than perfect. It may seem harmless in the moment, but settling (although the difference between compromise and sacrifice is a big gray mass) equates to future tangible unhappiness that will be expressed through our behaviors, either via food, lack of exercise, or worst of all an emotional and/or physical affair.

Removing the Junk in the Trunk

This is where I can only guess at the solution. I can add up the total of my experiences, including the one where I almost walked down the aisle, and I can reflect, and I can decide that an exceptional relationship is not an option – it’s deal or no deal time. Of course even the exceptional relationship will never prevent the added junk from piling up in the trunk at times, but the exceptional partner in the exceptional relationship will be the right motivation for preventing the junk from transforming into garabage. In a perfect world the expectional relationship will also include frequent exceptional sex to help combat any missed trips to the gym. Here’s to being single and idealistic!

I absolutely love Katy Perry’s new song, I Kissed a Girl. The lyrics don’t necessarily speak to me on an intellectual or emotional level, but I enjoy the sound of her voice, the kitchy quality of the song, and the upbeat tempo. What interests me more, however, are the inferences one can draw from the song as related to a shift in social mores. Let’s explore the women kissing women concept a bit more.

Why do we do it?

Maybe I grew up in a time of sexual experimentation, possibly a product of the sexual revolution, but ever since college I’ve been conscious of a growing trendy — women kissing other women. In case you’re wondering, I’ve been an active participant in this fad that doesn’t seem to be losing style points as the years go by. From what I know about women, men, and human nature, I’m fairly certain I can speak to why all of us straight chicas are so willing to liplock with each other.

1. Just for the fun of it. The equation usually consists of a few elements mixing together — alcohol + peer pressure + appearance = impromptu female make-out sessions. It’s really pretty harmless fun. Women are very conscious oh how they’re perceived. If they want to be perceived as sexy, fun, and adventurous they will “flirt” with their girlfriends for social acceptance and appearance.
2. Trying to impress (turn-on) a man. To continue on the first reason, if women are trying to attract male attention in a social setting, or just trying to excite their boyfriend, they will bank on the fact that 99% of straight men are incredibly aroused by the thought of two (or more) women kissing. The difference between a man and a woman, however, is that a man is more sexually motivated to turn the flirtatious kissing into something more tangible. For women it’s a game of how far they can vacillate between the indecipherable boundaries of sexual innuendo and actual sex. For men it’s more like a conquest – Can I get them to kiss? Can I get them to do more than kiss? The fantasy evolves for men.
3. Genuine curiosity. Somewhere between bi-sexual and sexually experimental for appearances sake, there exists a group of women who are intrigued by the female entity. It’s a genuine curiosity that may or may not be explored. I’m pretty sure I fall into this category, so I’ll speak in the first person. Certain women exude a sexuality that is tangible. So while I would never ogle an incredibly attractive women, I can be drawn in by a woman’s aura – the way she carries herself, the way she speaks, they way she touches herself – these can all be very sensual and erotic cues that peak my interest. The difference between me and women who do it just for fun, is that I am skirting the line of bi-sexuality with a genuine (albeit temporal) attraction to women,  even though I know I’m straight.

Of course there are many other factors that contribute to the phenomena, but most straight women can identify with one or more of the reasons I’ve listed.

Is it socially acceptable?

Fact, while women kissing women is becoming more prevalent, it’s only socially acceptable in pockets of society. Part of the appeal is that it is still taboo, and our parents will hate us for doing it. Obviously the most active participants in the trend are the high school and college kids of today. But what happens as the trend ages and adults, like myself, become parents? Will it always be taboo? Once the trend becomes commonplace, will the cool kids find something more rebellious to do? Will songs like I Kissed Girl result in more girls kissing girls? These are all questions that I don’t think can be answered right now. It seems possible that the females doing it just for fun, or to impress a man, may lose interest when the act becomes a good girl norm. I doubt, however, women with a general curiosity will ever change; they might be swayed to act more readily on curiosities during a fad, but those secret thoughts and desires won’t ever dissipate.

What are your thoughts?

I’m absolutely positive that everyone can identify with this trend as either an observer or participant, so what are your thoughts? What’s happening? Why is it happening? Will the trend change over time? What are your own personal experiences?

The point is that I am no stranger to troubled times. I’ve survived in stages. I’ve gone through various stages to cope: rebounds, bitterness, unavailability, altered reality, depression, religion, and even solipsism. And although I’ve become a master at hastily moving on, I’ve failed miserably at the coping part.

What I do, in lieu of coping, is put on a false front of appearing to be okay. I try so hard, for appearances sake, to be myself that I forget to deal with the pain appropriately. So even though I move on quickly, I never quite let go of the hurt, which continues to haunt me until it catches up to me.

Now that I’m a little older and hopefully wiser, I’m still struggling with how to cope with betrayal. Betrayal gets me every time. I’m a trusting person. I want to believe that there is good in everyone. I want to believe that people aren’t sick enough to make a mockery out of me for no reason other than the fun of it — that just seems too cruel to fathom. Betrayal still happens despite my efforts to believe otherwise, and when it does I always reflect on the how and the why. Here are the trends I’ve noticed.

Why Betrayal Happens

In my experiences there really isn’t one reason why someone chooses to betray another, but the reasons can usually be broken down to one core idea — an individual stands to gain from the betrayal. Whether the gain is proof of power, improvement in social status, financial gain, personal satisfaction, avoiding exposure/cover-up of other lies, or anything else, betrayal happens because one person is put in a situation where choosing to sacrifice a level of trust with another person becomes less important than doing something that they can profit by.

How Betrayal Happens

Secrets and lies. Those who choose to be betrayers secretly sign their name to the book of liars. Whether the betrayal is well planned, or a circumstance of other shady behaviors, betrayal cannot exist without secrets and lies that beget other secrets and lies. More often than not the one who is being betrayed will see hints of what is happening, and their trust in the friend and secret betrayer is put into question. If you’ve ever been confronted with variations of the truth from multiple parties, you can rest assured that someone or some group of people are in the process of betraying you. If you’re anything like me, however, you choose to believe the lies, and the lies that are concocted to cover the other lies, because it’s easier than confronting the truth.

How to Cope

So what do you do when you’ve discovered that people you’ve trusted have betrayed you? How do you go about healing properly? How do you avoid becoming one of those bitter and angry people that doesn’t trust anyone? How do you go about forgiving? As I said above, betrayal always gets me. I try so hard to recover, so hard to forgive, so hard to avoid becoming cynical, but then another person comes along and betrays my trust yet again; I’m left feeling even more foolish than the last time and finding it a cliff to climb to reach the pinnacle of forgiveness. What’s the right answer?

Twitter

Twitter, for those of you not using the incredibly addicting micro-blogging site, is like one big chat room with a 140 character limit for each update. The level of addiction increases as you follow and are followed by more and more people. As more people start to tweet about their lives, their locations, and general randomness, a few Twitter police have emerged from the crowd with the intention of spanking Twitter users for what they deem to be inappropriate uses of 140 characters.

I’m tired of seeing people tweet about how or how not to tweet. Twitter is still relatively new, we’re all still figuring out how to leverage the 140 characters for value, and no one has mastered what it means to be a good twitterer/tweeter/tweep etc. Take that soap box you’re standing on and use it for something meaningful. I might use my other blog to write a full post on this subject.

Men

Some of you are great, some of you think with your dicks, and some of you are just plain dicks. Here’s the problem. I think I’ve given too many men the impression that I’m bedable — an easy lay. Sorry to disappoint fellas, but a girl like me isn’t going to give up the milk for free. Realistically, after reading my post on sexpectations, you shouldn’t even want it. This milk is sour (that is a terribly poignant analogy).

There is also a handful of you who don’t know what to do with me. You’re not interested in the sex, and for some reason or another you’re completely turned off by my personality. That’s okay. We don’t have to like each other. If, however, I make an effort to send good things your way and I’ve never done anything but speak of you highly, why do you insist upon disliking me? Maybe you think I’m one big pretender, but if you do, have the decency to tell me to my face. Please, a little common courtesy is all I ask for.

Gossip

I’m usually pretty good about not spreading gossip. I like to stick to the facts. Every once in awhile, however, a really juicy piece of information crosses my path, and I can’t help but follow the grimy trail of dirt until I reach the filthy core of the secret. Lately, however, the tables have been turned. People are gossiping about me. People I trust are telling people I don’t trust things about me and/or my sex life that are either blatantly untrue or too true (hence the secret part). It goes the other way too…people I don’t trust are making up lies and passing them off as the truth. There’s only so many times in a week I want to hear, “just so you know XXXX said this about you…”.

It’s hard not to feel like I brought all of this messiness upon myself. I’m caked in mud and trying to dine at a four star restaurant, of course I’m going to draw unwanted negative attention. Perhaps the easy remedy to the problem is to lay low, or blog less, but the reality is that as more and more people find my little sex blog, the more I’m going to have to develop a thicker layer of impenetrable skin.

Lately the same conversation keeps happening…

Man: You’re probably going to blog about this.

Me: I might <wink>.

Man: Just make sure to keep me anonymous.

Me: Of course.

A few weeks later…

Man: I can’t believe you actually blogged about me.

Me: You knew that I had this blog, and I warned you that you might make an appearance. Didn’t I keep your identity private?

Man: Well I really thought that our moments were private.

Me: Our moments are private. For the most part, I strip you out of the content completely and only take the circumstances that I can apply to bigger trends or broader subjects.

Why I Do What I Do

My intentions are never to use the relationships or situations that I find myself in for good content, traffic, or comments. I’m really not that shallow, nor do I think my life to be that interesting. At the very core of my being is a writer, who enjoys the beauty of the written word and the blogging platform as a means to reach a larger audience. I blog for several reasons, but for the most part what you read here is the product of the following:

1. I’m an overly analytical person. I never have just a passing thought, and when it comes to relationships and men, I tend to obsess over every single detail. The easiest way for me to make sense of a situation is to write about it. Blogging helps me release the overwhelming thoughts that eat away at my sanity.
2. When I experience something that I think has implications beyond my immediate situation, I love to extract my moment in time and compare it against the millions of other moments that resemble my own. It’s not that I think I have any more experience or wisdom then the next person, it’s just that if I can find a pattern, I can come to some type or resolution.

I completely understand that most men would rather not turn on their laptop to find a blog entry about their sexual encounters with me. In fact, I usually avoid getting overly personal, and I never reveal anyone’s identity unless they’ve already expressed that they’re comfortable being a subject. What frustrates me to no end, though, is that there are men who seek me out because they appreciate the quality of my writing or the candidness of my blog, and yet these same men want to be excluded from something they know is a huge part of my life.

Is it unreasonable for me to blog about the men in my life? I certainly don’t think so. If anything, if you’re featured in an entry on Content Dynasty, you should take a little satisfaction in knowing that you’ve made a big enough impression on my life and mind that I felt compelled to write about it.

Here’s a minor revelation – I’ve been secretly sharing a bed with a privileged party for a few weeks now, and I’d rather not say who this person is, but let me just iterate that I hope he’s as disconnected to my world as I think he might be (but you never know with Google these days). Back to me. The whole scenario developed unexpectedly. I’m happily single and very flirty with everyone, so when a particular man started paying extra attention to me, I really gave it zero consideration. In fact, I never even noticed him in *that* way. There’s so much more to the story, but suffice it to say we unexpectedly ended up in bed together. No I’m not proud of it, and it certainly wasn’t a defining moment in my life, but it was good and oddly very comfortable.

If you’ve read any of my previous posts, then you probably already know that I’m not the type of girl that has sex just to have sex. I just wasn’t wired that way – the few times I’ve tried to disassociate feelings and do the simply sex thing, the end result was just plain messy. It’s pretty rare these days that I stumble into bed with a relative stranger before setting the sexpectations.

Setting the sexpectations, prior to the act, is the best way for me to let the guy know what he can expect after we start engaging in afternoon delights. I’ll usually lay out the following sexpectations before stripping down:

• Sex with me is complicated.
• I do get emotionally attached.
• I don’t share.
• If you’re going to sleep with someone else, tell me first or stop sleeping with me!
• You can’t be hyper-sensitive to feedback. I communicate what I want and so should you (this includes ways to improve).
• I’ve lived through too many experiences that I’d rather not share, but suffice it to say getting too rough won’t be appreciated.

Okay so now that everyone in the world knows way too much about me, let’s continue…

Here’s the problem. I made the same freakin’ mistake in my personal life that I made in my professional life. I didn’t set the sexpectations prior to the act, and now I’m paying the consequences. Trying to set sexpectations too late is almost as bad as trying to forget the whole thing ever happened.

Example.

The other night I confided in my coital confidant that I’m not interested in being friends who fuck. I was accurately picking up on a vibe that he assumed sex was an added bonus of our friendship (a friendship I’m not even sure really exists yet). Of course I was right. He’s not interested in really getting to know each other, and I was starting to think I could be open to that (but maybe that’s a side effect of good bedding, it makes you want to turn nothing into something to justify your behavior).

There was nothing left to do but to terminate the situation. If life has taught me anything, it has schooled me on the importance of self-preservation. So now I’m out, completely solo once again, and feeling like I violated my own bedroom code-of-conduct. [Said with the inflection of Chandler Bing] Could I be feeling any lower?

I don’t know. What do you guys/gals think? Is there a way to backtrack, after copulation has already occurred, and set sexpectations? Did I back myself into a rookie corner and get what I deserved? Give me some perspective on this.

Men won’t turn down a sure thing. If a guy thinks he can bed you, he’s going to try. He’s not going to think about the consequences, or worry about how you feel, he’s simply going to sucker you into bed with the promise of a nice long massage and nothing else. Everything else is intended.

Men want to feel sexy. They almost need this. I’ve blogged about it before, but men do need the reassurance that they’re attractive, well-endowed, or good in bed. If you don’t pander to their ego, they’ll reaffirm these ideas verbally whether you agree or not, or they’ll find someone else who actually does make them feel sexy. Hopefully you won’t have to do the ego-pander dance.

Men will flirt with a skirt. It really doesn’t matter if the man is married, engaged, dating, or single. Nor does it matter if the women is overly attractive. Men enjoy flirting with women, and they’re going to do it repeatedly, especially if said woman is in the service business (waitress, bartender, maid (that’s more of a fantasy thing)). It definitely goes back to the ever powerful male ego.

Men acclimate to the vibe set by their male peers, and the dominant male rules the roost. A group of men in the same place always has a leader, whether the group is aware of it or not. The leader is the man they all secretly strive to be (or the one they think gets laid the most, if it’s a fraternity group), and they’ll subconsciously emulate this man’s behavior. Ever wonder why guys get so rowdy (or retarded) when they’re together? They’re feeding off the vibe and energy that is created by the dominate male.

UPDATE

Here’s an obvious one I’m not sure why I forgot:

Men crave the challenge and the chase. It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to capture a man’s attention by making myself appear to be completely uninterested or unavailable. Offer a man a carrot and he’ll decline, but tell him he can’t have that same carrot, and all of sudden he can’t get vegetables off his mind.