No. It’s not ass-backwards. It is what psychiatrists generally insist upon. It is what most textbooks suggest. And prevailing wisdom seems to be that waiting is better than not.

But who’s foisting this crap?

Men are opportunistic. And this includes their relationships. If they happen to sleep with a woman within the first hour of meeting her, and there’s a genuine connection, he’s not going anywhere.

Definition of “connection” [from the perspective of a man]: “a woman he still loves to look at after he orgasms, and then wants to take out in public in spite of the fact that it’s 2 o’clock in the morning.”

Men want to know what sex will be like before they invest a lot of time and money in someone. They’re practical in this regard. They want to know, for example, if their bodies fit well together? How passionate they are as a couple, not as individuals? How open-minded she is in spite of the fact that she’s Catholic? Does she release the thing inside of him that he doesn’t want to talk about but needs in order to get the fix I mentioned? If the answers are yes, he will not only call her back, but he’ll also do everything else she wants him to do and more, including cuddle with her after intercourse…even if it does mean doing so with CSI Miami running in the background.

Anyway, there’s a limited window of opportunity here.

So men won’t wait indefinitely for the sex, mostly because they can’t. They just can’t. They’ll burn out before they get started if this window exceeds their thresholds. And don’t suggest that he has intimacy issues or that he isn’t good for the long haul, because you don’t even know that about yourself.

The last thing a woman needs is for him to start treating her like a coworker, instead of the lover he’s supposed to be. The guy will eventually walk out using some emotional issue as a pretense. The flame died. That’s what happened. The glue never solidified because it was never released in the first place. You have to light the god-damned fire first and then jump off the cliff. If you don’t, he’s out the door before you ever know what you had.

Men are not interested in being your friend. They are interested in being your lover, then your friend…but with exceptions. If you become too chummy, he’ll stop thinking of you as a girlfriend. One manifestation of this is that he’ll stop staring at your ass, not because you don’t have a nice ass, but because it now reminds him of his sister and he doesn’t want to sleep with her no matter what she looks like. Believe me when I tell you, you do not want your man to fall into this vortex, because getting him out of it can be a perilous undertaking.

Remember, men are quite simple. They want to be fucked, fed and respected. They also have a pathological aversion to being hassled, by the way. So if you can get past this you have a shot at a sustainable relationship. Understand that, eventually, men become just as vulnerable [if not more so], so be patient.

I realize this answer isn’t elaborate, or in some minds, sufficient. But men are very simple, and generally ruled by primitive instincts that are too complicated to fathom in spite of their simplicity.

This isn’t a cop out. It’s the truth, even if it is a cop out.

Men are basically little boys who require nurturing they don’t get anywhere else. So in this sense they need a mother who doesn’t remind them of one.

They like to objectify the women they’re with. This keeps her a safe distance from the incest thing. She’s just an object and then a girlfriend, and not the other way around. He may not admit this, but it’s true.

In a sense they’re fulfilling a primitive role. Women cannot withhold this instinct from them for more than a short period of time or they’ll risk becoming something other than what they want to be.

There are two different paths to the same objective. Women want the emotional connection but they have to be willing to allow a man to get there in his own way. The fact that she’s afraid that he’ll leave her after he’s slept with her is a chance she must take. It’s the way of things. The longer she withholds, the less interested he becomes. Men like the idea of communicating with a woman on an intellectual level, but crossing the line into the realm of friendship can have an adverse effect on the stability of the template that he needs in order to build a healthy relationship. If he doesn’t feel like the man from the start, she can’t construct that person down the line.

Some women empower men to be men. Others stifle it by trying to control them. Some women make better lovers than friends. Sometimes it’s the other way around. Therapists are always trying to get their patients to merge Madonna and Whore into one super-being, but I’m not sure it’s possible. If women understood this they would allow men unfettered access and then counterattack when they’re more vulnerable.

You didn’t hear this from me, by the way.

So if you want to win, you have to allow a man to objectify you. It would be preferable if you appreciated his perception of things, because eventually you’ll get busted for your obfuscation. So be on board with who he is and don’t even think about being passive-aggressive with him when he misbehaves. This who he is, and if you don’t like it, find a girlfriend and a dog.

Okay, so first he’s in love with your ass or your legs or the way you smile at him. This is where it all begins for a man, in some rainforest without boundaries. You’re just the other animal in a mating dance. You’re shadow-boxing in the dark. Feeling one another out. Not intellectualizing. Feeling. Groping in most cases. But it’s about the emotional, the sensual and the primal. This is life on the loose. Where two people blindly walk through the door for the dopamine mines that transform what they once were into something entirely different. What happens next is anyone’s guess, but that isn’t the point. The point is to get through the fucking door.

See, when you sleep with a man he wants to believe you’re doing it because you can’t not do it. Of course, some men also like hookers who do what they’re told, knowing that they couldn’t care less, but this essay isn’t about sociopaths or teenagers.

It’s about men like myself who want some connection to a woman beyond penetration. So let me repeat: The woman must first embrace his primitive instincts, and then accept the fact that he is not a woman, not her best friend [the way her girlfriends are best friends], and not interested in comingling vulnerability with what happens in the bedroom, unless it involves some form of bondage wherein he’s just as disconnected.

In summation, Whore and Madonna are two separate beings. If they do happen to merge, his concept of Madonna better look a hell of a lot more like the one that makes records than the archetype.

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