His mission becomes making the switch from one woman to the next without getting caught. He's getting consistent sex about now, and if the two women meet or, even worse, move in together, he knows he's in for a dry spell. The whole process of ditching one for another requires more planning and precision than splitting an atom, and one mistake can be just as explosive.
Well, men, this is your lucky day. I may get kicked out of my gender for telling you this, but I'm about to enlighten you with the magic words that will make your problems go away forever. That's right, you'll never have to fret about this kind of situation again.
Did it ever occur to you to just tell her to fuck off?
Why not? It's what we do to you all the time. Women just don't sit around getting our tail feathers ruffled over the possibility of a confrontation between the men in our lives. Hell, it's been awhile since I've seen a good bar brawl over a woman, and there is something primitively attractive about men fighting over one. Unfortunately, it doesn't count if his name is Bubba and he lives in a trailer.
I know some guy out there will think to himself, "Well, yeah, I could do that, but I don't want to hurt anybody."
Even thinking like that gives you the misguided assumption that the female in question is panting over you to start with. Unless you're extremely well endowed, this is one arena where you can save yourself some dignity -- and not dig your own grave by looking stupid as well. If men put the same effort into sex as they do into the lies they tell, they'd never suffer through another weekend in bed alone.
I dated a guy recently, an uptown yuppie. He was my age, new to Charlotte, and was a triathlete. On our first date, I was a little annoyed that he had dressed for a hike for a Saturday night dinner, and hadn't bothered to reveal that we were going cut-off casual. However, I couldn't throw him back so soon, mainly because I happen to have a taste for Fourth Ward restaurants.
Over dinner, I weighed the option between the filet mignon and a chicken salad. I dismissed the filet -- I thought maybe I'd give the guy a chance -- and ordered the chicken salad. I watched him closely as he devoured an entire plate of chicken wings. It was somewhere through the wing sauce and the blue cheese that I began to see that this was a very sexual person, intelligent, and a little on the kinky side. This guy actually talked more than I did, which amazed me, and I decided that, at least for the time being, he was a keeper. I even offered to pay for my half of the check, which he chivalrously declined.
Looking back, I can now see that all we ever had in common was great sex, but with his constant bicycle-riding obsession, this one redeeming quality was fading. We were both growing tired of each other, but I, being the typical female, was willing to wait to see if the relationship would take a turn before I decided to call it quits. The virginal truth was that I hadn't had the time to summon up a replacement. I soon learned that in his world, to exit stage right wasn't dramatic enough.
The story he gave me to swallow -- via a 9:30am Saturday wake-up call, no less -- was that he had been divorced for four years from a woman he had married while living in Belgium, no biggie, just a minor detail. His story grew when he divulged that his alleged ex-wife had called that morning and announced that she was coming to stay with him, from Poland, for two weeks in his one-bedroom condo, but no worry, as it was purely platonic. She supposedly had never been to Charlotte and she needed to make the trip in order for them to finish their taxes. I double-checked the calendar to confirm. Yes, it was September.
I yawned as he closed by saying that he was going to miss me terribly, and we would resume dating once she left, but he was going to spare me any discomfort that might accompany my dropping by for a visit unannounced. He told me, politely, that while he would be flattered, it just wasn't necessary. Mr. Sensitivity.
My translation? He just transferred to Charlotte for his job and was living in a rented uptown condo and his wife was coming for a two-week visit.
My dilemma was that I couldn't decide what insulted me more: the fact that he was married, or that he lied about it. Should I be more offended by his lying to my face, or that he really thought I was moronic enough to fall for it? I'll probably never be able to fully appreciate the effort and hours he went to in planning his elaborate explanation.
Walt Disney's famous fairytale Pinocchio was about a boy whose nose grew whenever he told a lie. Too bad it's only a fantasy and can't apply to another part of a grown man's anatomy. Then I don't think the lies would bother women as much.*