Sex and the Single Girl: The Unmarried Woman's Guide to Men (28 page)

Still others, though neither recently divorced nor mature in years, have the emotional make-up which permits them to enjoy an affair, unwracked by guilt, anxiety or unrealistic hopes.

One of my best friends is such a girl. “I think it’s because I blossomed late,” she says. “At thirty-one I have the glamour and looks and popularity I never dreamed of at nineteen, when I was considered absolutely huge for a teenager. I adore the whirl I’m having and haven’t any wish whatever to stop it, though I’ve had two proposals this year. I love children and will have them a little later than most women—just as I’ve had everything else.”

My friend is probably exceptional in her ability to take sex with equanimity. There
is
no question that an affair adds to the emotional problems of many women; however, the ones who suffer most are probably the ones who have the most emotional problems to begin with.

Since the married state in our culture is considered the most, if not the
only
, acceptable one for a woman, there is some basis for assuming that many women who fail to find themselves a suitable first husband by at least their thirtieth birthday are somewhat emotionally crippled to begin with. In her youth when there was plenty of marriage material around, the neurotic girl lost out simply because the race to the altar is to the healthy and strong.

This doesn’t mean she wasn’t and isn’t attractive, intelligent, and possibly more alluring than her friends who married painlessly at twenty-two, but her neuroticism will not
let
her accept the adult responsibility of marriage or staying married. At least that’s a pretty well accepted psychiatric theory. She finds no man good enough for her. She must stay home to care for her parents. Or she loves only “impossible” men whom she thinks she meets by accident but whom she virtually “stalks.”

Embarked on an affair, the neurotic quickly runs aground on the emotional reefs. Her ego is probably so weak that the merest slight from her love—the missed phone call, too much attention to another girl at a party—is magnified beyond all proportion. Without being able to help herself, she makes demands that seem reasonable to her but are oppressive to her lover.

She wants him to make her feel proud, secure, confident, beautiful, intelligent and rich. She is the biggest insister-on-getting-married of them all. Never mind that her beloved is utterly neurotic himself (for many unmarried and divorced men her own age are “that way” too), a sadist, a pauper, a drinker, a Don Juan and as stable as four-year-old peanut butter. She blanks out every consideration but her blinding need for the society-approved, mother-sanctioned relationship of marriage.

And if her “intended” reacts to the marriage shackles by cowering against the wall, that seems to make him all the more desirable! Actually, if he were chasing, she’d probably be running. She has little confidence in anybody who finds
her
irresistible.

The point to all this is that many single girls having an affair should not be so hard on themselves, or the man, when it is altogether possible that there is something wrong with both of them that not having an affair wouldn’t remedy … and getting married wouldn’t either!

Conduct and Ground Rules

Now that we’ve established some of the facts of affairs, at least as I see them, let’s see if we can set down a few ground rules.

How Often Do You See Each Other?

If it’s a “working affair” (not the ragged end of an old one or a liaison so casual as not to qualify as an affair at all), I should think you would see each other several times a week. If you are relegated to mere Tuesdays and Fridays, wondering what the hell he is doing Wednesdays and Thursdays, etcetera, you are missing out on some of your justly deserved fringe benefits—the wining and dining and buzzing around. A friend of my husband’s says his idea of a perfect arrangement would be to make love to a girl, after which she would be quietly lowered through the floor and a table would descend from the ceiling on which would be seated three of his male cronies, a pack of cards and a bottle of Jack Daniels. That’s
his
idea of the ideal arrangement … and it makes me quite nervous!

Where?

Just anywhere is fine as long as it is within the law.

One problem married people have is the eternal sameness of their surroundings. You, just by alternating between your apartment and his apartment, can keep things lively.

Your apartment is probably the best bet most of the time. There, you seem more like the seductress than the seduced. Also, when the affair ends, you can be sure he’ll have one hell of a time getting you
and
your apartment out of his head.

Should a Man Think You Are a Virgin?

I can’t imagine why, if you aren’t. Is
he
?

Is there anything particularly attractive about a thirty-four-year-old virgin?

Of course it’s all right to pretend virtue when you turn down an “insister”—if you can get away with it. And you probably can! A man would prefer to believe almost anything except that you don’t find
him
appealing!

Once in bed, it’s kind of silly to fake inexperience. Most men agree that inhibitionless and even aggressive enjoyment from a woman is an asset so far as their own enjoyment is concerned. If he is the kind of man who is only interested in deflowering virtue, he should stick to unraveling chrysanthemums!

The only man who might “suffer” from your experience is the man who is no great shakes in bed himself. If you have no one to compare him with, he might get an “A”!

As for never literally going to bed to preserve your technical purity—
i.e.
, you make love without being together in a cool, comfy bed—let’s say you can get just as pregnant and have missed a great deal of fun.

As for not going quite
that
far and merely teasing your young man to the jumping-off point while you turn your own feelings on and off like a gas jet, you can get your responses so out of whack you’ll never get them straight again.

Do You Date Other Men While Having an Affair?

My answer to this question would be that it depends on the intensity of the affair—and I consider any affair rather intense—and what stage it’s in. In the first blush of great love you may think it disloyal even to smile at the news delivery boy, whereas later you’ll be rounding up everybody from old grammar school flames to poker partners of your father to go out with on a spite fling.

The trouble is that, even when you are both utterly loyal, royal true blue, things get sticky. If you are not going to marry him, it’s insane not to keep date channels open. Of course if
you
go out, you must accept the fact that
he’ll
go out. He may
anyway.
Grit your teeth and don’t let him do anything silly—like getting booked for New Year’s Eve.

Even if the affair is much too intense for extracurricular dating, at least keep in touch with your friends. Letters, phone, calls, Invitations to the country swirling around you, are
desirable
, no matter how much he grumbles about never having your undivided attention. A little healthy anxiety is
good
for him! Besides, when that awful time comes—the end of the affair—you’ll need every old friend you can muster, and you’ll be in real trouble if you’ve snapped them off like butter beans.

Can You Sleep with Two Men at Once?

Gracious, what a greedy girl!

I’m sure many girls do.

I was chatting this week with a friend about thirty years old who makes $18,000 a year as a fashion photographer. I mention her income only to establish her status and talent in the professional world. She said, “I understand you are writing a book about sex and single women. I’d be happy to tell you a few of my experiences.” She then went on to keep me on the ropes for twenty minutes with tales of assignations in the front seat of convertibles with twenty-year-old college boys, on yachts with dashing old men, and with assorted other types in boarded-up summer cottages and unfamiliar bedrooms while a party was raging downstairs. She is currently enjoying an affair of long duration with a famous young actor, and had just embarked on a new one the night before with a blind date who’d made up a fourth at bridge.

There is no doubting her veracity. She is a merciless teller of truth.

I don’t
think
she’s typical, though I must admit her story shook me into wondering if she is more typical than I know.

I believe there are more girls like my average “prototype” girl who simply wouldn’t know how to handle a multiple-affair setup. Instead of gaining emotional security with numbers, she’d likely wind up a gibbering idiot, so she eschews them.

An affair can overlap, of course, but it’s more likely that one will be finished before another begins.

Suppose You Like Girls

You’ve already worked out a way of life for yourself to which I could contribute no helpful advice. I’m sure your problems are many. I don’t know about your pleasures. At any rate, it’s
your
business and I think it’s a shame you have to be so surreptitious about your choice of a way of life.

You’re Frigid

If after some experience you are still unable to enjoy making love, and this bothers you, psychiatric consultation may be in order.

He Has Problems

Him you don’t need. One of the things a single woman
can
have is a good sex life, and the disturbed boy is doing you out of it. A married woman has every reason to help a semi-potent mate get back to normal, but
you
have no more incentive than a short-term tenant has in rebuilding his apartment.

Not all of your beaux need to be he-males … just the one you sleep with.

The Married Man

As a woman grows older and the eligibles become fewer, it becomes increasingly tempting to take a married lover; but it is best to know what you’re in for.

A friend who had a long-term affair with a married man had this to say: “It’s a real education in human suffering and makes all past and future relationships less painful by comparison! Having an affair with a man you
know
belongs to another woman, a man who is with
her
on important days, is simply too degrading. If a man is single, you’re at least on somewhat equal footing!”

Another friend with whom I discussed the subject said, “We know married men do get divorces and marry their girl friends, but it happens so seldom as to be hardly worth mentioning; and I think it takes a special breed of woman to see it through.

“We also know that sometimes they get divorces and
don’t
marry their girl friends. The hand that held theirs during the crisis years now seems a little careworn.”

I think those are sage remarks.

Yet married men do keep buzzing into your life like mosquitoes on a June night, don’t they? To a single woman it sometimes seems as though they are the
only
thing buzzing!

I would like to suggest that for the next three minutes you be a big girl and consider with tolerance and compassion what a married man wants and why he wants it. (You expect
him
to listen respectfully when
you
talk of wanting to be married. Then you must give him equal time!)

A married man may quite desperately need love on a sexual level and reassurance of his male prowess.

That old bunch of tripe, you say! Babies, rump roasts, wall-to-wall monogrammed towels, that’s all that
really
matters! Not to him! He’s
had
all that. And his needs may be as tearing and searing as
your
needs, just different.

Though it may look as though a man has a loving wife, that may be only for show. She may only have tolerated him in bed for many years, and now that the children are all spawned she is quite, quite finished with him in that department. On the rare occasions when they do sleep together, she is like the woman the following joke was told about: A man and his wife are having a violent argument. Finally after an hour of haranguing he says to her, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Constance, let’s forget all this arguing and go to bed.” Over my dead body,” she says. Of course,” he replies, “why should we do it any different
now
?”

The last thing this kind of woman wants is a divorce. She is used to the convenience of having a man around the house and has long since forgotten how to support herself. She just wants to be left in quiet and peace in her bed. It is my firm old-fashioned belief that a man who is well and enthusiastically loved at home, even if a certain amount of showmanship is required on his wife’s part, can be kept safely and happily at her side with only minor excursions into the unknown. The man who comes to you needs reassurance.

The fact that a man wishes to corroborate his maleness away from home may
not
be his wife’s fault. The two may be devoted to one another but have been married so many years that neither is really able to excite the other.

I should be careful to qualify everything I say on this subject and will add that being married many years doesn’t positively presuppose sexual boredom, but in many cases it
does.

Many husbands and wives have an “understanding” that he may frisk about a bit without recriminations. I remember being shocked and offended at twenty-two when an older man I was dating (thirty-six!) told me a married-woman friend of ours had called him that morning and said, “Gerry, could you possibly find Lew a girl for tonight? He’s really long overdue.” And these people had what might be called a very happy marriage!

Other wives know their husbands stray but they
don’t
know … if you know what I mean. They never ask pointed questions because they don’t really want any definite answers. I would call it “tacit permission” on the wife’s part because though she would be hurt to know absolutely of her husband’s peccadillos, she wouldn’t divorce him.

Other men cheat like hell whether their wives like it or not. A sex-goddess spouse couldn’t satisfy them. Let’s say they can’t help themselves … or if they could, it would be at such a severe penalty of pleasure and prestige to themselves that they couldn’t take it. Many rabid chasers are, of course, quite satisfactorily (if not happily) married to wives they adore, and divorce never enters their minds.