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women - do you like sex-only relationships ?
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women - do you like sex-only relationships ? from the internet: No strings attached What do women want from a man? Not too much, it seems - sex, the odd bit of DIY. But increasingly they can do without cohabitation A friend in her late thirties confides that she intends to end a four-month relationship with a man who initially came round to plaster her living room ceiling. 'We have nothing to talk about,' she announces. 'No common ground. We do have very good sex - and I'll miss that - but I would like to have very good sex with someone I can talk to afterwards.' Sounds reasonable. I wonder when she intends to inform him that his services are no longer required. 'In three or four weeks.' Three or four weeks having sex - even very good sex - with someone with whom you cannot communicate sounds like stretching it a bit. I suggest she deals with it sooner (these things are never easy, but cruel to be kind and all that). She explains: 'He's putting up shelves. I'll wait until he's done the bedroom because it's driving me nuts, having nowhere to put my magazines.' How we howl. I am reminded of my three-year stint as editor of more! magazine in the mid-Nineties, largely spent inventing features along the lines of 'Useful jobs for a boyfriend to have' and jacking up sales with supplements with titles such as 'Men: A User's Guide'. The whole premise was that men were to tease, have fun and frolic with; not 'please' or 'turn on' or crowbar into commitment as the previous generation of women's magazines had kindly instructed us. The editorial team - in their early twenties, like our readers - dreamed up 'features'; games involving the staff consuming enormous quantities of alcohol and pouncing on men enjoying quiet after-work drinks. On one occasion, the sole male staffer was 'auctioned off' and dispatched on a trip to the States with a young female reader who yelped with delight at having 'won' him. Which is precisely how young women are supposed to behave. We were raised on Just Seventeen - all cockiness and no-messing sex advice - not Jackie, in which agony aunts Cathie and Claire would sternly warn readers not to 'go too far' or 'let' boys fiddle with the clasps of their bras. The remainder of the magazine consisted of tips on ïgetting him to notice you', implying an awful lot of time dawdling about on drizzly football pitches, batting eyelashes hopefully. In the Corinthian, a vast, ornate bar off George Square in Glasgow, there is major hair, make-up and flirtation going on. I meet a lively group of women. 'The older I get, the more picky I'm becoming,' says Jill Riddiford, a 36-year-old actress. 'The other night, a gay male friend and I were discussing how intolerant we'd become: how we ruled out men who were rude to waitresses or bank clerks, who were badly dressed, or too well-dressed' Jill has been single for three years and says: 'If you're not interested in marriage or - and I'm not - you don't have that pressure to do the expected thing. The beginnings of relationships are great, that heady rapture, all that adrenaline flying around, but it's not a state that lasts. You can derive that excitement from other places like landing a great job.' Her friend Adele, 39, who works in market research, is on the verge of moving in with her partner of eight months. She is pragmatic about the arrangement: 'We met, like each other and I was looking for a flat - I feel OK about it. But I've been married before and am more cynical, less naive.' Comparing her current attitude to her younger self, she reasons: 'Now, I look for certain qualities - intelligence, humour - rather than just putting up with stuff. I think, does he make me laugh or bore me to death?' Adele admits that, if a relationship is not working, she is 'completely honest' and ended one liaison with a quick call to his mobile. She says: 'If I don't have it's not the end of the world. I wouldn't feel out of the norm. And I wouldn't rule out bringing up a on my own, if that's how things work out; a baby would have a good life with me.' In the next booth, a cluster of women in their late twenties swivel round in unison when a waiter brings a note from a group of men at the bar. Watching, amused, is Mags, a 29-year-old full-time mother whose 10-year-marriage ended at Christmas. 'Do women use men? Of course. They want to have their wicked way exactly in the way that men do,' she says. Mags concedes that she might 'catch someone's eye and get talking Ü if it happens, it happens. I don't want to get married again and I have two so I could just do with a laugh, to be honest'. Joan Smith, author of Moralities: Sex, Money & Power in the 21st Century believes that, rather than 'using' men, women are simply having lots of different types of relationships. 'When I was growing up, there was a clear template: date boys, get engaged, get married, have - and a relationship for life. It was how life worked. It doesn't any more. Women don't necessarily want men as partners in rearing. Some like going out with lots of men; others want a passionate engagement with one person. There is no one pattern. It's a fantastically fluid situation.' In researching her book, Single and Loving It, author Wendy Bristow encountered two distinct attitudes: 'The man-obsessed 'he hasn't phoned" type and the phenomenally sussed woman who wants sex on a first date because, if the sex isn't good, she doesn't want to know.' One woman in her thirties told Bristow: 'Frankly I'd rather find out at the beginning than mess about and shilly-shally and be let down in the end. I've slept with 10 men and half of them have been bad in bed. That's 50 per cent of men. They were all lovely men, but no use in bed.' Bristow believes that the latter group of women 'aren't sex mad - just practical. We're seeing it across all ages. Women in their forties have had the big relationship, and look what happened. They love sex and miss it when they donÍt have it but don't necessarily want to live with a partner.' She reports that the late twenties/early thirties bracket appears to be 'the vulnerable group - more concerned with finding 'the one'. Increasing divorce rates affect the expectations of young, single women. 'The splitting-up of your parents inevitably brings down your own expectations of marriage,' says Bristow. 'We are seeing less of a desire to have a man at all costs. Most of the women I met in their twenties appeared fantastically confident, and many are not interested in a relationship. They just want lots of nice sex.' No-strings sex is a viable option. I left home at 17 to live in Dundee and hooked up with a gang of women who had arrived from various corners of England and Scotland. It was a heady, busy time; more scribbled on hands than peering hopefully into jewellers' shops. A colleague from that time points out: 'We had absolutely no one to please but ourselves. The fact that we had escaped our parents' clutches meant there were no real restrictions on our behaviour. You wouldn't have been quite so eager to have a man in your flat if your mother was likely to turn up next day, banging on your door with a casserole.' We are more mobile, and richer than ever before. Between 1986 and 1998, an extra 15 per cent of women joined the workplace. We are choosing to have fewer , later in life Ü if we have them at all. A report by the Henley Centre on behalf of the Salvation Army predicts that, of all women born in 1972, just under 25 per cent will remain childless at 45 by the year 2017 (compared with 16 per cent in 1997). David Weeks, neuropsychologist at Royal Edinburgh Hospital and author of Superyoung, points out that both genders are ageing more slowly. 'We are seeing an extension of adolescence - physically and emotionally - and postponement of emotional development.' According to Weeks, there is a marked increase in the number of sexual partners and range of sexual experimentation during the 10 years after puberty. The 2001 Durex report reveals that 16 to 20-year-olds were 15 on average when they first had sex; over-45s were 18. 'Morality is not perceived in the same way as in previous generations,' says Weeks. 'The parents of women in their twenties and thirties - post-war baby-boomers - had comparatively easy lives and a desire to protect and do whatever they could for their . Smaller families meant that those could be indulged. We moved into a more permissive society.' Weeks believes that women still want emotional security, ïbut are less concerned with formalising it and more likely to formulate their own ideas of trust and responsibility. Women are taking advantage of freedom that, until now, they have never had in such abundance'. Back in the Corinthian, Julie, a 25-year-old law student, has had 'serious' relationships since she was 15. She and her partner of three years split up recently and she is badgering her friend Elise to leave the bar and go dancing. 'I can't stand a night in. I'm out, flirting with millions of men, ripping the piss out of them Ü being a total bitch really.' To boost her ego? 'No.' For sex? She looks aghast. 'I don't do that. Some women do. I just lead men on. Tease them a bit. They should be able to take it.' Ben Renshaw, author of Success But Something Missing, believes that women want what they have seen men having in the past. 'Given the fact that women are more emotionally mature than men of a similar age, they are perhaps better equipped at playing the dating game and handling it well.' Renshaw adds that women's increased earning power and associated work commitments mean that 'time is at a premium. Women are less prepared to put up with relationships that are clearly not working - and freedom is a highly prized commodity'. Hardly surprising, then, that we are seeing a decline in agony aunts' advice on snaring a man and hauling him, yelping for mummy, to choose flowers and agree on the order of service. I ask Karen McKee, a single 30-year-old advertising assistant at Radio Clyde, how she would react if a partner appeared to be steering her towards marriage and Mothercare. 'Panic. Friends used to say, 'Wait until you're 30 and you'll change your mind"; here I am, 30, and I haven't.' She has been the one to end most of her relationships: 'I always seem to do the splitting-up. I'm straightforward about it; I don't believe in playing games. I'm not willing to put up with nonsense.' Karen acknowledges that she and her peers have a different - though not necessarily easier - agenda than that of their parents: 'My mother was married at 21 and had me at 24. That's what you did then. Divorce no longer has a stigma attached; friends are more likely to say, 'You've done the right thing. Good on you.' Single for three years, she says: 'Meeting a man is not top priority right now. I'm doing an OU degree and have dance classes and I'm learning piano. I don't need a man to boost my ego. My family, my sister, and two or three close friends do that.' While women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan still regularly include features such as 'Power Flirting' - including the tip 'squeeze gently with both hands while gently shaking it', which as it turns out is advice on giving a good handshake Ü they also advise on landing a job, friends and party invitations as well as (naturally) a man. Rita Lewis, publishing director of Marie Claire, says: 'Emotional features are more of a feel-good read than a real guide as to how to cope. They are needed less as women are open to more ways of living than the traditional baby-boomer fantasy. Marie Claire assumes the reader is more in control and less often in victim mode. A good example is 'All the men I slept with' [February 2001].Í In the feature, 20-year-old Yolanda, reunited with six ex-lovers, says, 'I do feel like a slapper seeing all my exes together, but I also like the idea that I've had them all.' But certain comments from her sexual partners - 'Yolanda is up for anything: I can see that by looking at the other blokes she's slept with (Mark, 35)' and 'My mum wouldn't like Yolanda: she's way too forward (Carl, 25)' - imply that even the men with whom she has had sex do not wholly approve of her behaviour. At my secondary school, in the late Seventies/early Eighties, a more terrifying prospect than developing a throbbing spot on school disco night was gaining a reputation. Sex felt dark and scary Ü the prospect of all that fun and fumbling marred by rumours that you could get pregnant by having a bath after your brother and, weirdly, passing a boy on the stairs. Good girl didn't, and bad girl Ü well, we knew what she'd been up to with that blob of toothpaste on her neck, ïhealing' a lovebite. From meeting readers of more!, I know that today's young women are less hung up about supposed good/bad behaviour. The Durex Report 2000 reveals that 40 per cent of women using condoms take the responsibility for buying the condoms themselves. I witnessed a fantastically direct pick-up recently. A (single) male friend and I were having drinks when an attractive woman in her late thirties glided up to him, as if on casters. 'Your boyfriend?' she asked me courteously, before charming him with enviable speed and efficiency and swiftly steering him into a taxi. The following morning I conjured up some creaky excuse to call him. 'I feel used,' he complained. 'She didn't even ask for my phone number.' From where I was standing it sounded ideal; convenient sex with no 'I'll call you' and subsequent call-screening endeavours. 'It's nice to meet a woman who knows her onions, but she was so macho,' he finished, lamely. Leading sex therapist Martin Cole acknowledges that the female sex drive equals a man's, eventually exceeding it: 'The male libido kicks in at around 14, rising rapidly to 18. ThereÍs a plateau throughout his twenties, then - as he calms down and becomes more discerning - a gradual decline.' Women, on the other hand, rev up with age: 'As a woman grows older, she generally finds it easier to orgasm, so sex becomes more fulfilling.' Yet, according to Joan Smith, casual sex - at least women enjoying casual sex Ü is still frowned upon. 'Our culture undervalues women. There is a tendency to look at men kindly - at a man in his fifties being still sexually attractive - yet a woman who is single and having fun in her forties shouldn't be doing this. It's an inhibiting factor.' In my close circle of half a dozen friends, all admit that casual sex can be a useful exercise in itself and less hassle than going to the gym. 'It's an ego boost,' says one. 'A nice opportunity to show off,' adds another. One friend keeps an ex-partner 'in reserve for when I haven't had sex in maybe a month and it's becoming a bit dull going home on my own. We meet for drinks and I'll go back to his place. The first couple of times after we'd split up he'd go through the motions of making up the spare bed for me. Now we just sleep together. There's no bashing around with spare duvets. I've been emotionally involved with him and don't want that again, but the sex is kind of cosy and familiar.' Another long-term single friend confesses, 'I'm a great believer in the 'barrier bonk'. When you've come out of a long relationship, and you're not too confident about yourself sexually, a barrier bonk starts everything up and working again, helping you get a bit of practice in.' Interestingly, in the changing behaviour of women, culture and biology might clash, since biologically, it seems, we are not programmed to behave in this manner. Dr Weeks says the hormone oxytocin is released in women during sex: 'While it is usually linked with breastfeeding - and the suppression of sexual desire - in small quantities it creates feelings of warmth and intimacy, reinforcing a woman's feelings for her partner by association.' The ratio of women joining internet dating agencies is growing. However, Danny Smith at www.midsummerseve.com, says, 'You will find fewer women attaching photos to their profiles than men. Women seem to prefer to look out for a chap they like the look of and then make the first move - rather than allowing any number of strange men contact them.' Mary Balfour, at the introduction agency Drawing Down the Moon, has launched a new dating service, Only Lunch, 'for those who want to meet casually, perhaps just for an hour. You're not giving up an evening'. There is mileage inthe 'low-pressure package', Balfour believes. 'It is becoming increasingly difficult to find a mate; the old matchmaking routes - extended family, factory floor - have long gone. Women do not necessarily want to meet a man to live with; we saw the big cohabitation boom through the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties - a rebellion against the old ideals. Now there is nothing to rebel against.' According to Balfour, women are also becoming more picky: ïWomen want men who are sorted emotionally and have worked a bit on themselves. Both sexes tend to look for a partner who is on a higher level of attraction. We call it FSI - faulty self-image. That is, believing that you are more attractive than you actually are.' I met Toni (not her real name), at a Christmas party. Two years previously, she had responded to a personal ad 'initially for sex because I had been single for four years and it just wasn't happening through the usual channels like work or in bars'. She embarked on a relationship with one man. Keen to have a , she plotted her fertile days with Persona and became pregnant within three months. When we spoke, the was nearing her first birthday and Toni was contemplating separating from the father. 'There is fondness there but we are utterly different in our interests and aspirations. I have my . I can support her without my partner's help. I am just a little put off at the thought of lurching into that going out and meeting men thing all over again. It's a lot of effort.' Dating is becoming trickier. Status is harder to define. Joan Smith toys with the following labels, 'technically single - as I live alone but have boyfriends; single not celibate - it hardly fits on a census form'. Our mother and grandmothers simply had their pick of single, married, divorced, spinster. 'Now we have partners who are not boyfriends but whom we like or even love,' she adds. It is 1.30am in the Corinthian. A woman from the table who received the mysterious note repeatedly bounds towards the men at the bar, whispering in ears and patting thighs until a waiter requests - with extreme courtesy - that she leaves them alone. Elise, 26, watches and laughs. Meanwhile, Julie is growing impatient. She wants to move on and for Elise to accompany her. I wonder if Julie's night has been successful so far. I remember her vow to flirt with 'millions' of men. She shrugs and touches up make-up. Evidently, the night is young. She leads Elise to the door, announcing: 'We're going dancing.' |
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