"No thanks, I've got a boyfriend"... part deux

[Anniegetyourgun]

Here y'go, nice clean thread, please wipe your feet before trampling all over it.

Me too SaF

My sister is 21 and from the age of 16 has regularly has a bed full of men.

She's not a virgin, but she is very close toone - she doesn't shag these men and they don't attempt to shag her, no matter how drunk she and they are.

Colditz, it genuinely warms the cockles of my cynical miserable heart to hear about your sister. It's what it's all about, isn't it? Wonderful, equal, respectful and rewarding relationships of all kinds between men and women.

I don't know colditz, I tried the 'innocent bed sharing' thing when I was very young but it never ended up innocent - especially where alcohol was involved. Mainly because my male friends are quite attractive.

Sorry, but if a man (or woman)- and I am talking about adults here not teenagers having fun sleepovers in gangs- invite each other into the other one's bed (unless there really is nowhere else to sleep, of course) then they are sending the other one a very clear signal that they want to get intimate.

Any person would then be acting reasonably if they made an attempt of kissing that other person who invited them into their bed. Now this is NOT to say that if the 'inviter' says 'Look, I don't want sex, just a cuddle' that the other person carries on, no, not at all, to carry on when that person has said no to sex is clearly rape. To carry on having sex with somebody when they have said no to it is rape wherever that place might be.

But are we now supposed to believe that a man is in the wrong for making a pass at a woman who has invited her to her bed? Jeez, if so, then we really have entered cloud cuckoo land...

Eh? From recent posts, how on earth have you got to 'men are now wrong for making a pass at women who invite them into their bed'?

For the record, the last time I shared a bed it was with three of my good male friends. Because we wanted to talk.

Bit late coming back to say: thanks for explaining, Kallista, I'm glad you didn't mean what I half accused you of. I agree some women do give off an air of unavailability. I tend to have one myself, indeed kind of assumed I was unattractive in my youth because I didn't get chatted up that often (photographs taken 30 years ago suggest that I wasn't bad looking and had quite a good figure and really rather fabulous legs, if I do say so myself). However I did occasionally suffer from pests. I didn't usually have too much of a problem handling it myself as I can talk the hind leg off a donkey and it makes their eyes glaze, heh! And although I would have scorned the boyfriend line, talking about my children (once I had some) was very effective in scaring 'em off. There were only a couple of incidents when I felt a bit intimidated, the rest were just irritating, so I count myself lucky. But less robust female friends and colleagues sometimes didn't know how to handle it, and let's face it, why should they have to? It shouldn't be happening in the first place.

While I'm thinking about the subject, none of my female friends sleep elsewhere when they come to stay. We both sleep in one bed, normally roaring with laughter and chattering away until sleep overtakes us. There is one friend who doesn't, but she's really funny about sharing her sleeping space with anyone. It's no different with male friends.

When I used to share a house it wasn't at all remarkable for us to clamber into one another's beds, even if a boyfriend was there as well. Normally that would be on a weekend morning, to trade war stories. Quite often we'd all fall asleep again. It's not that I had a particularly unusual set of housemates, either; I've just flicked through my FB list of friends and there's plenty of others I can point to who did the same in their houses.

Just responding to the comment by VictorGollancz that it shouldn't be any different to share a bed with a man she just met (as opposed to male friends).
Of course it is different.

I mean who is to know how a stranger will react if you invite them to your bed? They will probably make a pass of some kind, heck, nobody would consider them beasts for it, and , yes, if you say ' no I don't want it' they should respect that, absolutely they should respect that.
But nobody in their right mind thinks that it is OK to just invite a stranger to bed with them, on grounds of what they think should happen in a politically correct perfect world where we all love and respect each other.
You don't invite a stranger to bed with you and expect them not to make a pass at you and for it just to be friendly.

This thread is about inappropriate male behaviour, is it not? And I could easily imagine that a few women here would think a man dreadful if he made a pass at her in this way. which given the circumstances, i.e. stranger just met him, invited him to bed, I would find it very, very hard to find fault with the man for making a pass. I'd only find fault if he didn't stop when the women told him she was not interested.

Glad to hear it, SAF! I know I shouldn't let the anti-feminist stuff get to me but there was a lot of it on the previous thread and sometimes it's good to think back and think yes, I'm not a humourless freak. I've got good friends of both sexes, who I can grab and hug and get pissed with and fall over with and collapse into bed with and all that stuff because we respect one another and don't pay any attention to constructions of gender. And all I really want to do is spread that around a bit!

Honestly, Wamster, I think you're focusing on the wrong bit. I said it 'shouldn't' be any different with a work colleague or someone I'd just met. Of course it probably would be. I wish it were different.

But, I have to say, I have shared beds with men I've just met. My bed isn't in a nightclub, or a bar (although sometimes I wish it was!). I also don't tend to meet total strangers in my living room. There is quite a stage inbetween meeting someone, inviting them back, having coffee, drinking some more, realising it's really goddam late, and letting them crash. It's always been established that sex is not an option (unless, of course, it was, in which case THAT had usually been established waaaaay before this stage). The bed means sleep, nothing else.

There was even a guy who I met on the internet. He came over, we got drunk, we chatted and didn't realise the time so no train, he stayed. The conversation was had. If he'd been pushy, or exhibited any of the signals we've discussed at length in this thread, then no, he wouldn't have stayed. I would have felt really bad about condemning him to a night at the station or a 50-mile taxi ride but safety first.

Oh, forgot to finish. None of them pushed it. None of them tried to kiss me. It is totally possible for men and women to co-exist this way, if both of them work together. I'm probably a bit too much of an optimist but it's certainly been the case in my life.

OK, then I accept that my interpretation of should not was incorrect, I apologise; you were lucky, though, with that internet guy. You can't always tell what someone is like after a few hours, and he could have been an unpleasant guy who was good at hiding it.

he could have been an unpleasant guy - but the onus is on men to control their behavior, not upon women to 'be careful.'

That persistent guy who asked you out a few times (stress not abusive or violent or rude) may turn out to be a nice guy after all, whereas the guy who seemed all nice and non-pushy and yes, got a lot of female friends who think he is really nice, may turn out to be the guy who chucks stuff at you and cheats.

Not directed to anybody here in particular but don't write somebody off straight away on one viewing. As long as they're not rude or abusive or violent, of course.

Oh, absolutely agree, with you colditz , but that is no good when you've actually been attacked, that knowledge that you are in the right- WHICH YOU ARE guys should control themselves- brings no comfort.

Why not write someone off in one viewing?

If you don't like their behavior when they are trying to impress you, why on EARTH would you like their behavior six months in>?

Pushy people are not 'nice guys' who get a bit too enthusiastic. They are people who think that their's is the only opinion that counts. They are pushing because they think that you don't have the right to an opinion of your own, and they are just waiting until they manage to turn it into their opinion.

Why would anyone give someone like that a chance? I don't want to be contantly steamrollered into doing things that I have already said I do not wish to do. I do not want my relationship to be a constant battle to be heard. If someone behaves like that on a first date, that is the sort of person he is. And he's out.

And of course it brings comfort - the knowledge that the person did not have the right to behave like that brings far more notion than the idea that it was somehow MY fault for letting him in/showing too much leg/not covering my face.

It is a comfort because unlike the above, the blame is firmly on the perpetrator.

Wamster, last time I checked it was my prerogative to decide who I date or don't date. And men should respect that if a woman says no once, she probably won't change her mind.

Interestingly, I've just had an email from a dear friend who is dealing with just such a situation - at work. She was transferred about a month ago to a different department and is working in the same office as this guy who started out just being "overly friendly" but incrementally has got more intrusive, getting too close in conversation, asking her out and telling her to ditch her boyfriend for him. She's tried brushing it off, but she wonders if she needs to say something to her manager. She's already tried laughing it off, then saying she's not interested, then ignoring him, but nothing has got him to stop. We're not talking youngsters in a nightclub here. They are both about the 50 mark working for a large public sector organisation. She's mature, astute, confident and professional, but this is really getting her down. Sucks.