The flirting seems to go well until I suggest actually making a plan. I can trade jokes with a man I find attractive, get what feels like interest back, and then watch the whole thing lose momentum when meeting up becomes a real possibility. I’m not asking where this is going. I’m asking whether we’re going to see each other at all.
I’m a woman in my early thirties, athletic, a bit of a tomboy, and comfortable with my own life. I have interests, hobbies, and a career I’m working toward. What I don’t want right now is a relationship. What I would like is a consistent sexual connection without much commitment. Those two wishes don’t feel contradictory to me: something can be casual without every attempt to arrange it falling apart.
The men I’m interested in tend to be around my own level of attractiveness, as far as I can judge something that subjective. There’s banter. Sometimes there seems to be quite a lot of enthusiasm. But when we get to the practical part, they pull back, become unreliable, or never follow through. After enough of that, I start looking for the detail I’m missing.
I’m autistic, and I wonder whether my directness plays a part. I don’t usually announce that I want sex in the bluntest possible terms. I’m more likely to suggest spending time together without romantic expectations. To me, that is a way of making my interest clear while leaving out a promise I can’t honestly make. I’m not trying to hint at a future relationship to get a present encounter.
What confuses me is that some of these men do have casual sex with other people. I’m not assuming that means they should want it with me. Attraction isn’t transferable, and nobody owes me sex because our preferences appear compatible. Still, it makes the explanation that they simply dislike casual sex harder to settle on. I’m seeing a gap between what seems possible in the flirting and what happens afterward.
One possibility I keep wondering about is whether being wanted romantically is part of the appeal, even for someone who doesn’t want a relationship himself. Maybe knowing a woman might fall for him adds something that my openness removes. Or maybe I’m misreading the flirting, and the interest was never as strong as it looked. I don’t have access to anyone else’s reasons; these are questions I’m left with, not things the men have admitted.
My social circle is full of musicians, artists, and people in a fairly alternative scene. That may affect the expectations around me, though I can’t tell exactly how. It isn’t a setting where I would automatically expect a casual proposition to be shocking. Perhaps that’s another reason the lack of follow-through catches me off guard.
It has now been months since I’ve had sex. I can be comfortable with myself and still feel bewildered by that distance between a lively exchange and an arrangement that actually happens. I keep wondering whether my directness makes the invitation less appealing, or whether I took the flirting as more of an invitation than it was.
