There is a news story out there ...
That I am not going to link to. The story about how a man in his thirties may or may not have done something really stupid to attract the interest of a much-younger woman he should not have been interested in. Okay, if you are reading this today, you can probably guess which story I am not linking to.
But here is the thing, if someone were to search up this post ten years from now and didn't notice the date they might well think it about some then-current story. Because the truth is that there is almost always a story like this.
Leaving aside currently unproven stories, why does this keep happening?
Part of it is the way we see young women. Or, more accurately, the way we refuse to see young women. It takes two people to get into an inappropriate relationship. And when a young woman gets into an inappropriate relationship with an older man, most of the real power is usually on her side, not least of all because she knows that she will be presumed innocent in ways that he won't. And power gets abused because that is one of the few things you can actually do with power.
But that really shouldn't make any difference if you are a man. The drug dealer on the corner also initiates the contact but you know better than to go anywhere with that one.
And, regardless of what women do or don't do, there are all sorts of men who mistake casual flirting from women as invitations for more. I had a friend back in university who was firmly convinced that every waitress who ever served us was coming on to him. He was otherwise an okay guy for a casual university friend but that one trait was really irritating.
The point here is that you really don't want to be that guy. And if you are that sort of guy, the problem starts with you.
It starts with a certain set of attitudes towards sex. The first attitude you don't want to have is the belief that an opportunity to have sex is a terrible thing to waste. And you'll meet guys who think that way all the time.
I've been that guy myself now and then. If you give just about any guy the opportunity he will tell you about the missed signal and the woman who told him, years after the fact, that she was his for the taking. But so what? Did you really need to have sex with every woman you might have had sex with?
The fact that we are even inclined to ask the question tells us how easy it is to get going down the road. But you can clear it up, put the question in the mouth of your wife or girlfriend or, if you aren't currently attached, imagine how some future partner might react to the issue. Would you expect the woman in your life to be happy knowing that your attitude before you met her was to never let an opportunity for sex to go to waste? Would you be happy to learn that had been her attitude?
For, really, the guy who keeps getting into trouble, like guy in the news story I'm not linking to, is the guy who always thinks in terms of sexual possibilities.
And I say this as a guy who is pretty tolerant on the purity front. That someone might slip up strikes me as understandable and forgivable. But there is no good reason to even begin to think of a woman other than the one you are in a relationship with as a possible sexual partner. Even entertaining the thought in a casual, purely hypothetical, way is going too far.
Of course you will at least once in your life. And then you have to stop yourself.
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