Remember how I wrote an article about how to approach women a few weeks ago? Not exactly my style, but little did you know it was part of trade!

That’s right!

My friend Christian and I decided to write scoops for one another’s blogs. Christian’s a social coach who works with men to improve their success in life (and love) and is one of the few people I know who enjoys theorizing about relationships as much as I do. Guys, you can check out his website, The Social Man, here.

So while Christian asked me to write about the best way to approach women, an aid for those shier guys out there, I asked him to write about why men, well, LEAVE, DISAPPEAR, VANISH all the time, often for no apparent reason.

Here are the results:

Why We’re Scoundrels

by Christian Hudson

Sorry. On behalf of all of the guys who have, literally and metaphorically, screwed you over. We don’t mean to, it just kind of… happens.

Why do we have sex with you then lose interest? Why don’t we call back the next day? Why do we pull a jekyll and hyde after the night that should have meant something?

Look, there are two types of sex: the sex that comes our way effortlessly, and the sex that we have to work for. We’ll consider each separately.

We don’t feel too strongly, one way or the other, about the sex that comes our way. We’re hanging out with a girl, she’s in our bed, and, well… it’d be letting her down if we didn’t have sex.

This is an important, but rarely visited storage closet in the basement of the male psyche. Rejecting a woman when she’s slightly drunk, falling all over us, and giving us ‘f*ck me’ eyes? We’d be SUCH jerks. She might create drama. Or worse - our friends would tell us we were, uh, pu**ies for not having sex with her. I remember looking up at a girl one time, who had deposited herself on my couch, and saying “well, I guess we’re gonna hook up now, huh?” “Yep,” she replied. Not exactly romance, but then again, I didn’t exactly want to hook up with her.

The next few hours/days/weeks are spent avoiding a conversation or anything resembling acknowledgment of the fact that a hookup went down. We don’t even want to remind ourselves about it. And we rationalize it by telling ourselves that we wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t liked us so much. Lessons learned by both parties. Society is cruel. etc.

Spineless of us? Damn straight. And speaking from personal experience, and after a few or so nights like that, I stopped having random hookups that just come my way. Not good for anyone, and it annoys my housemates when girls just show up unannounced and I’m not here. Consider me enlightened. Other men? Good luck.

But I might have a relapse. I’m a guy… come on.

Ok, but how about the girls who we work for? The girls with whom we actually make eye contact… the girls to whom we whisper sweet nothings… the girls we may even like? Hmmmm, where to start?

Bad sex. This can include everything from dead body syndrome to poor grooming (you do wax, right?) to unfortunate smells. And what a shame it is when it happens. If we actually liked you but the sex was bad, we’re as disappointed as you are.

Don’t take it personally, some couples just don’t have sexual chemistry. But understand that this is grounds for immediate disqualification as a long-term prospect. Sex is important to us, and unless we really, really, *really* like you, we’re not going to suffer bad sex and work through it

Now, its unlikely that we’ll be honest and tell you it wasn’t good. Chances are it wasn’t great for you either, and the possibility of getting sucked into a blame game is enough to keep us from broaching the topic at all. Mark Twain once said “a man who holds a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.” I’ve never told a woman that her performance was lackluster, so I have only suspicions that it would result in my eyes being scratched out.

With all of that said, there is a deal breaker even more insidious than bad sex: insecurity. Some girls change - in a big way - after sex. Its like they let the sex happen so that they can allow themselves to feel close to us. Even worse, they hide this insecurity from us until we’ve slept with them. But make no mistake, we feel it.

We feel the weakness, the clinging, the neediness, sometimes just moments after sex. Rather than being allowed to peacefully enjoy the girl’s company, we feel pressure. It might be in how tightly she cozies up to us. It might be in how she looks at us. It might be in the conversation. Insecurity manifests itself in a million little ways, and considering the vulnerability of true intimacy, it’s not surprising that this might be the first time we feel it from a girl.

That doesn’t mean we’re ok with it. Being a good lover and being an emotional crutch don’t go hand in hand. We assume that most women have a guy friend or two who provide emotional support services in exchange for the long-term prospect of sex - clearly, we’re not that guy if we just hooked up. Expect to get lots of space from us if we feel too much pressure too soon.

But enough about the craziness of women. How about our own craziness?

Some of us have intimacy issues of our own. We may chase woman after woman, looking for something to make us feel better about that girlfriend who once dumped us, the family that wasn’t there, or the struggles we’re facing professionally. And we don’t always have the self-awareness to realize that more sex with more women isn’t the answer. We may even convince ourselves that we really like a girl, only to discover in moments of intense closeness that she wasn’t what we were looking for. Usually, there’s another rationalization to follow about why we couldn’t call her, why its been tough to make time to see her, and why we became so damn weird.

I also believe that there are some of us who just relish sexual variety more than others. I’ve known men who will sleep with women who I wouldn’t approach after a pint of Jaeger, but more often than not, their low standards are a function of a raging, adventurous libido, not a genuine and exclusive desire for unattractive women. For those men who fall into this category, the terms and conditions of sex are more malleable than for the rest of us. Realize when you’re dealing with this kind of man and you can proceed accordingly.

Ultimately, I look at sex as merely one way that humans interact with each other. Like a conversation, a game of doubles tennis, or any other collaborative social endeavor, it can work incredibly well, or it can fail miserably. It isn’t the be-all end-all, but rather, a form of expressing intimacy and making someone else feel great, which also happens to be quite self-indulgent. Sometimes, it doesn’t work out, and rather than have an honest conversation about it, we disappear mysteriously.

Kind of like the how you left your last hair stylist.