Just Say No to the Naked Make-Out (Part 2)

So what should you do if you’re in Maggie’s position? If you’ve spent too much time dry humping in a thong to ever go back to go back to a Victorian courtship, but you don’t wanna give it up until you have some sort of title (i.e., girlfriend)?

You don’t want to make it seem like you’re trading sex for relationship status. And that’s not how you should think of it either.

If it’s 3 a.m. and you’re nakedly grinding all over a guy, if you tell him you won’t go all the way unless he agrees to be your boyfriend, he’s gonna agree. In fact, there’s probably not very much he wouldn’t agree to if he thought it would get him laid.

But that doesn’t mean it’ll stick in the morning. I had a friend who once did just that: he took a girl home, she fed him the “no sex unless I’m in a relationship line,” he readily agreed, and then left the next morning before she woke up. When she called him, he didn’t pick up, and he finally texted her to tell her that he “realized he’d made a mistake.”

Like we said yesterday, when it gets past a certain point in the naked make-out, a guy’s mind is focused on only one thing: getting sex ASAP. If he can see your nipples, he won’t be able to have an honest talk about “where things are.” (Although you should avoid that topic as much as possible, especially in the beginning.)

But if you have been doing the naked make-out, here’s what you can do.

First, you need to figure out exactly what you want. Most girls tend to think about these situations in the abstract. They say they want their hook-up buddies to be their boyfriends, but they don’t really have a clear picture in their minds of what that means.

A guy could call himself your boyfriend and still blow you off six nights a week, pick up random girls in bars, and sleep with your best friend. The title means a lot less than the way he acts around you.

So figure out what kind of boyfriendly behavior you’re looking for. Do you want him to take you out to dinner once a week? Only call you when he’s sober? Introduce you to his friends? Call you to check in at the end of the day?

Once you know what you want, you need to start reinforcing that type of behavior. The most important part of this is usually hardest to do: you need to ignore him when he’s not treating you the way you want to be treated. But you have to do this in actions, not words. You can’t tell him, “I’m not gonna hook up with you unless you take me out with the guys.” If he texts you at 3 a.m., ignore him. If calls you and asks you to come over and watch a movie, tell him you’re busy. If he accuses you of blowing him off, blame it on work or school or yoga class.

But when he does the right thing, turn on the charm. If he asks you out to dinner, put on your nicest dress and make sure to compliment him if he looks good. Act in a way that will make him want to take you out to dinner again to replicate your behavior.

But this doesn’t mean you should use sex as a form of positive reinforcement. If you only let him go all the way after he takes you to dinner at Komi, he’s basically paying you for sex. And, unless you’re Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, this isn’t the path to a relationship.

You’re still going to have to figure out the right time to sleep with him. But until you are ready, avoid bringing him home.

This can be weird if you’ve already been doing the naked make-out. And you’re going to have to come up with pretty creative excuses. Tell him you’re tired. Say you have to get to work early. Make up a story about your crazy roommate.

You’re also going to have to play some things by ear, because the situation will be different for every couple. But, above all, you need to change the way you’re thinking about things. Don’t tell yourself that you’re waiting for him to say “girlfriend” before you’ll let him go all the way. And project this attitude when you’re talking to your wanna-be boyfriend. Don’t feel like you have to explain yourself or arbitrarily withhold certain things for set periods of time. Tell yourself that you’re in charge, and act like you can do no wrong.

If he straight-up asks you about the lack of loving (in the Biblical sense), you can say something like, “I don’t have sex unless I’m in a relationship, and I don’t know you well enough yet to know if I’d want to date you.” Make it seem like the decision is yours to make, not his.