Meet the Dating Expert – Katy Horwood

Last week we kicked off a new feature called ‘Meet the Dating Expert’ with professional dating profile photographer Saskia Nelson.  The post proved extremely popular, so this week I asked Sex Expert Katy Horwood, of All Sweetness & Life, and Dating Agency ‘The Four Letter Word‘ to share some expert advice from her specialist area of dating.

I agree whole-heartedly, and have been giggling into my wine reading this over dinner!

Miss Twenty-Nine xxx

 

Making Him Wait – When is The Right Time to Get Physical?

I think one-night stands are highly under-rated. There is something wonderfully reckless and fun about sharing a night of passion with a man you barely know. Not least because it means avoiding the awkward ‘What was your name again … Do you have the number of a local cab office?’ conversation in the morning. (It could be debated that one shouldn’t necessarily be sharing bodily fluids with a man who’s name she doesn’t know, or whose cab office she is unfamiliar with, but stay with me on this one. I have a point to make.)

Today’s society would have us to believe that men don’t stick around with a girl who give it up too easily, and, if a girl has sex with a man on the first night it will lead them to wonder whom else she has done it with.

Nonsense. A man who  judges is simply brainwashed by the ridiculous theory that nice girls don’t give out too quickly. And, actually, this kind of automatic assumption says more about the man than it does the women (of alleged ill-repute), he’s single-minded and inflexible and almost certainly not worth seeing again anyway.

Having rather an impulsive nature myself, I have been known to, ahem, liaise quite early on in relationships. (It is amazing what a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc can do to a girl’s sense of urgency.) However there have been times when, in contrast, I have decided to wait.

To wait, to date, to get to know a person.

As women, we are regularly being reminded of the correct way to act, the right way to dress, the perfect weight to be and how to behave. Rules, advice, guidelines, however you want to dress them up, are dished out daily, you may not think you are living under instruction, but pick up a newspaper or a weekly magazine and you’ll realize you are – Big Sister is watching you.

So, with this in mind, I decided that perhaps it was about time I started doing the ‘right thing’. Shocking results, I don’t mind telling you.

Take a relationship I had a recently. I made him wait and wait… and wait. We got to know each other, we strolled along the Thames, we went to the cinema, we ate sushi, we walked the dog, we even ran together. Then after 3 months we had sex and, drum roll … it was bloody awful.

We just didn’t ‘fit’ together and despite getting on outside of the bedroom, we weren’t compatible in the sack. Perhaps it was because we had become too ‘friendly’ over this extended period of matey-ness (3 months, hell yeah!)  or that we simply wasn’t the sexual chemistry, either way the results were disappointing, and Lord knows, after 3 months, I’m not that fussy.

My theory is this – had we fallen into bed on the proverbial first night we would have realised we didn’t quite click and moved on, or better still, without the pressure and the build up, we might have been a great deal more relaxed and it may have taken him longer than 3 thrusts to climax. (Admittedly his choice of Carly Simon as our lovemaking music didn’t help, but he was in his mid-50’s so that’s excusable.)

We did try, but the moment had passed. Sex just wasn’t that great. We split up and I spent the following weekend in bed with an absolute stranger who I never saw again. Oh the joy.

Make no mistake, I am not suggesting we all start giving head to the local mini cab driver after a curry on a Tuesday night, but I do think men could gain a great deal from sometimes judging less and relaxing more.

And that we might all benefit from laying off boxing people into categories. Sometimes bonking feels right after 3 hours, sometimes 3 months. People and relationships are all different.

A woman who drags you down an alley for a passionate embrace after too many Martinis before she’s met your mother shouldn’t be written off as a partner.  She should be celebrated as a sexy, confident woman who doesn’t always play by the rules and likewise;  a woman who makes you wait for a bit isn’t a prick-tease or a prude, it’s her choice and that’s just fine too.

And that’s coming from a gal that’s tried both … purely in the name of research of course.

 

Katy Horwood writes an award winning blog, All Sweetness and Life, focusing predominantly on dating, sex & relationships. Besides her blog, she writes for The Huffington Post, along with a number of other well respected sites and runs a successful London based dating agency http://www.four-letter-word.co.uk/ 

In her spare time, Katy flirts outrageously in the name of research, over-shares on Twitter, has been know to run the odd Marathon and is a complete liability after a few Dirty Martinis. 

@katy_red

 

 

VOTE HERE!