Attention to the people who need to hear this today: No means no! It doesn't matter if the both of you are "talking," dating, in a long term relationship, or in a long distance relationship.
I say this because I had a recent experience that actually shocked me.
I used to "talk" or simply message a guy about two years ago. It didn't grow into anything more because it didn't work out. There was no substance to our conversations, so I quickly became uninterested.
Fast forwarding two years later, in 2019, we reconnected again. How or why did we reconnect? I know that's a question that you are probably asking. I recently saw a Snapchat story that showed he had cut his hair. If you had seen how long this guy's hair was before, you would have been a little surprised like I was. Because of this, I simply sent him a message saying, "Oh wow you cut your hair...looks nice."
Maybe it's just me, but I thought my compliment was harmless. Clearly not, because he took that as me wanting to be with him. This the point where I insert an eye roll emoji in response to the craziness this guy made up in his head!
I didn't get rude or anything. I just simply explained that I was just trying to give him a compliment and that I didn't expect an entire conversation to form from it. That was the complete opposite of what happened because a conversation did begin, and it was surprisingly a decent one.
It was nothing like two years ago, and I was actually interested in continuing a conversation with him. What started out as a simple compliment on Snapchat, formed into us talking every day after that.
Aside from that, he eventually expressed how much he liked me now and how he wanted to try and make something work between us. I felt like it was too soon, so I explained to him that we should continue to get to know each other more, but we could focus on each other since we were both interested in what could come from this.
I guess he also misinterpreted this as well because he was getting way more serious about an "us" than I was. Soon after I mentioned us focusing on each other to get to know one another more, he took that as I should also focus on him sexually also.
He had the audacity to tell me that I need to sexually please him in order for him to want to stay loyal and just focus on me. I calmly explained to him that he can keep doing whatever he has been doing to satisfy himself because I am not and will not be taking on any responsibility to satisfy him.
He clearly didn't understand me the first time because he continued to ask me about it, and even stated that I shouldn't have a problem with at least oral since that's not sex. This is when I began to become pissed.
After I thought the conversation was done and my decision was respected, I was totally wrong. Later that night, he asked me if I could at least send him a picture. After explaining how I wasn't comfortable with sending pictures either, he makes the statement, "Please… just a little something so that I know you're trying on your part to make this work."
This is the point where I was not only disrespected, but he was starting to guilt me into something I had repeatedly stated I wasn't comfortable with. After sitting through many events on sexual assault and learning about peer pressure, this is when I realized how bad this situation was and never spoke to him again! Well, after attempting to explain and educate him on why what he was doing was bad, and how his behavior is only contributing to the problematic rape culture we live in, I ended communication with him.
Even though he may not have even realized the impact of what he was doing, I did. To all of my women and men out there on the dating scene, do not ever let someone pressure you into doing anything you don't want to do, especially anything sexual. Do not feel like you are a bad person or not putting in effort into your relationship/situation because you are standing by what you believe in. Never think that sexual acts will keep someone interested in you because it will, AT MOST, keep them interested in your body. Lastly, when someone says no, it means no!
