"When you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise whether you do or not" -Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz), Vanilla Sky.

"Maybe. But some promises are worth more than others." -Lex Alexander, NLJ's comments section.

A while back I wrote on a pitfall that many would-be suitors fall in to. Mostly guys, but some girls, will befriend the person they want to be more than friends with in their efforts to become more than friends with them. This leads to a plethora of unpleasent responses and counterresponses.

Now it's time for a new ubiquitous story.

A guy and a girl are hanging out at his dorm room. They're both attracted to one another. He can tell that she's at least somewhat attracted to him, but he's done a good job of keeping his poker face around her. He offers her a backrub and she accepts. While giving her the backrub, he kisses her neck. She asks what he's doing and he replies he's not sure, it just felt right. They kiss.

Two hours later, she's hugging him tightly asking "Why does this feel so right?" while he's laying there thinking about whether his paper is due at the begining of that day's class or whether he can turn it in late. That afternoon, she calls him. He asks what's up and she just says that she wants to talk. "Oh, okay," he replies and they talk. She wants to know if they're getting together that night, but he dodges the question.

A couple nights later they're together again. The fact that he hasn't made any overt gesture referring to their relationship has not escaped her attention. She finally breaks down and asks him about it, but he more or less dodges the question and simply says that he doesn't know what they have.

She's suddenly a lot more intent on a relationship, whereas he has become surprisingly adept at avoiding the question altogether. In her mind, if they keep acting like a couple, he'll realize how good a relationship with her can be and he'll want one. So she spends the night again.

As the sorta progresses, she becomes increasingly impatient. The longer this goes on, the less he really wants a relationship with her. The more impatient she gets, the less he even really wants the sex anymore. Eventually, he suggests that maybe they ought to just cool it and be friends or something. She doesn't like that idea, so he gets more sex. He sleeps easier at night knowing that he has a sex-pal and that he warned her.

"After all, if I wanted a relationship, why would I offer to stop having sex?" He says to himself.

"If he isn't interested in me, why does he keep having sex with me?" She asks herself.

Eventually he gets interested in someone else, she gets upset and then angry. He comes home from a date with his new girlfriend and she has left some twelve messages asking if he misses her and if he misses sex with her. He becomes increasingly agitated (cause he warned her, after all) and she becomes increasingly angry (how can he be so cold to her after all they shared?)

She comes out of it angry and upset, but he comes out of it just fine. After all, why shouldn't he? He got everything he wanted.

While the previous installment of Paging Dr. R. posed a variation of the Harry Met Sally Question, whether or not a man and a woman can be just friends, this installment will focus on whether or not a man and woman can have sex without strings attached.

My position of the Harry Met Sally question is that guys and girls can be friends, but only if both parties are being honest about their intentions. My position on the Sex Without Strings question is actually about the same. Unfortunately, in both cases, one party or the other is generally dishonest, leading to unfortunate results as often as not (usually more).

The problem in the above scenario isn't necessarily that they're having sex outside of a relationship. Some people do it, enjoy it, and it doesn't cause problems. Those, I'd say, are the minority. In general, one party or the other believes that the sex really means something and they're just going along because they more they do it, the more they feel that the other person will believe the same. I'd say somewhere between 75-90% of the time, it's the girl that thinks that.

Cameron Diaz's character from Vanilla Sky embodies that belief. She doesn't say the quote as a suggestion or an abstract belief, she screams it as she drives Tom Cruise at eighty miles an our down a busy road on their way off a bridge. (I'm not giving much away, that's all in the first fifteen minutes or so.) While most people are more stable than Diaz's character, variations of it occur as many variations of the scenario I wrote above do. In some cases, they're in a relationship and she wants it to be more serious. In others, the relationship is in trouble and she thinks that'll save it.

According to her and all of her friends, he will be the villain in the struggle. To an extent, it is deserved. Whatever his intentions were, he kept his cards close. He only overtly admitted that a relationship wasn't going to happen when he became uncomfortable with her aggressiveness. He's also the one who got out unscathed and unhurt, so it's natural to say that if she's hurt and he's not, surely he did something.

More of the fault, in my view, lies with her. While he wasn't completely honest, she was outright dishonest. She explicitly or implicitly demonstrated that she was fine having sex outside the context of a relationship. The gateway to sex with her was meant to be a relationship. Like the guy from my earlier scenario, she wanted something and acted as though she wanted something else. He should have known better, but she really shouldn't have expected him to. Especially when he has every incentive not to make that realization because as soon as he does, he either stops getting sex or enters a relationship he (apparently) doesn't want in to.

Now, as to my personal views on the subject, I am more or less in agreement with Heidi and Daniel in their comments below. The notion of so much as kissing someone that I don't have feelings for simply doesn't appeal to me. I suppose that I'm not a typical male in that regard. I feel the sentimental attachment of a shared moment, or shared moments. If I know ahead of time that it's not going anywhere, the feeling is hollow.

That's certainly not the case with everyone. Different people want different things from a relationship and some people simply want the physical aspects of it and are willing to put up with the rest (note: only when they have to) to get that. A lot of girls simply want the emotional support aspect of a relationship, which is why they often string some guys a lot as their "close friends" despite being aware on one level or another that's not what they're friends want.

In a way, relationships are a negotiation. The typical guy wants sex, the typical girl wants emotional support. In the scenario I wrote in April, the girl got what she wanted, so why should she give up anything more than she has to? Especially when she get can get emotional support not only from the guy-who-wishes-he-was-more but also from a boyfriend. Extra points if the boyfriend "doesn't open up easily" (is a standoffish jerk). Extra bonus points if he drives a motorcycle. On the other side, if a guy is getting sex from a girl, as the saying goes, "why buy milk when the cow is free?" Especially in the age of "sexual liberation" where sex outside a relationship is more permissable and so they can be sleeping with someone while pursuing someone else, much as the girl can be confiding in her problems with the motorcycling jerk to her friend-who-wants-more.

There are exceptions to The Negotiation Rule. Sometimes relationships occur seemlessly out of the blue where everything comes together at once. Of course, waiting for that is the subject of another post entirely. Coming soon to a blog near you, for sure.