Lab Experiment – Can You Unring The Bell?

In the spirit of not wanting to blindly assert something without having testing it, I am going to attempt to unring a bell. By that, I am referring to the rule that says once you have fucked up on not following the rules you need to bail because it is now ruined.

Background: I matched with STV-002 initially about three months ago. We chatted for a bit and then he disappeared. I don’t know when – I didn’t notice until I saw him pop back up in my dating queue and I swiped on him again. It turned out he had “gone off the grid” for a bit to recharge but was back.

STV-002 is a big lovebomber. He is unrelentingly complimentary, positive, friendly. He finds things I like and then sends them to me, like pictures and songs. We share a lot of interests. He is encouraging and seems to have his shit kind of together.

My mistakes: I have been too readily available. I have responded to messages during the day, in the morning, and late at night. We’ve spoken on the phone, which in itself isn’t a bad idea, but it was definitely plucking some emotional strings. I have also sexted him (though not to completion if that makes a difference) and have sent him suggestive pictures of me. We have continued to chat even though he has only suggested we meet – as though it was on me to ask him out. He now mostly sends sexual texts and pictures with the slightest provocation, and has admitted that his fantasy about me is that I just show up to his house and fuck him without saying anything.

Or getting paid, apparently. Not great. He is essentially suggesting that I am worth less than a prostitute.

Anyway.

My hypothesis: are there a set of rules you can follow to bring a derailed interaction back on course?

Trial 001: not responding to texts of a sexual nature, not being so available. Will this subtly demonstrate my boundaries and the direction I now wish to take this?

Update: Much to my chagrin, this seemed almost TOO easy to correct. I started aggressively asserting the rules – no texting during the day, I did not engage with sexual innuendo or suggestion, I wasn’t always around. Within a day, STV-002 had returned to sending me pictures of things he knew I found interesting, and was asking about my day and not telling me unprompted how nude he was at any given point.

Two or three days later, he asked me out and gave me the option of coffee, dinner, or drinks. I chose drinks because fuck a coffee date, and dinner is too much of a commitment if you just want to have sex (though there are differing opinions on this and I welcome discourse if you have any). He asked me out on a Wednesday for any day I wanted and I chose Friday. The thought crossed my mind that once a date was made he’d go back into sex mode, but he remained friendly and casual.

We met, got a bit (a lot) drunk, made out in the park we were walking through and I decided I did want to bang him, so we went back to his place. It was a pretty fun night. He made sure I came twice before he did, and I made sure to get up, pee, and get out after things were over. He sent me a polite thank you message saying he had a good time, I said the same back.

So asserting the rules worked? I got what I wanted, but the ease of this makes me suspicious. Have I never tried to reassert normalcy in a situation when things have crossed boundaries? Have I just gone along with it because that’s all I knew?

And before you say “oh wow, you got a random dude to bang you once soooo cooool, do tell me your secret”, the outcome of this experiment wasn’t just that I get laid – it was that I made the other person regard me as a human PRIOR to that moment, that they stopped seeing me as a fantasy hole they’d constructed and paid attention to the real person I am.

Outcome: a possible rule amendment – if you fuck up, you can try going by the rules to see if it can be corrected. More testing required.

Thoughts?

-C