Straight Talk, No Chaser: How to Find, Keep, and Understand a Man

8

The Cookie

More on Why Men Need It, Why You Should Keep It

I mean, we just need it, man.

Like the earth needs the sun, like sharks need water, like Parliament needs George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, and Funkadelic, like Benny needs the Jets.

Men absolutely cannot-I repeat, CANNOT-live without sex, or what I often refer to as the cookie.

If he’s breathing and free and clear of medical issues that would preclude him from getting some, then a man is going to have sexual intercourse. Period.

There is nothing on this planet that makes him feel better than sex. Not a hole in one on the golf course. Not a game-winning three-point basket at the buzzer. Not even the best drug. Hands down, it is the most gratifying, tension-releasing, confidence-building, conquering feeling any one human male could ever experience-the mere release is like a pressure valve being turned and all of that steam and buildup and energy rushes through, making the machine right again.

And in order for our machines-our bodies, our souls, and our minds-to be right, we’re going to have sex by any means necessary. We enjoy the act that much.

What women have to understand, however, is that it is just an act. As cliched as it may sound, men have nary a second’s thought about separating the act of having sex from making and being in love. Of course, the more skilled our lover is, the more enjoyable it is-and if she’s as beautiful as the ideal woman we’ve conjured up in our mind when we’re fantasizing, it’s all the more enjoyable, especially if she knows what she’s doing. But really, we have no problem having sex, and hitting the road the second it’s over. If we’re not in love with our partner, we don’t want to cuddle. We don’t want to touch. We don’t want to talk and share and emote and plan and dream with you. And if we do submit to the postcoital cuddle and conversation, it’s most likely insincere-just a way for us to keep alive the possibility that if we need another sexual release in the future, you’ll be available to us.

Cold but fact. Straight, no chaser.

Which is why we men never understood this whole concept women have about using sex to deepen a man’s feelings for them. If you think because you have a special way of handing out the cookie that there will be a difference in how we respond to you emotionally, you’re sadly, pitifully mistaken.

He just took the cookie because you passed it out. I’m serious. No matter how sweet and seductive you were, no matter how much you’d worked out in your mind that sleeping with that man was going to connect the two of you in ways that going out to dinner and a movie followed by a long deep discussion on a walk through the park never would, he was likely saying in his mind, “Well, I’m here, 9:30 on a Tuesday night. If we are efficient enough, I’ll still be able to catch the sports highlights on ESPN. ‘Let’s get on in here, girl!’ ” Often, the physical connection doesn’t lead to much more than that.

This is why I insisted in Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man that women adopt the Ninety-Day Rule-a probationary period of sorts where you forgo having sex with the new guy until you figure out whether he is really into you or is just trying to hit it and quit it. I tell you, this was the chapter that women across the land gave me the hardest time about; all too many refused to even hear me out on this one. I had women calling into my radio show saying, “I don’t know, Steve-ninety days just seems so arbitrary!” At my book signings and lectures from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, from Detroit to Topeka, and everywhere in between, women kept protesting that ninety days seemed “too long” and insisted that it’s okay to do “what feels right” and “hope” that they wouldn’t get hurt in the process. My personal favorite was a proclamation by one woman that she wasn’t going to be bothered with the Ninety-Day Rule because she tried it with a guy and “he ended up dumping me because I wouldn’t put out.” As if that guy would have stuck around if she would have just given him some cookie up front.

I said it before and I’ll say it again: the man who refuses to give you time to investigate whether he’s worthy of intimacy with you is not your man. He’s taking off because he doesn’t have what it takes to meet your standards and requirements, isn’t demonstrating that he’s interested in what it would take to make you happy in a relationship. He’s not looking to get emotionally invested in you; he’s not even considering it as an option. So why would you want this guy to stick around?

Treat sex as if it’s something special and let the man you’re interested in know that it’s special, and guess what? He’ll either leave-which is what you want this guy to do if you’re in the market for a serious relationship-or he’ll see something special in you and do what it takes to meet your standards and requirements. When you require something of a man, he will have no problem giving it to you if he truly wants to invest in a relationship with you. Your prize is only special if you make us treat it as if it’s special-if we are forced to say to ourselves, “Oh, wait-I can’t just run up in here and get the cookie like I can everywhere else because this is more than just a hit-it-and- quit-it kind of girl.” Men don’t mind having to prove themselves, and you are worthy of the effort and the attention.

If, however, you’re treating sex as if it’s just a box of Chiclets, we’ll run through the relationship with you as if it’s a box of Chiclets. You know you don’t chew Chiclets too long. You pop one in your mouth and you chew it for a little while and then you spit it out and get you another piece until the box is empty-until there’s nothing left. You don’t want to be the used-up, empty Chiclets box.

You want to be the one he feels emotionally connected to, because when a man loves you and he’s committed solely to you, sex means something wholly different; now it becomes the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. That ideal woman we’ve had in our mind since we became sexually active is now an actual person-our ideal woman personified-and when we have sex with that woman, our physical, emotional, and mental desires synchronize and work together to give a pleasure trip that is exponentially better than any other sexual experience we could ever conjure up in our mind, let alone ever have had. When we’re making love to a woman we love, we don’t ever want it to be over; we want to keep touching her and smelling her and drinking her in because every inch of her arouses us in ways that no other person can-drives us crazy, damn near. Sex with that woman rejuvenates us-gives us the strength to carry on, the comfort we need to continue, the feel-good we have to have to make it through the hard times. And we actually care deeply that our lady feels the same way about us and will aim to do whatever it takes to bring her that immense pleasure, because we love her and want her to feel what we feel. We want her to be happy.

Now men-and only men-can determine whether they love you and that your pot of gold is special to them. You can’t decide it for a man-you can’t say, “I’m going to get my sexy on so much so that he’ll be too strung out to leave,” and expect that it’ll work. Trust me when I tell you, no man on this planet will make that determination without first being shown how you want to be loved, how you expect to be treated, and whether or not it’s worth pursuing you beyond a casual romantic fling.

Ask any man living if I’m telling the truth and he’ll tell you the same.

COMMITTED SEX VERSUS FLINGS

Of course, even if a man is in a committed relationship with a woman he loves, sex is going to wane. That’s just human nature. You’re going to get comfortable with each other. I’ve yet to meet a parent of a toddler who doesn’t find the king-size bed that was so immense during the honeymoon feels cramped when Junior starts walking in during the middle of the night (how romantic can that be?). Bill time is going to come around too often and with it the kind of stress that can play a number on your sexual energy. And somewhere along the line, there will be days when you’re just going to be tired of looking at each other, even though you know good and well you can’t live without each other. But even with all those changes, the one thing that I guarantee will remain constant is your man’s desire for sex. Again, unless there is something physically precluding him from achieving intimacy, a man is going to want to have sex regularly, especially if he’s committed to you.

Now I’m not saying he has to have it every night. That’s for the young boys who don’t have anything else to do but prowl for the next conquest. And I’m not suggesting either that a guy won’t make allowances for natural occurrences that throw you off from giving us good loving, like illnesses and pregnancy and the like. Men are not heartless-we’re not the dogs you make us out to be. But the release we get from sex is essential to our existence. As I’ve written elsewhere, it recharges our batteries, feeds our ego, releases a bit of the pressure cooker tension