Fifty Shades Of Wait

I'm a very successful guy in my 30s. I had a lot of casual sex in my 20s, but I got sick of the disconnection and emotional fallout. I'm looking for a relationship, and I've started waiting to sleep with women (for at least a month). I tell them this, but the waiting thing seems to make them want me more and push to have sex. What I don't get is why some get so angry at me.

--Slow Train

Women are used to men wanting sex right away -- or sooner, if possible. Your being the one with your legs crossed? Well, it's like offering a dog a strip of bacon and having him look up and say, "Aww...thanks, doll, but I'm good." Now if these women getting angry with you were just lusty, there's an app for that -- one that allows a moderately attractive woman to swipe a sex partner over faster than Domino's can get there with a pizza. The problem here is female sexual psychology. We all want to be wanted, but research by clinical psychologist Marta Meana finds that women, especially, seem to have an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. This makes evolutionary sense, in light of women's need for reliable signs that a guy would stick around after sex to "provide." A man having an uncontrollable longing for a particular woman is pretty great insurance -- right up there with leg-shackling him to the cave wall. Not surprisingly, according to research by evolutionary psychologist Patricia Hawley, if there's catnip for women, it's those "bodice ripper" novels. They feature intense male desire for a woman, but not of just any male -- a "powerful, resource-holding" one, like the playboy prince or titan of industry. This alpha god cannot be tamed, until...whoops...up pops our heroine, the apparently ordinary maiden. The hunky royal or CEO is so taken with her unique (and otherwise overlooked) beauty and spirit that he can't help but grab her and "ravish" her. Of course, in real life, we call this felony rape. In romance novels, when the guy is uber-rich and cruelly handsome, it's the start of a beautiful relationship. So, women's inability to defeat the time lock on your zipper is telling them something -- no, not "Wow...he thinks I'm really worth getting to know," but "Wow...he thinks I'm uggo" and "That two-week sabbatical from Booty Barre has really caught up with me." It may help a little to reassure them that you find them wildly attractive -- like by "confessing" that you have to take three cold showers and stare at pictures of steamed vegetables before every date. For you, this is the only possible way to keep from giving them one of those man-scam long hugs that turns into sex...uh, that is, three weeks and four days later.