You wake up every morning to sweet text messages.  Not that “good morning beautiful” bullshit either.  You wake up to genuine well wishes and sentiments of longing to see you, and now you have an extra boost of energy for the day.  He calls and says, “Get dressed we’re going out,” and you love the spontaneity and mystery of it.  He keeps you on your toes, so you’re never bored.  You may even travel to see him sometimes.  He has an enduring presence in the back of your mind.  He makes you laugh and blush.  He pleases you in ways you’ve never experienced before, and unexpectedly you find yourself daydreaming, replaying it in your mind and outwardly biting your lip in memory of the moment.  You discuss things about the world, and he introduces you to ideas and concepts you’d never considered before.  He makes you think.  He disarms you.  He makes you feel comfortable.  He really sees you.  He says things in the plural like us and we, and uses future tense.  But this is not your boyfriend.  No commitments have been made, and fear, anxiety, and insecurity creep in.  Now every time his phone goes off you wonder if it’s another girl.  Now you grow suspicious of the times he’s taken a little longer to text back.  Now you notice certain likes and comments under his pics.  Now you have the sneaking suspicion that that which you’ve become accustom to may not actually belong solely to you. 

I think that feeling we get that something is off (AKA women’s intuition) is a heightened level of discernment that the Lord gave us in exchange for the pain of periods and childbirth.  When we feel like something is off, it really is.  Remember that story I told you about walking into that guy’s house and knowing something was wrong, and then seeing those earrings an hour later on his nightstand?  You know when something isn’t right.  So, when is it okay to ask, “What are we?”

It’s safe to say (in general terms of course) that guys do whatever they genuinely want to do when it comes to dating.  It’s what they are trained to do and to be: ambitious and tenacious, and sometimes to our detriment and theirs.  We on the other hand are socialized to lie in wait.  To be courted and pursued.  Not to act too fast, or too suddenly, because this takes away their incentive to pursue us.  I venture to guess that’s why some guys find women who are…sexually aggressive unappealing.  Many people (my therapist included) have explained this to me many times over.  That this is just the way men are, even from an evolutionary standpoint, so if you do the whole “What are we thing?” you scare them off.  This somehow goes against the natural order of things.  You are to sit politely and do nothing.  There are three things I have been told in the past couple of months in relation to this:

My Therapist: When it comes to guys, the best thing to do is nothing.

My Sis: The girls who do the least get the most.

My Male Co Worker: Men are like woodland animals.  You have to gently lure them out without making any obvious or sudden movements, and when they get close enough and feel safe enough to eat out of your hand, you pounce.

The trouble with this is, we are also always being told that if a guy doesn’t commit to you he doesn’t really care about you.  By this logic any dude who doesn’t marry you does not care about you, and you should forget he ever existed.  So you have people like Steve Harvey telling us all these tactics, and emotional manipulation skills to alter your way of thinking into one that is conducive with luring a guy (any guy) into a commitment.  Even if that works, even if you emotionally contort yourself to get a guy to commit, how long can you hold the pose?  How long are you planning on keeping up the ruse to maintain it?  For example, if he got with you under the preconceived notion that you are not a sexual being, then what’s going to happen the night you unleash your sexual prowess?  How long are you supposed to keep this act up?

In my limited experience, when a guy wants you, he just does.  You don’t need to convince him of anything.  So if you feel the need to ask, “What are we?” is it the same as asking how much a pair of shoes cost in Bergdorf’s?  If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.  If you have to ask, does it mean he’s just not that into you?  What say you?