Lesson Twenty-Four: Sometimes A Man Just Wants To Be Held.

Believe it or not, I’m being totally serious. I have heard these words uttered out of the mouths of two men in the last few years. Two, straight men I was involved with. They’re not words I ever thought I’d hear a man say because you learn as a girl, that all men want, is a shag. Apparently this isn't the case with all men. 

Teenage years: You start to see guys as attractive and start having feelings for them. You start exchanging notes (or these days ‘Facebook/texts’). You go through your first crush and normally your first boyfriend and learn that boys hormones mean they’re just after one thing.

Twenties: You go through your first heartbreak, you feel what it means to be jealous, you start to get competitive with your girlfriends for a man’s attention and more often or not you have your first one night stand and learn that men just want one thing.

Thirties: Marriage, children and sometimes divorce. You learn that men just want one thing, except often it’s not from you.

Forties plus: Houses, travel and for the odd group, Internet dating. You learn that men just want one thing….from someone a lot younger than you.

Through all of those phases you see men as sexual creatures who think about sex all the time. And from your teenage years you’re warned that a guy, “Just wants one thing”. You read in magazines and see in movies that men are sexual creatures who spent their days chasing tail – and some of them never stop chasing regardless of their status.

So all men just want sex right? Wrong. Well in my case it is and I’m sure after men marinate this information they too would probably admit this sometimes applies to them.

I first heard the words from my last ex said to me over a few too many sake’s one night, “Tarsh….I don’t just want to have sex with you, sometimes, I just want to be held”. I nearly choked in my Asahi. I’d never ever had a guy say that to me before. In fact I’d never ever heard a guy say that before, not in a cheesy Mills & Boon book or on an episode of Melrose Place.  

Then the latest beau also said to me one lazy afternoon as we lay on the beach, “Tarsh, you know, sometimes I just want to be held. Sometimes I wish you wouldn’t just use me as a sexual object”.  At first I thought he was kidding so I punched him in the shoulder. He wasn’t kidding. I thought to myself, “oh how things change – I used to want to hug my boyfriends but they’d go reaching for first base and now they want to be held”. I’m not an over-sexed nympho. I’m not a demanding sexual fiend. But perhaps I’m not, “comforting enough” or “ sensitive” to their needs.  So, I became the world’s best hugger. I hugged the ex everyone morning until we split and I hug The Boyfriend, a lot. I’m not sure I’m comfortable saying I “hold” him. But I know for a fact that he’ll be even less comfortable with me telling you that it was something he specifically asked for.