[SleepyButch]

Originally Posted by imperfect_cupcake

Hmn. Tricky. I don't know. The last time I dated someone I quite liked neither of us was asking for monogamy off the bat because we were both the same about it. I told her on the first date that I didn't mind who she dated or slept with and she didn't have to tell me about it unless she wanted to talk to me as a friend about it (which she did. She had an issue and a bad date and wanted to tell me and I listened and we joked. Which actually made me feel closers to her).

After we had been dating a while, we both decided we would like to know if the other person was sleeping with anyone else. She had never done this before and was nervous about it so I said "let's role play it! You tell me and I'll be me!"
We laughed and joked our way through the role play and she felt much better about it.

But about four months along she wanted to meet someone "for sex or for a date, date. Like proper romantic date"
"Proper romantic date"
And I knew at that point we were at different stages and wanted different things, for now. So I bowed out. And it busted me to do it. If she had been meeting someone for a fun casual sex date, I would have felt jealous but nothing I couldn't deal with. Her wanting to meet someone to romance, made me scared and I knew I couldn't do it.
She was deeply upset with me breaking things off and didn't understand. I said that we were at different points and I wouldn't be able to handle it and it would affect us both. But she was welcome to come back at anytime in the future should she choose because I still thought she was the bees knees.
No, apparently, for her, if you ring the bell, it's done.

Dating is hard. I'm not really a big fan of it.

So the possibility of me sleeping with someone would be there. Just highly unlikely. And if I *had* slept with someone while I was dating her, it would have been very casual and of little consequence to how I felt about her or what we were doing. But if someone fell in my lap and said "hey! Just passing through!" I might have. I was dating, and if I'm dating, I am not in a couple. I'm not ready to answer to someone just yet, even though I really, really like them. Just like I don't want to have to explain why I'm going on a holiday with friends if I'm dating someone, or why I didn't call last night. They don't have to check with me to go bowling with mates and if they don't call me at 10pm for a chat (say it's something we might often do) they don't have to text and apologise.

I think the word "expectations" is something I like to keep on very close to nil, or quite low when dating.

Perhaps that's key to it?

I'm curious. I wonder how she would have reacted had you told her you were going on a "romantic date" with someone else? I know you said you don't like the romance up front so whatever the equivalent of that would be for you. We tend to have a totally different reaction when things are happening to us instead of doing them ourselves.