So you’re out one night and it happens: a woman agrees to come home with you. You’ve hit it off at the bar/coffee-shop/art gallery/zoo and now she’s making out with you while you fumble for the keys to your apartment. At this point, you probably feel like you’ve accomplished something.
. . . But you haven’t. Not yet. You’ve made a big step, certainly, but until she has safely been in your bed for at least five minutes, there are still many undiscovered factors that could make a woman change her mind about sleeping with you. Now that you’ve already got her home, it’s probably not going to be something you say or do (I’m assuming you already put in the hard, personality ground work while you were downing shots/munching biscotti/pondering post-modernism/watching the lemurs bound blithely from branch to branch) it’s your apartment that will ruin you. After all, women generally assume that every man’s apartment is full of little clues about the person they truly are, and they want to judge you on that. Making sure you’ve taken away any leading, or misleading, hints about yourself may be the subtle difference between rocking her world or listening to her lock herself in your washroom to call a cab. Here my three very basic, very universal rules for what you’ll need to avoid don’t want her running out on you.
1) Be prepared; clean up your shit.
Maybe you weren’t expecting to bring someone home, maybe you have dirty laundry everywhere and dishes in the sink; those normal sorts of messes are not a dealbreaker for most girls. It’s the more. . . curious messes that usually make women want to rehook their bra and back away slowly. One friend of mine says she abandoned a guy mid-hook-up because he turned on the lights and she noticed his apartment was full of lotion. Not one bottle of lotion in a normal place, but large bottles of lotion everywhere.
Another one of my friends changed her mind after she noticed the guy she was with had a fish tank full of dead fish. He hadn’t killed them or anything, he just had a bunch of fish who died and he hadn’t bothered cleaning them up.
The most common complaint, however, was dirty sheets. I really wish this went without saying, but: when you bring a girl home, your sheets shouldn’t still smell like the last time you brought a girl home.
2) Don’t be too prepared, because it’s creepy
This one time, a beautiful, intelligent friend of mine went home with a dashing man she met at a round table discussion on international development. After the two shared a stiff, post-debate cocktail, where I’m sure he touched her leg suggestively after saying all the right things, she agreed to let him wisk her away in a cab. His apartment was perfect: normal, undouchey, and surprisingly clean, so my friend let it move forward from there. It was only when she got into the bedroom that things started to take a turn. My friend, who, if you remember, is whip-smart and well versed on worldly matters including the AIDs epidemic, asked if the gentleman if he had a condom. He said yes, and from his dresser produced a large vase made of the fine bone china. It was inspired by early Ming dynasty patterns and entirely full of multicoloured, multiflavoured, multitextured magnum condoms. My friend could not continue. The situation was, she said, “just too gross” and it turns out she made the right decision, because as she left the gentleman yelled “I should have made sure you were YOLO!!” at her back.
On a less impressive note, I once had a fling with a guy who was cute, sweet and liked to bake cookies. Then one day he offered me a toothbrush, he had “an extra one still in the package”. I opened his bathroom cabinet and, not only did he have an extra one, but dozens of brand new, unopened toothbrushes—a veritable slut-stash of toothbrushes. I didn’t break it off with him at that moment because. . . cookies, but I seriously thought about it. A little.
3) Unexpected roommates
This is the worst. Gentlemen, if you’re going to bring a girl home, you absolutely must, MUST tell her who else lives in that home. Too many women have gone home with men, only to be told at the last minute “heeeyyyyy…. Soooo like, you might want to take your shoes off. I don’t want my mum to hear you coming in.” or “Heeeeyyyy…. I hope you’re not allergic to dogs, because mine sleeps in my bed and I don’t want to move him while we’re at it.” Or “Heeeyyyyy… I am single and all, but I’m still living with my ex until I find a new place. It’s ok though, she’ll make you a really great omelette tomorrow” I’m not even going to tell a long wrap up story with this one. There is no excuse for this. Ever. Just don’t do it.
This list is obviously incomplete, and I’m sure there are many new horrifying ways to make a girl run out of your apartment, and possibly for her life, but take these three as a starting point, and you’ll at least avoid the most obvious blunders.
