What's the big deal about "spending the night"? Well, plenty. To be honest, I'm sick to death of men assuming that just because they've paid for your dinner, told you they like your hair and offered to take you to a trip, you will go back to their place … that night. "Just to talk," they'll tell you.
"Just to cuddle," they'll beseech. "Just to tickle your back." Bollocks.
"Oh that's the line I always use," my womanising pal J told me the other night.
I was asking him about this kind of behaviour that I'd noticed repeatedly from men who'd asked me out, and wondered if every man under the sun asked the same question.
And if so, what's their real intention? Did they really only ask you out on a date to have you come back to their abode? Surely they can't all assume that we're all that dumb?
"Not every man asks that," J snapped. "Just the ones who think they can get some."
But here's the thing: J says that, more times than not, the men actually succeed. "There are so many girls out there willing to do that, it becomes sort of a game. And if we're just out to have some fun, we think, why waste time on ones who won't?"
Great. My girlfriends told me I was harping on about nothing. That it was because I usually wear short skirts (I don't own anything below the knee), tight dresses and heels to rival Victoria Beckham that I put the wrong message out to the men I date.
"You need to wear something a little less … revealing," my girlfriends finally told me. "And stop being so gushy too. You don't have to try so hard to make them like you. They should be trying to get your attention. Not the other way around."
What about the women who fail the male test? Is it really that big a deal if they decide - just once - to go up and see the view from his window?
"It's about putting a value on yourself and knowing what's going to happen without being naive," says my girlfriend Donna, who is a dating expert and author of Never Trust a Man in Alligator Loafers.
"When you are spending four to six hours in skin-to-skin contact with someone, all of a sudden your body starts wanting sex, not just your mind. And it's really hard to say no. Every hour you spend skin to skin, all the reasons not to go out the window."
She also says that the morning-after syndrome is very real. "When you wake up and your mascara is run, your feet hurt from the heels you wore, and you look at each other and hardly recognise one another, the fantasy is gone. You're thinking that he's seen you naked and yet you don't even know how to spell his last name."
Right. Either way, no one told me this dating stuff was going to be so bloody darn difficult. And confusing. And that there'd be so many freaking rules. Whatever happened to just "being yourself"? I guess that must have gone the way of VHR machines and Chris Brown's reputation.
But c'mon blokes (and I'm not only talking to the players out there), what happened to basking in the ability to get to know one another? What happened to waxing poetically about your similarities and laughing off your differences? Sharing an intimate kiss at the end of a delectable evening together before embracing goodnight and making plans to see each other… another time? Seriously… are all men the same? Or just the ones I meet?
After analysing the situation, seeking advice from the experts, weighing up the possible responses and deciding on what to do, when it happened for the fifth time in a row, I was finally prepared.
"You should see the view from my apartment," a first date recently asked during dessert. "It's amazinggggg."
"Oh, I'd really love to…" I oozed cheerfully, before adding, "but maybe another time."
While that answer certainly managed to shut him up, I'm quite sure it put me into the no-second-date category, but I didn't give a toss. Surely there must be some blokes out there who are willing to take a woman out without an expectation at the end of the night? Not even "just to cuddle" as they so eloquently put it?
Why do we bother? Is it really that important to find a partner? Why can't we just be happy by ourselves for all eternity? I was thinking the same thing, believe me.
To get answers, an interview with Helen Fisher while she was recently in New York. (The trip was supposed to bring me a summer fling, help me get over my break-up and heal my broken heart in the way Julia Roberts's character Elizabeth Gilbert was able to in the film Eat, Pray, Love. Sure I ate loads, dated loads (there is never a shortage of people wanting to hook you up with their friends) and drank my weight in vodka. (What else are you supposed to do on a boring date?)
But I certainly didn't fall in love. Rather, all this frolicking about in search of something made me crave the safety, familiarity and the chivalrous way my ex-boyfriend treated me. Of course I wanted to see his bloody apartment at the end of the night – I lived in it!
In case you haven't heard of Fisher, she's the brilliant woman behind recent research into dating and relationships from the Rutgers University in New Jersey, and also the author of Why Him, Why Her?
First question to her was this: do we really all need love? And if so, why?
"We need it for evolutionary reasons," she explained. "We all have three powerful brain systems that drive us to find a partner: our sex drive, the need for romantic love and the yearning for attachment – all necessary for the ultimate goal that has been our goal for millions of years: reproduction. We are a species that exists to form pair-bonds with the opposite sex to have babies."
She explained the purpose of each brain system: sex drive is to try people out. Romantic love enables us to focus our mating energy on one person at a time. And the yearning for attachment is what sustains us together to rear children as a team. "Those who didn't fall in love and just had sex wandered off, had fewer children and died out. It wasn't the best choice."
(She also said that love doesn't last forever and that research done in 58 societies found that divorce is most common in the fourth year of marriage after a couple has stayed together to raise a child through infancy.)
So why all the casual sex? According to Fisher, and a recent study, we're all just kidding ourselves.
"A study found that 50 per cent of women and 52 per cent of men actually had a one-night stand with the hope of creating a longer-lasting relationship." The study also found that a third of one-night-stands end up in relationships after all.
Hmm. Perhaps a "cuddle" at the end of a date isn't so bad after all ...
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