Ok, I've been away from the forum for a while, partly due to work craziness, partly due to exploring other things and thinking and reflecting on my own for a while.
Anyway, I have a situation now with a girl, and I've come up with what I want to do, but I'm curious what feedback/insights guys here have on how to best approach it. Also, I'm betting that someone will have some sort of insight/comment that will hit me upside the head like a ton of bricks, but that would of course be a good thing, so bring it on.
Here's the situation: This girl is not really in my social circle, but we have a few mutual friends, and I caught her eyeing me once about a month ago at a bar. She's cute but not super-hot. Pretty nice body, fit, late 20s. We were both on a big saturday night pub crawl where everyone was dressed as Santa, and I randomly walked up to her and used the cheesiest pickup line I could think of just to give myself a laugh: "Hey Santa - got any presents I could unwrap later?" said with over the top tongue-in-cheek innuendo. She laughed and immediately opened up to me, body language, facial expression, everything. We ended up talking for about 45 minutes, then dancing for quite some time at the next bar on the pub crawl, and then at the end of the night I asked for her phone and put my number in it and told her she should call me.
She messages me on wednesday, message back and fort a few times, and I invite her to go out with me and a big group of my friends on friday night, which we do. We hop around to a few bars, get pretty tipsy, and end up at a rowdy dance club. We try to dance for a couple songs, but the dance floor is too rough, and she says to me "Its too hard to dance - we can go back to my place now."
So I oblige. Its about a 15 minute walk back to her house, and somewhere along the way we stop on a dark part of the street and make out for a bit up against a car, then continue on to her house. We go inside and she takes me to her room, and we get down to business. In the morning, I wake up hung over (she was too, I'm sure). She makes me eggs and coffee, and then I walk back downtown with her to get her car and she gives me a ride back to my place. I just tell her I'll catch her later when she drops me off - nothing cutesy or any sort of kiss goodbye or anything.
That night we both show up at the same houseparty. I knew she was going, but didn't talk to her about it or about going together. I don't see her when I walk in, but she sees me, so theres a bit of tension/awkwardness when I finally run into her and chat with her a bit. We already have separate plans with our respective friends for the night.
Sunday rolls around, and she texts me to ask what I'm doing. I tell her my plans and ask if she wants to join me. She says yes, so we spend the whole afternoon together doing some athletic stuff. I feel like I may have gotten a touch sympish on sunday, but I tried to quash it and I did my best. After hanging out all afternoon, she comes with me to my buddy's housewarming get together. Its pretty chill and by 9pm I'm tired, I can tell she's tired, and I know she gets up at 6am to make it to work, so I suggest that we go. I drive her home, and we make out for a minute in my car before she gets out and goes into her place.
The past two nights (monday and tuesday) we've texted a bit, and its the same pattern. She asks me what I'm doing, I tell her my plans, she tells me that she's actually going to be doing something nearby and maybe we could meetup. I tell her, "cool, if it works out it works out." Both nights she has ended up not meeting up with me, even though I think it would have been easy enough for her to do. I don't make any effort to change my plans to meet up with her though - I just tell her she's welcome to come to me, and she doesn't. Maybe purely misunderstanding, maybe she's trying to get me to pursue her.
Now, I've decided as of today that I don't want her as a girlfriend (more re-affirmed that don't really want any girlfriend at all), but I would be happy to have friends with benefits/casual/low commitment. Either just meet up for sex only, or maybe as much as one night a week of going out, partying, etc in addition to sex. More than that and I'm not interested. If she's not cool with something like that, then I'm fine just friend zoning her.
So, my plan is to not try to meet up with her tomorrow night (Wednesday), and maybe see if we can hang out either thursday or friday night. I was thinking I'd invite her to meet after work for a drink somewhere. Then I'd just be super upfront/explicit and tell her that I don't want to be in a relationship, but I would be fine with something casual/non-exclusive, or just being friends.
I'm basically planning on saying that I've been thinking about it this week and I've decided that I don't want to get into any sort of committed/serious relationship, but I think she's cool, I think she's attractive, and I enjoy spending time with her, so I would be happy to keep dating casually/hooking up, but keep it to once or twice per week, and no expectations on being exclusive, etc.
Here's where I would love some advice. I've never had a friends with benefits situation before, so does anyone have any advice on logistics of it, best way to approach bringing it up, etc?
I'm also concerned that she'll be offended. Maybe thats an unwarranted conclusion, or maybe the real problem is the fact that I'm concerned about her taking offense, not the fact that she might be offended. I feel pretty indifferent to the outcome of this, but I guess I'm not totally 100% indifferent - I guess there's probably a part of me that wants the sex/attention/validation that friends with benefits would bring.
Thoughts anyone?