Billingsley’s case is not unique. I know a guy who once went on a very steamy first date with a woman he met at an open mic night at a coffee house. The next day, still feeling the glow of the night before, he stupidly told his brother all about it. A week later, the guy was singing at the coffeehouse and was excited when the girl showed up. Unfortunately, the brother introduced himself to the girl as my pal’s brother adding, “Do you sing? I hear you’re real good at hitting those high notes.”

My friend didn’t get a second date.

To sum up, if a man does talk up his current flame to his friends, it’s either to say, “Yeah, I met this girl,” “Yeah, we’re getting married,” “Yeah, we’re having a kid” or “Yeah, we’re getting divorced.” Otherwise, she never comes up in conversation.

“To be honest, the less a guy says to his friends about a woman he likes, the better,” says Stephen Douglas, a southern California mortgage broker. “If you’re happy and he’s not, your happiness is like twisting a knife in his heart. If you’re miserable and tell your friend, he feels like your bad luck will rub off on him.”

That’s why the only time a man talks about his sex life with another guy is if something extraordinary happened—usually something extraordinarily bad.
Here’s an example of something we would share. One of my friends was recently dating a woman and, after three weeks, they finally decided to get it on. It was then that she decided she had “something important” to tell him—she didn’t have a left hand. He had never noticed the missing appendage, so she felt compelled to point it out before they got naked.

For him to tell me about this might seem in poor taste, but it was something pretty extraordinary (wouldn’t you say?) that he was dying to tell someone and it’s not something you confess to a priest. I’d like to tell you more, but the guy obviously really likes her because he’s refused to hand out any more information.