4/9/13
Comment of the Week: Just Say No to Arbitrary Time Limits on Sex!

photo via flickr

For the record, when we pick a “Comment of the Week,” it’s not necessarily an indication that we agree with the poster. We’re not that narrow-minded, we swear! Sometimes we pick comments that make an interesting point, or comments we think will start an interesting debate, or comments that present an argument in a new way. To wit, we don’t agree with everything that reader Eric  says below, in response to our post, “Your Call – How Long Can a Virgin Make a Guy Wait?” But we did find it interesting to hear from a guy who says that he finds it easier to concentrate on building a relationship once the sex thing is out of the way.

WOW! 26 and a virgin? Here’s some facts:

If you’re worried about being considered “loose” or a “slut,” I have only heard other WOMEN use these terms. A girl has a much greater chance of being in a relationship with me if we get the sex thing out of the way A.S.A.P. then we see if we really like each other instead of just waiting til “that night.”

Oh and for those you telling her to move on cause these guys aren’t worth it, she may not being having sex, but your fellow women are.

If I meet a girl and she puts arbitrary time limits on sex that’s a form of “control.” It’s a BIG turn off. A signal that some time in the future sex may be withheld to get her way. That’s childish.

You’re missing out on some really good relationships. The person you do lose it to might end up being a jerk anyway, there’s really no way to tell.

Live your life, be human, have sex — or don’t, and come back in a few years on another blog complaining about being a 30 year old virgin who can’t find “The right guy.”

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5 Comments

  1. I also would like to respond to this: ‘If I meet a girl and she puts arbitrary time limits on sex that’s a form of “control.” It’s a BIG turn off. A signal that some time in the future sex may be withheld to get her way. That’s childish.’

    It isn’t an arbitrary time limit to be dating someone and not want to have sex with that person right away or for even a long period of time. It’s not a matter of deciding, “Oh, it’s okay to have sex only after the third date.” It’s a matter of a woman actually wanting to have sex with the person she is seeing. It’s about feeling comfortable and trusting the other person. Yes, having sex with someone may help determine how sexually compatible you are, increase intimacy, and be fun, but many women and men don’t want to have sex with someone until there is a level of trust and understanding. Especially since as you are implying having sex with someone may determine how much you actually like them.

    True, you can’t always know if someone will be a jerk in the future, but you can get to know someone well enough before having sex to know you feel safe with that person and have confidence that she or he is caring.

    Also, saying no to sex does not mean a woman is trying to use sex to get what she wants. Maybe she just doesn’t want to have sex because she is upset with her partner and doesn’t want to be intimate in that way. People don’t always want to have sex.

    Everyone should be able decide when they feel ready to have sex. Ultimately sex might not be as big of a deal as it seems when you haven’t had sex, but it still is important to listen to yourself. Just because other women are having sex doesn’t mean any woman has to say yes to men in order to be liked. If I were the 26 year old virgin I’d steer clear of anyone that put pressure on me to have sex or implied that I should have sex with him because he can get it from other women.

  2. “we did find it interesting to hear from a guy who says that he finds it easier to concentrate on building a relationship once the sex thing is out of the way.”

    Since society seems to give points to men for having frequent first-time sex and take points away from women who do, it makes (unfortunate) sense that men will still tend to push for sex early even when they’re not interested in a relationship, while women who aren’t interested will feel pressure to decline it.

    Meanwhile, since the odds of an early relationships becoming long-term are low it would be easy, but generally false, to conclude that having sex early causes relationships not to work out.

    Not sure how to reconcile the two phenomena, above. But I think it nicely demonstrates that it’s a mistake to attribute psychological or strictly selfish motivations to individuals in what’s really more of a sociological dynamic.

    “Women ‘being expected’ to have sex = not ok.”

    I don’t agree that women are necessarily harder on women who “sleep around” than men are. Instead I think it’s more accurate to say that the public tends to dismiss women’s disapproval of each other, dismiss it as mere “cattiness,” or otherwise overlook it’s actual impact.

    I’d just point out, again, that the issue here isn’t so much what women do as what’s they’re expected to do because they’re women. I think putting it that way highlights that both expecting women to have sex and not to have sex are coercive, patriarchal, and bogus. (Equally overlooked? The correspondingly gendered expectations that men should or shouldn’t seek sex.)

    Bottom line, it’s just as bogus if your mom or minister expects you not to have sex as if your peers or partners expect you to have it. What matters is whether you want to.

    Again, no reconciling this except maybe to say the trick is going to involve reorienting those moms, ministers, peers, and partners to stay the $%!#% out of individual’s… well… individual inclinations.

    figleaf

  3. I think these are the key points:

    1. Men find sex important in relationships – until they know that their partner is sexually compatible/they have ‘a spark’, they aren’t fully invested in the relationship anyway. Romantic? No. Product of our multi-choice, consumer driven society? Probably. Better than the old days when men expected women to be ‘pure’ ’til marriage? Definitely.

    2. Following on from this, men think women should spend more time doing what they want to, and less time worrying about what men and (as the OP posts is now mainly the case) other women think of them for it. Women ‘being expected’ to have sex = not ok. But women being ‘slutshamed’ etc by other women for enjoying their life = just as bad.

    3. Men like sex (shocker I know). They also like the idea that their partners enjoy sex with them – not that it is a ‘treat’ which the male receives from his partner after doing something good (washing up/fetching a bone/not peeing on the sofa). Simply put, men want to feel ‘desired’ by their partners as well! Whatever the morality of using sex as a bargaining chip may be, men don’t like the feeling that they are being conditioned, or that sex is a reward for good behaviour. I think this is why Eric warns women to be careful when doing this at the beginning of a relationship, as it can be a big red flag for some men who have had bad experiences.

    (As a personal example, my ex girlfriend would never get intimate with me if any female work colleague/ female friend of mine had texted me that day)

    To summarise, this isn’t about control, rather the immature manner in which some women (and rarely some men) choose to exert that control. Partners should be equal in relationships.

    Just remember: as soon as you use sex as a bargaining chip, in your partner’s eyes it ceases to be a pleasurable activity you do together, and becomes a reward for good behaviour.

  4. It is such a big turnoff when a woman “controls” a man by not giving in to his controlling behavior…

    This is exactly why you should wait as long as you need to have sex… to weed out guys like this!!!!

  5. ‘If I meet a girl and she puts arbitrary time limits on sex that’s a form of “control.” It’s a BIG turn off. A signal that some time in the future sex may be withheld to get her way. That’s childish.’

    Women exerting control over their relationships is childish? What? There is no invalid reason to “withhold” sex, first of all; and secondly, using the phrase “withhold” denotes that in some way, for some reason, sex may be owed to someone when that’s never the case.

    That entire thing read almost entirely like a kid in high school trying to convince someone they should have sex with him.

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