Comment of the Week (OR EMandLO.com Has the Smartest Readers!)

We feel honored, lucky and humble that some very smart readers and writers choose EMandLO.com as their place to intelligently discuss and debate issues of sexuality and culture. Exhibit A: The comments section of last week’s Comment of the Week, which was a response to the post “Your Call – How Long Can a Virgin Make a Guy Wait?”, in which Eric provocatively railed against women putting arbitrary waiting periods on sex. We hoped it would spark further conversation and it did! All of the comments to Eric’s original comment are worth reading: they’re thoughtful and thought-provoking. Here’s one of them below, but again, it’s worth reading them all here because like we said, our commenters are AWESOME!

Claire Says:

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.