Making Better Choices When Dating

If you are serious about wanting to be in a relationship and not just hooking up, keep reading.

Dating is full of pitfalls for everyone. You can't get a date, or you have too many options? You are not sure what kind of person you want to meet or what to expect? Many people would benefit if we had classes in dating that talked more about intimacy and how relationships work. Instead, we seem to have a limited choice of either getting laid or getting married.

Sex is one of the most complicated and least talked about factors in the real-time aspect of relationships. Too much of the conversation goes back to religious perspectives that are outdated or seriously flawed: for example, considering procreation as the only reason for sex, that sex is sinful for the unmarried, and even for married people, if not trying to conceive a baby. Many religions encourage people to wait until marriage to have sex for the first time. They often actively discourage masturbation. It seems the intent is to keep people uneducated so that you think that your first sexual experience is all there is to it. Perhaps when lifespans were remarkably shorter, and more people were needed in the world, these perspectives made more sense, but no longer.

Our first sexual experience with another person shapes our sexuality. Most people have the experience without any real education, try their best to figure out this most intimate of acts, and consequently fake their way through it. People who are sexually traumatized, whether they are aware of it or not, are psychosexually stuck at the age of that trauma.  Exposure to pornography overwhelms a child's system, and that is the marker of what they expect sex to feel like. The same is true for a pleasurable experience between an adult and child: the child is always harmed, even if they don’t think so in retrospect. Children are overwhelmed on both a sensory and emotional level, and that is what they take forward in their sex lives.

Masturbation is how we learn to self-pleasure and figure out how our bodies work sexually. Adding on guilt and shame simply creates more confusion and inner conflict. Combining shame and sex, while common in our culture, warps our sexuality. These two most powerful feelings are carried in our body and once they are combined, they are rarely disengaged. Negative programming from religions instills this combination from the beginning.

Our sexuality is shaped by childhood experiences, both healthy and unhealthy. Our fantasies and desires follow us into adulthood and continue to change. A sexual mismatch can kill a relationship from the beginning. Keeping people naïve sets them up to be abused and unfulfilled. Sex should be seen as part of the glue that keeps a relationship together. We need better education.

A lifelong marriage/partnership that is fulfilling and satisfying is rare. A relationship of equals is even rarer, even though that is supposed to be our cultural ideal. They do happen, but seem to be more due to luck than design. Usually, one partner surrenders to the other until they can’t anymore, and then the divorce happens.

A big part of what keeps relationships from working is bad sex, lack of sex, the wrong sex, being with the wrong gender, and too many assumptions and myths about sex. If you can’t talk about sex in an honest and vulnerable way, then you are either with the wrong partner or you have damage that needs to be healed, so that you can be sexually present in your relationship.

Getting into the real detail about sexuality will take a book, and perhaps I will write it someday. For now, I'll focus on an initial step you can take in dating that will change how you look for a partner and end up have fewer false starts.

The big unspoken question on most dates is: Are we going to have sex? The primary focus is watching for signs you are getting along, how flirtatious to be, are we getting laid, or conversely, trying not to give the idea that you are going to put out. Consequently, all of the attention, or at least most of it, is on the sex question. It is the wrong question and the wrong focus. 

Having sex too soon derails intimacy. Intimacy is revealing who you are to another person and risking rejection.

Most first dates are like a job interview. You try your best to make a good impression, perhaps even a false one, hoping that they will like you enough to overlook the flaws or questionable parts when they are inevitably revealed. Put the pressure to have sex on top of that, and you have a set up for no one really being themselves; the first impression will end up having little to do with who the person is.

When people start a new job, they put on their best face, and it can take some time to know who they really are. The same is true when dating someone. It takes time to gain enough trust to reveal hidden parts of yourself. To really know someone, it can take a couple of years of being around them a lot. And if it is a partnership that you are looking for, you need to see them in the morning with rumpled hair, bad breath and still think they are beautiful, handsome, and someone you want to know more. You will know you love someone when you see them at their worst, and you still don't want to run away.

If you rush into sex too early in a relationship, you don't have enough trust built up, to be honest. It also does not support you in being honest in other parts of your life. When you are in a temporary situation like a passenger on an airplane, some people feel the limited space's physical intimacy and openly share information that they would not usually tell anyone. This is ”faux intimacy”. You will probably never see this person again, so you can be honest, and since they can't run away from you at that moment, there is little risk of being rejected. Jumping into sex before you have had time to reveal a reasonable amount of information about who and what you are looking for in sex is also faux intimacy.

Some people have met first in a hookup and still ended up having long relationships and marriages. This is the exception. I still wonder what the result would have been if they had taken the time to get to know each other first.  Just because a couple has been together for a long time does not mean that they are happy, or that they have any ongoing sexual relationship. “Bed death” is incredibly common in long term relationships. We tend to marry one or both of our parents. It may feel like what you were programmed to expect in a relationship, but it does not necessarily make you happy in your relationship. If you grew up in a family that was verbally or physically abusive, then that would seem normal in your relationship, because that is how you express and receive love. We get taught a dance of intimacy in our family, and unconsciously, we are looking for that dance in our adult lives. It is what we were trained to believe relationship is supposed to be to be loved.

The point is to encourage you to take time before you have sex. On the other hand, waiting the entire time until you are married is a terrible idea as well. The idea proposed here is waiting three months before you have sex. Why? Taking sex off the table forces you to focus on finding out who this other person is. It also gives you time to reveal yourself to them. There is space to talk about sex. What you like, what you don't like, sharing sexual history, and informing them about expectations and needs. When you do get to sex, you will have a road map to understanding what they want and don't like, and vice versa. 

If you are looking for a serious relationship, I suggest waiting for three months to have sex to get past the infatuation and excitement of meeting someone new. You will learn if the other person has self-control. You will learn who they are on deeper levels and experience if they can be intimate and vulnerable. Having sex too soon, before you know the other person, is like a quarterback throwing a Hail Mary pass and hoping there is someone there to catch it. Adding sex to the mix too soon distracts and confuses our perception of the other. Once you know they like some particular form of sex, you can decide if that works for you, too. If they don't like a specific sexual act, you will not waste time trying to give them a kind of pleasure they have no interest in. If the sexual styles are a deal-breaker for you, then it is time to move on. Talking about sex is a natural development in getting to know someone. The first date or even the first week or two is too soon, but if you get more interested, then it is time to talk about sex and let that conversation deepen and become more vulnerable over time.

It is not to discount sex, but to own the power of sex to bond us to another. For more than a hookup, take the time to find out who this person is. Healthy relationships thrive on intimacy, which allows you to have a connection that can transcend words. The early stages can be fun and exciting, but once that initial excitement wanes, is there a deeper knowing of this person that draws you to them? Waiting to have sex and taking the time to get to know each other will cause you to have less sex in the short run, but it will pave the road for much better sex. Waiting may not lead to marriage, but if you get there, there is a much better chance of a happy ending.