How Far Should You Go On a First Date: Your Get Out of Jail Free Card

Get one for yourself! (The t-shirt. Not the kid or the lunchbox.)

First, let’s address the guys…done.

Now it’s the girls’ turn (guys, don’t neglect your girl’s turn).  Somehow, I have a feeling it’ll be slightly more complicated…

First date definitely a hug goodnight to weed out the dick heads who just want you for your looks. It’s like a test to see who’s serious and wants a real relationship with a future.

I found the above comment on a forum about this topic.  It’s a popular sentiment, even amongst “dating coaches”:

I recommend to my clients that they play it a little conservatively on the first date. I know that is sometimes hard, if you really are into him. But I don’t know many cases when sex on the first date has worked out well in the end. Play it safe; don’t let him solve the whole puzzle in one night.

Ultimately, it’s a personal, subjective choice; nobody can tell you what is right for you.  Personal choice, however, is influenced by knowledge and self awareness.  Your personal choice might be for the 10.5 inch Ron Jeremy Dong, but if you find out one day that it causes your pussy lips to sag down to your knees, you might rethink your personal choice.  My goal here is to provide a reasonable picture of the landscape influencing your decision.

Biological Influences

From evolutionary-philosophy.net:

Early evolutionary theories about the sexual behavior of animals suggested that males generally evolve to become aggressively competitive, often fighting among themselves for access to females or carrying out ornamental displays in order to attract them.

Sperm is easy to produce, and after fertilizing a female, the males of many species have little or no further parental responsibility. They have little to lose by fertilizing as many females as they can. Males that fertilize more females will contribute more to the genetic makeup of the next generation, and so males will generally evolve to become competitively promiscuous.

Early evolutionary theories also suggested that females generally evolve to be more selective about their sex partners. Eggs are large and biologically expensive to produce, pregnancy can be an enormous burden, and the females of some species continue to care for their young until they become self-sufficient. With such a large investment in reproduction, females will evolve to focus more on males with genetic traits that when passed on their young, will improve their chances of surviving and reproducing.

The point of recognizing the internal programming we have inherited from our evolutionary past is not to justify our behaviour, but to get a better picture on how it might affect our judgement and bias our reasoning.  While researching other articles on this topic, I noticed that women tended to recommend holding back, even if you feel, or especially if you feel hornier than being in chastity for a month while constantly popping horny goat weed, while men tended to recommend going with it if it feels right (including this one).  It’s anecdotal evidence, but I suspect that a truly scientific study would confirm this finding.  If this turns out to be true, would it mean that the reasoning one way or the other is just post hoc justification of our biological biases?

This does not mean that we should reject or embrace biases or behaviours just because they have an evolutionary origin.  We have to ask ourselves what they mean to us today.  We evolved the urge to punch the shit out of anyone that pisses us off.  That urge, I am happy to do without.  We also evolved the capacity to love, and I wouldn’t give that up for anything — except maybe sex, but that’s my evolution speaking.

Cultural Influences

Biological biases often turn into cultural biases where they then take on a life of their own.  Female chastity has always been held as a virtue with abstract notions like purity and honour.  To this, Bertrand Russell writes:

In early days, and in the East down to our time, the virtue of women was secured by segregating them.  No attempt was made to give them inward self-control, but everything was done to take away all opportunity for sin.  In the West this method was never adopted wholeheartedly, but respectable women were educated from their earliest years so as to have a horror of sexual intercourse outside marriage.  As the methods of this education became more and more perfected, the outward barriers were more and more removed.  Those who did most to remove the outward barriers were convinced that the inward barriers would be sufficient.  It was thought, for example, that the chaperon was unnecessary, since a nice girl who had been well brought up would never yield to the advances of young men, whatever opportunities of yielding might be allowed her.  It was generally held by respectable women when I was young that sexual intercourse was displeasing to the great majority of women, and was only endured within marriage from a sense of duty … The women of the Victorian age were, and a great many women still are, in a mental prison.  This prison was not obvious to consciousness, since it consisted of subconscious inhibitions.  The decay of inhibitions, which has taken place among the young of our time, has led to the reappearance in consciousness of instinctive desires which had been buried beneath mountains of prudery.  This is having a very revolutionary effect upon sexual morality, not only in one country or in one class, but in all civilized countries and in all classes.

While we’ve come a long way since Bert’s essay was published in 1929, I don’t believe the socio-sexual emancipation of women is as far along as their financial and political emancipation.  This makes sense, since financial and political issues are more readily fixed through legislation.  Socio-sexual emancipation involves changing the perception of the masses.

Breaking Down the Mental Prison

The most common bad arguments against first date sex:

• He might think of you differently.  If he’s the type of guy that would think less of you for showing him such a good time on the first date, you don’t want him anyways.  If you do the deed on the first date, you’ll find out after the first date.  If you wait for a “respectable” number of dates, you may never find this out about him.
• Abandonment after sex.  If he just wants to make you another notch in his belt, he’ll be gone after the deed whether it’s on the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth date.  If you make him wait longer, he may come back for seconds and thirds, but that will only be to improve is ROI (return on investment).  If you make him wait an inordinate amount of time, you may eventually lose him and find out that he’s a notch maker, but you could have found that out a lot earlier and not wasted so much of your time.  You may also end up losing some good ones because you seem insincere or appear to be using them.
• Relationships that begin with first date sex don’t turn out well.  Really?  So you take a couple, happily married for 25 years, and say that if they had done it on the first date as opposed to the…fifth date?…they would not have ended up happily married?  Somehow, if a couple can pull this off, their compatibility goes a bit beyond first date sex.
• The relationship will be based on physical things.  This is corollary to the previous argument.  I think the attitude of both parties going into the relationship determines its nature more than the number of dates before sex.  If two people want a physically based relationship, then they will more likely do it on the first date.  I don’t think first date sex causes the relationship to be physical.  And anyways, isn’t physicality a large part of any relationship?  Would you have a long distance marriage?  Would you marry somebody who didn’t physically exist?
• He needs to earn it.  Why?  Beware the biology speaking.  Female monkeys will mate with the male who brings her the most meat.  Are you a monkey looking for meat?  (Well, in a sense you are.)  If you’re into him and you want him and he wants you, why torture yourselves?
• You should get to know them first.  Of course.  But it has nothing to do with the number of dates.  If you click, it’s possible to know somebody better after the first date than the fourth date.  And do you really know somebody that much better after the fourth date than the first?  Also, aren’t women always saying they know whether or not they want to be with somebody within the first 30 seconds or so?  Skip dinner.  Just kidding.
• You could get STDs.  Yeah, I seriously read that on another blog.  As if that’s not a risk anytime you have sex.  An even more absurd variant I’ve read is:  “you could get pregnant”.  /facepalm, /facepalm, and one more /facepalm for good measure.

The Pussy Puzzle

I had to make a separate section just to address something the dating coach said above, because it…just…gaaaahh!

Play it safe; don’t let him solve the whole puzzle in one night.

So you’re saying a woman’s pussy is her entire puzzle?  Kind of demeaning, isn’t it?  (That dating coach is a woman, by the way.)  If you have nothing to intrigue a man enough to stay other than your pussy, then first date sex is really not the problem.  If men abandon you after the first time you have sex, maybe it’s not because you put out too early, but because it’s more interesting putting things into your mouth than listening to what comes out of it.

Isn’t it ironic that these same women (and men) give “the relationship will be based on physical things” as an argument, when they are using a physical medium to shape the relationship?  If the relationship is to be truly meaningful and “above physicality”, then shouldn’t first date sex not matter at all?  I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: if you want good relationships, work on yourself.  It’ll have much more impact than worrying about whether or not to put out.

Women’s Emancipation

I’ll leave with a few final thoughts on social and sexual liberation:

• Women who put out on the first date should not be called sluts.  Women who don’t put out on the first date should not be called prudes.  Women should be comfortable doing just as they please.
• Silly men in funny hats will tell you to not have sex.  Then horny men, also often in silly hats, will try to get into your pants.  Don’t be a battlefield for men’s egos.  Be yourself and do what makes you feel good.
• Sure, there will be people gossiping and calling you a slut behind your back.  Fuck them.  Actually, don’t.  They don’t deserve you.  It doesn’t make sense to leave a career because some people think that it’s unladylike.  It also doesn’t make sense to allow your sex life, of all things, to be controlled by people who don’t know what mouths are for.

It is often difficult for a woman to truly choose for herself.  The difficulty lies in that all these inhibitions and feelings of uncleanliness or guilt, instilled either by biology or by culture, act on a subconscious level.  The true emancipation of women will happen when both men and women bring those subconscious motivations to the conscious front to make fully aware, fulfilling choices.

If you liked this, you may like this other article on the same topic from a woman’s perspective:

http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N19/undress.html