Like that very post quoted, it is not such a big problem if “their baggage matches yours”.
That’s why the question was: what IS (or is not) “reasonable”
Meh, this kind of decision I have to respect even a simple “I just don’t want to”. Doesn’t mean I have to stick around, but explanations, though appreciated, are not owed.
Y’see, as I see it the thing is, it is just as unfair to expect someone to be counselor/therapist and sit out for months on end until the other party resolves their issues when you’d rather just move on, as it is to presume that if you’re not up to it within a relatively short time then there must be something really, really wrong with you.
My question is, how do you tell a person you don’t think it’ll work out because you’re not having sex soon enough without sounding like a complete pig?
Agent Foxtrot - I would think that discussion would come about naturally when one person gave the good night kiss or starting kissing in some other private setting, started escalating it, and the other person starts pushing away. The person pushing away is sort of obligated to say what the problem is to clear the air, don’t you think? If they say they aren’t interested in being anything more than friends, then you have your answer. If they say “I’m not ready”, I think it’s reasonable to ask if there is a problem or issue. If none is given, you can decide how long you want to wait, but I would again expect the one pushing away to provide an explanation in pretty short order without you having to ask. Personally, if that happened to me, I would try the same move no more than two dates later, and if I got the same result, I would ask in the least judgmental way I could what the issue is. If I got the “I don’t want to talk about it”, I would see that as a major red flag and move on in all but the most extreme circumstance per my previous post about minimizing baggage.
Call me old-fashioned ('cause I am) but I was and am the ‘wait for marriage’ type. My so my wife and I waited about nine months, which was the time between our first date and our wedding. I don’t think I either of us could have waited much longer than that; it was pretty difficult (I almost wrote “hard” which was also true).
When I was single, I never had a defined timeline. If I was hot for a guy, I had no trouble sleeping with him right away. In my experience, guys who were under 30 were happy to have sex on the first or second date, and guys over 30 (all the two or three I went on dates with) wanted to wait.
A while after I started dating my fiance, he told me that he had a 3-date rule. At first it struck me as overly aggressive and judgmental, but then I realized that someone who had such different views on casual sex probably wouldn’t be a good match for him, anyway.
If I were dating again, I think I’d tend to move quickly again. If someone I really wanted a relationship with had a good reason to wait, I would hold off for a month or two.
Not to mention that intellectualizing emotional trauma in therapy can only help to a point. Sooner or later one has to work through things on a physical level, and well – it’s illegal to have sex with your therapist.
Really, it can be as simple as just going through a step-by-step process of getting comfortable with deeper levels of intimacy, and with the person you’re being intimate with. It’s not unreasonable, nor is it particularly traumatic to the partner.
I agree that telling someone there’s something wrong with them, or accusing them of “playing games,” because they won’t fuck someone they basically barely know is ridiculous. And arrogant. It’s not a “game”; I’m very upfront about what I need, and that earning my trust at a deep enough level for sex is a process. I wouldn’t loan money to someone I’d just met two weeks ago, either, and you’d expect me to put my emotional and physical well-being in your hands?
And if you’d read all the way to the end of my post, you’d see that I did state what’s reasonable along with my above explanations for why it’s reasonable.
Or to summarize: reasonable is when you have some idea that this other person is trustworthy, has similar goals for the relationship, and wants both the privileges and responsibilities of taking the next step. How long that takes depends on the people involved. But as far as I’m concerned, expecting it within 3 dates or just two weeks (or similar) is the definition of UNreasonable, since no one can possibly know these things in that short a span of time. Have some patience and willingness to actually know the person you’re fucking. It’s not unreasonable to want that, at all.
I expect it on date #2, I am gone for good if nothing happens on date 3. Now, more importantly, if I go two weeks without while in a re!ationship (meaning we see other during that two weeks and no sex), then I am gone.
I said hanging out for two weeks and no sex. Obviously, if she was in the hospital or away on business, I wouldn’t leave. I am not okay with her taking vacations without me. My ex-wife did that and cheated. Never going there again.
Would not cheat. I’d end the relationship.
Five days is the absolute max for me, though personally I prefer extremely short term meet n fuck relationships as opposed to long term emotional type things, since in those cases the partner is useless baggage.
If a relationship is going to work out, it’ll still work out if sex happens very early.
If a relationship is going to fail, it’ll fail whether sex happens early, later or not at all because the relationship is already over.
So if you don’t mind or even prefer having sex with people you won’t end up in a relationship with, go for early sex.
But if you don’t like the idea of having sex and then finding out there’s no relationship potential, it’s better to wait and give the red flags time to come into view.
However, there is a slight chance that person A wanting to wait may cause person B to move on even though a successful relationship would have been possible if A hadn’t waited so long. So basically, (some of) the [strike]sluts[/strike] sociosexually unrestricted individuals are trying to get the rest of the population to play the game according to their rules. Not a good deal if you don’t like those rules.
