It seems the story I told has more basis in reality than I at first feared.
Other animals also lack the baleful interference of conscious thought, expectations, embarrassment, pride, prudery, etc. And, frankly, have little or no concern for how willing, or not, their partner is. Nor whether the partner is enjoying the experience.
But yeah, I 100% agree that somehow after at most a few trials and errors they’ll figure it out. The mere fact you and I are alive proves a LOT of generations of humans and protohumans have done so successfully … enough.
I can imagine the big difference in how quickly and easily young men of the right mindset get erect vs how quickly and easily young women of the right mindset get lubricated might be an impediment to first time success. Or at least to first time mutual enjoyment.
Well, but married couples did not lie in bed together. Those twin beds were kinda small, and they always each had their own, so why would they be crowding into one together?
I don’t know… I recall seeing the Playboy pictorial back in the day, and there wasn’t anything particularly scary about her, unless you find nude women scary in the first place.
You’re right @Napier; that’s pretty optimistic of the doc. I’d also bet that questions like that need the doc to validate that both patients correctly know what “ejaculate” and “vagina” mean. Given the swirls of misinformation and embarrassment around the whole topic, almost no misunderstanding is too far-fetched to occur in your weekly patient load. The patients saying “yes” based on their misunderstanding of the terms when “no” is the truth would really throw off the whole diagnostic flowchart. Oops.
Unrelated to the above, I realize now I missed my chance on my earlier response to @suranyi. I should’ve said:
My great grandmother (born 1891) ran and hid in the bathroom on her wedding night after finding out what her new husband was expecting. She had no clue before this. She related the story to my mother with whom she was extremely close. What I have never understood about it is where did she think reproduction came from? What crazy story had she been believing? Did she understand a biological difference between men and women?
While this doesn’t answer if it was common, it does clarify that yes it happened.
Even today there are young people shielded from the reality of their own bodies, and what the different parts do. My kids attended whatever health program was provided thru the public schools, agumented and clarified by direct conversations at home. However, we were shocked to learn the course was not mandatory, and a simple note from a parent got kids out of it. This was about 7-9 years ago. I am quite sure the kids excused from that material were not having direct conversations with their parents about this stuff at home.
I remember reading that a Regency historian who was a consultant to some Jane Austen movie adaptation (maybe Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility?) told the cast that it was quite possible a woman of that era would have no idea what to expect on her wedding night.
I’m not going to say there was ever any pre-herpes (I’m sure there wasn’t) , but I am going to ask what exactly you mean by "everyone who’s had sex outside of a mutually-monogamous relationship ". I’m not at all sure my chances of avoiding it are any better if I have had sex in five ( or ten or twenty) different serial mutually monogamous relationships than I would if some of those relationships had overlapped.
I said serial mutually monogamous relationships. One mutually monogamous relationship from 1987-1989, one in 1990. Another from 1991-1992, one from 1994-96 and one from 1997 until now. That’s five- there could easily be a couple more. Or did you actually means two people neither of whom has ever had any other partner?
An estimated 491.5 million people were living with HSV-2 infection in 2016, equivalent to 13.2% of the world’s population aged 15 to 49 years. HSV-2 is almost exclusively sexually transmitted, causing infection in the genital or anal area (genital herpes).
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