When is the right time to start having sex in a relationship? Not
until marriage? A couple months in? The “standard” three dates?
Sometimes even on the first date?
There are as many opinions on this question as there are men in this
world, and each will often vigorously defend his position. The guy who
waited until marriage says he couldn’t be happier with his decision,
while the guy who sees nothing wrong with sex on the first date contends
that such behavior is entirely natural and without negative
consequence. And of course abstinence guy will never be able to step
into the shoes of early-in-the-relationship guy, and vice versa. Which
is why time and experience have shown that arguing about this decision –
especially over the internet! – rarely, if ever, convinces someone to
entirely change their position.
Thus what I hope to lay out in this article is not an iron-clad rule
for when you should become intimate in a relationship. Instead what I
aim to present today is a case for delaying intimacy in a relationship
and taking it slower – leaving the interpretation of what “slower” means
up to each individual man to filter through his own moral, religious,
and philosophical beliefs.
Note: Before we begin, I should probably point out the somewhat
obvious fact that this post is directed at those who desire a long-term
relationship. While I don’t personally endorse the one-night stand, if
that’s your modus operandi, then this article would not be relevant for
your situation.
Is There Any Evidence That Delaying Intimacy Benefits a Long-Term Relationship?
You may have a heard a parent, teacher, or preacher contend that
waiting to have sex will ultimately strengthen a relationship. But is
there any actual evidence out there that backs up this well-meaning, if
often vague advice? There is at least some that seems to point in that
direction.
In one study,
Dr. Sandra Metts asked 286 participants to think about the different
turning points in their present or past relationships. One question she
hoped to answer was whether it made a difference if the couple had made a
commitment to be exclusive and had said “I love you” before or after
commencing sexual intimacy. Metts found that when a commitment is made
and love is expressed
before a couple starts to have sex, the
“sexual experience is perceived to be a positive turning point in the
relationship, increasing understanding, commitment, trust, and sense of
security.” However, when love and commitment is expressed
after a
couple becomes sexually involved, “the experience is perceived as
a negative turning point, evoking regret, uncertainty, discomfort,
and prompting apologies.” Metts did not find a significant difference in
this pattern between men and women.
In another study,
Dr. Dean Busby sought to find out the effect that sexual timing had on
the health of a couple’s eventual marriage. He surveyed over 2,000
people who ranged in age from 19 to 71, had been married anywhere from 6
months to more than 20 years, and held a variety of religious beliefs
(and no religious beliefs at all). The results were controlled for
religiosity, income, education, race, and the length of relationship.
What Busby found is that couples who delayed intimacy in a relationship
enjoyed better long-term prospects and greater satisfaction in a variety
of areas in their marriage. Those who waited until marriage to have sex
reported the following benefits over those who had sex early on in the
relationship:
- Relationship stability was rated 22 percent higher
- Relationship satisfaction was rated 20 percent higher
- Sexual quality of the relationship was rated 15 percent better
- Communication was rated 12 percent better
For those couples that waited longer in a relationship to have sex,
but not until marriage, the benefits were still present, but about half
as strong.
Why Would Delaying Intimacy Benefit a Long-Term Relationship?
These studies are certainly not conclusive and do not decidedly
settle the question of whether or not delaying intimacy is beneficial
for a long-term relationship. But the results are intriguing, and as
they at least point towards that idea, it’s worth exploring why this
might be so.
The main point of contention in the debate over when you should get
intimate in a relationship generally boils down to whether it’s better
to find out if you are sexually “compatible” as early as possible, or
whether holding off on sex might uniquely strengthen the relationship in
such a way as to make that question a moot point. For example, while
the participants in Busby’s study who waited until marriage to have sex
would seemingly have taken the biggest gamble in “buying a car without
ever taking it for a test drive” (to use an analogy that frequently
comes up in this discussion), they still reported being
more
satisfied with their sex life than those who had kicked the tires right
out the gate. Busby offers this explanation for such a result: “The
mechanics of good sex are not particularly difficult or beyond the reach
of most couples, but the emotions, the vulnerability, the meaning of
sex and whether it brings couples closer together are much more
complicated to figure out.”
The following factors help explain how waiting to have sex may trump the question of sexual compatibility.
The Importance of Narrative in Our Relationships
In the past decade, psychologists have increasingly recognized the importance of “
personal narratives”
in the way we construct our identities, make choices, and find meaning.
Researchers have found that the human mind has a natural affinity for
stories, and this predilection strongly extends into how we view and
make sense of our own lives. We all seek to fit our experiences and
memories into a personal narrative that explains who we are, when and
how we’ve regressed and grown, and why our lives have turned out the way
they have. We construct these narratives just like any other stories;
we divide our lives into different “chapters” and emphasize important
high points, low points, and, of particular importance here, turning
points. Psychologists have shown that these personal narratives are
truly powerful things that shape our behavior and influence our big
decisions – even when we’re not aware of it. They affect both how we
view the past, and how we see our future. As
science reporter Benedict Carey puts it,
“The way people replay and recast memories, day by day, deepens and
reshapes their larger life story. And as it evolves, that larger story
in turn colors the interpretation of the scenes.”
The power of personal narrative may explain the results of Dr. Metts’
study. She theorizes that “for both men and women, the explicit
expression of love and commitment prior to sexual involvement in a
dating relationship appears to provide communicative
framing
[emphasis mine] for the personal and relational meaning of sexual
actions.” For couples that make a commitment to each other prior to
becoming intimate, the initiation of sex becomes framed as “a relational
event” rather than a “physical release or moment of pleasure.” In other
words, whether “I love you” came before the sex or after it changed the
way the couple was able to fit this turning point into the narrative of
their relationship and thus what kind of meaning the event took on.
Psychologists have found that just like all good stories, the
coherence of our personal narratives matters and the more coherence our
life story has, the greater our sense of well-being. Coherence grows out
of a number of things, including the way one event seems to lead
naturally to another, and how clearly cause and effect can be seen. When
sex happens prior to love and commitment and somewhat randomly – “After
a few dates we were watching a movie and then we started making out and
ended up having sex.” – it becomes a fragment that’s harder to fit into
the narrative of your relationship and doesn’t add much to the story of
how you became a couple. On the other hand, if the sex in a
relationship follows after expressions of love and commitment – “We
first said I love when we watched the sun come up after a hike. We
booked a weekend at a bed and breakfast a few weeks later and had sex
for the first time.” – the episode easily becomes integrated – in a
positive way — into the story of your relationship.
It may be easy to dismiss stories as just…stories. But the effect of
personal narrative in your life should not be underestimated. The memory
of your first time as a couple will be something you look back on and
draw from for the rest of your life and will at least partially color –
for better or worse – “the story of us.”
The Creation and Lasting Power of Sexual Patterns and Preferences
We’ve talked a lot about
habits and how our repeated behaviors not only train our minds to think and act in certain ways but can even
change the literal circuitry of our brains.
How we choose to do certain things can set a pattern that’s very
difficult to alter. This is likely as true for sexual intimacy as it is
for anything else.
As Dr. Busby puts it: “Many will say, ‘When I get ready to settle
down I’m going to take things more slowly.’ Unfortunately, some of our
more recent research seems to suggest that the patterns that develop in
young adulthood, and their relational consequences, can’t just be turned
off or avoided once a person decides it is time to marry. Every
relationship we have, however brief and insignificant, influences every
other relationship we have, and the patterns that we repeat across
relationships become very difficult to change.”
Busby is likely referring to some of the studies on relationships and
marriage he has conducted, but for my money one of the most interesting
experiments on sex and habit comes from a different laboratory – this
one headed by psychologist and neurobiologist Jim Pfaus.
In one study,
Pfaus painted female rats with “cadaverine” – a synthetic form of the
scent of death. Cadaverine smells so bad that rats will scramble across
electrified gates to get away from it. Thus when virginal male rats were
put in a cage with these death-scented females, they at first
predictably refused to mate with them at all. But after much coaxing
from the researchers and flirting from the female rats (who were
blissfully unaware of their repulsiveness), the male rats gave in and
got down to business. Later on, when these male rats were given a choice
between mating with the death-scented rats and ones that smelled
naturally good (to a rat), they preferred to mate with those wearing eau
de cadaver. Pfaus even tried perfuming some female rats with the
delightful smell of lemon, but the male rats couldn’t be swayed from the
preference they had formed during their first sexual experiences.
In another experiment, Pfaus put different virginal male rats in
little Marlon Brando-esque leather jackets, which they wore during their
first times mating. When the leather jackets were later removed and the
rats given a chance to mate again, a third of them refused to even make
an attempt, many that tried to give it a go couldn’t get an erection,
and sex for all the rats took longer and required a lot of help from the
females.
In both groups of rats, the male rats had come to associate certain
elements (scent, jacket) that were present during their first sexual
experiences with arousal, and had formed a preference and even a need
for those same elements to be present for successful sex later on. This
result has been shown in numerous other studies – when rats are sexually
stimulated in certain locations or in various degrees of light, they
will come to associate those conditions with arousal. It’s basic
Pavlovian conditioning, applied to sex.
While the gap between humans and rats may seem huge, their limbic
systems are so similar to our own that they are frequently used in
studies on sexuality and have been called the “‘guiding flashlights
’
for understanding the primitive mechanisms of our own brain.” While I’m
drawing my own conclusion here, it doesn’t seem like a stretch to think
that if we come to associate sex with feelings of love and commitment,
of being in a secure, comfortable relationship, that’s what we’ll
continue to prefer and seek out and be turned on by, while if we come to
associate sex with novelty and newness, we may then have trouble
breaking that pattern and being satisfied with the sex of a long-term
relationship. This is true with pornography as well. The brain gets
tuned to being aroused by different women or by certain sexual acts on
screen, and then you are no longer able to perform with your significant
other.
In fact, our brains may have evolved to aid in the continuation of a
pattern of short-term sexual relationships once a man has started down
that path. In primitive times, a man was driven to spread his seed to
increase his chances of siring as many progeny as possible (this pattern
is repeated by modern men who wish to have as much sex as possible, but
typically do not want any children to result from these couplings). But
as evolutionary psychologist David Buss points out, a “critical problem
that must be solved by men pursuing a short-term mating strategy is the
problem of avoiding commitment and investment. The larger
the investment in a particular mating, the fewer the number of sexual
partners a given man can pursue.” Buss calls this the
“commitment-avoidance” problem and
a study he conducted
found the possible solution to it: after sex, men who have had numerous
sexual partners experience a “negative affective shift” — they perceive
the woman they’ve just copulated with as less sexually attractive than
they did prior to doing the deed. Why would this shift in perception
occur? Buss theorizes that “a negative change in perception of the
woman’s sexual attractiveness might provide the motivational impetus to
promote a relatively hasty postcopulatory departure. This
quick departure, in turn, would function primarily to reduce the risks
to the man of making unwanted commitments.” Buss thus concludes that
“successful short-term strategists are more likely to experience a
negative affective shift following sexual intercourse than long-term
sexual strategists.”
The Interplay of Hormones, Sex, and Bonding
Most folks have heard about the wonders of oxytocin by now. It’s a
hormone that reduces stress, counteracts depression, engenders trust,
and is especially famous for being the glue that bonds together both
mothers and their babies, and romantic couples as well.
Advocates for abstinence often put forth a very simple storyline
regarding oxytocin – arguing that because the hormone increases during
sex, intercourse can be deeply bonding, and if partners aren’t committed
to each other, the severing of this newly-formed bond post-coitus can
be psychologically damaging. This argument is often advanced in regards
to women, because testosterone may partially mute oxytocin’s effects in
men, but the hormone is still present during sex for both partners.
However, the effect of oxytocin is much more complicated than this
simple talking point would suggest. Oxytocin isn’t just created during
sex, but from a whole host of other behaviors that fall far short of sex
— from cuddling and holding hands to smiling and listening. As someone
who knows numerous couples who had very serious relationships despite
not having sex, it is clear that two people can form a very deep bond
and can suffer a psychologically wrenching break-up without ever having
slept together.
Furthermore, while the interplay of oxytocin and sex may still be a
reason to delay intimacy in a relationship, it’s for the opposite reason
than is typically advanced.
Oxytocin does indeed greatly increase during sex and peaks during
climax. At the same time, another important hormone – dopamine – is
surging too. But after climax, both oxytocin and dopamine
quickly drop off.
This drop in dopamine provides a feeling of satiety, and the two
hormones affect each other; as the dopamine falls, so does your level of
oxytocin. Dopamine is what drives you to do the deed, and oxytocin is
what draws you to a particular person, so that when these motivators
decrease post-climax, your overall desire for that person dissipates.
Thus, instead of making lovers feel closer to each other, sex can
actually make partners feel further apart and even discouraged and
restless. This is what the ancient poet Ovid was getting at when he
argued that the best cure for love…was to satiate oneself with orgasm.
As Marnia Roberston writes in “
Oxytocin, Fidelity, and Sex”:
“It’s possible that repeated neurochemical fallout after
climax does not register as soothing to all lovers, or even inhibits
their capacity for bonding. Remember the movie When Harry Met Sally?
Billy Crystal said that thirty seconds after making love he always
wanted to get out of bed and leave. When asked about this, another man
said, “Yeah, I guess that is how most men feel. ‘Boom, I’m done! Elvis
has left the building. The fat lady has sung. Thank you—and goodbye.’”
Not strong evidence of a desire to bond.”
The rise and fall of dopamine and oxytocin during and after sex can
potentially make a relationship feel, if not like a roller coaster, then
a little dramatic and bumpy.
If, that is, a non-sexually-sourced oxytocin safety net isn’t in place first. Robertson again:
“Frequent, comforting feelings are important in
maintaining strong pair bonds. We only deepen our bonds when we feel
safe. What keeps us feeling safe is bonding behaviors (attachment
cues). The oxytocin they release relaxes our natural defensiveness (by
soothing the brain’s sentry, the amygdala, and stimulating good feelings
in our reward circuitry). The more dependable the flow of oxytocin via
daily bonding behaviors, the easier it is to sustain a relationship. In
contrast, a passionate one-night stand allows lovers’ innate
defensiveness to snap back into place pretty much as soon as oxytocin
drops after climax. The next day, when she doesn’t text and he doesn’t
call, defensiveness naturally increases.
Perhaps the drop-off is why pair bonders (including humans) rely on more than just climax to keep bonds strong.
Pair-bonding species spend most of their “us time” engaged in
non-copulatory, oxytocin-releasing (bonding) behaviors: Grooming,
huddling together, tail-twining, or, in humans, comforting, soothing
touch, kissing, skin-to-skin contact, eye gazing and so forth.
Interestingly, pair-bonding monkey mates who engage in the most bonding
behaviors have the highest oxytocin levels.”
All of this is to say that when you have sex early on in a
relationship, before you’re seeing each other every day and spending
most of your time together and engaging in a whole lot of other bonding
behaviors, you won’t have a strong non-sexual stream of oxytocin flowing
to compensate for the hormone drop-off post-climax, which may make your
relationship feel more bumpy, tense, and volatile. If, on the other
hand, you wait to have sex until your non-sexual oxytocin stream is
running full blast, this flow will smooth over the neurochemical ups and
downs that accompany sex, so that intimacy enriches your relationship
and draws you together instead of apart.
Building a stream of oxytocin before initiating sex also provides
fertile ground for creating an all-important foundation of friendship
for your relationship. As Robertson mentions above, non-sexual bonding
behaviors relax the defensiveness of the amygdala, creating a feeling of
trust and safety with your significant other. This security provides
time and space to work on the communicative and emotional side of your
relationship without those aspects becoming underplayed and overwhelmed
by a focus on physical intimacy.
But Everyone Else Is Doing It!
Even if you decide you want to delay intimacy in a relationship, you
might feel like your decision is less than manly. We definitely live in a
culture that often equates manhood with the number of notches on one’s
bedpost and you may assume that all of your peers are having lots of sex
and that following a different path therefore makes you a square.
In reality, surveys show that 77% of college students believe that
their peers are hooking up more often than they really are. What are the
actual numbers? According to
the most recent study
by the CDC, over a quarter of young men ages 15-24 have not had any sex
at all – oral, anal, or vaginal. And over 40% of men 20-24 have only
had 0-2 sexual partners, and that includes those with whom they only had
oral sex.
And while the apparently rampant hook-up culture on college campuses
comes in for an awful lot of hand-wringing by those who fear that young
people today have all devolved into amoral hedonists, the numbers, here
broken down by
Slate columnist Amanda Hess, don’t quite support that worry:
“Sociological Images’ Lisa Wade, who has researched hookup culture extensively, has found that ‘between two thirds and three quarters of students hook up at some point during college.’ Since the term “hookup” can include everything from
just kissing (where around 32 percent of college hookups end) to
intercourse (40 percent of hookups), that means only that college
students are engaging in as little as one makeout every four years. One study found that among students who did hook
up in college, 40 percent did it three or fewer times total (less than
one hookup a year); 40 percent did it between four and nine times (one
to two hookups a year); and 20 percent did it ten or more times. Less
than 15 percent of college students are engaging in some form of
physical contact more than twice a year.”
In a survey Wade conducted with her own students, she found that 38%
of students said they had opted out of the hook-up culture altogether,
and that few of those who did take part found hooking-up all that
satisfying. Only about 11% of students “expressed unequivocal enjoyment
of hookup culture,” while 50% were hooking up “ambivalently or
reluctantly.”
The bottom line? If you decide that delaying intimacy is the right choice for you, you’re certainly not the odd man out.
Conclusion
I hate when people oversell things, and this is a topic where people
are especially sensitive to things being over-simplified. So I have no
problem saying that the kind of studies cited above do not “prove” that
delaying intimacy is the best way to go, and there are assuredly folks
who are happy they waited until marriage to have sex, and folks with
happy marriages who had sex on the first date. I provided this
information because it offers important food for thought – grist to add
to the other things you evaluate and ponder when making a decision about
where you stand on this issue. Truthfully, scientific studies are not
likely to be the most important factors in that decision-making process –
your religious and philosophical beliefs will and should have the
greatest sway. The most important thing, regardless of those beliefs, is
that you make the decision deliberately and consciously. It shouldn’t
be a decision you reach based on what you think your peers are doing or
an image a magazine sells, and you shouldn’t wait to make up your mind
until the heat of the moment. Before you get involved with someone, make
sure you have already worked through and decided what you believe about
the timing of sexual intimacy, and then stick with your principles.
On a final note, whatever your personal beliefs are, I think one of
the most compelling arguments to be made for delaying intimacy is
the power of delayed gratification. Deciding to wait for something not only builds your discipline, self-mastery, and
character,
it can exponentially increase the pleasure of its eventual consummation
and make it a far more deep and memorable experience. Everything is so
cheap these days – in-your-face, mass-produced, common, and banal. Yet
within his own sphere, each man has the power to
sacralize
something — to take it back from being trampled under foot and make it
something more meaningful – to turn it into something that will add a
richness and texture to his life rather than just another
run-of-the-mill experience in a tirelessly ordinary and worn out world.
