Should Couples Wait to Have Sex? It Depends if You Have a High or Low Sociosexuality
Misunderstanding your sociosexuality is why the three-date rule is garbage.
If only sex was like baking cookies. Stick them in the oven. Cook them for a specific time. And voila…enjoy.
Unfortunately, no one can agree on how long to cook your relationship cookie before having sex.
There’s the hookup culture rule. Eat that dough raw! You should have sex when you damn well feel like it. This isn’t exactly a rule, but permission to have no rules.
There’s the three-date rule. This rule claims you should wait at least three dates before eating your cookie.
There’s the 36-hour rule. According to psychotherapist Barton Goldsmith, it takes at least 36 hours to develop a strong enough connection with someone to have sex. Goldsmith contends that it doesn’t matter if you reach those 36 hours within three or thirty dates. (People who “breadcrumb” must love this rule.)
And lastly, there’s the wait-until-you-are-married rule. You don’t get to eat your cookie until you sign on the dotted line. Plenty of “studies” claim this is the best approach. These studies are always funded by a religious organization. So there’s that.
But even the unbiased research on this subject is dubious. In a study of 2035 married couples, researchers found couples who waited to have sex (over a month) reported better “sexual quality, relationship communication, relationship satisfaction, and perceived relationship stability.”
Unfortunately, a key factor is always missing in these studies.
It’s not when you have sex that matters. It’s whether your “when” matches your partner’s when. In other words, the most successful couples have similar sociosexuality.
Sociosexuality vs. culture
Sociosexuality is someone’s willingness to have sex outside of a committed relationship.
People with high or unrestricted sociosexuality prefer casual sex.
People with low or restricted sociosexuality prefer sex within committed relationships.
Culture and childhood environment often dictate our sociosexuality, but biology usually wins (or makes you miserable fighting it). Sociosexuality is so baked into your personality that one study found that women could identify a male stranger with high sociosexuality by looking at only a photograph of his face. (Interestingly, men could not predict high sociosexuality in women as well.)
Researchers theorized that women have this sociosexuality spidey sense to screen out men seeking short-term relationships. So if his face screams manwhore…you might be right.
People with low sociosexuality should wait to have sex.
People with low sociosexuality need to have an emotional investment before having sex. This need is partly neurological. After an orgasm, you release a chemical concoction of oxytocin and dopamine. These sneaky hormones and neurotransmitters cause the prefrontal cortex — the reasoning part of your brain — to go offline.
Translation: You catch the feels.
Trust me on this one. You don’t want to catch the feels for a baddie.
Some brains are simply wired for more oxytocin and dopamine release. And no, this is not a gendered debate. Men can catch the feels as quickly as women.
If you tend to get emotionally attached after sex, you have low sociosexuality. So before you get naked, you should ensure your crush has an interior as sexy as their exterior.
Unfortunately, women with low sociosexuality must battle one worry.
“He will lose interest if I don’t have sex with him.”
Pleeeeeeeease.
If you are using sex to hold a guy’s attention, you are either with a shallow man, or you are shallow.
There. I said it. Set the trolls loose.
If the former is your problem, choose men with more substance. If the latter is your problem, improve your conversation skills and develop your mind. All sex begins in the brain.
Either way, if you communicate to a guy that you prefer to get to know him before having sex, and he leaves…good riddance. You don’t want to waste time dating someone who doesn’t match your sociosexuality.
The other reason those with low sociosexuality should wait is mechanics. People (usually women) with low sociosexuality cannot orgasm until they are comfortable with their partner. Although an orgasm is not necessary for great sex, it sure as heck helps. Why have sex with someone when it will not be pleasurable?
People with high sociosexuality should not wait to have sex.
Other people have high sociosexuality. Those people can have sex on a first date and have mind-blowing orgasms. They are comfortable with their and their partner’s bodies, even if that person is a stranger.
People with high sociosexuality do not get as emotionally invested when they sleep with someone. To them, a commitment is not necessary for sexual pleasure.
To be clear, people with high sociosexuality still need intimacy, but it builds over time and is not defined by sex.
They also are happier in polyamorous relationships.
For example, one study found that people with high sociosexuality reported lower satisfaction over time in their marriages. Another study found high sociosexuality was correlated with higher rates of infidelity. Researchers suspect that people with high sociosexuality have higher marital dissatisfaction and infidelity rates because they are miserable in monogamous relationships.
Unfortunately, women with high sociosexuality have a more stereotypical (and trickier) worry than women with low sociosexuality.
“He will think I am a slut if I have sex with him too soon.”
Sure. Many men will think a woman is the Whore of Babylon if she has sex too early. These men define sex through more prudent cultural norms or a childhood upbringing that taught them the problematic Freudian Madonna-Whore complex. And despite hookup culture trying to reframe these beliefs, slut shaming isn’t going away any time soon.
Other men are free thinkers. You can have sex with these men on the first date or the fortieth date. It doesn’t matter. And often, they wait to have sex with some women and not with others. Their attraction to a woman is shaped by their feelings for her, not a prescripted ideology.
But I will warn you. These free-thinking men are rare. No one lives in a bubble. Even the most progressive men are influenced by cultural norms and their childhood to some degree.
Not knowing your sociosexuality is what causes problems.
Of course, cultural stereotypes will always frame the sociosexuality debate. We all know the hypocrisies. A man can have a high body count, and he is a stud, but when a woman does the same, she is a whore.
To the women who believe this stereotype, I will ask a more salient question — why are you not holding men to the same standards you hold yourself?
Personally, if I get the impression that a man is indiscriminate about his sexual partners, it’s a huge turnoff. And no, I am not slutshaming men. I have a low sociosexuality, so I prefer to be with someone who matches my sexuality.
Here’s the real problem. Too many women pretend they have a high sociosexuality when they do not.
You know who you are. If you constantly end up in situationships and then get hurt when those casual relationships don’t magically morph into committed relationships… you are misunderstanding your sociosexuality. Stop rushing into sex, especially with high sociosexuality men.
Now, I am going to direct this finger-wagging lecture at the men.
If you lose interest in a woman after you sleep with her, you probably have a low sociosexuality and should also wait to have sex. Often, you are losing interest because intimacy is not established before sex. So stop bending the plot curve and keep your goddamn pants on.
Or at least apply the same rules you apply to women to yourself. If a woman is a whore for sleeping with you too soon, you are a whore too. Maybe you should just go with it and be nasty whores together.
I jest (sort of), but this is one area where modern dating is really screwing with our heads. We apply all these rules to others and then don’t apply them to ourselves.
Hypocrisy has no place in connected sex.
Here’s my rule for when to have sex:
There are no rules on when to have sex for the first time because every situation is different.
Let me repeat that for the lazy, binary thinkers at the back of the bus.
Every situation is different.
But here’s the one commonality that every thorny first-sex debate has — YOU. Make your own sex rules and then stand by them. If you let culture dictate your sexuality, you risk ending up in a relationship with someone who does not match your sociosexuality.
Once you understand your sexuality, the decision of when to have sex is easy.
“There is no love without sexual instinct. Love uses this instinct as a brutal force, as the brigantine uses the wind.”
-Ortega y Gasset
Carlyn Beccia is an award-winning author and illustrator of 13 books. For past articles grouped by subject, see my Table of Contents.
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