Gala Darling just wrote a great article about sex on the first date. Gala’s pissed (and rightly so) about the idea that the worst thing a woman can do is sleep with a man the first night she meets him. I wanted to expand on Gala’s ideas, which are a fantastic start, but I’d like to take it further also adding some of my own thoughts and experiences.

Obvious sexism around the topic aside, Gala makes an interesting point: this fear of sleeping with men on the first night is possibly because women feel that the value they bring to a relationship is a vagina. I think this is a sexist idea that is somewhat ingrained in us, that if we are to be liked we must promise sex, constantly dangling the vag in front of men.  But it is just ridiculous, vaginas are not rare or special. About 50% of the population has one.

I totally agree with Gala that it is ok to sleep with people–it is okay to be horny and act on it. It’s fun and freeing to sleep with whoever you want, whenever you want but I think where we get into trouble is justifying it to ourselves afterward. Sleeping with someone on the first night is essentially sleeping with a stranger. While that is an okay choice it doesn’t mean you should/will/can have a relationship with that person. You don’t have to make it into something its not…you can just walk away with getting what you wanted and taking home some J.O. material for the rest of the week.

But not walking away is where it gets sticky. If you don’t want to walk away, why? Do you genuinely like this person? Is a relationship with them on the table for you? Either way you  really need to start being honest about what you are feeling and where you would like this to go before you wind up in 6-month-in-confused-fuck-buddy-land. ‘Cuz anyone who has been there can tell you its pretty bleak. So what I am going to say is this: Sleeping with someone on the first date is defenitly not the worst thing you could do, not being honest is. That includes alot honesty and vulnerability. Adding this to early sex is really hard, we are all so conditioned for mind games and manipulation but that’s not to say it can’t be done.

For me not sleeping with my husband on our first date was a way for me to see the relationship as different, to put him in another category, actively making it different.  I didn’t want him to be all of the dudes I was hanging out with/sleeping with, he was special. I postponed sex but it wasn’t about putting my pussy on a pedestool, it was saying this is going to be more than that, I need to know that and I want you to know that. I agree with Gala that the best times come from dropping the gender roles and just relating and hanging out. But I think this is why I skipped first-date sex with Ned to begin with, getting to know him intellectually and emotionally made me sure before getting into the messy lovely giddy lustfulness of sex. What it all comes down to though is knowing what you want and being upfront about it, ‘cuz that truly is being empowered.