Is it possible to successfully date without sex?

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12/23/2015 11:15

Subject: Is it possible to successfully date without sex?

quote

Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:Not if you want a happy marriage.
Try before you buy because forever is a long, long time.

I really have to second this.

I'm a guy who actually shifted my strategy in my 40s (divorced, now remarried) and started wanting to be able to date for a while to make sure I actually liked someone before being "rushed" into exclusivity and too much emotional commitment by rushing into physical intimacy. It seemed to me there was a 3 date rule - first date, nothing much maybe a kiss, second date making out, and third date, sex. Because the "exclusivity" rule seemed to be the norm, I would go on a couple of dates and find myself in an "exclusive" relationship with a woman before I really wanted to be - I still wanted to get to know her better before I was "locked in" to something that I might decide I wanted out of.

It's fine to wait a long time but waiting until marriage is completely foolish. Also: the longer you insist on waiting for physical intimacy (and I'm including all of it, not just PIV "sex"), the more you will narrow your pool of potential dates. It's one thing to pursue a long waiting period in your late teens and twenties, but quite different by your 30s. The pool of people who aren't sexually experienced shrinks enormously, and the more experienced people are, the greater the expectations of intimacy. I just think you will really dramatically narrow your pool to people who - like you - put a premium on commitment and an emotional attachment over casual intimacy; the pool of guys like this is small.

That's not a bad thing: the older we get, and the better we know ourselves, the better we can make smart choices about who we want to spend our lives with, and the choosier we can be. Ideally, this change is also partly due to learning we can be complete, happy and alone, and so there is no "pressure" to marry. So, in a way, getting pickier or narrowing your pool down to people who are real matches for you emotionally is good.

However, I do think you're going to push it a lot by expecting no physical intimacy for >3 months. That's the natural "infatuation" period, and honestly, nobody can keep a mask on for that long - they will have revealed themselves to you by then. I know people who say they were "fooled" by someone for longer than that, but in every case it was pretty clear they wanted to be fooled and chose to ignore warning signs.

I also know that a lot, lot, lot of men will read this as "she's really just not that into me"...because this is exactly what women do who are not into you but like going out (and I don't think sex is transactional, this is just a friend-zone move).

All that said, when I met my wife, I was trying to do this - date casually, and not rush into sex - and I wound up sleeping with her and one other woman I had been seeing at the same time (not together) - they both initiated (and I was surprised how much I could get them to chase me by not chasing them). I slept with DW on the third date. I was very uncomfortable for the month or so that I was seeing (and sleeping wth) both of them, definitely not cut out for that.