How long should you wait?

This is a question that is always asked and people have very different ideas on how long to wait before having sex with someone.

A reporter asked me this question and to be honest, I don’t have any scientific based advice, all I can offer is how I viewed the question and answered it for myself.

I am 50 now and happily married. Personally, my rule was to wait at least 3 months before having intercourse. I would neck and pet but not involve genitalia until at least 3 months of non-exclusive dating. I had several secular reasons for this.

1)      You don’t know if the other person is actually sane for at least 3 months. For the first few dates, people can fake it. Usually by month 3 the real person emerges and you can decide then what the real emotional risk of taking it to the next level is.  I only violated this rule once and ended up with a stalker. When I was dealing with that in the courts, I met way too many women who had babies with men who were insane. Best way to avoid that – don’t have sex with a guy until you know whether he is sane or not.

2)      Waiting helps avoid the guys who are only interested in sex. If you don’t give out right away, you weed out the men who are only interested in sex. The men who truly like you and are interested in having a relationship will wait.

3)      It helps promote exclusivity.  When first dating, you don’t really know if the person you are dating is a good fit for you - relationship wise.  My mother encouraged me to date multiple guys and hold off having sex with them until I narrowed them down to the one guy I wanted to be exclusive with.  By not dating exclusively at first and not having sex until I was dating exclusively I helped ensure that a) I didn’t have sex with a dangerously insane person. b) My relationships were honest, the men I was dating knew we weren’t exclusive, and that I wasn’t sleeping with multiple guys, we were just dating. c) The guy I eventually chose to be exclusive with was my first choice and not just a boyfriend of convenience.

4)      Reduced sexual disease transmission. By waiting and establishing a relationship before having sex, it made the conversation about whether or not to have sex explicit and that meant we could discuss our health histories, expectations etc. and both get AIDS tested to ensure we weren’t bringing anything into the sexual relationship that would hurt one of us.

Yes – my husband and I dated non-exclusively for a few months before becoming exclusive. It was and has been great!

Want more advice like this or to be able to jump start conversations about these topics with your tween or teen – get my book: The Humanist Approach to Happiness: Practical Wisdom.  

Don’t judge yourself by others especially when it comes to sex

Virility is important to our self-esteem. We want to be wanted. We want to be seen as wanted. This is not just a thing in western culture. It’s a human thing.

We humans want to know, to quote the Pet Shop Boys, “Have you got it? Do you get it?  If so how often? Which do you choose, a hard or soft option?”

By knowing this, we can know – are we normal? Average? Above average. If you are basing your self-worth on how often you get it and with how many people, please stop. I’m not shaming you or anything. You can do whatever you want. I’m just saying, that there are other ways to gauge your worth. Sex should be enjoyable and fun, not a competition.

The good news, for those of us who are rather … monogamous, is that, that appears to be the norm. There is a really great article over at medium that summarizes a study by the National College Health Assessment. It is based on 15 years of data!

Here is a link:
https://medium.com/@enagoski/these-graphs-tell-a-shocking-story-about-the-rampant-college-hookup-culture-38a0ef1b0af8#.9bcjeye3c

Turns out that despite our perception that everyone is doing it with everyone else, most people aren’t.
~30% of college students didn’t have sex with a partner in the past year.
 ~45% had only one partner in the last year.
~15% had 2 or 3 partners in the last year and
~10% had 4 or more.

Both men and women were equally celibate.  The only real gender difference was that there were slightly more men than women who had more than 4 partners making men ever so slightly more promiscuous.

So, that 80/20 rule – where 20% are having 80% of the sex? Yeah that appears to be true.   Should we be panicked about rampant sexual hookups on college campuses? Probably not.   Also, if you aren’t having a lot of sex or are rather monogamous when you do, you are perfectly normal and you have a lot of company.

If you are a young person struggling with these sorts of issues, get my book; The Humanist Approach to Happiness: Practical Wisdom.

Prudish Non-Belief

Is it ok for non-believers to have relatively prudish ideas about sex?

Well, let’s first start by defining prudish. It basically means someone who cares what is proper. Someone who is sexually prudish is someone who has some concept of what they personally think is proper and they stick to that, whatever that is.  Other people who think they are too strict in their sexual morals, label them as prudes. So whether or not someone is prudish depends entirely on the sexual values of the person labeling someone else as too strict.

This came up because one of my male fans was accused of being a prude because he thought a sexual comment directed at a female friend of his in public by another friend was not appropriate. He shared his views and was called a prude and told that because he was non-religious, he shouldn't abide by “religious” standards of what is proper sexual conduct in public. This left him wondering whether his sexual values were indeed prudish and influenced by religious beliefs he doesn't hold.

It’s an interesting question and dilemma.  I think having some values relating to sex (ie: what is good and what isn't for you – is smart, not prudish). When people label others prudes, it’s because they are being accused of being inappropriate.

First, let me start by staying, I do think of myself as a bit of a prude. I do enjoy sex, but I do think that certain behaviors are inappropriate in public – but that may be because I’m a mom! I've also been accused of being a prude by several “sex positive” atheists. My crime? Pointing out that sex has consequences, both good and bad and that you should choose your actions to maximize the good and minimize the harm. Apparently pointing out this obvious fact means I’m scaring kids into not enjoying sex.  Well, there is also my opinion on pornography – which is that it is great – just be aware it’s fantasy and you should not expect from yourself what you see in porn as there is a difference between real life and porn. According to the sex positive folks, this makes me anti-porn and a prude.

My point is that I think anyone who has any standards regarding sexual conduct, both public and private will, at some point, be labelled a prude.  And that’s not a bad thing. It means you have standards and values and are trying to live by them.

I personally think that sexually denigrating comments about people are inappropriate in any circumstance as they can cause real harm by virtue of being denigrating and dehumanizing – which is anti-humanist. I don’t come by that opinion because of religious indoctrination because I was never religiously indoctrinated. I come by that opinion having been the victim of such comments and understanding the harm they cause from personal experience.

For me, my sexual values are based on respecting individuals as individuals and for the sexual choices they make or don’t make for whatever reason they have for making them.

I choose monogamy for myself and my husband. Not because of religion. I've never been religious. I choose this because that’s what works for me. I don’t want to take on the risks of an open relationship. I LOVE the comfort and security of the closed relationship I have. I don’t have problems with people who choose other things, as long as the choices are informed and consensual.

And that’s the problem with lewd sexual comments in public. It’s not the content; it’s whether someone else’s sexual ideas and fantasies are being forced onto another person without their consent. And that includes not just the target of the comments, but the other people present as well. And even if it is just a verbal exchange, it’s still not ethical because it’s not consensual.  And so yes, I do think people should consider who else is present when discussing sexuality and making sexual comments in public places. To me, that’s being polite and respecting the existence of other people who may not want to hear what exactly you plan to do with your partner later.

Ultimately, I think being a prude is in the eye of the beholder. And if being a prude works for you – then be a prude and don’t let people bully you into changing your sexual standards. To some people, my monogamy makes me a prude. For me, it makes me happy. And isn't that the ultimate point? To have a happy, healthy sexual life?  I do have a happy sexual life and apparently being a prude is what helped me to achieve that.  I am not planning to give that up just because some people I don’t know are convinced I couldn't possibly be happy because I haven’t chosen the same lifestyle they have.

To each their own. Leave the prudes alone!

When to talk to your child about sex

Most parents dread talking to their children about sex. It's important though, so be prepared.

I’m an author of a book that parents use to talk about things like sexual ethics, safety etc. (See happiness.jen-hancock.com). Parents use my book to jump start these important conversations with their kids. Here is my advice for when to start talking to your child about sex.

Ideally, you want open lines of communication so that when your child has questions they come to you. If they do, you will know when it is time to talk about sex because they will be asking questions about it. If you don’t have that sort of relationship, a book can help. You can read it with them and then see if they have questions.

I recently had to alert a neighbor that it was time to talk to their 13 year old boy about sex because of the questions he was asking me. He wanted to know about relationships and disease and stuff he has heard about and was trying to make sense of.

I recommend that people make the time to ask questions of their kids as subjects come up. For instance, if you have watched a movie with some relationship in it – you can remind your kids that it is fantasy and that in real life, people don’t necessarily get together so quickly – usually they date. Ask them if they have questions, if they don’t, move on.

I think the mistake parents make is in thinking they have to impart all their knowledge at once and then they are done. The reality is that your child needs lots of little conversations in context over time to digest and understand complex ideas – like dating and relationships.

The other mistake I see parents make is that they focus on the big issues – like sex and safety – and they forget the basics – like what is dating, why do people do it, what is the purpose etc. I wrote my book because my neighbor’s daughter had told me she was upset that her boyfriend hadn’t called her. It turned out to be a boy she had sex with but not dated. Her mom had failed to help her understand the very basics of what constitutes a relationship.

So, start right away, focus on relationships first – the conversations about how sex fits into relationships will occur naturally out of discussions about friendships, relationships, dating and so forth.

Plan for your sin

I am not a believer in the religious concept of sin. Though I do think there is a secular value in the word “sin.” It implies not simply that something is wrong, but that to do it will be to cause problems. And certainly, most things that are considered sinful have the potential to cause us problems.

Regardless, I was doing a radio show a while back on religious attitudes towards sex. I was the secular voice basically saying, enjoy yourself, just take care to not cause any harm while you do so. One of the female pastors who came on before me said something that stuck with me though. This was a black preacher and she said that one of the reasons the white community has fewer problems is because they plan for their sin better.  Specifically, she was referring to the fact whites use condom more and so experience fewer problems that are associated with unprotected sex like disease transmission and unplanned pregnancies.

 I loved this idea of planning for your sin. From a Humanist perspective, it isn’t that sex is inherently sinful. That’s a nonsense idea to us. However, we do understand that all of our actions have consequences and we should plan for those consequences to maximize the good and minimize the harm.

The idea that you can plan for your sin is actually a Humanistic idea. It is rooted in the idea of human agency, that we humans have the capability to choose our actions and therefore, to a certain extent, choose our consequences. We aren’t victims of fate, we can, in fact, plan for our sin, though I prefer to think of it as accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative.