The Timeline of Sex and the Timeline of Love Are on Entirely Separate Tracks

My friend Teresa went on a date with a guy from her university—film, dinner, the whole evening—and when I asked afterward if they’d slept together, she looked at me like I’d suggested something criminal. She explained, with great seriousness, that she would never sleep with someone she could see a future with on the first date.

Only if she already knew going in that nothing real was possible—that his dick was the main event and the rest of him was irrelevant—would she allow herself the one-night stand. That way no illusions, no confusion in the morning, no complications. Practical, she said. I told her it was kind of insane.

You can absolutely fuck someone on the first date. Front, back, top, bottom, all night. Whether that turns into something real has nothing to do with when you slept together and everything to do with whether you actually develop feelings for each other. The sex timeline and the feelings timeline run on completely separate tracks and conflating them is just a way of making yourself miserable twice—once by holding back, and once by wondering whether holding back would have changed anything. Sex therapist Kristina from the YouTube channel Fickt euch! agrees, and she’s spent considerably more time thinking about this than Teresa has.