Your Place or Mine

I asked a friend once why she wouldn’t sleep with someone on a first date if she actually liked him, and she looked at me like I’d suggested something obscene. Her argument was that if she saw a real future, she had to protect it—wait, let him prove it wasn’t just about her body, give feelings time to settle before adding sex into the mix.

But then she’d also say if it was someone she’d never see again anyway, then yeah, obviously, why not. At least then she wouldn’t fool herself into thinking he cared. It’s practical in a way. Also completely backwards.

You can fuck someone on a first date. In every conventional way, in unconventional ways, whatever. How a relationship develops has nothing to do with when you first had sex and everything to do with whether you actually like each other as people. That’s just obvious. Every therapist, every person who’s actually thought about it, knows this.

The anxiety around it is strange because it assumes the sex is what’s at stake. Like you’re either guarding something or you’re not. But really you’re just finding out. Getting real information. The person either comes back or doesn’t. Everything else is just you trying to choreograph an outcome you have no control over.