In A Bad Pattern

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-21-2006
In A Bad Pattern
4
Mon, 07-14-2008 - 9:59am

Hello everyone!

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-12-2006
Mon, 07-14-2008 - 10:46am

ALL guys are different.

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-24-2008
Tue, 07-15-2008 - 12:32am

Maybe it is not the sex.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-30-2008
Tue, 07-15-2008 - 1:31am

It seems that most people here are concentrating on how soon into the relationship you have sex. From a man's point of view, when you have sex just depends on the state of the relationship, not necessarily on a time line. Before a certain time and you're too easy, after an arbitrary time it's OK. I think that's not a theory that applies to all cases.

Personally I think the issue is that as soon as you have sex, you start revealing way too much personal information about yourself. You two are having sex. You're enjoying a certain stage in your relationship and that's fine. However when you start unloading all of your personal baggage on someone, you better have a reasonably stable foundation to hold all that stuff. It sounds like you're putting the cart before the horse. How well does that usually work?

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2007
Tue, 07-15-2008 - 8:16am
"Part of me thinks, I just want to have sex period, since I just go long times without having it, but another part of me knows I have to learn to respect myself a lot more!"



It sounds to me like you're struggling with satisfying your wants/needs and worrying about what you're supposed to do. To figure out where you are comfortable with bringing sex into a relationship, I think the first thing you need to do is identify why you're having issues with respecting yourself when you do have sex. If you're having sex on a fourth date, do you loose respect for the guy? If not, why should you be loosing respect for yourself?



"... I have found after we have sex I think, oh, now I'm close to them, and I start revealing way too many personal things about me after we have sex and then they're scared off and don't want to see me again."



You obviously realize that having sex doesn't make you close to someone in all the ways that you might be seeking. If, for you, you need to have a foundation for a relationship prior to having sex, then you need to set that limit for yourself. If you do have sex before you're ready, then you have to stifle all those revealing things.



I think you have a couple of different issues going on here, but it seems to me that they might both be tied to how you feel about yourself. Tied to feeling whether or not you respect yourself, and worrying about what "he thinks". Try to remember that he's there too -- he's part of this decision. If he feels that he can't respect you after having sex with you, then chances are, he wasn't the right guy for you anyway. It's all part of the process of getting to know each other, the only person who can make you feel guilty about your decisions is yourself ... so you need to identify why you feel guilty. I suspect if you didn't feel guilty, you wouldn't start revealing the things that you feel are scaring the guys off.