so I was watching the big bang theory today (the people I'm house-sitting for only have cable, and there was really nothing else on. I was desperate), and there was a scene where one of the main characters is on a date, and the girl says that 'the third date means sex'. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned (I really am), but that sounded like bullshit to me.
so I did some research, and apparently this is, indeed, a thing.
and, man, did it piss me off.
the whole concept that there is a universal standard for when it is proper to become physically intimate with someone completely baffles me. Not to say that having sex on the third date is a bad thing. If both people in the relationship are ready to become intimate with each other by the third date, that's great, have at it. However, the fact that this appears as 'something everyone is doing now', 'the norm', 'the new trend' (as I read in several of the google results that popped up when I typed 'third date rule' into the search bar) concerns me. So what if you have two people who are dating, and they're on the third date, and one of them expects sex because, oh, you know, everyone is doing it, but the other person isn't ready to take that step yet. What then? Then there are mixed signals, and someone is probably going to get hurt, someone is probably going to be disappointed, and it's going to be a gong show? How do you come back from that? "Wanna have sex?" "Uh, no." "...oh." How awkward is that going to be? Props to those who can move beyond that, laugh it off and keep seeing each other, but, I know in my case at least, I would be so uncomfortable, and feel inadvertently pressured to be 'ready' faster than I can get there in the terms of my own comfort zone. It's happened before; it ended my first relationship, and it was just horrible.
the bottom line here is that we should just do away with all these stupid 'dating rules', in my opinion. Toss out the 'third date = sex' idea, and all its variations, and just get to know each other. If you want to have sex before the third date, that's fine; if you want to wait, that's fine, too. Hell, if you never want to have sex, I don't see why that should be a problem either. Society needs to stop coming up with supposed rules that completely disregard the comfort zones of individual people, and the speed with which they become intimate with others; needs to stop shaming people for the speed at which they progress in terms of physical intimacy, or don't progress. Everyone has their own speed. This varies for everyone, so stop making people feel like sluts/prudes because they don't adhere to these supposed 'trends'.
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