Why You Shouldn’t Wait To Jump Into Bed With Someone

The other night, I had a casual encounter with the sexiest man I’ve ever been with: blond, blue eyes and a beard that made him look like a young Norse god. He was so attractive that I was intimidated to do anything until he pulled me into him for a kiss. Within minutes, our clothes were off. Everything about him was sexy to me, his body, the way he smelled, how way he grabbed and kissed me.

I don’t recall a time that I ever wanted someone as much as I wanted him. After we had sex, we laid together in bed, my head on his chest. We talked about work, life, whatever — it didn’t even matter as I would have been equally enraptured if he read to me from a takeout menu. I didn’t want him to leave. I would have moved back to New York, where he lives, if he asked me to.

I couldn’t stop thinking about him for the next two days. I would take naps in the afternoon just to daydream about him and fantasize about him being back in my bed.

I think if I had tried to date him, if we had gone to a bar instead of my bed on the first meeting, I’d have been intimidated by him. Out of fear of getting hurt, or my insecurity, I wouldn’t have flirted with him or made it obvious that I was into him, and he’d have thought that I wasn’t interested. Instead, the fact that he was already in my home and I was already shirtless made the barrier much less imposing to cross.

With that out of the way, were we to see each other again, I’d already feel comfortable around him, and not just comfortable, but a level of desire and familiarity that would usually come with dating for a longer period of time.

I once dated a guy who was perfect on paper, the epitome of my type. He was handsome, older, successful, prep school and Ivy League educated. We went on a few dates together, each one ending in a split check and an awkward hug goodbye. I was tormented over whether this guy liked me or not, if I was imagining a romance between us where he was only laying the foundations for a friendship. There was always a tension between us, on the phone, in person across from each other at the table, is this person attracted to me or not? If we had jumped into bed together straight away, we’d at least have determined this and been able to move forward or call things as they were.

With endless platonic dating, we can delude ourselves into imaging a life and future with someone before we know whether there is sexual compatibility. They seem like a good person, they might make us laugh, but can they make us orgasm?

A friend of mine met a guy he liked online and as these things go, they started chatting, their textual interchange evolved into phone dialogue and quickly they started hanging out together. They went on a string of dates for two weeks, and were even planning to go away for a weekend together. Yet they had not slept together.

Ultimately it turned out that the guy was sexually incompatible with my friend and all that time in courtship was wasted. At the end of it, my friend was vexed and embarrassed that he had excitedly shared his hopes of this guy being “the one” to his friends.

A few days after my tryst with the blond who rocked my world, I invited a cute Middle Eastern guy over who was visiting from out of town. We spent a couple hours lying out by the pool talking. Intellectually, we were well-matched — each of us had grown up traveling the world, had diverse and interesting social lives and career ambitions.

I could tell he was attracted to me, not least by all the compliments he heaped upon me. I led him upstairs and we proceeded to get naked. There were parts of him that were attractive to me, but overall my body did not respond to his the same chemical way that it did to the blond. After half an hour of kissing, my lips were tired and I turned my face away from his. I fixated on his lower teeth which were not straight. I wished that it were the blond holding me instead of him.

After an hour, I wanted him to leave. He asked me if I was free the following day to see him before his flight. I didn’t respond. I didn’t desire him and didn’t want to date him. What I might have had to wait for weeks, and potentially spent hundreds of dollars to figure out since he lives in San Francisco, I was able to know in the span of a few hours.

I don’t regret our sexual dalliance — it was important to determine whether I could see this going anywhere, and it also wasn’t a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Nonetheless, there are some things that you try once and that’s enough, like cocaine or lesbianism.

There is of course a possibility that I’m overlooking — the idea that feelings for someone develop over time and one’s sexual desire increases with it. As I have never been in a long-term relationship, I can’t discount this might be true. However in my dating history, it has always seemed a liability if we didn’t get into bed after at least two dates — I could almost always be sure that the person wasn’t interested in me.

I think that a relationship must be built on a chemical craving for the other person. We should trust ourselves to know when something just feels so right that it must be right.

With women, there are slightly different rules and norms. Firstly, there is the idea that if you sleep with a man right away, he will not respect you. Women, also, generally treat sex as something more sacrosanct that men (especially gay men) and have to feel something more than just physical desire (or at least get a few free dinners) before jumping into bed.

But most of my girl friends said there are no hard and fast rules. It depends on what feels right with the guy, how often you’re seeing them, and if they look like Channing Tatum, or in my case, Thor.