Let's wait awhile: Should you wait 182 days to have sex? | Single ...

Amanda Hess on a new study by the Journal of Marriage and Family:

The study, published in the August issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family (but not available online), found that women who dated their partner for at least 182 days (!) before having sex with him reported higher levels of satisfaction, commitment, intimacy, emotional support, and sexual satisfaction in the resulting relationship. The results have inspired a new wave of sex delaying advice: The Daily Mail warned women against ?leaping into bed at the first opportunity? (or, presumably, the 100th). The researchers claim that their results supported couples ?taking it slow.? (Really slow. For those not good at math: 182 days = six months.)

What the Daily Mail doesn?t say is that half-year stretches of celibacy may make a woman more satisfied in a long-term relationship, but they don?t necessarily make her a more satisfied person. This study only surveyed couples who live together or are married, so ignored couples who live apart, women who ?leap into bed? without an expectation of commitment, and those who break up when their relationships no longer support their personal needs.

Since most studies frame discussions of sex in heterosexist terms of when (not if) singles will get married, this article and discussion made me think of the ideas of the relationship market as described by UT sociologist Mark Regnerus who has recently made headlines for other reasons. The conservative sociologist basically suggests that if people want to get married and stay married, they will get married young (starting at 18 and into one?s twenties) or stay abstinent.

But anecdotal and real life data show that most people do neither. What is the point of waiting 182 days, exactly, if you don?t plan on waiting until marriage?

Studies like the one Hess writes about and writers like Regnerus essentially blame the disintegrating fabric of relationships on easy women who won?t keep their legs closed; Regnerus goes in to explicit detail about this in his book, Premarital Sex in America. I wrote about Regnerus and his book while I was a religion reporter at the Austin American-Statesman. I also profiled him.

Regnerus notes that women who ?give it up? too easily sexually end up driving down the value of intimacy and sex in what he calls the relationship market for women who are willing to wait. What his research has in common with the study Hess writes about is that men are rarely held accountable for the ways their desires shape women?s agency when it comes to love and sex in the heterosexual landscape of courtship. Boys are just being boys, I suppose.

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Source: http://partyofones.com/2012/09/07/lets-wait-awhile-should-you-wait-182-days-to-have-sex/

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