Post 4: How many dates should you wait?

originally created as column 4, September, 2000

Despite our supposedly modern society, and even those enough intelligent enough to use condoms and get periodic HIV tests, many of us still agree that one does not go to bed on the first date. So the question is, on what date is it ok to go to bed? There seems to be some consensus that the fourth date is passable but that the fifth or sixth is more respectable, and others say waiting for 20 dates is a real test of spiritual awareness and restraint.

So is it ok to kiss? To walk hand in hand, to put one’s arm around his/her partner in the movies. And by sex are they talking about intercourse or any type of physical contact? And what’s a date anyway. If phone conversations don’t count as dates, what happens if you have phone sex? And how often do you have dates. If a new potential partner sees you every day or twice a week, or only once a week, it will take anywhere from 20 days to 20 weeks to sleep with him? Sure, you will get to know each other better, but in the meantime he is probably sleeping with someone else, or you are masturbating like crazy and starting to worry whether reality will match your fantasy. Yes, there are some relationships that actually develop after going to bed on the first or second date, but they are far and few in this Israeli dating world, unless it is a relationship that is mainly sexually oriented, and then why do we care if they like pets, children, are bachelors or divorced. I recently fell for an intelligent non-smoking divorced man who has one child and he only wanted a sexual relationship. I thought, what a waste. If I want only a sexual relationship, that’s what bachelors are for? What a waste of a divorced man with a child.

I am looking for a partner and potential father figure for my son, as well as a friend and a lover. For lover, I would prefer an old friend, a “yeziz”. (Combination of the Hebrew word ‘yedid’ (friend) and ziyun (fuck). (In the tv program they call them “Fuck Buddies”). Good friends that sleep together are much safer than new ones. For the yezizim, I know where things stand. I know we can’t ever really be a couple and then I don’t have to worry about emotional attachment and can have “sex netto”, as I’ve heard this type of relationship being referred to.

This writer has yet to wait 20 dates. She hasn’t even had a third date in months.