The Rule Of Thirds: Should You Wait Until The Third Date To Have Sex?

There are many rules when it comes to dating, but one of the most well known is that you shouldn’t sleep with someone until the third date. The ideology behind this is that in this way your not branded a “slut” or seen as too eager. You have to figure out if you like a person and have them get to know you first before you give yourself sexually to that other person.

This set of rules comes from the same archaic mindset that you should wait three days before you text or call a person (what’s with this rule of thirds when it comes to dating?), that a man has to text the woman first, and that he should always pay for the first date.

As a strong independent woman who, if she finds a person attractive in some way, will always text first (coz I’m ballin’ like that!) and as a woman with a high sex drive who has slept with more than her fair share of first dates, I can see the reasoning behind the third date rule. It’s a fine line between scoring yourself another date and finding yourself ghosted the next day, especially if the other person got what they want first time around.

It’s not always like that in every relationship, but in my experience in the past year it’s definitely been the case.

If I truly like a person I don’t sleep with them on the first date. Maybe it will be as fast as the second, but for whatever reason if there is something there they aren’t going in there. Some of my more successful and longer term hook ups and dating arrangements have started off with this personal ruling primarily for the reason those third-date rulers do it – you want to keep them around, hooked on you and on something other than your body.

In the last year since I’ve been divorced, there have been four people to have fallen under the “You-ain’t-getting-it-on-the-first-date” category, and they have been the four people who ended up meaning something more and helping me grow as a person and discover what I like. One of these people didn’t get it at all (though not from my choosing – they ended up ghosting me the very day they were going to get it three dates in) and one of them lasted six months. It’s not a full-proof plan, but in my experience it worked.

While the second date rule made sense to the general rules of dating, my other logic has been somewhat skewed through– especially when I was initially out making up for lost time – My sex drive was so high that sex on the first date was just simply how I ended the date.

I mean, I hadn’t been single in seven years – how else do you end a date?

After many duds in the sack I realized that I didn’t have to sleep with anyone if I didn’t feel like it. Contrary to this weird logic I had built for myself, you can end a date another way. What? Crazy, right?

But you know how they say a guy generally thinks with his penis? Well I think with my vagina. With my high sex drive, if I get an itch I can’t scratch there is nothing I wont do. I have gone on Tinder, found a man who seems adequate enough to be inside me (and I say adequate because if I actually was interested in them they would get the second/third date rule) and convinced them to fuck me. In these moments of weakness why waste time?

You’re here and I am here for one reason only. So take off your pants.

Despite my candor, these promiscuous encounters were not the most common. At the beginning I made them take me out and get me drunk first, or at least take me on a date. Then like I said I’d end the date sans panties. These dates that ended this way always ended up with no texts or responses the next day. At the start, I didn’t mind – I mean, I ghosted them as well after all – but after awhile I got into the swing of the dating world. I realized you don’t have to end a date braless and so the dates were ending with clothes fully on unless I felt otherwise so inclined.

Yet they still ghosted me!

The dates seemed to go well, so why the radio silence? A guy was in my house and we watched a movie and he told me he would make me a necklace based on the movie we were watching (I don't know why!) and then I never heard from him again.

So if I don’t sleep with them on the first date, or I do, why do both options get me ghosted? Why do we walk such a fine line between the two? In the end, is it just the chemistry? Are we damned if we do and damned if we don’t?

Either way it’s damn confusing. What’s a girl to do in order to score the second and third date?

I guess in the end, if it works it works and if you like each other the second and third date will come along and happen naturally. In the terms of sex on the second and third date I would say that, yes, in the grand scheme of things, the third (or second) date rule for sleeping together seems pretty appropriate.

But if you need it, you need it. Hey, girls gotta do what a girls gotta do.

Just always be safe about it!

Photo by torbakhopper