There is also the possibility that sex would not have happened anyway but brining it up that that was your intention made them want to distance themselves from the situation. And the possibility that it would have happened if you hadn’t asked but only because the flirty/touchy behavior was leading them towards wanting to have sex but asking interrupted the process (this is distinct from the original claim in that the problem wasn’t asking but asking too soon).
There is also the possibility that sex would not have happened anyway but brining it up that that was your intention made them want to distance themselves from the situation.
I’m aware, unfortunately there’s no way to tell. Asking does seem to lower the frequency, though, at leas as far as I can tell in my cultural environment.
And the possibility that it would have happened if you hadn’t asked but only because the flirty/touchy behavior was leading them towards wanting to have sex but asking interrupted the process (this is distinct from the original claim in that the problem wasn’t asking but asking too soon).
That’s surely possible. Based on observations in my personal life though I don’t deem it much probable… Anyway, the original point was that there are very important situations in which asking for feelings is very bad and quite far from a solution. In this regard, asking too soon to me is a subset of asking, not just an entirely different issue
How do y’all have sex without asking at some point? Do you just kinda follow a script and try to guess the other person’s script from their body language and hope that you get it right enough that they don’t have to stop and correct you, and that your default ideas of sex more or less match? And once sex is underway, do you switch to words, or have some other method for requesting things, or just have the same kind of sex every time?
Or am I mistaken about what “asking” covers? I’m counting both asking after a makeout session and commencing sex five seconds later, and asking “Wanna meet up five days from now and do these sexual things?” and then initiating those things on the assumption you’re working from the same script.
If your tradecraft is good enough, you never need explicitly ask. The First Directorate expects its agents to be better, da? That sort of incompetence will get you thrown in the Lubyanka dungeons!
In my experience there are more or less three stages:
1) Flirting without physical contact, or only with physical contact that might be acceptable for an acquaintance (brief touches, possibly friendly hugs) leading up to some kind of asking-out or other fairly direct “are you interested in me” question
2) More overt flirting, possibly later-stage physical contact, possibly leading up to kissing
3) After kissing or similar-level contact, if things seem to be getting hot and/or heavy, body-language-only communication halts. Serious Discussion is had about What Will Happen Next, including sex and/or Future Plans. This is fairly explicit and consists of things like “Do you want this to be a serious relationship?” and “Do you want to do sex act X?” and “I need to tell you about Y.”
I doubt this is really applicable to anyone else, because our culture doesn’t seem to really have a script that is standardized enough for anyone to follow, but it’s a script that I like pretty well. I’ve skipped steps, but more or less always follow the “Talk about it explicitly once physical contact reaches a certain point” part, and I think it is helpful.
I’m aware that I’m going in quite a bit more detail than you might be willing to give, but I’m confused.
Say you want to receive oral sex. (I don’t think that’s an uncommon preference.) Do you go through elaborate acrobatics so you can “just go forward” without her actively helping, or is there some nonverbal way to signal you want that (pushing her head down? smoooooth), or once you have tacitly agreed that sex is going to occur can you use words to decide what kind?
Say you want something unusual, either for society at large or relative to what you’ve done before. Do you also just go forward? That seems like it would cause quite a few “Whoa, not that” moments, and a lot of “Um, I may or may not be into what you want to do, but I can’t tell what it is” awkwardness.
Is she also just going forward with her own script, or only correcting yours when needed? If the former, doesn’t that cause confusion and bumping noses? (Maybe being good at reading body language and not so clumsy avoids that.) If the latter, isn’t that a lot of corrections (or maybe a full switch back to using words) for her to get what she wants? Or do you do a sort of Designated Control Freak thing where the last person to object becomes in charge?
I imagine most of the course corrections will be minor, along the lines of “Slow down, tiger” or “My ears aren’t really all that sensitive, kiss my neck instead”, but it seems like major ones would tend to be mood-killers. If she asks for X, you can say “Sorry, not into that, but how about Y or Z?” or “Hmm, not sure but I’d like to try”; if she starts doing X when you didn’t really expect it, you’re more likely (or so I’d guess) to go “Whoa ew no stop” or “Ouch” or “WTF are you doing?”, all of which seem hard to recover from. I assume the idea is to notice that she’s going for X, and nonverbally redirect her toward Y or Z?
I can’t speak for MrMind, but typically if I want to introduce novel things into my sex life, I talk about them with my partner when we aren’t having sex to see whether there’s mutual interest. If there is, I start introducing them. I rarely talk much while having sex, relying primarily on non-verbal communication (which is quite adequate for “is this OK? more of this? less of this? something altogether different?” kinds of negotiations). He’s more inclined to negotiate verbally during sex, which is also fine, but not really my thing.
Not precise enough! Do I want to have sex with you right now, after dinner, after you drive me home, next time we see each other, on your birthday, at some unspecified point in the future, after marriage? Are you my boyfriend, my friend with benefits, my date, someone I’ve been flirting with for weeks, someone I’ve been flirting with for half an hour, someone I’ve been talking to but didn’t realise there was any flirting going on, a complete stranger? Are we in bed half-naked, cuddling on the couch, at your front door, out on a date, at a nightclub, at a book club, at an orgy, on AdultFriendFinder, on LessWrong? Why are you specifying “with me”?
Any data? Yes. In my personal experience that kind of question were able to kill flirty and touchy behaviour 100% of the time.
Double-blinded, debiased, large sampled data? I don’t think, but it might be a fun project for some social scientist out there.
There is also the possibility that sex would not have happened anyway but brining it up that that was your intention made them want to distance themselves from the situation. And the possibility that it would have happened if you hadn’t asked but only because the flirty/touchy behavior was leading them towards wanting to have sex but asking interrupted the process (this is distinct from the original claim in that the problem wasn’t asking but asking too soon).
I’m aware, unfortunately there’s no way to tell. Asking does seem to lower the frequency, though, at leas as far as I can tell in my cultural environment.
That’s surely possible. Based on observations in my personal life though I don’t deem it much probable… Anyway, the original point was that there are very important situations in which asking for feelings is very bad and quite far from a solution. In this regard, asking too soon to me is a subset of asking, not just an entirely different issue
My personal experience only contains switches the other way. Maybe I don’t ask enough and others don’t ask me enough.
You mean that asking increases the probability of sex happening? Interesting… I wonder if it’s something reproducible or just a cultural artefact.
How do y’all have sex without asking at some point? Do you just kinda follow a script and try to guess the other person’s script from their body language and hope that you get it right enough that they don’t have to stop and correct you, and that your default ideas of sex more or less match? And once sex is underway, do you switch to words, or have some other method for requesting things, or just have the same kind of sex every time?
Or am I mistaken about what “asking” covers? I’m counting both asking after a makeout session and commencing sex five seconds later, and asking “Wanna meet up five days from now and do these sexual things?” and then initiating those things on the assumption you’re working from the same script.
Comrade, do you enjoy borscht?
But… at some point you do ask if they are a Soviet spy too!
If your tradecraft is good enough, you never need explicitly ask. The First Directorate expects its agents to be better, da? That sort of incompetence will get you thrown in the Lubyanka dungeons!
In my experience there are more or less three stages:
1) Flirting without physical contact, or only with physical contact that might be acceptable for an acquaintance (brief touches, possibly friendly hugs) leading up to some kind of asking-out or other fairly direct “are you interested in me” question
2) More overt flirting, possibly later-stage physical contact, possibly leading up to kissing
3) After kissing or similar-level contact, if things seem to be getting hot and/or heavy, body-language-only communication halts. Serious Discussion is had about What Will Happen Next, including sex and/or Future Plans. This is fairly explicit and consists of things like “Do you want this to be a serious relationship?” and “Do you want to do sex act X?” and “I need to tell you about Y.”
I doubt this is really applicable to anyone else, because our culture doesn’t seem to really have a script that is standardized enough for anyone to follow, but it’s a script that I like pretty well. I’ve skipped steps, but more or less always follow the “Talk about it explicitly once physical contact reaches a certain point” part, and I think it is helpful.
That’s really funny: for the stages I’ve been experiencing, that’s when body-language-only communication begins.
Halts temporarily, I should say. After Serious Discussion is had, it generally continues.
You mean that you explicitly, verbally ask for each step before that?
No, only that before it’s usually a mix of verbal and non-verbal. After kissing, body-language-ONLY communication begins.
I usually just go forward and if a girl is uncomfortable she will stop me. Apparently this is much less awkward than asking directly.
I’m aware that I’m going in quite a bit more detail than you might be willing to give, but I’m confused.
Say you want to receive oral sex. (I don’t think that’s an uncommon preference.) Do you go through elaborate acrobatics so you can “just go forward” without her actively helping, or is there some nonverbal way to signal you want that (pushing her head down? smoooooth), or once you have tacitly agreed that sex is going to occur can you use words to decide what kind?
Say you want something unusual, either for society at large or relative to what you’ve done before. Do you also just go forward? That seems like it would cause quite a few “Whoa, not that” moments, and a lot of “Um, I may or may not be into what you want to do, but I can’t tell what it is” awkwardness.
Is she also just going forward with her own script, or only correcting yours when needed? If the former, doesn’t that cause confusion and bumping noses? (Maybe being good at reading body language and not so clumsy avoids that.) If the latter, isn’t that a lot of corrections (or maybe a full switch back to using words) for her to get what she wants? Or do you do a sort of Designated Control Freak thing where the last person to object becomes in charge?
I imagine most of the course corrections will be minor, along the lines of “Slow down, tiger” or “My ears aren’t really all that sensitive, kiss my neck instead”, but it seems like major ones would tend to be mood-killers. If she asks for X, you can say “Sorry, not into that, but how about Y or Z?” or “Hmm, not sure but I’d like to try”; if she starts doing X when you didn’t really expect it, you’re more likely (or so I’d guess) to go “Whoa ew no stop” or “Ouch” or “WTF are you doing?”, all of which seem hard to recover from. I assume the idea is to notice that she’s going for X, and nonverbally redirect her toward Y or Z?
I can’t speak for MrMind, but typically if I want to introduce novel things into my sex life, I talk about them with my partner when we aren’t having sex to see whether there’s mutual interest. If there is, I start introducing them. I rarely talk much while having sex, relying primarily on non-verbal communication (which is quite adequate for “is this OK? more of this? less of this? something altogether different?” kinds of negotiations). He’s more inclined to negotiate verbally during sex, which is also fine, but not really my thing.
I always wonder if it was neurological: if I talk or someone talks too much during sex I lose all the excitement.
This. Once sex is a given, words usually can be reintroduced without mood-killing, away from the bedroom.
I wonder whether MrMind’s was intended to be a direct quotation or a paraphrase.
Not precise enough! Do I want to have sex with you right now, after dinner, after you drive me home, next time we see each other, on your birthday, at some unspecified point in the future, after marriage? Are you my boyfriend, my friend with benefits, my date, someone I’ve been flirting with for weeks, someone I’ve been flirting with for half an hour, someone I’ve been talking to but didn’t realise there was any flirting going on, a complete stranger? Are we in bed half-naked, cuddling on the couch, at your front door, out on a date, at a nightclub, at a book club, at an orgy, on AdultFriendFinder, on LessWrong? Why are you specifying “with me”?
“A potential partner asks you if you want to have sex! How long does it take you to decide?”
“Less than a second, sensei!”
No more wondering! I’m ok with asking directly ;) Yes, I intended it to be a more or less direct quotation.