Submitted on Thursday, November 22, 2007
By lindsey, 23, from glasgow:

Do guys respect you more if you wait to sleep with them? I've been seeing a guy for a few weeks now are we are both good looking people and have a lot of chemistry but I like him a lot and he is really lovey dovey with me but we both get a little heated and stop because we don't want to rush things. But when is it right? I mean, there is no time limit OK but there is when people think you're a slut for jumping into bed.

VictorM's advice:

Different things, such as culture, religion, upbringing, etc. determine what's socially acceptable. So the answer varies from guy to guy. That's something that you have to discuss with the guy.

But the advice I usually give that there should be a waiting period before sex has nothing at all to do with those reasons, and certainly nothing to do with the role of women in our society; it has just to do with typical human behavior.

In most cases, having sex signifies that the female is ready to get serious about the relationship. Guys, on the other hand, could have sex without such meaning. But if by having sex guys feel that they are being pressure into a relationship -- and in most cases guys feel that way whether the girl means it or not -- and they have not yet had enough time to conclude they are ready to be serious with her, they are quite likely to be scared away.

My point is: make sure the guy has had enough time to develop feelings for you so that he's ready to commit when you two have sex. This is even more important because girls are more likely to start liking a guy with a relationship in mind from day one, but very often a guy will go out with a girl because he likes her boobs, her ass, or something else as trivial. Therefore, it takes guys longer to develop serious feelings for a girl than a girl for a guy. Having sex before he develops those deeper feelings runs the risk of him fleeing. It's easy for him to run away when he thinks of you as just a pair of pretty nipples but much harder once he starts thinking of you as the mother of his children.

So, give a guy enough time to develop deeper feelings for you before you ask him to be in a relationship, which you can do explicitly with words or implicitly with sex. Hence, my advice that girls should wait to have sex.

Of course, there are many people, boys and girls, to whom sex is purely a casual activity and the above does not apply, but those kinds of people aren't likely to be the ones writing to me about this issue.

In your case, Lindsey, forget about the slut label -- by the way, that's usually something that women call each other, not something that guys think -- and just concentrate on whether you think he has developed deep feelings for you. If so, heck girl, jump his bones like he's a trampoline! :)