Dear Claudia,
You may not be able to print this one, but here it goes. I have been divorced for about six years, and have not dated. Until now. I recently met a man I am VERY attracted to and have been out with him a few times. We have also spent quite a bit of time talking on the phone. I like him a lot. I have not been on the dating “scene” for a very, very long time. I am very conflicted about the right time to “get intimate.” Any suggestions?
— New to Dating
Dear New to Dating,
Before I got married, actually, LONG before I got married, I took almost all the classes on dating that were offered in Boston. I learned “the rules,” “guerilla tactics to dating” “1,001 ways to flirt,” “finding and creating your soul-mate” ... you get the picture. Despite the many, many different approaches to dating, there was never any disagreement among the workshop leaders about the right time to get intimate before commitment. They all said the same thing: DON’T DO IT! Then everybody would groan.
One day, one of these teachers left her job at the Boston Center for Adult Education and I toyed around with the idea of applying for it. After all, I was not only a psychoanalyst, but I also had also myself been on the dating scene for years. Finally, I applied. “What’s your angle?” they wanted to know. “I help people explore their feelings about intimacy and dating.” I said. “Oh, wow” they said. “That’s new!” I got the job and for the next 12 years of leading that workshop, the question as to when to get intimate never came up. Not once.
I hope you are wondering why, because I found the answer out in the privacy of my analytic office, where sooner or later, people tell me everything. The reason the question of when to get intimate did not need to get discussed in public is because most consenting adults, despite what the experts recommended, were usually not waiting for commitment to get intimate. And they felt somewhat embarrassed about it, as if they were the only ones.
These consenting adults did in fact often wish they had listened to the experts. It can be awkward figuring out how to return to being relative strangers in the morning, or becoming attached to someone physically who was just out for a good time. On the flip side of these people were the people who were waiting too long to get intimate. They had their own set of personal problems – trying to pretend they wanted to continue getting to know the other person mentally when all they could really think about was well, you know. So this is my happy news of the day: whatever you decide to do will present its own set of problems, and the timing may never be right.
