Survey says sex on the first date isn't as bad as we think

A new survey conducted by Cosmopolitan finds that most of us think first-date sex is totally acceptable.

How long do you wait in a new relationship before having sex? It's a deeply personal decision — some people think waiting until marriage is the right choice, while others see no problem with having sex on the first date.

A new Cosmopolitan magazine survey of 1,000 people ages 18 to 35 found that 38.6 percent of women and 44.4 percent of men copped to having sex on the first date. Also, 44.5 percent of women — and 58.6 percent of men — said they know couples who started their relationship by having sex on the first date.

"38.6 percent of women and 44.4 percent of men copped to having sex on the first date."

Our attitudes about first-date sex might be changing, but the Cosmo survey shows that women still experience a serious stigma for getting between the sheets on date one. According to the results, 82.6 percent of women believe men think less of a woman who has sex on the first date. Another 63.5 percent of women said that at some point, they've wanted to have sex on the first date but didn't go through with it because they didn't want the guy to get the wrong idea.

The survey shows it's (mostly) not true: Over 67 percent of guys polled said they "absolutely don't" think less of a woman if she gets into bed on the first date.

"If there's chemistry, there's chemistry, and from the guy's perspective, it doesn't really matter if we hook up on date one or date seven," Jeff Wilser, co-author of It's Okay to Sleep with Him on the First Date: And Every Other Rule of Dating, Debunked, told Cosmo.

Our question: What's up with the other 33 percent? Get with it, guys. Seriously.

Ultimately, a romp between the sheets should be a decision between you and your partner. If you both agree to it, have fun!

"In this day and age, more people recognize sex as an important component of a successful relationship, not something to be ashamed of," Justin Lehmiller, Ph.D., a social psychologist at Harvard who studies relationships and sexuality, told Cosmo. "For those people, it's important to establish sexual compatibility early on, and having sex on the first date may be the right move for them."

And if you're not sure about having sex on the first date? Listen to your instincts —?and never feel pressured to go through with sex if you're not ready.

How do you feel about having sex on the first date?

Sound off below!

50 Crazy sex facts for the modern woman
Oral sex: How to get over your insecurity
Dating with STDs online and off

View the original article here

Have you been watching ... First Dates?

First Dates is set in a restaurant, and the show flits from table to table taking the temperature of how the date is going. Photograph: Ryan Mcnamara

Now that it's halfway through its run, the unique selling point of Channel 4's First Dates has become unmistakably clear: it's a dating show about dating. This is almost unprecedented. Almost every other dating show around at the moment is so concerned with pairing people up – blindly flinging strangers together in a giddy, lowered-expectation, 3am small-town nightclub rush of noise and colour – that what actually happens when these people have to spend time with each other is only vaguely gestured at.

Not on First Dates, though. First Dates is all about the actual date itself. Although it has a fascinating process – viewers at home can apply online to date people onscreen, in order to appear on the following week's show – that's hardly dealt with at all. Instead, the whole show follows what happens in the glorious window between the moment two strangers meet for the first time and the moment they're finally allowed to clank down their cutlery, sigh with relief and pelt off in different directions as fast as their legs will carry them.

On the surface, First Dates doesn't look as if it has much new to offer. It's a fixed-rig documentary, just like 90% of Channel 4's current output. It's The Fried Chicken Shop with tablecloths. It's a more awkward The Hotel. It's 24 Hours In Er & Um. But here, with the possible exception of A&E, the format is at its strongest. Set in a restaurant, the show flits from table to table, taking the temperature of how profoundly awkward one date is, before moving on to another table, invariably one where the couple are having the time of their lives purely because they're blootered on four bottles of wine.

Obviously, a series such as First Dates lives or dies by its characters, and in that regard the producers have either been very shrewd or very lucky. Put, say, me in a first-date environment – worse still, a blind date that is being broadcast on television – and I'd burn up, anxiously mutter a string of unintentional insults, and try to escape through the toilet window a nanosecond after the waiter had brought the bread basket to the table. Chances are you'd be the same. But First Dates has a glut of incredible peacocks to choose from.

Two weeks ago, for instance, we met a nice old man who used to make porn films, and chose to mention this to his date at the earliest possible opportunity. To her eternal credit, she managed to take this news completely in her stride. "Have you got a biggun, then?" she replied between sips of her drink. And then there's Rajan, who is currently in danger of becoming the show's star attraction. In episode two he scared off one prospective date by aggressively maintaining his right not to dance in a nightclub. In last week's episode his opening salvo was: "It's OK, I like curvy women." That meal ended prematurely, with Rajan calling for the bill after he took offence at a passing comment and started yelling "RED FLAG! RED FLAG!" over and over again like a Brick Tamland robot that someone had just spilled juice on.

By dealing with the innately horrible process of dating – the drooping shoulders, the sly watch-checking, the profoundly lonely moment that you realise the universe is a howling void and you're going to die alone – instead of, say, Paddy McGuinness bellowing and pulling faces, First Dates is easily the most human dating show I've seen for years. Admittedly I have to watch about 60% of it through my fingers, but I do still watch it. A second series can't come quickly enough.

View the original article here

Internet dating: how do you decide who pays on a first date?

'Personally I don't like to be paid for on a date; it makes me feel uncomfortable, like you are not parting on even ground.' Photograph: Getty

Ever since I started writing about dating in Manchester, there has been one topic on which everyone I bump into has an opinion or anecdote: the first date.

The general consensus is that this primary stage of courtship holds the potential to be a universally soul-destroying experience – and a far cry from the image of two impossibly attractive people falling in love over champagne and tapas that dating sites would have you believe. It can all too often be a few hours of awkward conversation while staring intently at the emergency exits of a local bar working out your exit strategy.

Vacuum cleaners: not a good first date accessory. (Alamy)

You only have to scroll down the comments section of my first blog to read some absolute belters of first date stories. My favourite was the guy who admitted turning up on a first date brandishing a hoover and a shredder he'd just purchased from Argos, the latter of which his date carried for him to and from the restaurant. There was no follow-up date for the guy, or for his hoover, or his poor, lonely, loveless shredder.

Many of my friends have also come forth with tales of dating woe; these include one friend who ended up in the back of a police car due to his date thinking she was being kidnapped by their taxi driver (she wasn't); or the friend whose date repeatedly stroked a mole on her face and referred to it as her "pet" throughout the whole day.

One of my good friends has just embarked on her maiden voyage of internet dating this month and has managed to rack up quite a repertoire of disappointment in just a few weeks.

Her first ever internet date was rudely interrupted by her immune system, which inconveniently announced she had caught a stomach bug. So rather than concentrating on stimulating conversation, all her efforts were channelled into clinging on to some dignity in her local pub in Marple.

Her second date, who she was really looking forward to meeting, proceeded to repeatedly remind her it was her round as soon as he'd finished his drink, asked her for money to go to the bar and then ended the date by staring deeply into her eyes and announcing their "children would be beautiful". Which, she felt – after knowing someone for a grand total of about four hours and having no money left to start a family due to excessive round buying – was slightly jumping a massive cannon of a gun.

The issue of who pays on a first date is a subject close to the heart of Manchester-based blogger Cubicgarden, who wrote a blog about how my first column had irked him. Which in turn irked me a bit right back. So I got in touch with him to see if we could meet up on a non-date and iron out the irks.

Cubicgarden turned out to be a brilliant chap. He's a human dating Wikipedia, taking great interest in – and blogging about – everything from the technology to the dynamics involved in meeting someone new. His top topic being Who Pays On A First Date? We debated the topic over breakfast at FYG in the Northern Quarter last week. Personally I don't like to be paid for on a date; it makes me feel uncomfortable, like you are not parting on an even ground.

He regaled a tale that qualified my feelings about this further. A lady friend of his on a first date offered to pay her share but graciously accepted being paid for on the insistence of her date. She was then asked to pay back the money by said date when she turned down seeing him again due to there being no spark. Wow.

Over breakfast he also flagged up a couple of dating-themed TV programmes that have popped up recently on Channel 4. Dates, a dramatised series of first-date scenarios, for the first 2 episodes seemed a little far fetched. A bit like the cast of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps had grown up, found themselves in that there London and were being taken advantage of by savvy southerners they had met off the interwebs. But it was still very good TV and worth watching. By episode three the gorgeous Mia had gone on a date with a doctor, managing to convince him to smuggle her into his hospital where she posed as a doctor and wreaked some medical-related datey havoc.

I was about to go on my first date with Mr Facestalk from my last article around the same time. He too is an A&E doctor and so I was expecting great things from this first date. According to Dates, and from memory at least one episode out of every series of Casualty, I was destined to end up in A&E scrubs, pouting while performing a tracheotomy with an empty biro.

The diagnosis of bum scabies is not a first date winner. (Getty)

We met up at Parlour in Chorlton, and immediately my pupils did that dilating thing that subtly gives away your synapses shouting "I fancy your face!!". I already knew his profile pictures were not raging lies due to my outing myself the week earlier for having a good flick through his Facebook pictures, but in the flesh he was even lovelier.

We hit it off immediately, and so without thinking I broke two of my first date rules and went for a quiet walk in secluded woodland, down the side of a deserted river with a man I'd just met off the internet. Luckily, doctors come with a CRB check so I figured this would be OK. Well, to be exact, it was a walk through Chorlton Waterpark over to Jackson's boat pub. He didn't murder me, nor me him. So far so good.

We were getting on brilliantly when the drunkest person in the pub stumbled over. He approached us because I am "a ginger", and so was he. And in his drunken state I appeared to be a big ginger homing beacon attracting him like a pissed moth.

On asking my date what he did for a living and my date replying that he was a doctor, the drunk then stood up, dropped his trousers, bared his backside and presented us with what was "one of the worst cases" of bum scabs my date had ever seen. I thought putting on my anorak on because it was raining had killed the romance a little, however bum scabies pretty much batted the romance out of the beer garden and over to the other side of Sale.

My date then dutifully diagnosed him and advised him to stay off the beer as that was likely to be causing the issue, to which the drunk gracefully told him to fuck off and waddled back over to the other side of the beer garden.

It was time to leave; there had been no biro tracheotomies or flirting with a defibrillator, but this was Chorlton and not telly so we kept it real, went back to his and ate a couple of kebabs in the back of his campervan while listening to some music. (Not a euphemism!).

As for who paid? We split it down the middle.

View the original article here

Dating questions answered: Should he pay on a first date?

Dating can be a minefield of questions and concerns whether you're on a first date, a third or you haven't even asked him out yet. That's why we're answering some of the most common dating questions with the help of some experts, starting with: Should he pay on a first date? Stay tuned for more questions later this month.

Paying for the date defines the date as an actual date, says April Masini, relationship expert behind the critically acclaimed Ask April advice column and author of four books on dating including Date Out of Your League. “If he pays for the first date, the date is clearly a date and it's not 'hanging out.' This is important so that you both understand that you're dating and not stepping into that swampland better known as the friend zone,” she explains. “When he pays for the date and picks you up, drops you off and does other things associated with dating and not hanging out, there is less confusion in the relationship.”

It happened to her: "I once went out with a guy a few times, to a bar for a few drinks and then to a movie and we each paid our own way. It turned out that this guy wasn't actually interested in me, at least not as more than a friend. Lesson learned. I totally take into consideration whether a guy pays to make sure he's actually into me." Tonya, San Antonia, Texas

When he pays for the first date, that gives you insight into his fiscal self, notes Masini. You get to know what he's like when it comes to spending money. “This is an important part of who he is and a great way to learn about him and to be able to decide if he's someone you want to continue dating,” she explains. “For instance, if he insists on splitting the bill, you can expect more of the same, and less generosity than you might be looking for in a relationship. Or if he's someone who's toting a Groupon and a Living Social coupon and whips them both out at happy hour where your date is virtually free, he may be someone who's always looking to cut corners.”

It happened to her: "My ex-husband was notoriously cheap. We rarely went out for dinner, vacations were unheard of unless you count his parents' condo in Florida. Looking back, he was always tight with money, even on our first few dates where he made me split the bill every time. I should have paid better attention to that fact!" Natasha, San Jose, California

Paying for the first date also shows he's invested in dating and isn't just looking for a good time (or a booty call). After all, dating is expensive. “After a guy adds up the price of dinner, the movie, the grooming expenses, the gas, the car maintenance he has to pay for to make sure he can pick you up?— it's expensive to date,” affirms Masini. “So if a guy is paying for that first date, it means he's invested in the process. He wants to spend the money because he's looking for a real relationship,” she explains. “Someone who's just looking for a good time isn't interested in investing in a first date the same way someone who springs for an impressive concert and Champagne is.”

It happened to her: "I honestly don't mind chipping in for a date. I'm not one of those women who needs car doors opened for her or flowers every other day. But it really does feel like someone cares about the outcome of a date when they pay or at least offer to pay. It's not the be all and end all, but it can speak volumes about how interested someone really is." Bethany, Newark, New Jersey

Tips for a first date that will ensure a second date
Date disaster: Mistakes you don't realize you're making
A guide to letting your guard down

View the original article here

Elizabeth Taylor's first wedding dress sells... for $188K!

The dress Elizabeth Taylor wore to the first of her nine weddings just went up for auction. Let's just say it's a little out of our price range.

The dress Elizabeth Taylor wore to marry Conrad Hilton in 1950 was just auctioned off at Christie's in London — and it ended up bringing in way more than what the auction house expected.

The dress — created by costume designer Helen Rose — sold at just over $188,000 to an unnamed buyer. That's like $917 for every day of Taylor's 205-day marriage.

"The dress is inextricably tied to the golden age of Hollywood, as well as to the extraordinary life and career of the star who wore it," Christie's director, Nicolette Tomkinson, told Vogue of the white satin gown covered in bugle beads and seed pearls. "Since it was unveiled, it has attained global appreciation, resulting in competitive bidding for it today."

It's a gorgeous dress, but it's from a particularly painful time in the late actress's life. Taylor married the hotelier when she was 18 — and she later accused him of "extreme mental cruelty" during their union.

"The honeymoon in Europe lasted two weeks," Taylor wrote in her 1965 memoir. "I should say the marriage lasted for two weeks. Then came, yours sincerely, disillusionment — rude and brutal."

Taylor, of course, went on to marry eight more times — including two marriages to the "love of her life," Richard Burton.

She eventually swore off marriage when her marriage to construction worker Larry Fortensky ended in 1995.

"You don't get over men like the flu," Taylor said after her divorce in 1996, according to the Associated Press. "Every divorce is like a little death."

"I said I'm through with marriage, but I'm not through with men — that wouldn't be realistic."

Is Elizabeth Taylor's wedding dress worth $188K?

Sound off below!

Copy Kristin Cavallari's wedding dress for less
90210 's Shenae Grimes weds in a black Vera Wang gown
Jennifer Aniston hates styling her hair

View the original article here

Avoid These First Date Blunders

Getty Images

"Your date doesn’t want to hear about which Lannister you hate the most." 

You’ve got everything planned out: what to wear, dinner reservations, suggestions for where to go for a drink afterward, a few witty anecdotes -- this is going to be the best first date in the history of first dates. But then, as you’re waiting for dessert, you go on a 15-minute rant about your ex. Crash and burn.

Sometimes we spend so much time thinking about what to get right on a first date, we forget to plan for what could go wrong. And what could go wrong is you.

If you want to impress on the first date, make sure you’re prepared. Give yourself ample time to finish work, do errands and get ready for your night out. You don’t want to be that person who has to send “just one last email for work,” or show up with your gym bag. If you’re running late, chances are you won’t be looking your best either and you definitely want to be dressed your best. When people are late, they tend to get flustered, and the reality is that your date is going to be judging and evaluating every little thing -- so you don’t want to do something out of character.

#WhatNotToDoOnAFirstDate ask what she wants to do for the date.

— Greek Gent (@GreekGent) April 25, 2013

Everything in moderation, right? You might be hungry, but it isn't the best idea to try and get to the bottom of an Olive Garden’s bottomless bowl of pasta (bonus tip: don’t go to the Olive Garden on a first date). You also don’t want to overdo the booze. A drink or two to calm the nerves can often help the night go smoother, but once you’ve polished off your sixth vodka soda, chances are things are going to get sloppy (and not in a good way).

#WhatNotToDoOnAFirstDate - Don't get loaded, it's not a bachelor party. trib.al/Pkt0hSn

— AskMen (@AskMen) April 25, 2013

And while you want the conversation to progress naturally, also make sure not to dwell on any topics for too long. Sure, you may the biggest Game of Thrones fan, but maybe your date is just being polite and doesn’t really want to hear about which Lannister you hate the most. Next Page >>

View the original article here