I won't lie. I have a hangover. It's the hangover that so many women of the Sex and the City generation are experiencing. The truth about single women and mothers in a high-supply sexual economy doesn't look anything like those glamorous Sex and the City follow-up movies. None of my girlfriends ended up marrying "Big." None of us have the genes or moxie to vamp like Samantha. None are in a storybook family like Charlotte. And no one can afford that wardrobe!
Instead, two of my friends likely got HPV and cancer that led to a hysterectomy before they had a consistent guy and children. Another girlfriend had a teenage pregnancy and lost her youth in parenthood. One friend did score by getting a "stringer" (a commitment-phobe who strings a woman along for years) to marry her one weekend in Vegas. He then dangled a possible baby in front of her for another decade until her fertility window slammed shut. She's divorced now, raising a dog.
And me? Well, I was a real-life Carrie Bradshaw, writing books called The Boyfriend Test and The Girlfriend Test and championing women's sexual freedom. I had enough good sense to check my watch at midnight on my 35th New Year's Eve and make a resolution to find some sturdy sperm -- fast. I found it, encased in the body of a Greek god. I got in under the wire, giving birth at age 36 and again at 41. Soon after, my god-man slipped out under the wire and I was forced to sell on eBay every remnant from my Sex and the City days -- designer bags, shoes, jewelry -- so I could maintain a breastfeeding lifestyle without a male provider. I still feel lucky. Of all the women I ran with in my 20s and early 30s, I am the only one who was fortunate enough to become a mother. And I am blessed to have a close circle of accidental "aunties" for my kids.
This is the payback for sexual freedom: Men who won't commit. When sex rises in supply in a culture, men are less likely to commit to one woman, or they delay marriage until its too late. Thus women are being cheated out of motherhood or treading water as single mothers. We are a lost generation of women who were sold a false bill of goods about fertility, motherhood and female sexual freedom.
And for young women today, things are even worse. With men not using courtship to obtain sex, women have lost important rituals that gave them valuable information about a man's intentions. In this information vacuum, too many women are deluded in thinking that a sexual hook-up is a ticket in a husband lottery.
The answer of course is slow love. Research supports this. Nearly 90 percent of the fast movers in one study had broken up before one year.[1] However, if couples waited just 30 days before engaging in sex, 24 percent were still together a year later. That's a one in four chance.
Brave women in a high-supply sexual economy say no to low-criteria relationships. But it's hard. Because men have so much sexual power. Some of the researchers whom I interviewed even found that alarming numbers of young women are participating in unwanted sex. They are either doing particular acts that they don't feel comfortable with or having full-on intercourse with people they don't feel comfortable with.
And when you're having sex, you aren't developing the skills you'll need for a long-term relationship. Bottom line: Waiting to have sex prevents a whole lot of heartbreak and increases your chances for a long-term commitment.
"Delaying sex makes for a more satisfying and stable relationship later on," says Brigham Young University researcher Dean Busby, Ph.D. "In our research of more than 2,000 couples, those who had sex the earliest -- such as after the first date or within the first month of dating -- had the worst relationship outcomes."
Look for Dr. Wendy Walsh's The 30-Day Love Detox (Rodale Books) Valentine's Day, 2013.
References:
[1] Regnerus, M., & Uecker, J. (2011). Premarital sex in America: How you Americans meet, mate, and think about marrying. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
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Secondly, we're all "victims" of the modern culture, shaped more by Kim Kardashian's sex tape than the totality of Wendy's work (no criticism just a fact). While adopting the personal strategies Wendy extolls may help, life, especially mating, is still a game of sorts. There is no guarantee of any outcome.
I can go on, but sufficed to say - for those who have felt they made the wrong choices, rest assured, they were also the right choices in many ways. Secular humanism for one posits your past could not have been any other way, so in essence you had no choice - and you did the best you could based on the situation. In addition, while the love and compassion and other goodies you wanted to give to your children did not materialize, those same goodies were spread out to other people.
I slept with my wife within a week of meeting her and it's 13 years later, I'm still around, and we're doing just fine. A woman should go with her gut and if she makes a bad choice or a man leaves her, it's not some indictment of her, or men, or our culture. It's just that 1 person in a relationship realized they no longer wanted to be in that relationship and left. Nothing more.
We shouldn't focus our lives so much on having sex or finding the perfect partner. It is OK to be single and have a FWB or have a long term partner or even get married. What works best for one person or couple doesn't work for everybody
[typo]
Here's what I've seen happen: the women have started to be more "sexually free" and so the men end up putting in less effort in the courtship. I have guys send me messages and asking me to send photos, or be their "lingerie buddy," or come over and have a sleepover etc... These days, its so rare that you find that one gem that will blossom into a great love affair. Tons of women are having frivolous sex and it sets the bar low and at the end of the day we end up with the shorter end of the stick by becoming single mothers or used or disrespected etc!
Bottom line: keep it in your pants until you're sure his intentions are pure. Please stop ruining our futures and start having meaningful sex with partners who care about you! PLEASE! If this article is like a prophecy of our futures, stop devaluing our sexual values and start *honestly* evaluating what it is that you want out of life - frivolous sex or lasting, loving and meaningful relationships? If you're thinking "he'll probably like/love me more if I have sex with him," don't do it!
Dr. Wendy Walsh, you have COMPLETELY freaked me out about my future! I hope it doesn't end up like yours' and your friends'!
For me the sexual experiences with him were expressive of deep feeling, one for the other. My heart was broken--told him I could not be sexually involved with someone who didn't care about me. It ended. Had I NOT had sex with him and sought assurance that he cared for me, maybe he would have left (if he was only after sex), or he would have stayed knowing that that was my standard.
Why didn't I do this? I was following a cultural norm that sex is expected after or on the 3rd date--if I engaged, he would love me more. He didn't love me at all. Lesson: NO to sex until a guy shows you he cares about you, that he really wants to be in your life in a meaningful way. Sex and love go together. A hard line to tow if one is sexually attracted to the man, but it would have been the wiser choice, a choice I should have had the courage to follow.