After a failed 3 year relationship where I was led to believe we were building a future together, I am not so guarded that I want to wait to have sex until marriage for my next relationship. I am concerned about my success...

[SadTexanChick]

After a failed 3 year relationship where I was led to believe we were building a future together, I am NOW so guarded that I want to wait to have sex until marriage for my next relationship. I am concerned about my success...

I am 33 years old and I am on a timeline.

My relationship ended about 2 weeks ago so I am giving myself like a month or so to heal, but I do plan on jumping into the dating world by the end of the summer and I will it make it very clear that I want a proposal, engagement, marriage within the next 12-15 months, and then a family in 2 years or so (that is not so strict, but I definitely am not dating for more than 1 year or so without a proposal and marriage soon after at this point).

I also do not want to have sex with any other man unless he's my husband/soul mate/life partner. This last relationship was my 3rd one, and all 3 of my relationships were long term (3+ years) and I really thought "that guy" was the one. So at this point, I just want to wait until we're married for sex. And if we're on the same page as far as timelines go, I don't think waiting 12 months for sex is an impossible task for an adult to accomplish.

Would freezing your eggs take the pressure off yourself and any relationship you might have?

The only way you will find someone like that is to find someone religious, of any faith, who does not believe in sex before marriage and is dating with the intention of marriage so would also be happy with a short amount of time before proposal and marriage.

I highly doubt your ex used you for just sex for 3 years if you were in a relationship together, unless you were a causal relationship that you had hoped would be more?

If you don’t put a time frame on it it will work. i took this approach for a while and lots of guys happy to go on dates etc and you can usually tell if there is chemistry without the sex.

what I will say though is watch out for abusers. I wasn’t rushing but made it clear I wanted marriage and kids. Thought I’d found a decent guy so we did end up getting married fairly fast as soon as we were married he changed into an abusive arsehole. I personally think saying I wanted to move fast put a massive target on my head and with hindsight I should have said no sex before marriage but won’t be moving fast. Actually with full hindsight I wish I’d just had a baby alone with a donor

I don’t think it makes any difference if you have sex on day on or day 90
if the person really likes you they will stay with you

if he doesn’t then he will hang around long to try and get sex and dump you anyway

i met my husband slept with him on the first night
got married within 4 months

been married 25 years

No kids together though
but he was upfront that he didn’t want any more kids and I already had one and wasn’t bothered about having any more

I think you need to come to terms with the fact that it may not happen and you may not meet a life partner and have kids.

Don’t focus all your energy on that alone, but focus on what you have already. Then start broadening your horizons with travel and experiences which will also widen your likelihood of meeting someone and MAYBE achieving your dream.

If you are so very desperate for a child then maybe it is also time to explore how you might do that alone.

OP do you enjoy sex. It sounds like you maybe see sex as something men
want and women give and you want to hold off giving until they give you what you want.
by doing this you are making things very transactional and are committing to only a partial relationship until you get what you want. Can you see how unhealthy this is?

I totally understand and respect your intentions here. Half the battle is being clear with yourself about exactly what you want from your next relationship.

I'm Muslim and found my husband on a Muslim dating app, and did what you're proposing to do and it worked, but it's a lot more achievable in some sort of religious context, be it Islam or any other.

From a non religious point of view, I would date people and after the third date would be making it very clear that I'm dating to find someone to marry and that I'd like children. I wouldn't say the 'in 12 months part' because that's a bit prescriptive, but I would not be saying away from making my needs/wants clear. Then pause and let the man continue that thread of conversation. If he wants the same he'll probably carry on in a positive way and want to discuss more. You'll hopefully get a feel for who is actually ready and willing for that commitment and who isn't.

I also wouldn't mention the no-sex thing, because again it's too prescriptive. But I would be withholding sex until I was totally satisfied that my partner wanted the same things.

You also need to suggest things along the lines of getting ready to marry, like meeting the family, meeting the friends, readiness to buy property, how you'd like to raise kids, all that long term stuff.

You're on the right track - just soften the approach a little. And be ready to ditch people who shy away from adult conversations about commitment and future. There are a lot of man children out there. Don't be scared to scare them away, you don't need them anyway.

I’m an Orthodox Jew, (not Ultra Orthodox), dating for 8-12 months and then engagement is normal. I think that despite the ongoing stigma about living together it’s rare not to have sex unless you are in an arranged marriage process (dating to marriage in 3-4 months). I’m not saying it’s unheard of but I think better to be clear that you are dating with a view to marriage, and that you won’t be moving in together, and that if not ready to commit within 9-12 months it’s clearly not right.

Of your last one lasted 3 years then it wasn't just about sex.

I think you're nuts personally. I'd never marry anyone without road testing them first. They could be shit..or worse have some really fuckikg weird kink ..

Good luck tho

Completely unrealistic. Most people want to try before they buy! This includes sex and living together, divorce because you aren’t compatible is very expensive.

How about concentrating on having fun for a few months and see what happens, you may meet mr right

I never said one shouldn't enjoy the journey, I'm just saying it's bad advice to tell someone who's 33 years old, with a biological clock ticking, to not approach dating with some determination and consideration. When you're just focusing on having fun, you are not selective and end up wasting your time on people who are entirely wrong for you.

No offence, but making someone wait 6-8 weeks is nothing. Most people can be patient for that long. Try make someone wait until marriage, and a lot less people will stick around.

I love this advice and I'm trying to let go. I feel like that's exactly what I need and everything will take care of itself.

Its a lot easier said than done though 🥲

This is exactly how I feel. I am not opposed to sex and I have been very open to having sex in a relationship, but it's gotten to the point where I feel like most men will not give a woman wife status if they're getting the milk for free.

I never thought about it like this until my most recent relationship ended. I am done being with men who want all the benefits of a wife, but as soon as we want to make it a reality for us, they drag their feet in uncertainty.

Well his words to me a couple of weeks before I ended it were something along the lines of "We're basically already married" meaning we already share a bed so he was ok with him dragging his feet on even just looking at engagement rings after 3 years! Then anytime we didn't have sex when HE wanted to, for whatever reason, he'd be mopey or cold towards me because I didn't "take care of his needs." It was all so sexual which I was fine with, but not without also planning our future together.

I'm not opposed to arranged marriages either. My parents were actually arranged in India 😅 But nothing has come for me from that end either.

I am not opposed to sex and I have been very open to having sex in a relationship, but it's gotten to the point where I feel like most men will not give a woman wife status if they're getting the milk for free.

This is a very transactional way to look at sex and relationships IMO.

1. You should be having sex because you want to, not because it's something you feel the man in your relationship wants
2. If you want to have sex then you've not 'lost' anything by doing so and presumably gain something in enjoying yourself
3. You're not a cow and sex is not an asset you're giving away, it's an activity you do with someone else.

He would have been even worse if you were married
stroppy cause “you aren’t taking care of his neeeds “
Chuck in a baby or two mortgage both of you working
taking care of his needs becomes a low priority for most women in those first few months / years

if was stroppy before any kids and full time pressure of being a father / husband then you had a lucky escape
he would have been one of those guys expecting sex 3 days after you have given birth and shagging around “as you don’t take care of his needs”

That's how I felt towards my ex... I never slept with him unless I wanted to as well. But his reluctant behavior when I started asking about us taking the next steps in our relationship, started to turn me off sexually from him, and I think that's when I knew something was really wrong.

If your 3 year relationships ended, what makes you think that a marriage entered into after only 12 months will succeed?

I honestly think this timeline is so prescriptive that it makes you sound controlling and, if I'm honest, desperate just to be married.

And "wife status"? Seriously? OP I feel like you need to value yourself as a person in your own right more, and worry less about being promoted to the "status" of some guy's wife

it's gotten to the point where I feel like most men will not give a woman wife status if they're getting the milk for free

I think this is a very outdated way of looking at things.

Sex should not be something you do for a man because he is willing to commit to you. It should be something you both want to do because you're attracted to each other, regardless of your marital status.

Many couples find that the amount of sex they have drops quite drastically during pregnancy and the first few years after having children. If that happens, it's important to be able to remember a time when you were having lots of great sex in the hopes of getting back there once your children are through the baby years and you're less tired. If you haven't had sex before your marriage and then you get pregnant quite quickly, the danger is that you won't have any real experience of having a healthy sex life together to fall back on, and you might just think you're not sexually compatible.

In my opinion the first couple of years of a relationship are when you should be really enjoying getting to know each other sexually. A year of abstinence with the aim of getting a ring on your finger and a positive pregnancy test as soon as possible doesn't sound very conducive to long term happiness.

To be quite honest with you, I think any man who is more likely to want to marry you if you don't have sex before marriage is probably going to be a bit odd, and maybe not the best choice for a life partner. (Assuming he's not waiting for marriage himself for religious reasons.) It is unhealthy to place too much moral value on someone not having sex.

Ironically, I actually think it makes sex more of a transactional thing, not less.

The majority of men, including the ones who, like you, want to get married and have children, want a life partner who wants to have lots of great sex with them.

If you treat sex as something you do to get something else you want (such as a wedding ring, or a baby), the logical conclusion a lot of men are going to come to is that you don't enjoy sex in its own right and will stop doing it once you've got everything you want out of it. And most men who want to get married and have kids don't want to be getting divorced after ten years because they haven't had sex for the last five.

If I were a man, I would see abstaining from sex before marriage (when you have had sexual partners before) and wanting to get married and have children on a particularly tight timescale, as big red flags.

It would tell me that you don't particularly want to have sex with me, and that you're more interested in being married and having children in general, rather than specifically being married to and having children with me.

I get where that's coming from. But I just feel so broken after giving it my all this last relationship, only to see him still dragging his feet, that I feel like I was just taken advantage of. And when I started to stop being taken advantage of, that's when we fell apart.

He was perfectly happy with us dating for the next 5 years to make up his mind. We were having sex almost every weekend for reference, and we only saw each other on the weekends for the majority of the relationship.

At the age of 33 I would be prepared to wait 5 years with the RIGHT man. But the RIGHT man wouldn’t want you to wait 5 years.

You need to raise your standards and change your perspective on what sex is in a relationship.

I wish more women would realize that their power in a relationship lies in their confidence in knowing that they do not need to be in a relationship to be happy. A man is terrified of a women who won’t put up with nonsense and is prepared to rather do life on her own that accept less than she deserves. The rotten eggs will sort themselves out this way and you won’t waste more time than necessary on them.

Freeze your eggs lady.

But it wouldn't have been different if you had decided not to have sex until marriage.

Perhaps you would have split up sooner and "wasted" less time. But if you were going to have the same approach with the next man it would most likely not have worked out with him either.

Your relationship didn't end because you were having sex. It ended because your ex boyfriend didn't want to spend the rest of his life with you.

And I hate to say it, but "almost every weekend" is not that often for a young childless couple to be having sex. Maybe one of the reasons it didn't work out between you was because you weren't having enough sex.

Do you actually enjoy sex?