9 Questions You Should Ask Someone Before You Sleep With Them

"Lets face it whilst asking personal and even intimate questions may not seem ideal for 

the romantic mood its the adult and responsible thing to do."          -  Susan

9 Questions You Should Ask Someone Before You Sleep With Them

We all want to get swept away in the romance or passion of a new relationship, but allowing your body to make decisions without any input from your brain is, usually, a recipe for disaster. While it may seem like an outstanding idea to follow your heart (or other more influential body organs) after you hit it off on a date and decide to become more intimate, certain truths may surface in the light of day that make you regret ever having had sex with your date.

You may find out, weeks later, that your attitudes about sex differ greatly — perhaps he views it as a pleasant escape from reality, while you deemed it a heartfelt spiritual connection and the start of a serious relationship (or vice versa). Maybe he has zero intention of sleeping with only one person until he's married, while you'd never dream of playing the field while you have working knowledge of every detail of another human's naked body (again, or vice versa). Since sex can mean very different things to different people, it's important to ask the right questions before doing it — it's even more important to feel like you can ask any question you deem necessary.

"Most women fail to ask any sort of questions before sex," says bestselling author and relationship expert Susan Winter. "Culturally, we've come to a time period being mute. In today's world of open sexuality, sex comes first and questions come after the fact. This is the wrong order. In fearing our prospective partner may feel uncomfortable with being asked questions, women have learned to not ask at all. Why blow the glow? We fear we'll come across as difficult, needy, or intrusive. Yet, all of the pain we experience is due to not knowing the type of experience we'll have, nor knowing the man's mindset and dating goals."

Here are nine questions experts say are important to ask prior to sex.

1. Are you looking for a casual hookup or are you hoping that sex will lead to something more long term?

Save yourself heartache by knowing beforehand what your partner's relationship plans are, says Astro-glide's Resident Sexologist Dr. Jess. "Many people make the mistake of acting first and discussing later, but because sexual values are highly variant (some see sex as a simple physical act and others value it as a means of connecting intimately) and deeply entrenched (we often assume others feel the same as we do) this can lead to confusion, conflict and hurt feelings," Dr. Jess says. "You don’t have to engage in a long, drawn-out discussion to gauge how your partner feels and you can simply open the conversation by expressing your needs/desires."

2. Are you married?

For obvious reason, you'll want to know if you're unknowingly agreeing to make yourself an accomplice in the ultimate act of betrayal. "Most people assume that they’re sleeping with someone who’s single, because they are, too," says April Masini, New York-based author of four relationship advice books and the AskApril advice column. "If you’re not sure, ask. And if you don’t trust your answer, do a little online research."

3. Have you been tested for STDs and when?

One of the first questions you ask should pertain to STDs. Even if your partner claims he/she has been tested and is clear of all sexually transmitted diseases, the results of a test can change with the person's next partner.

4. Are you sleeping with anyone else?

Don't assume your partner feels it is necessary to practice monogamy because you've had sex. If the act is merely physical to him, he may not be ready or willing to stop seeing other people — or sleeping with them. If that's not your MO, find out where you stand before you have sex.

5. Do you have children?

If you're heading over to his home and are not sure if he has children, Masini recommends getting your facts beforehand so that you don't bump into his 7-year-old — or 17-year-old — while making a naked, middle of the night bathroom run.

6. Do you know my ex?

It's a small world, one that seems to shrink even more when you become intimate with someone and later realise he knows 40 of your closest Facebook friends. "Stranger things have happened than sleeping with a great guy who you then find out is the first cousin of your ex," Masini says. "Do a little geography socialising about who you both know before sleeping with him."

7. Where do you work?

Again, the "It's a Small World After All" principle can become a scary one when you realise you have colleagues in common — or worse. "You don’t want to have a wild night of sex and go into the office only to find your lover is your new boss," Masini says. "Vet him before you sleep with him."

8. Will you wear a condom?

Psychotherapist Kelly Kitley encourages us to set expectations about birth control prior to sex, which will ensure we don't make poor decisions when passions are running high. "In the heat of the moment, partners often bypass this important component that helps prevent sexually transmitted diseases," Kitley says.

9. How do you feel about foreplay?

Here's one conversation you might actually enjoy having — one that can be a sexy turn-on and informative. "Attempt to talk about foreplay and/or sex before engaging in it to see how comfortable the person appears and/or their overall perception of sex," Kitley says. "It could be an indicator of how he might be in the bedroom. Although, be careful he’s not too suave or bragging — that might be a sign he’s all talk."


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The Mating Game Is Changing —And You Won't Believe How

"Why do people seem to not want to commit anymore? Is romance dead? Is it that there is to much choice, always looking for the next thrill, the next hit of excitement, the next instant gratification, so never to be content." - Susan

The Mating Game Is Changing —And You Won't Believe How

For better? For worse? It depends on what you want.

Yes, the matting game is changing. Dating is on the ropes. But more, the whole mating repertoire is shifting. Coyness is, well, not quite a crime (thank you, Andrew Marvell), but not a fashionable feint either, and certainly not an inherent attribute of females. And no, this has nothing to do with the Internet. It has to do with numbers. It turns out that they have changed a whole lot more than you might suspected, and probably without your awareness.

The way people match up varies according to how many partners they sense are available—no surprise there. And the number of men, and especially quality men, is declining relative to the number of women, especially for those of college age, when people are primed for pairing off, in the moment and as they march through post-college life. You’ve seen the headlines: Men are falling behind women by almost every measure there is—school completion rates, number of graduate degrees, labor force participation. It especially matters at college, where men and women are housed together in a more or less closed community. For every 60 women now at college, there are 40 men—that's 50 percent more women than men.

The gender ratio tends to be closer to 50-50 at highly selective schools—with an excess of applicants they can draw deeper into the pool to balance their classes. The gender mismatch at such schools is not one of numbers but, at some point, of quality. Complaints of college women that men “act like they’re in high school” or “don’t have it together” are not sour grapes or losers’ laments; they reflect a true and growing reality.

But what isn’t at all obvious is that the very desire to pair off—and especially on what terms—changes radically as one's number of possible mates changes, and in ways that are extremely counterintuitive. The surprise is that men are more apt to be single when men are rare than when men are abundant. They’re surrounded by potential partners but have little interest in committing to or marrying them.

When males are abundant (China, take note), on the other hand, they are especially eager to put considerable effort into finding a mate and settling down; marriage rates go up and crime rates go down. Conventional wisdom  would have us believe all that testosterone on the loose would lead to mayhem, including lots of promiscuity and maybe rampant violence—you know, rape, pillage, and plunder.

Not so.

It’s when males are in short supply that men turn promiscuous and spawn babies out of wedlock, and male violence rages: Male-male homicide rates go up; so do sexual assault rates. Men muster little energy for finding a mate and, preferring casual sex, happily engage in multiple relationships, University of Utah anthropologist Ryan Schacht reports in a recent issue of Royal Society Open Science.

Schacht studied a homogenous population in southwestern Guyana whose members, in search of work, moved to several geographically dispersed communities that consequently varied naturally in gender composition. There, he observed, the sex roles and mating efforts of men and women were not tethered to biology but instead varied significantly depending on numbers of the opposite sex. Mating dynamics are mating dynamics, and the same dynamics, Schacht says, likely apply on college campuses—and in other populations where males are in short supply, such as older adult communities.

The findings, Schacht reports, “reject simplistic labeling of reproductive roles by gender based on inherent sex differences.” In fact, there’s evidence from many studies that testosterone levels—which prime males for mating competition, or something—vary tremendously based on situational factors. They dip significantly, for example, among new fathers.

Women  are not destined to be coy or passive in the mating game. When they are the more numerous sex, they engage in sometimes fierce competition among themselves for the few available mates. Exhibit A might be Schacht’s home base, Utah, dominated by the Mormon Church. Such is the nature of Mormonism that men are apt to leave it while women are more likely to convert to it, and stay Mormon. That gives the community a strongly female-heavy sex ratio. It also gives Utah a wildly disproportionate rate of plastic surgery procedures—with higher rates of breast implants, nose jobs, all kinds of facial surgery, and Botox injections, even among college students.

It’s not that Utahans are vain, as Forbes magazine has claimed: They’re lonely. And they want a romantic partner. So do women outside Utah—say, in colleges across America—and to have one, they may feel compelled to behave in ways they are not entirely comfortable with, such as hooking up.

This is what I found when I interviewed young women for a recent article, Crisis U, on the declining mental health of college students. Relationships were the leading cause of distress, and women were especially distressed over breakups, typically due to “commitment issues” among men. Further, at least some of what is being reported as rape stems from regret over drink-fueled encounters devoid of emotional connection.

The distress also makes its presence felt in my email inbox. As Psychology Today’s advice columnist, I increasingly hear from young women who are dissatisfied with relationships that don’t even qualify as relationships. They meet a guy, he calls every couple of months, they spend a night or two together each time, and then they’re miserable because they’re emotionally attached to him and want more from him—for which he might even call them "needy" or "greedy," should they summon the courage to ask. 

It was in trying to understand this growing phenomenon that I turned to the literature for insight and discovered Schacht’s work. One of the novelties of his approach is to factor into research on mating what economists have known all along—that mating functions like a market in some ways, in response to the supply and demand of partners. Once he did, he found that those variations also change psychology.

“Relationship preferences and sexual behaviour of individuals are responsive to context,” Schacht says. “Men want fundamentally different things from relationships when males are rare than when they are abundant. The rare-male male is the stereotypical fling-seeking cad we expect him to be. However, the abundant-male male is the committed, devoted male from the age of Camelot.”

For the generation now coming of age—and for successive ones as long as males continue to fall behind—the dearth of good men at an important life juncture has repercussions for mental health. To name just one, success at dating and mating affects self-esteem.

With our egocentric bias, we think that everything in our life happens because of us individually, due to one characteristic or another, and, when we don’t get what we want, a characteristic that is in some way flawed. We probably seriously underestimate how much factors having nothing to do with us, but everything to do with our environment, including demographics, affect the shape of our lives.

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Why Do Men Pay For Sex? 5 Guys Tell Us What Their Motives Are

I think men pay for the services of  prostitutes because this enables them to be themselves, they can ask and pay for whatever  they require without fear of judgement or ridicule. Many men and women are not able to tell their partners what they would really like to try sexually and end up paying for the services of a prostitute.  However I am not in favour of this happening whilst you are in a relationship or married, its better to try and talk over your sexual requirements with your partner, maybe if they are really bazaar you should think really carefully. 

Prostitution is one of the oldest surviving professions and will continue to be so, and so be it,  as long as it is done responsibly and nobody is forced into it for the purpose of other peoples  financial gain. 

It has been said that  women who turn to prostitution  or in some cases men are being exploited, but I don't see it like that, how I see it is that the only ones being exploited are the people who hand over  the money for sex.  What do you think?        -   Susan

                  

Why Do Men Pay For Sex? 5 Guys Tell Us What Their Motives Are

It's the oldest transaction in the world but in 2014, when casual sex is easy to come by for free, why do men visit prostitutes?

1. "Sleeping with a prostitute almost ended my relationship"

Jamie, 31, an office worker from Liverpool, says:

"About six years ago I went to Amsterdam with four single friends on a lads' holiday. We said we were going for the 'coffee shops' but I think we all knew beforehand that we'd also be keen to sleep with a prostitute while we were there. So late on the Saturday night we all split up and wandered through the glass doorways which have women posing behind them.

"It took me a while to pick the girl I wanted and the whole experience felt a bit like having the oil changed on my car – it was quick, it was pedestrian and I really didn't feel much. I don't remember thinking about the woman's situation and why she was making money that way. I think most blokes presume that the woman is well-paid and is doing it by choice - that's what we want to believe anyway.

"I didn't feel any guilt about it – just vague disappointment that it was rubbish sex with a girl who I don't think really wanted to be there. I used a condom – I thought it would be insane not to, and I didn't have a choice anyway. She told me she would never have had sex without one.

"It was only when I moved in with my current fiancé that I felt guilty about it. I felt I had to be completely honest with her about my past so eventually I did tell her that I went with a prostitute once. She was very, very upset about it and I had to move back in with my parents for a few days. She told me that it would take her a long time to reconcile her image of me with what I did that night. I think her main point was that I didn't need to ever do that as I was attractive enough to pull women without paying for it. It took a lot of reassuring on my behalf to convince her that I wouldn't go and do it again.

"I still know people who sleep with prostitutes and whereas in the past I would feel sorry for them, now I feel angry with them. Not only is it something that will come back and bite you one day, from a purely selfish point of view it's also pointless, in that it's wasting money on bad sex that benefits nobody at all."

2. "I sleep with escorts when I travel for work"

Sam, 28, a sales executive from London, says: 

"I think I've probably slept with around a dozen escort girls while I've been in the Far East. I'm there constantly for my work and it is definitely a more accepted part of male work culture in places like Bangkok, Seoul and Hong Kong than it is in Europe. I've even heard of Christmas parties where the CEO pays for his best workers to have a girl for the night.

"I know the best agencies so I normally phone ahead and get a girl to have dinner and cocktails with me and then we'll go back to my hotel room for sex. I don't think there's really any moral element to it. I know that these agencies treat the women well – they get to keep a big chunk of what they earn for themselves and, from talking to them, it seems the majority do it because it's easy hours and better money than they could earn elsewhere.

"I like the women to be intelligent and sophisticated as I'll be taking them to expensive places. I prefer it if we can hold a good conversation but if she really is smoking hot in the looks department I tend to just do most of the talking myself and let her relax.

"I'm single at the moment because of my constant travelling but I'm certain that I'm intelligent enough to be able to separate sex with an escort girl from sex with a long term partner. I think that would be like confusing a hotel room with a home. With escort girls, it's pure short-term satisfaction and I like the total lack of emotional involvement and the fact that there is no deception. I want sex. She wants money. And if we can both enjoy ourselves in the process then so much the better.

"I tell my close friends what I do and I think on the whole other men are sympathetic. There's nothing sleazy about it. I don't go to brothels and I don't think I exploit vulnerable women. What I do is above board and not hurting anyone. What's more, the sex is almost always very enjoyable. The fact that we don't know each other lets me experiment and have adventures in a way I'd be nervous to with a long term partner.

"When I decide to settle down with somebody I wouldn't ever tell them about these things. I can't see the point in hurting somebody over something that means so little and happened in my past.

3. "I feel guilty and ashamed"

Chris, 30, a housing officer from Brighton, says:

"It's hard for me to talk about this as I still can't actually believe that I did something so stupid. My girlfriend had just walked out on me at the end of a very bad relationship and I was at home, drunk and lonely, so I decided to go online and get a girl to come over. I made the phone call, got a price and booked it so quickly that I didn't have time to think it through.

"It was a totally spontaneous decision and I certainly got the impression from the way the woman looked at me that she thought I was pitiful as a person, although she did her best to be professional about the whole thing.

"Afterwards I didn't want to have sex with anyone for a long time. I just felt that any woman in a bar could tell – just by looking at me – that I was the kind of guy who slept with prostitutes.

"It's only after getting into a new relationship with a girl who's a social worker that I've seen statistics about the number of prostitutes who are either in gangs that they can't get out of or are being forced by pimps to do things they don't want to do that I started thinking about it from a viewpoint other than my own.

"I still haven't told my girlfriend about what I did, and I'm scared to. I think of my feelings of guilt as punishment for what I did. My close friends who know have told me to lighten up, but I find this very hard. I think I took part in something cheap, exploitive and shameful and I don't foresee a time when I won't regret it hugely."

4. "I sleep with prostitutes because I can't chat up women"

Joe, 36, a solicitor from London, says:

"I have very low self-esteem around women. Although I find it easy to be their friend, I'm a red-blooded male so I often use social networking sites like Craig's List to find women who will have sex for money – my housemate is the only one who knows about it.

"I like to have a conversation and see a photo of them first, which I do online, and then we'll make a date where she'll come round to my house. I usually have a bottle of wine waiting for them but usually they don't have any and just want to get on with it, which is fine by me.

"The women I've been with – and there have probably been between 12 and 15 over the last year or so – are usually pleasant, polite and seem eager for me to have a good time. I sometimes request the same woman to come back again but it isn't really that important. I like to have variety as I don't want to get too attached to any of these girls.

"Deep down, however, I know what I'm doing is probably damaging me in some way. If it was a healthy thing to do then we'd live in a society where we could be much more open about it. The problem is that it's just so easy. I enjoy the fact that I can meet a new girl, have sex with her and then just leave it at that.

"There have been a couple of occasions where I haven't had sex with the girl and I've just talked with her. I still haven't fully understood why I do this but it certainly makes me feel better to be with somebody and talk, knowing they can't tell anyone I know and that they won't judge me.

"In the back of my mind, one of the reasons I keep doing it is that I want to have a proper 'porn star' experience. Of course, it's never like that – it's just fairly ordinary sex but it's given me this expectation that I want sex to be like what I see in porn films. I know this is absurd and I do worry that the way I feel about sex is somehow a little warped now.

"I'm sure that when I do find a girlfriend I like then I'll stop paying for sex but for now, despite the fact that I know it's not good for me, I still find it better than going through life having no sex at all."

5. "I hired a prostitute with my girlfriend"

Richard, 30, a fashion stylist from London, says:

"My girlfriend used to be a lap dancer and she's very relaxed and open about sex. She is also bisexual and, as we like to make each other's fantasies come true, we hired an escort girl to come to our hotel room during a holiday in Rotterdam a few years ago for a threesome.

"The only rule my girlfriend gave me was that I wasn't allowed to actually have sex with her. Everything else was fine. The girl was from Slovenia and we had some drinks with her before we started kissing. She was pretty, about 21 and she seemed to be very clued up about what to expect.

"I think having my girlfriend there made a huge difference to how comfortable she felt. The girl in question was studying for her degree and seemed very confident that she was in control of the situation and only doing escort work to pay her way through university.

"I can't speak for other men's experiences of paying for sex, but for me it was a very exciting, very satisfying experience. There's no way I was exploiting the girl in question. She was paid well for doing something which I think she enjoyed. Maybe she is treated badly by other guys but I know in Holland escort girls are entitled to medical care - and I think there's even a trade union for them. Me and my girlfriend really enjoyed the experience and we'd definitely do it again. In fact, my girlfriend talks about that night more than I do!"

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6 TIPS FOR DATING IN THE BIG CITY: A GUIDE FOR NEWCOMERS

When you come from a small town, or from the peaceful, leafy suburbs of Bumblefuck, Western Australia (like I did), dating in  any big, cosmopolitan city can be a strange and troubling experience. It can also be a lot of fun. Here are my six rules for getting the most out of dating in in the city and staying sane and positive while you’re at it.

1. Date Online: I’m not saying you shouldn’t be open to meeting people in more traditional ways, but I am also saying you should be dating online. Maybe there’s still a bit of a stigma attached to online dating where you’re from, but in the city, it’s de rigueur. Serious relationship seekers are on Match.com, casual sex fiends are on Tinder, and OKCupid has a little of everything. But everyone is on something. For dudes, there’s an extra plus. For some reason, a lot of guys have trouble keeping their drooly creepiness under wraps online. Any woman on Tinder or OKCupid gets a daily deluge of inappropriate, explicit and weirdly detailed sexual messages. That’s not fun for them.

On the plus side though, dudes, if you’re able to reign in your creepy id for long enough type an IM, you’re already at a huge advantage. Keep that shit courtly and you will see results. She’s got a great picture? Can’t stop thinking about sliding your fat cock between her tits or whatever it is? That’s good! Everyone should have an interest! But keep that information close to the vest at least for a little while, okay? Guys, this shouldn’t be hard.

2. Be Up For Shit:  I grew up in a sleepy Australian suburb. Your mileage may vary, but unless you were raised in a strange commune, a big city is probably more sexually permissive than wherever you’ve come from. People are more likely to tell you exactly what they want from you in bed. This can be a steep adjustment but, on the whole, I’ve found it to be a very positive one. It’s great not to have to guess at what turns somebody on. It’s also more likely you’ll be called on to step outside your sexual comfort zone a little. Obviously you don’t have to do anything that really makes you uncomfortable, but it’s great to keep an open mind. You might find all kinds of fun in unexpected places.

3. But Only Be Up For Safe Shit: I’m all for sexual permissiveness but that doesn’t mean being unsafe. In the last couple of months, I’ve heard a bunch of stories from lady friends about Tinder hookups trying to weasel out of condom use. There’s a pattern to these stories. After a night of flirting and drinking and making out and more drinking and going back to someone’s apartment and foreplay, you reach a point of momentum at which not having sex becomes almost unthinkable. It’s only then that he brings up the condom thing: “Oh, by the way, I can’t use a condom because [whatever].”

This isn’t by accident, it’s coercion, designed to make you feel like you either have to accept an unreasonable risk or take responsibility for “ruining the moment.”

Guys: don’t do this. Just don’t. Ladies: recognize this kind of bullshit for what it is and don’t accept it.

4. Don’t Be Jealous: I never really had to have the exclusivity talk where I’m from. If you were sleeping with someone, the default position was that you were sleeping only with them. In the city, it’s the other way around. The person you really like is sleeping with whoever they want until you both agree otherwise. This can be a tricky adjustment — painful to the heart and punishing to the ego. Try not to let jealousy ruin your dating experience. If exclusivity is a priority for you, be upfront about what you need. If your partner can’t accommodate you, it wasn’t going to work, anyway.

5. Be Sincere: Everyone knows that dating is crazy and that has led to a strange kind of relationship tourism. A Carrie Bradshaw syndrome, if you will. “I did it for the story” is a real reason for crazy behavior these days, apparently. More than once, I’ve found myself trying to put my finger on what was a little off about a date and thought: This girl actually wants me to do something fucked up! That’s difficult to prove and I have nothing to quote except the vibe, but I believe this happens. Bad writers think they need crazy relationship stories and some people just believe they aren’t proper grownups unless they’ve gone through a hazing process of strange sex.

By all means, be a writer, be a comic, be whatever. It’s your right to turn your experiences into art. At The Frisky, we do it all the time. But approach each date with a sincere intention to make some kind of connection with a person. The wild stuff will happen without you looking for it. Your date is a human being, not fodder for your blog. Don’t do things you don’t like with someone you think is gross just to have a crazy story. That story won’t make you sound worldly, it will make you sound gross.

6. Embrace The Mess: You will have disastrous dates. You will have awkward and sometimes unpleasant sex. You will face rejection and heartbreak. Isn’t that great? Can’t you just feel yourself becoming a more experienced and well-rounded human being? Dating in a big city is a grand adventure. It’s good to have an end goal in mind, but don’t let that stop you from valuing each experience along the way for it’s own sake — even the bad ones. Oh, and be nice. This is hard for everyone.

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