Slippery Slope

When Jerry/Hugh and I had dinner the other night, we sat across from each other in a booth. By the time we had been talking for an hour after our meal our was finished, he started to hold my hand across the table.

It's so strange to be dating again, that I actually had to consider whether it was weird or sweet to be holding hands. I mean - I'm almost 40 for crying out loud! It seems so silly, so backwards.
I decided on sweet. Hey, that's the way it's supposed to go.

After we had been talking for FOUR hours on our date, he invited me to sit on his side of the booth when I returned from the ladies room. It wasn't long after that, he kissed me. (yes, it was lovely - despite being in a public place!)

See, I'm a girl who waits to kiss until the third date.

You know why? Because in our society - things have become so distorted that many men expect sex on the third date! I reserve kissing for the third date to let a man know that I'm not that kind of girl!

This morning, on the AM Radio Show the hosts were talking about a survey. It had asked either 1500 or 15,000 women (I'm bad with numbers so I can't remember - and I can't find the source right now) on which date in a new relationship is it okay to have sex with your date.
The majority answer was the THIRD DATE! 10% responded that it was okay on the first date if you really connected!

This is ridiculous to me! What on earth does a couple know about one another by the third date to risk having a child together?!!! Yuck. That's part of the problem that our society's contraception mentality has created. (Conversion Diary has a great explanation of the Contraceptive Mentality - scroll down to that section or read this whole post... it's amazing.)

Back to my date.
He walked me not only to the door of my building, but to my own personal door on the third floor. (it was already 2:30am! ) We talked on my sofa for a bit, and kissed a bit more. This wasn't exactly the third date so I started wonder if this was all too soon.

But we had just talked for six hours! It's not as if we hadn't gotten to know one another.
So I looked up at him and said, "Wait. Maybe we should talk some more!"
As expected, he burst out laughing.
I took the opportunity to ask, "Is this our second date? Or our first? Was our breakfast meeting a date?"
"Of course it was a date. Plus, we've spent more than 15 hours on the phone together - this is like our 4th or 5th date."

"Well then, I guess it's okay to kiss."

But I am regretting it a little bit. I think I really like him, and now that we've kissed we've raised the bar a bit. If I'm trying to save sex for marriage - (whether with Jerry/Hugh or someone else) there's not a whole lot left between kissing and sex to reserve for the slow reveal.
Plus, it doesn't take much kissing before the desire to tear off clothing kicks in.
Sigh. Been there before!
Such a slippery slope.

For the record, Italian Guy asked me if I kiss on the second date. I said no. A) because I'm a third date girl - B) I'm already kissing Jerry/Hugh and C) Italian Guy is very recently divorced with three small children and no annulment yet. Oh... and D) as a by-product of being divorced, he hasn't really dated in 19 years so I figure I should help him set reasonable expectations.