Brad was just completing his divorce after having been married for over 25 years. He had not dated in what seemed like forever to him, and had no idea how to start. “How do you start a new relationship?” he asked me in our counseling session.
“What are you most concerned about?” I asked.
“Sex,” he answered.
“What about sex?” I asked.
Pause. “Well… performance. What if I can’t perform? What if I’m too nervous to perform?”
“Okay. Let’s start with sex.”
In the many years that I’ve been counseling, I’ve discovered that the one mistake people make in starting a new relationship is to have sex too soon. There are many reasons why people who are starting a new relationship have sex too soon: they think it will create deeper intimacy; they are just in it for the conquest; they are afraid of rejection if they say no; they get physically carried away; they like sex.
