Vaginas are a lot of fun to play with...

That line was the teaser for the next episode of a dating show I watched when visiting my family back East. It been with me ever since then. The line was spoken by one of the dating counselors to one of her male clients on the phone. This dating service has one rule, no sex until both people are committed to each other in a monogamous relationship. That is the premise of the show (and that the men are millionaires, while the women are not): they set up some dates for the "couple", film it, then show the aftermath of the clients breaking that one rule.

"Vaginas are a lot of fun to play with, but you are not marrying a vagina." That is my recollection of how that quote ended. The idea is that people going to the dating show are looking for someone to marry. Probably most of the women these men date have a vagina and could have a lot of fun as a couple with it, but the vagina overwhelms the sense of what it would take for a long term relationship. They even state something like that. Yet, it is a lie.

For the parts of the show I saw, it was always the same. They have a great first date based on the feedback of the women. They are wined and dined like never before by these millionaires. Then they go one a few more dates and decide that they want to lock the man into the relationship by having sex with him. Then they end up on the show again crying, saying that he got what he wanted and now the relationship is over. The interesting part was that they actually called both parties on it, they would tell the women off for trying to entrap the man with vagina and call the man for using his vast resources to overwhelm the women into thinking they needed to have sex or else he would look elsewhere.

So, even though the premise is that sex is common and easy and can skew ones sense of goals, it turns out that both parties want to have sex but for different reasons - neither of the parties actually believed that there was long term viability of the relationship.

What I came away with is that part of their initial premise is correct, people who are going to last long term do not seem to have sex right away. They know that they can have sex easily, but they want to focus on making sure that they person they are dating is actually a good partner. Once that is established, then sex is a part of their relationship. But for people who know that there is no real long term potential, they go for it as soon as they can, so that they at least get something for their efforts.

Why has this stuck with me? Because of the entire show, that seemed to be the only honest thing in it, and it seemed to be a very good summary of dating - I had never thought of as good and of as succinct way of explaining my view of sex to other people as that one line. Vaginas, in my experience, have been indeed a lot of fun to play with, but I am not looking to marry a vagina, but find a partner.

The Edward