It was your first date, but you kinda knew what it was hittin’ for before the plates and glasses from dinner even had a chance to be cleared off the table. Your chemistry had been crazy the entire evening. Every time you looked up, he was smiling with his eyes and grinning harder than a new Powerball winner.

Because you’re a natural flirt, it was hard not to give him your best vampy, vixen smolder, so eventually you gave up on holding it back and let your body language say the things you’re too ladylike to express out loud. You laughed and joked and played around all the way from the restaurant to the lounge to the car to the plush, queen-sized bed in your room.

Yep, you broke the cardinal rule of all good girl behavior: you got busy on the first date. Legs in the air, hair all over the place, gotta-get-up-to-get-a-glass-of-water kind of sex. Your mother would be so disappointed.

But the morning after. Ah, the morning after. The morning after has a way of recoloring the fun you had the night before with a responsible perspective that you didn’t have when the crown of your head was dangling off the edge of the mattress onto the floor. You cut your eye at the almost-stranger with his greasy head all over your favorite accent pillow, mentally scolding yourself for becoming one of those women you and your girls chastise for giving it up too soon. The crazy part is you actually really like this guy. And now you’re worried that he’ll treat you like a one-hit wonder because, after all, he did already dig all up in your cookie jar. The possibility of him wanting more in the form of a real relationship is a toss-up.

And so begins the morning-after mania of first-date, too-soon, no-commitment, what-the-heck-is-his-last-name-again? sex.

Most guys I’ve heard speak on the subject will say that whether it’s the first date or the fourteenth, bustin’ it up doesn’t have any bearing on whether or not they’ll deal with the girl on a more exclusive level in the future. If he likes her, he likes her regardless and will want to continue seeing her. Apparently, guys don’t sweat the inaugural sexual timeline as much as we do — which really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise since they don’t sweat too much of anything as hard as we do.

So the question actually isn’t whether he’ll respect you the morning after. The question is will you respect yourself?

Sex for most women — not all, but most — is all tangled up with intimacy, emotion, and positive affirmation. TV shows and articles in Cosmo may make casual sex look contemporary chic, the hip thing to do now that we make power moves in the work world and money moves in our finances. According to the liberal-thinking leaders in feminism, we should be able to cleave physical ecstasy from any psychological effects. But only a small percentage of women are actually wired to bedhop without developing some kind of attachment or racking up a whole heap of baggage from adventures in first date sexiness.

Holding out rather than giving in can building anticipation and heighten the electricity that already exists between the two of you. Intimacy can be stampeded in the rush to rip each other’s clothes off, but once you’ve introduced the bump and grind, it’s impossible to go back and work on the natural build of sensuality and flirtation and intimacy — the kind that exists before you see each other butt naked. Once that line is crossed, most men aren’t interested in going back to making out. Seems so tenth grade compared to what you two have already done.

Because most women just aren’t built for hit-and-quit sexual rendezvous, it’s no wonder that a chick who gives it up on Day One would be a little worried about her prospects with a guy who pulled a first round TKO. In fact, research shows that gals in monogamous relationships who’ve had just one partner in the context of a relationship over the course of a year are happier, shinier people than the other segment of the population who are dipping into the community pool of naughtiness on a regular basis. It doesn’t take a long tussle with statistics or compiling facts and figures. It’s called common sense.

Have you ever given it up on the first date? Was it a hit or a could’ve missed?

Image via Lite Speed Photography/Flickr