Ep. 39 - Sex On A First Date: Genius or Disaster?

[00:00] Introduction: Sex on a First Date - Genius or Disaster?

Dr. Bawa: Welcome to another episode of Dr. Sex Fairy. I am Dr. Kanwal Bawa, and as always, I am here to transform your life. I am taking my message of sexual and intimate wellness to millions of people all over the world. My TikTok account, Dr. Sex Fairy, stands at about 39 million views in just four months. It has literally gone viral. Make sure you follow me there, and don't forget to follow me here so that you never miss an episode. And do support my podcast by leaving me a five-star review. Our topic today is a controversial one. When couples should first have sex has always been a hot-button topic. Most people think that they should wait at least until the third date. But should they? The research will surprise you. The Dating Deal Breaker Survey questioned 2,000 adults in the United Kingdom about their first date habits. They found that having sex on the first date leads to a 52% chance of a long-term relationship that should last two years or more. Having sex on a second date will lead to a 15% chance of a long-term relationship. Wait until the third date, and now you're at 13%. The next statistic will blow your mind.

Dr. Bawa: Waiting a month before having sex means that, on average, you have a measly 5% chance of long-term success. Wait for two months, and you're at 2%. This goes against everything most of us have always thought about dating and sex. Today I'm joined by the podfather himself. Brian Howie is the host of The Great Love Debate, and he is here to discuss this controversial topic with me. Welcome to the podcast, Brian.

[01:26] What Happy Couples Say About First-Date Sex

Brian Howie: I know I've waded into these waters a bunch of times. It is controversial, but it's sort of indisputable. Twice, two different times, ten years apart. I surveyed 1,000 self-described happy couples, okay, and asked when they first had sex. I did this in 2007. I did it again in 2017, and said, When did you guys first have sex? The overwhelming number one answer was the first night. The number two answer was the second night. The number three answer was the third night, just as you said. It's not that if you have sex right away that it's this magic potion to it. It means that these couples felt something, did not play games, and rode out this wave of physical attraction, emotion, let's dive in this pool together and see where it goes. That has a much better chance of working out than using sex as a referendum or a reward on where you are. If, you know, if you're like, Oh, he must like me. He waited three. He must respect me. He waited three months to have sex with me. No, it just means that he waited three months to have sex with you. We'll wait. It doesn't mean we like you more. It doesn't mean anything.

Brian Howie: At some point, guys might look at it as like, I need some ROI, so I need to see this out. And if you're saying like, Once I get this or know this or I'm sure about this, then I'm going to give him that sex, I mean, that's a bad way to look at it as a woman too. It's not a favor. It is not a reward. It is not any of these things. The real answer to that, because I get asked that a lot at Great Love Debate live shows, When do we first have sex? A, when you want to, and B, when you can handle the fact that the sex might not lead to anything long term. Those are sort of the answers. You have to be able to prepare to deal with it because the sex changes everything. You might wait three, and sometimes the women are like, What are you talking about? And I ask all the women, How many times have you waited, you know, six weeks, eight weeks, six months to have sex with a guy and then the sex sucked and you lost interest? And they all be like, Yeah, all the time. Well, then you waited for something and then you're— Sort of judgment on this was based on how the sex was, not anything else.

Brian Howie: And so people, you know, tend to play these games to try and find this magic formula, like three dates or 30 days or six months or whatever. You're leaving logic out of it, and you're leaving true emotion out of it. You're putting up walls that shouldn't exist.

[03:44] Chemistry, First-Date Sex and Playing Games

Brian Howie: I think chemistry is important, and I feel that people who are having sex on the first date certainly have that. It's undeniable, and they're not playing games. And I hear that sometimes women say, like, or men say, Well, no, I don't want to have sex with them right away because then they're going to think that I do that with everyone. And my answer to that is, like, my ego is too big. I'll be like, Oh my God, she did that with me. She would never do that with anyone else. Like, that's the way I would look at it. Or the men who actually try to have sex, and then they have sex and then they hold that against her. Good that you found that out quickly, because you shouldn't want to date that guy anyway. You know, there's these people who are like, I know a girl of mine who was, you know, sort of a born-again virgin. She waited five years to have sex again until she was absolutely sure that this guy shared her quote-unquote values, her faith, and all this kind of stuff. He had sex with her and he never called her again. Like, that was like, you know, she was leading him into a game, essentially, by tempting him, like, Will he wait?

Brian Howie: Will he pass this test? He just wanted to have sex with her. So, I don't, you know, you're right that it is controversial that you're not telling everybody to sleep around with everybody, but you're not telling everyone to sleep around with. You're telling people to sleep with the people that they feel they want to sleep with. And if that's everybody, it won't always be everybody. Might be everybody when you're 22, won't be everybody when you're 42.

Dr. Bawa: Oh God, no. I think at this age, people know what they're looking for.

Brian Howie: Yeah, and they might just be like, Ew, or they're too tired, or you're not driven by hormones. You're driven to be like, Let's do this. But when you get to 42 or 52, I don't think anybody's under the impression that anybody's a virgin out there. So I think you're taking a little bit of the judgment out, but you're just like, Let's see how long we can keep this first date going, and if that leads to somewhere pretty intimate, oh well, good. That's a good thing.

[05:44] Performance Anxiety and the First Time Together

Dr. Bawa: Absolutely. Now, there are people who find difficulty performing on a first date or a first time they have sex because they're not used to the person. It's always a little awkward, you know, sex is messy on a good day, let alone when, you know, you're with somebody you don't really know. So there's always that aspect too. And some people think that by waiting, they'll avoid that.

Brian Howie: It's gonna, the buildup's gonna be even worse. Like this anticipation, it's like, Oh my God, is tonight the night we're doing it? I mean, that's gonna lead to more nerves than anything, you know? So you're basically, when you're having sex early on, you're taking advantage of a moment, and it's hard to recreate a moment artificially. And sometimes people try to do that, like, Okay, next weekend we're gonna go to this bed and breakfast and we're gonna do it. I can't imagine the pressure that ramps up of already a fairly anxious situation, an awkward situation. You wait all this time and then this was this. I mean, there's a whole lot to that, that people tend to play games with themselves because they believe doing something or not doing something is gonna lead to them not getting hurt. And if you're behaving in a certain way because you're afraid of getting hurt, you're really walling off a part of you that's going to allow yourself to take advantage in a positive way.

[07:00] The Magic of the Moment

Dr. Bawa: I think you have to open yourself up to the magic of the moment.

Brian Howie: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Like the magic of the moment doesn't present itself all the time. And the magic of the moment for these people who are in, you know, relationships, like that's not necessarily a drunken 5:30 in the morning. It's usually like there's a moment much earlier than that where they feel it. A lot of women say, Well, I want to have sex. I won't have sex till I'm sure that he only wants to be with me or he really wants to be with me. You know how you find out if he wants to be with you? Have sex with him. If he calls you the next day, he probably wants to be with you.

Dr. Bawa: That's well said.

Brian Howie: You know, like that's really the, you're not gonna know. Either way, until you have sex, I won't have sex until I'm in a monogamous relationship. Well, you have to have sex to be in a monogamous relationship, and you won't know if you're in a monogamous relationship until you do it, you know? So there's a lot of bad advice out there. There always has been, mostly written by women, these bad books like You Need to Wait 30 Days or, you know, make him chase you and all. It's nonsense. It's just complete nonsense.

[08:07] Fear, Rejection and Bad Dating Rules

Dr. Bawa: It is nonsense. And I think that, and I've said this before on my podcast with you, is that women do create a lot of their own drama in life. And I say that as a woman, and I know I'm pissing women off by saying this.

Brian Howie: Yeah, I mean, everybody's been hurt. A lot of times men are afraid of being rejected, and women are afraid of having their heart broken. You know, there's some crossover on that too. But when you're dating or engaging in relations or having sex with people and you're leading with fear, that has no shot of working out. Should you have sex with everybody you go out with because you think that's the magic formula? No. But if you feel something, and you both feel something, and you're like, This is the moment, take the what is he going to think of me out of it, or what does this mean, or whatever. Go down the road as far as you can. Listen, if people are listening to your podcast, they are interested in sex.

Dr. Bawa: Yes. It's the Dr. Sex Fairy podcast.

Brian Howie: That's right. If you're interested in, like, gardening tips, you've probably come to the wrong show, okay? So clearly you're here listening to this show, or people who are listening to The Great Love Debate, they are interested in relationships, they are interested in sexual relations, all of that. And to try and separate those two things, like, Oh, the sex is over here, we're going to find out, like, that's crazy. That being said, the man sometimes is so blinded by, like, I just want to not say anything wrong because I might screw up the sex part. Like, he's really focused because sex to him, or any time, kind of, you know, women are like, why does a guy always have to make a move on a first date? Well, a lot of times the man is making a move because that's the only way he can understand if you like him or not. A lot of times he will take you out, he will compliment you, he'll tell you you look great and whatever, and all he'll get back is a thank you. He rarely hears, You're attractive too, or I'm attracted to you. He has no idea that the woman desires him. We think you think we're gross, as men, always.

Brian Howie: So if we try something and she's like, Oh, I let him do that, we're like, She must like me. So that's what he's thinking more than anything else. So if there's ways, you know, I always tell women there's ways to, if you don't want to have sex right away, and you should never have sex till you're comfortable, but if you told him that exactly and say, Listen, I'm not going to do much until I get comfortable, but once I get comfortable, it'll blow your mind, he will calm the fuck down because at least he knows now that he sees a potential that you see him this way. That's really all he wants to hear early on. But if the two of you, like, are feeling something, you know, in the moment, see how long that moment can go. That moment can last a lifetime.

Dr. Bawa: Men are simple creatures. I always say that.

Brian Howie: Yeah, we are. You know, we get the smack on the nose a lot. We rarely get the pat on the nose. We really only hear what we're doing wrong. But if we get positively encouraged and understand that you do feel something for us and you do like us and you do want to see how far this can go. That can happen with a good conversation. That can happen with a perfect sentence, and that can happen with a really great night.

[11:11] Sexual Empowerment and Fear of Judgment

Dr. Bawa: I think women are just too worried about being seen as whores when they have sex on a first date and not being respected.

Brian Howie: I get it, but then they, like, put the Cardi B, you know, music on in the car. Like, the women are caught in this weird area now that they want to be sexually empowered and liberated, but they're worried about what other women think of them at the same time. Like, I don't understand it. It's 2022. I think people know that women like sex, right? I think that women know that they can, instead of giving away the sex and sharing, you know, if you look at it like, This is mine to do whatever, and I'm going to take control of this, I think that's a good thing. This mixed messaging, mostly among other women, the whole thing is really girl-on-girl crime. You know, are there occasional guys who are judgmental of it? Yeah, it's not nearly as bad as the women judging each other. I think the women judging each other is a far, far worse problem.

Dr. Bawa: I agree 100%. Far worse. Far worse. And women can be evil, that whole mean girl mentality.

Brian Howie: Right. It's terrible, and my God, you see it in Boca. And as far as the sex itself, like the guy, you know, there's no such thing as bad pizza. The guy is really going to be happy to be there. The guy, on the other hand, her friends are going to want to know every detail and how he screwed this up, you know? So it's a little more fraught with peril and worry on his part, but she's going to get a glowing review.

[12:34] Body Image and What Men Really Think

Dr. Bawa: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. In fact, there was that scene in Eat, Pray, Love, and Julia Roberts is talking to her friend. Did you see that movie?

Brian Howie: I did.

Dr. Bawa: Remember that Naples pizza scene where the friend's worried about how she's gained weight, and Julia Roberts says something to the effect of, When you've undressed in front of a man, has he ever walked out?

Brian Howie: Yeah, I wasn't walking out. Women are like, Oh, men are body types. No, no. Magazine covers are chosen by other women and a handful of gay men. Most men don't like a stick-thin woman.

Dr. Bawa: No, they want a little squish. It feels like a girl.

Brian Howie: Yeah. Again, we're just happy to be this, this, Oh my God, he's going to see me. That's a— no man's going to walk out. It's not going to happen, and he's not going to judge you. You know, I'm going to say never. There are some guys like that. You don't want to date those guys anyway, so you're better off finding out quickly.

Dr. Bawa: This weeds them out. Yeah, and if you're like, Oh my God, my, my—

Brian Howie: My number's too high. Well, let me break this. Let me give you a little math on this, okay? If you're an attractive woman and you get asked out by 500 guys, and you have sex with, let's say, 25 of them, okay? It's 25 out of 500. That's 5%. That seems really, really low, right? If a woman gets asked out by 10 guys and has sex with two of them, she had sex with 20%. So isn't comparatively, the one who went out on 500 dates and had sex with 25 guys, isn't she comparatively a bit of a prude if her percentage is that much lower than her denominator?

Dr. Bawa: I think that's what I look like.

Brian Howie: Like, you know, if you're out there shooting shots, so to speak, you're gonna make a lot, you're gonna miss a lot. If your percentage of opportunities is really high, that means that woman's saying no 475 times out of 500. So don't worry about the, Oh my God, I've had sex with 25 guys. I've had sex with, like, I went out with a lot of people and I pick and choose, and I've been doing this for 25 years and I've had sex with 52 guys.

Dr. Bawa: It has to be a choice, and you have to be comfortable with yourself. And you've got to understand that sex is sex. I'm not saying that people should take it casually, but at the end of the day, I think we're putting too much emphasis on sex.

Brian Howie: And they have too much emphasis on the number of partners. Would you rather, you know, go out with a girl who's had 12 boyfriends in 16 years, or would you rather go out with some girl who's married to some guy for 15 years?

Dr. Bawa: One guy.

Brian Howie: She's had sex with that guy like 10,000 times. You're never catching that guy. You know, everybody is the same. The old line, like, you're only as faithful as your number of opportunities. Well, you're only as— Sort of restrictive on your sexual habits is your number of opportunities too. So if you ladies, men, if you're out there and you have the opportunity to have a really good date and feel some chemistry—chemistry, that's a different show—and ride with it, like, it's got a good chance to work it out if you don't play games with your emotions, which is what you do if you sort of step on the hose halfway through a date.

[15:27] Tinder, Bumble and Swipe Culture

Dr. Bawa: Do you think Tinder is more of a booty call app than, say, Bumble?

Brian Howie: I don't. I think Starbucks is a dating site. You know, if you look at it, like, it's all the same. People are like, No, the swipe, swipe, swipe culture has really affected dating. We used to walk around the bar 50 times. That was swiping, and you would stop when you saw somebody you liked, and you'd talk to them for a second, and you'd swipe again. We've always been the same way. Bumble, you know, the illusion of Bumble is it allows the girl to have some modicum of control over who's contacting her. But most of the women out there are just saying hey and hope the guy then takes it from there. How boring is that?

Dr. Bawa: Well, I know that's what they're doing.

Brian Howie: I think they're all the same. The dating apps should be a means to an end. It's how quickly you move it off of there. You know, very rarely are you just going to meet somebody cold turkey on any of the apps and be like, Come on over. That's a myth. Like, that's not necessarily happening any more than it would happen in real life. You know, you could walk into Target and somebody might be like, Hey, you want to take a walk? That could happen too. But statistically, it's not like people are just going on Tinder and going right to sex. Like, there are dates in between. There are meetups in between.

[16:41] Online Dating, Pen Pals and Moving Offline

Dr. Bawa: Do you think online dating and getting to know people—when I say getting to know, like, quote unquote getting to know people online—that's making first-date sex more of a thing? Because by the time you get to them, maybe you know them a little better.

Brian Howie: Well, that's a really good point. People who are like, Oh, you don't want to date online. I don't know these people. If you're doing it correctly, if you're dating online correctly, you know more about these people before you ever meet them than you ever did that that person that you met at the bar. People are like, No, I used to meet people through people I knew. No, you didn't. You met people out, and you're like, Here's my number, and we would have to pick you up. Can't pick you up anymore. Take you out, all that kind of... It was—so if you're online dating, and, you know, the slogan to my show is Get your head out of your apps. I get that. So I'm always—I'm a little bit of a hypocrite on that because I think real life. But, you know, using the apps to engage with people that you might not ordinarily engage with and then moving it to a real-life situation, it starts there. So you're giving yourself a little bit of leg up if you have, you know, three or four sentences of dialogue and ask them a couple things and get to know about them.

Brian Howie: But, you know, the sooner you move it offline, the more you can get into the real dating, and the more you get into the real dating, probably the quicker you're going to get into bed. So, sex fairy fans out there, you want to get into bed, get offline. Like, move it off of line. A lot of people really get into that comfort zone of dating pen pals. You know, they just want to talk back and forth, Good night, how was your night, or whatever, and they're scared to meet because they're afraid the meeting is when all of the can of worms get opened and they might not like me as well. So some people, you know, hit the ping pong ball back and forth for months without asking anybody out. That's a waste of time.

Dr. Bawa: And I think you might as well meet them because half the time they don't look like their pictures and maybe you're not going to be interested.

Brian Howie: And the women should just say, like, after three or four back and forths, just say, I'll tell you when I see you. And that tells him, I want to see you, and that goes a long, long way too. Like, he's guessing. Does she want to go out with me? If you say, I'll tell you when I see you, and he asks, you know, the fifth question he asks you, then that's it. And if he doesn't make a move from there, on to the next. You know, that is it. On to the next. And if you go out with this guy and go out with this girl and you have sex and decide you don't like each other the next day, on to the next.

[19:15] eHarmony and Serious Relationships

Dr. Bawa: You know, I've heard of that dating app. What's that called? The one that gives you this thousand-question thing. You know which one I'm talking about?

Brian Howie: eHarmony?

Dr. Bawa: eHarmony, yes. I think that's overrated, don't you think? That's a lot of questions.

Brian Howie: Well, it is. It takes a little bit of the flirtatious element of dating out of it. It's almost like you're trying to match up based on what you think you like or what you believe you like, and all you really know is what hasn't worked out. Like you're sort of dating backwards when you do that. What that does, I will give eHarmony this credit: the people who are willing to go through that, they're serious about dating. Nobody's filling out 67 questions if they're just looking to get laid that night.

Dr. Bawa: Yeah.

Brian Howie: So the people that are on there, and I've had the CEO, Grant Langston, he's a pretty good friend of mine, so I've had him on my podcast a lot. He's like, We're not allowed to say legally that it's for the serious daters because we can't quite back that up. But if somebody's willing to go through that mechanism and a lot of self-analysis, those long questions, you really have to think about, like, what are you? Those people usually are looking to get into a serious relationship.

Dr. Bawa: But I think everybody wants a serious relationship.

Brian Howie: I don't believe almost anybody, if you could say, Here's a notary and here's a piece of paper, and it says, If you sign this, you're going to be in a happy, loving, sexually active, honest, trusting, growing relationship with one other person. You want to sign that? Everybody would sign that.

Dr. Bawa: Either they don't trust the piece of paper.

Brian Howie: Or they don't know that it exists. But almost everybody wants to be in a relationship. Very few people, when a woman says to me, I just want to have fun right now. No, you don't. You're just scared of going to a scary intimate place. And when a woman says, like, No, the guy's just a player. He's sleeping around a whole bunch, he hopes that that one is the last one. I believe that, and I think that's true of like 95% of people, and the other 5%, they are just so emotionally walled off that you're probably not dealing with them anyway.

Dr. Bawa: Steve Harvey said something like that, I remember.

Brian Howie: I was, you know, I think Steve Harvey's great. He said, He'll change for the right woman. If he's not changing, it's because you're not the one. Or you're not communicating to him in a way that is clearly or that inspires him to change. Like the right woman can make him, you know, we'll jump as high as you want us to to get the cheese, but sometimes you move the cheese around and we don't really understand what we're supposed to do. And as I've said before, all we know is what the last girl liked, and we probably found that out way too late. Like, it's your job to communicate in a positive fashion, a positively reinforcing fashion, what is the keys to your happiness? What is it that he can do to get a place in your world? And a lot of times we don't do that. A lot of women are like, I shouldn't have to train him. They're not a dog. And I'm like, Well, good luck with that. You know, you go to a gym to get trained. You're not a dog at the gym. You know, we do training and all. We do corporate training. We do trainings on, like, I shouldn't have to train my man. Well, then fine, don't. Make him guess. See how that works out for you.

[22:23] Communication Is Not Parenting

Dr. Bawa: No, no, I agree with communication. I just don't think that I'm here to be a man's mother, that's all.

Brian Howie: There's a difference between being his mother and being, you know, she wants to hear what he wants and what he likes. I know we're simple creatures, so it's a little bit easier. The old, you know, men are light switches and women are motherboards. Like, that's true. And I think we have to understand that. And I think the women have to understand that, like, you're very, very complicated. You're emotionally complicated. You're physically complicated. So we're gonna need a little guidance to get there. And so if you think that the best way to do that is a slow trickle out of information and what you like, I mean, have at it. Or you could just be really clear on how to, you know, communicate these messages to do that. And that's the problem. Like, the more ways we have to communicate as men and women, the worse we are at it. Like, we've societally just become terrible at communication. And, you know, we all kind of got to let those walls down a little. We got to take a sort of a half step back towards each other again.

[23:26] Communication and Sexual Health

Dr. Bawa: When people come to my office and they're discussing their sexual problems, I do ask them, Have you communicated this with your partner? And it's alarming to see how few people have. They just expect, you know, Dr. Sex Fairy to magically fix their problems without doing the work themselves.

Brian Howie: Right. And it's going to make your job a lot easier if they've done a little bit of the work themselves.

Dr. Bawa: Yeah, like we've talked about Jim and Cindy, my patients who at 69 and 70 are having sex twice a day. How did that work? They communicated with each other, then they came, got help together.

Brian Howie: Right.

Dr. Bawa: And now things are functioning well. The relationship is doing even better because the sex is great. But it didn't come without a lot of communication.

[24:08] Sex, Judgment and the Sexual Revolution

Brian Howie: The most sexually liberated time in this country—I'm not quite old enough for this, and I don't think you are either—was the time, the 20-year period between the invention of the pill and the onset of AIDS. That sort of 1965 to 1985, that 20-year period, the people who were around then, yeah, they were like, Oh my God, it was game on, everything. And because they had two big worries taken away from them, essentially. They weren't worried about pregnancy, they weren't worried about dying from sex, they weren't worried about disease. And then it was just like, here are men and women. So if you talk to people back then, they weren't like, We got hurt more, or We got used for sex more. They talk about the summer of love, you know? They talk about things in the '70s. They talk about Studio 54, where you were— I've talked to people who went to Studio 54, and I was like, I've been to some great clubs. What was so good about Studio 54? Why was that better? And they're like, Because you were free to do anything and be anyone you wanted to be without fear of judgment.

Brian Howie: And we added judgment into these things, and we added self-judgment into these things, and that really has trickled down to a place that should be completely free of judgment, which is the relationship between man and woman and sex between man and woman. And that's why having sex on a first date needs to be about the relationship and about the sex itself, not about what somebody else might think about it if they find out.

Dr. Bawa: Or is he going to marry me? Or is he going to go crazy? Or is he going to not respect me?

Brian Howie: Yeah, you know, I mean, who knows? At least it's another step on the road that you're going to have to take at some point. You know, if you're like, I'm going to wait till marriage to do this, hey, good luck with that.

Dr. Bawa: There are a few people like that that come to me.

Brian Howie: There are. Good luck with that. That's what I'm saying. The odds of that working out, I don't know. So you're really playing a numbers game on this stuff.

Dr. Bawa: There's much more than buying a dress without trying it on. This is a big decision.

Brian Howie: It's a big decision. It affects hormones in your body. It affects how you perceive. It affects all kinds of things. So if you're just like, Oh, this is just a checkbox and we're going to get to this on the honeymoon, I don't know about that. That's a little dangerous.

[26:20] Premarital Sex, Marriage and Commitment

Dr. Bawa: That said, in India— Where premarital sex is not as big a thing as it is here. They're having less and less of it. It's changing in India, of course, as everything is changing around the world, so is this. But they're still having less sex, premarital sex, than here. But the marriages are lasting longer. Now, on one hand, you might think, well, maybe they're just miserable and they're just sticking it out because culturally they're expected to. Right. But I think in some cases, in India, for instance, and I'm no expert on Indian marriages, clearly, but they, I think, have a concept where this relationship is for life, and they will make that sexual relationship better. They'll work on it because they're giving themselves less of a chance of an exit strategy.

Brian Howie: Right. When you go into thinking like, we have to figure out, get through the problems that are going to break people up, that's absolutely right. In America, though, we are having less premarital sex, and it's not that we've suddenly gotten prudish or morals or anything. It's just we have more ways to entertain and stimulate ourselves than we ever have.

Dr. Bawa: Sex dolls, my God.

Brian Howie: Yeah, I mean, sex dolls, virtual and the metaverse and everything. So you're like, why would I want to deal with a real person? This is madness.

Dr. Bawa: Yeah, that's not a healthy thing either.

Brian Howie: So part of that, if you're looking at like, oh, 19-year-olds are having less sex now, that's a negative thing for society. That is not like suddenly everybody realize, oh my God, it's wrong, we shouldn't do that. That's not what's going on here. What's going on here is people are retreating into themselves and their own worlds and putting up walls that are not good for, you know, society.

[27:56] Me Too, Flirting and Dating Hesitation

Dr. Bawa: No, and I think Me Too has done us a great disservice in some ways, and I know people are going to jump down my throat for this, but I think they've taken the spontaneity out of relationships. Now everybody's worried about stepping on everybody else's toes. You can't even compliment anymore.

Brian Howie: Yeah, you can't compliment anybody. You can't flirt with somebody at work, God forbid. They complain about you and then your career is over in a heartbeat. It's gone the other direction too much.

Dr. Bawa: That's a good point.

Brian Howie: And women say that all the time to me, that they're like, the men were already one beat too hesitant, and now they're like, you know, before they were afraid of being rejected. Now they're afraid of being rejected, being publicly shamed, being fired, being all kinds of... And so the guy's like, fuck it, I don't need this. I don't need this shit. I'm not going to tell the girl at the office that I think her hair looks good today. And she wants to hear that. Still, a lot of women do. And there's, you know... We sort of just nuked the whole system. And I get that there had to be some things done to the system. But a lot of women, because I hear it all the time, think, We've taken this too far and there needs to be a correction. Because now the only ones left in the pool are super alpha douchebag guys who have no fear whatsoever and huge balls and they don't care. And the women are like, We want just a hair less than that. But those guys are gone. Like, they're gone. They're just like, I don't want to deal with it. So.

[29:22] Dr. Bawa's Dating Reality

Dr. Bawa: I mean, look at me. I'm 44 and single, and nobody would think that I'm single, but I am because I'm just not meeting the right men.

Brian Howie: What does that mean? How do you know you're not meeting the right men?

Dr. Bawa: You know, one problem I have is I'm in a unique situation where I live a public life. Now, I'm not putting my private life in public. Even my social media, you don't really see my kids and my mom, and I keep that private. So it's not like if I was in a relationship, I would put it all over my Instagram. But I think because I have a public life, and also because, I mean, let's face it, I'm a sex doctor. I'm Dr. Sex Fairy.

Brian Howie: Right, that's intimidating.

Dr. Bawa: Can you imagine how intimidating that is for a man? Imagine having to perform in front of me.

Brian Howie: Yeah, I'm sure.

Dr. Bawa: So I feel that a lot of men get very nervous around me, and I find that to be a huge turnoff. And when a man can't even have a confident conversation with me, he's not dating me. It's not happening.

Brian Howie: I know therapists have the same thing. They're like, they feel like they're analyzed on the date, and the therapist is like, No, I'm not doing that. I'm off.

Dr. Bawa: Yeah. I'm just having a conversation with you.

Brian Howie: Yeah. And yeah, it's the same thing. That does shrink the pool a little bit. I get that. But there's a lot of doctors within 50 miles of here, right?

Dr. Bawa: I know. I need to get out a little bit.

Brian Howie: Yeah. I mean, there's doctors all over. That's your pool.

Dr. Bawa: But I don't have to. See, that's the thing, though. I don't necessarily want to be with somebody who's just like me. I want something different.

Brian Howie: They don't have to be just like you. They just wear the same coat.

Dr. Bawa: Yeah. That fits the same.

Brian Howie: That fits the same. But there's a lot of them, and they at least understand. You're taking one part of it out of it. They understand your hours and your drive and your medical curiosity and your field of interest and all those kind of things. And they're probably not going to be, you know, a lot of women won't date a plastic surgeon.

Dr. Bawa: Because they feel judged.

Brian Howie: Yeah. And a lot of times they are. But some women are like, I'll get the free work, you know?

Dr. Bawa: But see, in my case, if the guy has a problem, I can fix it.

Brian Howie: Yeah, you can fix it. Like, we'll fix it right now. You put that on a dating profile.

Dr. Bawa: Yeah, how about that?

Brian Howie: Exactly. But you have to be open to the fact that there are, you know, thousands of possibilities for you to date and be happy within ten miles of here. There just are. You have to recognize them, and you have to act on them, and you have to not rule that out by, it's like, oh, there's just not that many guys around. You're a little bit in no man's land age-wise because you have kids, and if somebody wants kids, you're probably a little too old for that. No offense. So that's sometimes if the guy's 48 and he wants kids, he's going to have to go younger. And I'm not sure how much older you want to date for guys, because the guys tend to poop out. Like, it's tough. Like, guys are like 58, they just want to go to bed at 8 o'clock. And that leads to a lot of divorce too. A lot of times the women are like, okay, the kids are out of the house, let's go dancing, and he's like, no, playing golf and I'm going to sleep. And she wants a second act socially, and so they break up because of that. That happens all the time.

Dr. Bawa: It is tough. It is a tough situation to be in. But, you know, I do have faith in the fact that my best days are ahead of me and my best relationship is ahead of me.

[32:36] Single vs. Available

Brian Howie: Yeah, and you have to paint a picture to your availability, because a lot of men are going to be like, oh, she's a mom, she's got a business, she's a doctor, she probably has one hour a month available to date me. And you have to lay out, like, here's the bullseye to hit on my schedule, and if you hit it, it's going to be awesome. As long as he knows that there's a window there to get into your world, like, that's enough. But if he's just guessing, like, oh, she's going to be too busy for me, that's the first step in any relationship thing is availability. You have to understand that I am, you know, single is a bad word. Available is a better word, because a lot of people are single who've just taken themselves out of the dating pool. Available is what people are looking for. So you're like, I'm available to do this with the right person on these days, and it's awesome.

Dr. Bawa: Yeah, and you know the other thing is that people are making those assumptions. It's not like I'm not giving them—

Brian Howie: I know, but you're also not putting your calendar on the internet, you know? Like, they are making those assumptions, but it's a reasonable assumption, you know?

Dr. Bawa: Well, I am a busy girl.

Brian Howie: But you're right. You're not available, I assume, to go out seven nights a week.

Dr. Bawa: Oh, hell no.

Brian Howie: But you're also not booked 30 nights a month.

Dr. Bawa: No.

Brian Howie: Right. So it's sort of the responsibility of the datee, the man or the women, to be like, This is my custody situation. This is my work situation. But I have time to have fun, and with the right person, I look to do that. And that's really how you do that, you know? A lot of men will hear, Oh my God, single mom, full custody. Does she have a babysitter? Like, what, are the grandparents around? Like, there's a lot of questions that he can't ask right away, and so she kind of has to be like, Yeah, I'm a full-time mom. I love my kids or whatever, but I also love to have fun, and I have a lot of time to do that, or I have some time to do that. And painting that picture to the guy goes a long, long way because he really doesn't know the right question to ask without seeming offensive. He might be like, Wait, you always have your kids? And then, you know, that doesn't sound right either. You know, it's hard to ask questions in a way to get the information you want, so you kind of have to put information out there that—we're all selling hope here.

Dr. Bawa: We are selling hope. Now tell me, you speak to more people about this than I will ever speak to in a lifetime.

Brian Howie: Yeah.

[34:55] Hinge and the Best Dating Site

Dr. Bawa: Is there a dating app that you like more than others?

Brian Howie: Yeah. Like, if I had to be like, What is the dating app? Hinge.

Dr. Bawa: Really?

Brian Howie: Yeah. I mean, and I say this not on personal experience with Hinge. I kind of got out of the dating game before Hinge blew up, but I've talked to a lot of people about this. Hinge is really built, and that's part of their slogan too, to get you to delete the app. So they really push the people off a lot quicker. So the people who use Hinge tend to like it more. There used to be a great dating site called, I thought it was called like How About We. I don't think it's around anymore. And it was called like, How About We mountain climb? How about we go run a triathlon? Like you would suggest something and see if the person was up for it, and so naturally you'd be forced into an activity that was chosen, and you would have to get offline to do it. You know? I say all the time the best dating site is Earth, meaning there are more possibilities out there every single day. But you can't dismiss that some people really are uncomfortable without some initial interaction. It seems strange to just go up to somebody at Home Depot and say hi now. Like it's weird. It shouldn't be. It's becoming weird. It never used to be. It used to be.

Brian Howie: We used to have to. I mean, guys, you think it's tough now. Back in the fifties, they'd have to go ask her to dance and dance with her before you got to talk to her at all. Like it's not harder now. It's just different now. We have to use the technology as a means to an end. So it lets you cast that net out. It lets you, you know, bring in some people you don't like. But, you know, the key to all this, I've said this a thousand times, is the best way to get into a relationship is to get rid of the words not my type. If you're over 30 and you're still single, you have no type. Your type is not working out for you. And if you're under 30, you have no idea what your type is. So either way, you kind of have to take off, like, I'm looking for this, I want this, I want somebody who does this, likes this. Like, just get rid of all of that. You're going to find out so much more about yourself if you open yourself up to the possibilities of dating somebody who you believe is quote unquote not my type.

Dr. Bawa: There's a thought.

Brian Howie: Yeah.

[37:04] Why 'My Type' Can Hold You Back

Dr. Bawa: Because I do have in my mind that person, my ideal mate, and maybe I'm restricting myself by having that ideal mate.

Brian Howie: Get rid of that. Either that person isn't right, or that person doesn't exist. But either way, that person is crowding out possibilities all over the place. All we really know is what hasn't worked out for us. There's a dating—there's a matchmaking company, I won't mention them because I know them. They ask the people they are matching to give them photos of people who they've dated in the past. And their logic is, we want to see physically what their type is. And I'm like, you're giving them the pool of no. You're giving them the pool of the discard pile. Why would you go fishing down there again? Guys are like, Oh, I only want blondes. I'll find you a thousand brunettes and you would like every single one, and vice versa. People believe what they think because then they're like, Well, if I don't see that person in my head, then it just—I haven't found them yet. It's not me. It's almost always you. And you have to open yourself up to these possibilities of getting out of your comfort zone. Maybe you, like a lot of people, never tried Indian food, you know?

[38:10] Costume Confidence and Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

Brian Howie: A lot of people—I bring up all the time that the one day of the year that collectively the most people in this country are the most confident is Halloween. And that's because people have this sort of costume confidence where they are liberated to be anything they want to be without fear of judgment. Nobody makes fun of anybody on Halloween. Everybody's in like a weird, Oh my God, look, you're a refrigerator. That's weird. Love your costume. Right. It's always about that. And people need to bring that costume confidence mindset into the other 364 days of the year where they feel that they can get out of that. Rut that they're in, and I only like to wear black, or I only want to date guys who are six-four, any of this kind of stuff.

Dr. Bawa: I don't want my cleavage on display.

Brian Howie: Yeah, all of it, right. You can be a slutty nun, or like, you have to shake up your snow globe and figure out what comes out of that.

Dr. Bawa: Oh, I was a slutty nun once.

Brian Howie: Yeah.

Dr. Bawa: And you want to know something funny? So I wore this really short little black dress with, you know, the habit and everything, and my mother wore the full-length regular nun costume when we went to Mar-a-Lago, and we were quite the pair.

Brian Howie: Good.

Dr. Bawa: And this guy comes across us, and he's dressed as a priest. So he looks at me and he starts laughing because, you know, we're quite the pair, Mother Superior and the slutty nun. And, you know, I wasn't too slutty a nun, but, you know, it was fun anyway. And he said something, and I said, Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned, and, you know, that led to some good conversation.

Brian Howie: It does.

Dr. Bawa: It was a fun night.

Brian Howie: I asked out a girl at a Halloween party once. She was a slutty Cruella de Vil, and I went to pick her up, and she should have stuck with the slutty Cruella de Vil. Like, not only did it change her physically, it changed her personality. Like, her personality in the costume was more flirty and playful and fun. And when she went back to, like, this reserve, it just wasn't—it was like it wasn't the same person. I'm not saying she has to be in her Halloween costume 365 days of the year, but the mindset that went into that, like, that was the girl I wanted to go out with.

Dr. Bawa: Very, very well said, because I think that costume liberated her.

Brian Howie: Yeah. It was an excuse to show a side of her that she was maybe too embarrassed to show otherwise. Right. And it wasn't like she was pole dancing at the party. She just had, like, one extra button and a little bit different color hair and a little bit more makeup, and it made her let the walls of her job down for four hours. And she needs to figure out ways to do that more often, all the time.

Dr. Bawa: We all do. We all do. In fact, people assume that because I'm Dr. Sex Fairy, they assume a few different things. They assume, A, that I'm having wild sex parties in my office. Yeah. And on the other hand, they assume that I wouldn't want to be with somebody because I'm Dr. Sex Fairy, so I've seen it all, done it all.

Brian Howie: It's too clinical to you.

Dr. Bawa: Yeah. Yeah. You know exactly how it works.

Brian Howie: It's paint by numbers.

Dr. Bawa: Yeah, assumptions. Yeah, I get that. You're right.

[41:03] Where to Find Brian Howie

Dr. Bawa: So, Brian, where can people find you?

Brian Howie: Go to greatlovedebate.com. Obviously, you can find the podcast everywhere, The Great Love Debate with Brian Howie, but go to greatlovedebate.com. We have live tour schedule up there. Our next show is in Boston. And shoot me an email, greatlovedebate@gmail.com, and we get all kinds of questions and answers and suggestions, and people are going to say, I met my wife and I didn't have sex with her for 40 years and I still love her. Whatever. And Great Love Debate on all the socials.

Dr. Bawa: And I was on the Great Love Debate live here in Palm Beach.

Brian Howie: Good.

Dr. Bawa: Yeah. That was a lot of fun.

Brian Howie: Yeah, it's fun. People get crazy.

Dr. Bawa: Yeah. Good questions, good information, and your podcast is definitely a go-to for me.

Brian Howie: Good. Thank you for having me. This was fun.

Dr. Bawa: Thank you so much for coming again, and I hope to see you back.

Brian Howie: All right. Thank you.

[41:51] Closing

Dr. Bawa: Great conversation. I hope you, my listeners, learned that it's okay to be your own true self. It's okay to do what feels right to you, and being judged really shouldn't be something that worries you too much. Life is short. Go live it. Until next time.

[42:05] Recorded Outro

Dr. Bawa: I hope you enjoyed the Dr. Sex Fairy podcast today. I would love to continue this conversation with you. If you would like to get in touch with me, email me at askme@drsexfairy.com. Don't forget to follow this podcast and leave me a five-star review, and make sure you follow my blockbuster hit TikTok account, Dr. Sex Fairy.