Ever Wondered Where a Sex or Dating Thing Came From?

[Sam W]

If so, we want to hear about it! I'm hoping to start a new series about the origins and history of different sex and dating norms. The series is aimed at exploring how certain ideas about sex and relationships come to be accepted as standard (like buying someone a diamond ring to propose to them), as well as offering up some fun facts and interesting history for curious readers. So if there's a particular sex or dating thing where you've always wondered, "why is it like this?" post it here and it might end up as part of the series!

[thewrit3r]

Is there any reason why penile-vaginal intercourse is often considered “real” sex?

[Heather]

One heteronorm that comes up often here over many years is the idea that women -- or, if not women, someone who is femme -- need to wait on a man or masculine person to do the asking out.

[Kaizen]

I wonder if "the talking stage" (where people are communicating a lot, often romantically/sexually, and not communicating with others that way, but haven't defined themselves as being in an exclusive relationship) is actually a new thing or just a new term for something that was already happening. I hear plenty of people my age complain about or make fun of "talking", saying it's a sign that people today can't handle commitment, but I know that in the past people would "date" before declaring themselves to be "going steady", and I wonder if that was different terminology for a similar pattern.

[Arasia]

I got engaged recently, and my fiance and I have examined a lot of "things" surrounding engagement and marriage which seem absolutely ridiculous.
For instance, as you stated, the diamond (or otherwise super-expensive) ring. Why is it a thing that a man is supposed to give up months' worth of his salary to get a piece of jewelry? That seems horrible to me; and crazy on the woman's part to expect that level of expense. Last Valentine's Day, I was driving with the radio on, and an advertisement came on. It was trying to sell a $5,000 dollar engagement ring on a payment plan, saying, "You'll have it paid off in 5 years!!" as if that was a wonderful deal. Meanwhile, my fiance and I bought a pair of nice $25 dollar wedding bands--and that's all we want!
In a similar vein, where did the super-expensive wedding dress come from? I cannot imagine spending thousands of dollars on a dress I only plan to wear once. In my case, I bought a nice-looking white dress with my own money, very cheaply. It isn't a wedding dress at all (which is why it was so cheap), it just looks like one.
Then there's the idea that the wedding is a bride's "big day," and should be all about her. I think the wedding day is the least important day of all for a married couple--it's all the days after that matter, the days where two people have to make their relationship actually work. If the wedding day is for anybody, it ought to be for the families of the two people. It seems strange that our society treats weddings as a flamboyant display meant to please the bride. As a soon-to-be bride myself, I can't imagine anything more self-centered and ridiculous.
Some other "things" my fiance and I have encountered during our relationship include:
-The man is supposed to have a car to drive the woman around in, and, the man is supposed to pay for the dates and outings. (REALITY: I have a car, he doesn't; and I make more money--so I do the driving, and I pay for dates more often.)
-Women with body hair are gross, and men don't find them attractive. (REALITY: I haven't shaved in years. My fiance likes to play with my armpit hair.)

[Rachel M]

I recently listened to a podcast that was talking about marriage and how in Western culture it was seen as something completely unrelated to love until reasonably recently--it was looked at more as a business venture in which the families and the individuals had something (money, power, connections)to gain from the union. This is still the way that marriage is treated in many cultures, with the idea that affection and love can grow over time, but that the goal of marriage is not actually to have a passionate love affair, but to have a stable and long lasting unit in which to raise children. It's definitely interesting to challenge where the entire concept of marriage came from and then within that where the idea arose that marriage should come from such a fleeting, intense thing as romantic love.

[millstreet]

Something we spoke about in a psychology class I took recently was the "sexual script" that we follow. Ie. In North America, the "sexual script" we follow is kissing, then feeling each other, then oral sex, then PIV sex. In other cultures it can be quite different. When someone varies from the sexual script you know, it is uncomfortable because it's not what you were expecting. I'm curious to know where these expectations came from and why they vary so much by culture?

[Mo]

I think it's good to keep in mind, too, that there are plenty of people in North America who don't follow this script exactly (or at all), especially when you consider couples where PIV intercourse just isn't possible. It definitely can be surprising or odd if you're used to having the same script or "escalation" pattern with all sexual partners and you encounter someone who doesn't fit with that pattern, but I think remembering that there doesn't ever have to be a script can be a way people can do more direct communication with partners, instead of assuming that everyone's on the same page and knows what "comes next" in the sexual timeline.

I don't know where, specificially, the idea of the script you mention above (I think the "base" system also ties into this) came from, sadly! I do think that what that script might look like, if someone has one in their mind at all, is going to depend a lot on cultural factors just because pretty much everything from food to etiquette to clothing to family dynamics is impacted by the culture someone lives or was brought up in. It's hard to find something humans do that isn't culturally impacted!