What's your explanation/evidence
I like this sort of question. Based on my own field experience, I agree with wedrifid's advice. Also, it's not hard to delay sex a few weeks, especially if are only going out with the person once a week.
Spread out with a week in between, these 6 steps could take 1.5 months to complete. In my last relationship, the schedule was something like this, and it didn't feel unnatural. It also helped that she liked to initiate things, so that I knew that she would initiate sex when she was ready; then I didn't have to try to guess the right timetable for sex and risk being too fast or too slow.
Of course, some of these steps can be accelerated, and people might meet more than once a week. The point is that it should be easy to delay sex past the two week mark, while still doing more sexually each time.
Don't be hanging out more than twice a week, or more than two days in a row. People shouldn't be doing that anyway in the beginning, because it's a great way for people to get sick of each other.
Have dates be activities where sex is logistically hard. Keep everything in dark corners of clubs, in parking lots, in cars, or out in nature. If the environment is a barrier to sex, then you won't have to refuse it.
See the amazing Playette FAQ:
If you haven't hit emotional hookpoint it yet AND YOU WANT IT, don't put yourself in a situation where sex can happen and then refuse to have sex -- just try to keep subtle control of logistics such that the rate at which you approach a possible hookup roughly corresponds to the rate at which his emotional attraction is growing. If you can't think of a smooth, natural way to delay isolation until you've hit hookpoint, then you have to weigh your options and make a quick decision: would you rather bail on the interaction, or go for it and risk the possibility that you won't hit hookpoint at all? I'd like to stress gently, here, that no matter what there are no guarantees. Some guys can hit hookpoint after sex. Some will immediately before. And some, no matter how long you have with them, never will. In either case, a smooth interaction is key - smoothly bail, or smoothly go with it. In general, I would avoid any kind of 'status of the hookup' talk or obviously artificial speedbump.
The most stylish solution would be to logistically delay sex without it feeling artificial for the other person. Yet if you are dating someone who is nerdy and/or capable of explicit communication around sex, explicitly trying to explain when you do or don't want to have sex could work. And if they specifically ask you when you will want to have sex, or keeps trying to initiate it, then they may force your hand (but if they are playing stylishly, then they shouldn't be trying to make you logically explain yourself).
Explicit negotiation can be very costly, and this cost isn't recognized by people in culture who are always gushing about "communication" and "talking about it." Setting up a date that makes sex difficult subcommunicates that you don't want to have sex, which can often be superior to explicitly explaining it to your partner.
My problem with this model is that sexuality is extremely important to me and a guy pretty much has to prove that he's sexually interesting in order to be worth my time. This is difficult to accurately gauge through conversation -- even men who are in my sexual subcultures/etc can be less-than-ideal sexual matches. It might be good for me to follow a more strategic drawn-out pattern than sex on the first date, but that would require me to spend a lot of time on men who may not end up being sexually awesome (and also it removes the pleasure of having sex ...
Related to: Luminosity Sequence, Unknown Knowns,
Let me introduce you to a hypothetical high school student, Sally. She’s smart and pretty and outgoing, and so are her friends. She considers herself a modern woman, sexually liberated, and this is in line with the lifestyle her friends practice. They think sex is normal and healthy and fun. Sally isn’t just pretending in order to fit in; these really are her friends, this really is her milieu, and according to health class, sex between consenting adults is nothing to be ashamed of. Sally isn't a rigorous rationalist, although she likes to think of herself as rational, and she's no more self-aware than the average high school girl.
Now Sally meets a boy, Bob, and she things he’s cute, and he thinks she’s cute too. Bob is part of her crowd. Her friends like him; he respects women and treats Sally well and, like any healthy teenage boy, fairly horny. According to her belief system, that shouldn’t set off any alarm bells. She’s been warned about abusive relationships, but Bob is a nice guy. So when they go upstairs together at her friend’s party, she has every reason to be excited and a little nervous, but not uncomfortable. The idea that Mom wouldn’t approve is so obviously irrelevant that she ignores it completely.
...And afterwards, she feels guilty and violated and horrible about herself, even though it was her decision.
I used this example because I expect it’s not unusual. On the surface, Sally’s discomfort seems to come out of nowhere, but modern North American society is chock-full of contradictory beliefs about sex. Sex is normal and healthy. Sex is dirty. Sex is only for when you’re married. If Sally’s mother is Christian, or even just conservative, Sally would have internalized those beliefs when she was a child. It would have been hard not to. They’re her unknown knowns, and she may not have noticed them before, because there’s a wide psychological gap between believing it’s okay for others to behave a particular way, and believing it’s okay for you. The meme ‘don’t pass judgement on other people’ is, I think, pretty widespread in North America and maybe more so in Canada, but so is holding oneself to a high standard...and those are contradictory.
I think that the nagging, seemingly irrational moment of ‘that doesn’t feel right’ is important. It potentially reveals something about the beliefs and attitudes you hold that you don’t even know about. Sally’s response to her nagging doubt could have been the following:
Hmm, that’s interesting, why does it bother me so much that Mom would disapprove? I guess when we used to go to church, they said sex was only for when you’re married. But I don’t believe anything else they said in church. ...Well, I guess I want Mom to be proud of me. I want her to praise me for doing well in school. And I think lying is wrong, so the fact that I either have to lie to her about having had sex, or face her disapproval, maybe that’s why I’m uncomfortable? But I don’t want to say no, it’ll make me look like a prude... Still, what if everyone feels this way at the start? I know Alice went to church too when she was a kid, and her mom would kill her if she knew she was sexually active, I wonder if that bothers Alice? Hmm, I think maybe it’s still the right choice to sleep with Bob, but maybe I’m taking this too lightly? Maybe this should be a big deal and I should feel anxious? After all, he might judge me anyway, he might think I’m too easy, or a slut. Maybe I can just explain to him that I want to think about this longer... After all, why should I assume something is right just because they told us in health class? That’s just like in church, it’s taking someone else’s opinion on faith. I’ve never actually thought about this, I’ve just followed other people. Who’s to say they’re right?
Whatever decision Sally makes, she probably won’t feel violated. She listened to her feelings and took them into consideration, even though they seemed irrational. As it turned out, they were a reasonable consequence of a belief-fragment that she hadn’t even known she had. So as a consequence of stopping to think, she knows herself better too. She’ll be better able to predict her behaviour in future situations. She’ll be less likely to ignore her threshold-warning discomfort and make risky choices as a result of peer pressure alone. She’ll be more likely to think.
To conclude: emotions exist. They are real. If you ignore them and plow on ahead, you won’t necessarily thank yourself afterwards. And that nagging feeling is a priceless moment to find out about your unknown knowns...which may not be rational, which may have been laid down in some previous era and never questioned since, but which part of you is going to try to uphold until you consciously deconstruct them.