3 Things You Should Consider Before Sending Him Your Nudes

Dating certainly isn’t what it used to be. Long gone are the days of months-long courting, exchanging letters, or waiting for a nightly phone call from our significant other to catch up on each other’s days. 

Today, so many of our romantic encounters take place from the comfort of our cell phone. We find our dates by swiping back and forth on a screen, set up video chat dates, text continuously, and have unending access to our guy with just a few taps on a screen.

We’re at a point in time where our cell phones are such a constant in our lives, from using them to getting takeout delivered to our doorstep, to ordering household essentials online, to staying in touch with friends, to finding romance. Our phones are there every step of the way. We’ve begun to treat our phone as an extension of ourselves, allowing it to replace in-person communication and interaction.

Along with the ability to stay connected to our significant other through our phones comes new expectations. These days, close to half of young women have sent nudes at some point. So it’s safe to say that sending NSFW photos has become an expected facet of romantic relationships. But as commonplace as it may be, is it a good idea?

It’s Just Not Appropriate Early On

Casual sex and casual dating are quite prevalent, and we see this in our reluctance to put labels on relationships. It seems that as our encounters become less casual, our relationships become less committed. But shouldn’t it be the other way around?

That level of intimacy is unwarranted in the early days of a relationship.

The early days of a relationship are best dedicated to finding out if this person is someone we’re interested in continuing to invest our time and energy in. By sending nudes and giving a guy access to more intimate details and parts of ourselves, we’re skipping more than a few steps ahead and offering more commitment through our trust and our bodies than is warranted this early on in the relationship.

If That’s What It Takes To Keep Him Interested, Then He’s Not Interested

With finding a new date being as simple as ordering a pizza to go, it’s normal to feel like we have to fight to keep a guy interested because of how easily replaceable we supposedly are. We’re sold the idea that dating is all about doing the absolute most to stand out from the crowd, to grab hold of a guy’s attention and not let go. And often enough, we’re encouraged to do this by sending nudes.

A quality guy who’s worth dating will reassure us that we don’t need to compete for his attention.

But here’s the thing: Any guy who’s worth our time, who’s actually invested in cultivating a committed relationship, who’s looking to know us on a deeper level, who’s different from any random Tinder dude, won’t make us wonder what we need to do to keep him interested. A quality guy who’s worth dating will reassure us that we don’t need to compete for his attention.

We Don’t Know Where They’ll End Up

Obviously any person who betrays someone’s privacy by leaking their nudes online or passing them on without consent is devoid of morals. That being said, once we take a picture and press send, we have no control over what’s done with it, despite the fact that our privacy should be respected.

Once we take a picture and press send, we have no control over what’s done with it.

Revenge porn, the unfortunate circumstance in which intimate photos and videos are posted online without the subject’s consent or knowledge, is all too common an experience for young women today, and the results of such an experience can be damaging to our professional life as well as our emotional and mental health. We can’t trust, even if we should be able to, that the photos we send in confidence will be kept private.

Closing Thoughts

We’re all well-aware that, with our technology and incredibly easy access to each other, sending nudes has become a normal, expected part of countless romantic relationships. But despite the expectations of our guy, it’s essential that we weigh the risks of sending compromising pictures, and resist giving into the pressure of doing so if it’s something we’re not comfortable with.

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