Dear readers, due to the powerful nature of this subject I have received criticism from people whose opinion I respect, who are guardians of the cultural integrity and tradition of Iran. Two important points have been made by the critics of this article: 1) what I write about 'casual sex in Iran' represents a corruption of tradtional Iranian culture and even if the intimate and embarassing things I write are true it is possible that, as they said, "exposing moral corruption accelerates the spread of moral corruption" and 2) when I write about "Iranian parties" etc a western reader would have no idea what this means and would incorrectly assume that Iranian parties envolve physically close mixed dancing. Due to the lack of any foundational information about Iranian culture and what makes it distinct from Western culture it is more than likely that western readers would misunderstand my article about this very intimate, personal, and sensitive subject. That means that by having this article here I am contributing to the misunderstanding of Iran rather than humanizing Iranians as I had hoped to do. Due to this I am currently considering retracting or severely modifying this article. Please send me (anonymously if you want) email by using the "Contact Me" button if you have any opinion on this subject.


This has to be one of the foremost subjects on the mind of young men and women in any country. Based on what pitiful little experience I had (though I tried my best!) I discovered the following about the dating environment in Iran:


The End Game
* Most Iranians have in mind the classic love story where their first sexual contact is with their dream partner they fall in love with at first site, court, engage, marry, and THEN consummate.
* Iranian men almost universally expect their wives to be virgens who have never even kissed or thought of another man. Apparently mothers somehow raise their sons with this expectation.
* Ideally Iranian men look for their future wives not only based on beauty and compatability but also their inherent nobility, chastity, perhaps piety.
* Family status is very important and in an indirect way arranged marriages are still very much the norm. Marrying from within one's extended family is not unusual.


Dating

* Dating just for fun and with no end objective (at least superficially) to marriage is NOT the norm.
* Most parties where young men and women meet take place in family homes where parents of one or both parties are present and looking on. note: in Iranian parties dancing is done with the arms in the air, the hands wearving intricate patterns at shoulder height. There is usually no touching while dancing between the sexes - normally there is a distance of a good half meter between the dancers
* Most young Iranians live in close quarters with their parents and thus have no venue for sexual contact should it be available. If they have a car I was told by some young men that that provides more possibilities.
* Since there are no public venues where unrelated men and women can socialize and dance together young Iranians seek out ways to party. Many trips planned by univeristy classments to an ostensibly cultural destination are really opportunities to draw the chartered bus's curtains, turn up the music, take of the headscarves and dance together. Many camping trips really turn into a disco in a natural setting. Again, please note that Iranian dancing typically includes no bodily contact between the sexes
* University students of different sexes get to socialize together under the auspices of study. Marriages from this venue are on the rise. More than half of all university students are women.
* There are some places like the vacation communities in the Caspian sea area where unrelated young men and women are more free to socialize within the walls of the community.


Physical Contact

* One girl told me about having a boyfreind 'if you have a really good one then for the first six months there will be no talk of physical contact, after that he might start to pressure you for a kiss. Once that is started the pressure to have some sort of sexual contact may start.'
* Hymen replacement surgery is not unusual in Iran. It is not implemented that often, however, since that requires that the girl go to her parents and say 'I need this operation, I've had sex, etc.' note: it is definitely NOT normal or easy for a girl to ask her parents about this.
* One girl told me 'when boys start putting pressure on you to have sex they say, "come on, its 2002, lets act like the Europeans and Americans etc..'" But when they want to get married they will not propose to a girl who has had sex with them saying 'if you did it with me maybe you did it with someone else.' She concluded: 'when they want to date you it is the year 2000, when they want to marry it is the year 1000.' Many unwed Iranian girls feel that if they lose their virginity they become worthless.
* With the few ( who can actually know what number this represents? ) girls that do succomb to the pressure to have intimate contact with their boyfriends begin I was told that oral and even anal contact are common ways for these girls to 'keep their boyfreinds' without having to "give up" their virginity.


Other Outlets

* Apparently for women there are no other outlets for sexual contact than waiting until marriage (at least not that I heard of).
* Many men spoke about prostitution. Apparently with the rampant inflation since the revolution coupled with static salaries economic pressure may partially fuel this phenomenon. Another contributing factor may be the death toll of the war with Iraq (at least 500,000 yound Iranian men died during that 10 year conflict) from which there are more young women than men in Iran.
- Men said that there are women in different well-known neighborhoods in Tehran who walk the street looking for customers. Men drive up and down these roads flashing their lights and pulling up to the curb. If the woman comes over to them then the assumption is that she is in the sex trade.
- Men I spoke to said these encounters cost between 12 and 25 USD but require that the man have an empty private residence to go back to with the girl.
- Some claimed that the prostitutes included univerity students, others said that was impossible and these were small town girls who came to the big city alone.
- Some young men claimed that if a men has extra money to spend, a cell phone, his own apartment and car casual sex is possible with non-prostitutes (since these conditions of having car, own apartment are not something any young men I met had I wonder how many men could verify this conjecture).

Also

* The obligatory military service plays a role in all this. After two years of boredom waiting out the finish of this service purely in the company of other sexually frustrated men many young men marry immediately. Many people I spoke to speculated that they marry purely to begin their sexual lives. One man upon hearing that I was 28 and still unmarried said 'times a' wasting, you should marry while you can still be strong in bed for your wife.'
* Since the election of President Khatami in the late 90s there has been a significant opening up of restrictions on intersex socialization in public. The president has made statements to the police forces & citizenry to the effect of 'do not stop unmarried young men and women from socializing in public, meeting each other, taking walks in the park etc, how else can they get to know each other?' While this may seem like a small move to some it represents a significant change from previous unwritten policy (I beleive on the books such intersex socialization is still forbidden). Young unmarried men and women can now be seen walking holding hands (especially in north Tehran) most everywhere. Still, near the mountain day hiking areas on Fridays there are sometimes moral police there trying to stop mixed groups from venturing out together.
* There is purportedly now coming into adulthood a generation of 16 year old grils who buck convention in various ways, purportedly especially in their attitudes towards casual sex.
* When a woman has been divorced or widowed then her sexual possibilities widen since the 'cat is out of the bag' and no one expects her to be a virgen anymore. I have also been told, however, that 'if a divorced woman starts DATING her possibilities of remarriage decrease significantly.'
* Adultery happens and also the phenomenon of married women trying to cheat on their husbands happens in Iran. Iranian women are quite outgoing, and have a much stronger display of personality than many of their counterparts in other Asian and Middle Eastern countries. They frequently hold professional jobs which may leave them together alone with men who they are not related or married to.