Getting Laid Tonight?

It might actually save your sense of self and social dynamics.

If I had to group my generalized content into “themes,” I would say some of the bigger ones are:

• Relationships

• Masculinity

• Connection

• Loneliness

Obviously I write a lot about work too, but those four bullets overlap with how we process and perceive work too — a lot of awful middle managers, both male and female variety, are that way because other relationships or connections in their life are suffering, and thus they turn “work” into “family,” or more accurately “work” into “fiefdom,” and everyone below them suffers. It’s a brutal circle.

As these are interests of mine, I’ve written about these topics a couple of times (couple dozen, in some cases):

• Can adults be more open about sex?

• Can we ever “fix” loneliness?

• How many times a week “should” couples have sex?

Within that last article is this quote:

No wonder they miss sex when it disappears. It’s a way for them to be aggressive and manly but also tender and vulnerable. “For some men, sex may be their primary way of communicating and expressing intimacy,” says Justin Lehmiller, a Harvard University social psychologist who studies sexuality. Taking away sex “takes away their primary emotional outlet.”

No doubt. Funny thing about that quote is … I led a couple of men’s lunches for this F3 (faith, fitness, fellowship group) last year. I decided to make one lunch about sex. I mean, it’s important to guys and a lot of guys never really discuss it openly aside from “slipped one past the goalie” discourses. So I figured, eh, let’s talk about it over rice and bean platters. As you’d probably expect, most of the discussion was me with a lot of dead silence.

But when I read that quote above, there was some interest. A dude named Colin Lackey finally spoke and said, “When my wife shuts it down, it’s bad times in the household.” I thought that was a bit odd, but also honest. And the honesty part has value.

This is all a long way of saying: I found this article on New York Times called something like “Have More Sex, Please!” and fell for the headline. I read it twice. The article gets on eggshells and tippy-toes later into the text, pivoting to discuss how “not everyone can feasibly have sex.” While true, it gets a little woke and honestly, kinda conceding that some won’t have sex is part of the issue of how we got here, ya know?

Sex is a very complicated topic for many people, and that’s ironic, because in reality it should be one of the simplest topics in all of human interaction. “If I wanna fuck, I say I wanna fuck.”

Why is the whole thing so complicated? Dozens of reasons. Let me give you a few: