Starting The Year With A BANG?

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:

1. Since the rise of red pill YouTubers and incel culture, we’ve had an increasing narrative (picked up on “mainstream media”) that the dating funnel is skewed (it is) and only the top 3% of hottest men can get laid. That’s not entirely true, but I understand how it can feel that way.

2. Scale of loneliness, COVID, insularity, etc. Amazon boxes on the porch. People don’t go to fucking grocery stores anymore, or church. How you gonna meet someone? In Reddit private messages? I sound like a Boomer edge lord.

3. There’s an incredibly fucked-up narrative around men getting married, where other men tell them “Well, there goes your sex life!” Isn’t marriage supposed to be, like, your greatest union? Weirdly couples get pregnant and dudes say to other dudes, “Well, there goes your sex life — and your sleep!” Dudes are generally not supportive of other dudes, at least semantically. It’s odd. I wonder if, generations after the first guy said to his friend “You’ll never get laid again as a married man,” the idea has scaled.

4. Availability of online porn. I’ve had five guys I am at best casual friends with tell me about their porn addiction in the past 12 months. All are married, all have children. I think there are 12 kids across those five guys. And they’re huddled in dark corners chasing “Asian scissoring.” That could, ya know, reduce sex with spouse.

5. Men and women want different stuff around sex sometimes. This is not pleasant to type, but a lot of times dudes want a rag doll for their dick. That’s the same narrative around virility. “She took my seed.” I’ve actually heard guys say that, like with a straight face. One of them is actually now a partner in a law firm. Ha. Women tend to (not always) want more romance and caring, or at the very least someone to unload the goddamn dishwasher and vacuum once in a while. That’s a conventional narrative but I’d also say some women do just want to fuck sometimes.

Anyway, the whole thing is a complicated topic and it shouldn’t be. It should really be about:

• Is this person nice?

• Are you generally physically attracted to them?

• Do you want biological offspring?

• Are you looking for a release on this particular evening?

• Is it a positive form of connection?

I’ve been having sex for probably 26 years at this point, give or take some dry spells. I don’t think I’ve ever gone north of a year, so pin a rose on me. But in 26 years, I’ve easily been part of 100 different rationales for sex, both my own and the partner in question.

It’s not as complicated as we make it. Now, yes, the modern age and modern dating suck. I was single for 11 months in 2017 and it was pretty brutal. I thankfully frequented some bars where I met people, but the one time I used Tinder, I matched with a transgender and I think I matched with a guy once. (I’m heterosexual.) So yes, it’s a weird world out there. But we could be having more sex, in general. We could be changing the narrative beyond “Not tonight, honey!” (trope) and “Well, porn is easier!” (trope) and “We ate/drank too much.” It can feel, as you interact with other people and couples in the wild, that the only point of sex for some is production of offspring, and once the offspring is capped, the sex fades to black.

Here’s that New York Times article on the benefits of more sex:

The loneliness epidemic may be a societal issue, but it can be solved, at least partly, at the level of individual bedrooms. Those of us in a position to be having more sex ought to be doing so. Here is the rare opportunity to do something for the betterment of the world around you that involves nothing more than indulging in one of humanity’s most essential pleasures.

Having more sex is both personal guidance — your doctor might well agree — and a political statement. American society is less connected, made up of individuals who seem increasingly willing to isolate themselves. Having more sex can be an act of social solidarity.

“Let me get someone tonight, bae. It’s an act of social solidarity.”

That shit might not work for every Leslie, Lindsay, and Lupe out in the world, but the argument is there at some level — sex is good, and healthy, and doesn’t need to be tied to just the period where you’re trying to conceive children or just ages 18 to 27 before you find your sexless, two-children-and-done mate. We can be more open about this stuff.