The thing our culture tries hardest to hide is that committed, married couples have the most sex, and the best sex. It completely undermines the sexual revolution and “women’s lib”, but random sex sucks, especially for women. Sex with someone you trust and who cares about you is so, so much better.
Hint to Gen Z. If you want to have lots of great sex, get married to someone you love and stay married.
Don’t know, but I’m more suspicious the more I read this, and it’s a sentiment appearing in multiple articles all over the place in the past coupla months, so you do gotta wonder.
Either 1. there’s a large number of married people who suddenly realised in the past couple of months that their very own, very particular married sex is better than that had by their non-attached friends, or 2. someone’s found a way to package up jealousy & make it sound like a win.
Call me cynical, but my money’s got to be on the latter.
Probably not. Just from personal experience amongst the people I grew up with, all the ones that settled down young before putting it about all ended up with broken marriages in their thirties. The ones I’ve talked to have said they feel as if they missed out on the nonsense the rest of us got up to in our twenties while they were shacked up at home, and it’s something you can’t recreate later in life
All but one of the ones that settled down a bit later are still together.
Random sex is a mixed bag. Sometimes good. You often wonder why you bothered. And you’re often left with emotional fallout if one of the participants (usually, but not always the woman) thought it was more than that.
The thing about sex with someone you love is that it doesn’t need to be great to be great. Getting that feeling to last is still a challenge though.
Ya, there’s an element of truth to the last para.
It’s done with a different kind of sentiment, so doesn’t need to be fantastic to be fantastic.
The main fantasticness may well be that after decades, you still do it at all.
Persistence isn’t usually a quality coupled with sweetness, but in this case it is.
not even remotely true.
The *real reality* is that euphamistically “healthy sex live” is the defining boundary condition that sets up diverging pathways for a couple in relationship.
once you and your partner have had sex 85,000 times over the course of many years of formal relationship (itself the follow up to many years of informal pre-relationship phase), by statistical necessity exhausting the configurationa space of every variable applicable to the topic (every eccentuating modifier that can be agreed upon, iterated in every way agreeable, graded in a continuous spectrum from most to least intense), and hence finding the “global optimized” state, there are exactly 2 trajectories the relationship can adopt:
kids (aka years of mutually exhausted selibacy, or even possibly “forever” depending on such unarguable facts like healthcare outcomes from pregnancy)
Breakup.
I have seen #2 happen, sincerley, at least 5 times out of the 20 or so relationships I have held in my circle over the last 15 years
Tony Taylor
6 months ago
I can’t stand sex scenes on screen. I won’t watch allegedly saucy movies, and at the merest hint of a romp appearing on TV, I reflexively push fast-forward. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen sex scene that has advanced the story, but 99.9% of the ones I have seen are entirely gratuitous and pointless; to me, anyway.
Certainly beats talking about something else mid deed. On a holiday when we were about 18 one of the boys went home one night with a woman in her 40’s who started complimenting the weather while he was going at it.
He described it as a massive kick to the ego
Unfortunately it was sunshine related so he couldn’t even pass it off as dirty talk
Rob McMillin
6 months ago
The more I see this sort of cultural discourse, the more I incline to believe that the Victorians had the right idea for the median woman: no sex before marriage, and make men do the heavy lifting to prove their value. Sex for its own sake just is not its own end for women, for whom evolutionary pressures make it at best a means to an end. A great deal of modern feminist dogma is about overturning this situation, with predictable results.
Sex for its own sake just is not its own end for women, for whom evolutionary pressures make it at best a means to an end.
I’ve heard this one so many times, mostly from men.
First: female sexuality seems to vary far more than male sexuality – in terms of amount of sex drive, adventurousness etc. it is absolutely not true that women don’t enjoy sex for its own sake. Some may not, many do. Some really do.
Second: it’s best not to decide what women do or don’t like on the basis of theory (“evolutionary pressures”). Look first at reality and see if the theory fits.
Last edited 6 months ago by David Morley
Charles Stanhope
6 months ago
Has UnHerd become The Sun?
Christopher Barclay
6 months ago
I don’t disagree with the sentiments of this article. However you need to view the way sex is portrayed in film in terms of the older men running, producing and directing films trying to persuade young women to have sex with them.
Many,not all,but most of the glorious pop songs of the 1960s and 1970s were so many variants on Andrew Marvells plea to his coy mistress,”Let’s do it now before we get old”. In fact the whole Sexual Revolution thing was a load of randy (and talented) young men writing those songs plus a whole lot of social commentators saying sex was good for us,and should be available to all and as Queen Victoria was long dead there was no moral judgment any more. Now the young men are granddads,the social commentators are discredited,and a load of people are in jail.
Philip Sawyer
6 months ago
What is good sex? Is it just a good physical climax? That’s rather easy, in fact, unless one’s partner is mostly about themselves — ergo, most men? Thing is, good sex CAN be quite a lot more. Spoiler alert — I’ve been married to one woman for 40+ years, and have only ever been with her. So sex is about far more than just physical pleasure. Which is why I think anonymous or random sex might seem to be far preferable, since you don’t think you need to worry about emotional complications, or possible betrayal. And given the generally parlous and shallow state of interpersonal relationships these days, that really does makes certain sense. But once again, this plays more into the hands of men, who don’t get pregnant, and don’t risk much more than getting STDs. But why even bother with another person when nowadays there are so many other options?
Micah Dembo
6 months ago
I sympathize with the female end of things, but wait till you hear the male side. “ Such fools these mortals be”, as Puck would say.
It’s just a game, trying and often failing to lose your virginity. Once you’ve lost it you’re c**k-a-hoop for a few days (you can always spot the apprentices who’ve got lucky over the weekend as the literally skip onto the site) but then it becomes an irrelevance and you move on to the next one
Last edited 6 months ago by Billy Bob
Ben Shipley
6 months ago
Sex without emotional attachment comes in a step or two below masturbation (where you at least get to choose the perfect imaginary partner!). I had many partners, but never went into sex without the possibility that this one might be the one who counted. There were a lot of mistakes along the way, obviously, and I should probably apologize to anyone I met before age 35, but for incompetence, not indifference. I wanted to love them all—which is why 90% of the conversation around the male half of the equation reads as stupid and prejudiced.
So you never had sex without emotional attachment but can authoritatively say that it’s inferior to masturbation. Well done Ben, you’ve defeated the scientific method.
Richard Colman
6 months ago
I found a quick read through this article to be refreshing and reaffirming being broadly in line with my own opinions. Somewhat disappointing were the comments.
I am still trying to better understand the significance, meaning and place of sex for human beings. It entails the expenditure of a huge amount of time and thought and encompasses a spectrum of activity from love to hate. I suppose in the end one’s own views are the only ones that matter to you, each to their own but to separate the act from some show of love, friendship or relationship is to put it on a par with a w**k but possibly with significant unwelcome physical and/or emotional consequences. To lose ones virginity as described is sad.
I wonder if the modern approach of sex for its own sake might be missing something very deep and integral to human happiness and contentment.
tim Ireland
6 months ago
this reminds me of a Canadian film of a few years back, entitled Young People f*****g. As one wiser critic said, the film was good, only the words of the title were misordered. It should have been labelled f*****g Young People.
Not, Hypersexuality is an indirect payment for intelligence. The human baby depends on the mother for too long, which increases her dependence on the father.
Most of the comments on Unherd are from men. What’s your point?
Last edited 6 months ago by David Morley
Cho Jinn
6 months ago
The c******s?
Christopher Chantrill
6 months ago
Back in the day an eevil patriarch made a joke about this:
“Women give sex in order to get love; men give love in order to get sex.”
I wonder what his eevil patriarchal design was behind that sexist and oppressive and harmful remark.
El Uro
6 months ago
The best thing I can offer girls is to lose their virginity in the arms of an experienced, ethical and woman-loving partner. Then all this drama of losing а virginity will turn into one of the most pleasant memories.
I don’t really understand why I have to explain to everyone that in the case of a young virgin, I meant a young guy of about 25, and not Harvey Weinstein or Clinton.
However, on the Internet it has long become necessary to add the word “sarcasm” to any sarcastic remark, but even this no longer helps.
My remark was not sarcastic, but it was quite reasonable.
In the same way, it is quite reasonable if a young man has his first sexual experience with a woman older and more experienced than him.
The lads I know of that age bracket were never all 3. You don’t tend to be experienced at that age if you’re ethical and nice to women, and likewise if you are nice to women you don’t tend to be very experienced. Hence my assumption they were talking about the older cad type of gent
The thing our culture tries hardest to hide is that committed, married couples have the most sex, and the best sex. It completely undermines the sexual revolution and “women’s lib”, but random sex sucks, especially for women. Sex with someone you trust and who cares about you is so, so much better.
Hint to Gen Z. If you want to have lots of great sex, get married to someone you love and stay married.
The only people who say “random sex sucks” are those who didn’t get enough of it when they were younger
Is that true? Genuine Q.
Don’t know, but I’m more suspicious the more I read this, and it’s a sentiment appearing in multiple articles all over the place in the past coupla months, so you do gotta wonder.
Either 1. there’s a large number of married people who suddenly realised in the past couple of months that their very own, very particular married sex is better than that had by their non-attached friends, or 2. someone’s found a way to package up jealousy & make it sound like a win.
Call me cynical, but my money’s got to be on the latter.
Probably not. Just from personal experience amongst the people I grew up with, all the ones that settled down young before putting it about all ended up with broken marriages in their thirties. The ones I’ve talked to have said they feel as if they missed out on the nonsense the rest of us got up to in our twenties while they were shacked up at home, and it’s something you can’t recreate later in life
All but one of the ones that settled down a bit later are still together.
Says the guy who always finishes before his partner comes.
There’s no point dragging it out, I’m a busy man I’ve got things to be getting on with
Random sex is a mixed bag. Sometimes good. You often wonder why you bothered. And you’re often left with emotional fallout if one of the participants (usually, but not always the woman) thought it was more than that.
The thing about sex with someone you love is that it doesn’t need to be great to be great. Getting that feeling to last is still a challenge though.
Ya, there’s an element of truth to the last para.
It’s done with a different kind of sentiment, so doesn’t need to be fantastic to be fantastic.
The main fantasticness may well be that after decades, you still do it at all.
Persistence isn’t usually a quality coupled with sweetness, but in this case it is.
Along, of course, with those who didn’t – but like to imply that they did.
I wouldn’t know.
“Random sex sucks” is an unfortunate choice of words in that context.
not even remotely true.
The *real reality* is that euphamistically “healthy sex live” is the defining boundary condition that sets up diverging pathways for a couple in relationship.
once you and your partner have had sex 85,000 times over the course of many years of formal relationship (itself the follow up to many years of informal pre-relationship phase), by statistical necessity exhausting the configurationa space of every variable applicable to the topic (every eccentuating modifier that can be agreed upon, iterated in every way agreeable, graded in a continuous spectrum from most to least intense), and hence finding the “global optimized” state, there are exactly 2 trajectories the relationship can adopt:
kids (aka years of mutually exhausted selibacy, or even possibly “forever” depending on such unarguable facts like healthcare outcomes from pregnancy)
Breakup.
I have seen #2 happen, sincerley, at least 5 times out of the 20 or so relationships I have held in my circle over the last 15 years
I can’t stand sex scenes on screen. I won’t watch allegedly saucy movies, and at the merest hint of a romp appearing on TV, I reflexively push fast-forward. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen sex scene that has advanced the story, but 99.9% of the ones I have seen are entirely gratuitous and pointless; to me, anyway.
The sex scenes in Brokeback Mountain were glorious!
Chacun à son goût
Otherwise known as “For a Few Buggers More”?
Lol
And nearly always totally unrealistic. The first fully clothed kiss to full penetration in about seven seconds is not anything like actual sex.
The least sexy thing about sex is the constant talking about it.
Monotheistic Semitic so called ‘faiths’ have much to answer for in this respect.
Except when you are doing it at the same time, of course.
Certainly beats talking about something else mid deed. On a holiday when we were about 18 one of the boys went home one night with a woman in her 40’s who started complimenting the weather while he was going at it.
He described it as a massive kick to the ego
Perhaps he misunderstood. “It’s so wet” or “ I like it dry” doesn’t always refer to the weather. 🙂
Unfortunately it was sunshine related so he couldn’t even pass it off as dirty talk
The more I see this sort of cultural discourse, the more I incline to believe that the Victorians had the right idea for the median woman: no sex before marriage, and make men do the heavy lifting to prove their value. Sex for its own sake just is not its own end for women, for whom evolutionary pressures make it at best a means to an end. A great deal of modern feminist dogma is about overturning this situation, with predictable results.
I’ve heard this one so many times, mostly from men.
First: female sexuality seems to vary far more than male sexuality – in terms of amount of sex drive, adventurousness etc. it is absolutely not true that women don’t enjoy sex for its own sake. Some may not, many do. Some really do.
Second: it’s best not to decide what women do or don’t like on the basis of theory (“evolutionary pressures”). Look first at reality and see if the theory fits.
Has UnHerd become The Sun?
I don’t disagree with the sentiments of this article. However you need to view the way sex is portrayed in film in terms of the older men running, producing and directing films trying to persuade young women to have sex with them.
Many,not all,but most of the glorious pop songs of the 1960s and 1970s were so many variants on Andrew Marvells plea to his coy mistress,”Let’s do it now before we get old”. In fact the whole Sexual Revolution thing was a load of randy (and talented) young men writing those songs plus a whole lot of social commentators saying sex was good for us,and should be available to all and as Queen Victoria was long dead there was no moral judgment any more. Now the young men are granddads,the social commentators are discredited,and a load of people are in jail.
What is good sex? Is it just a good physical climax? That’s rather easy, in fact, unless one’s partner is mostly about themselves — ergo, most men? Thing is, good sex CAN be quite a lot more. Spoiler alert — I’ve been married to one woman for 40+ years, and have only ever been with her. So sex is about far more than just physical pleasure. Which is why I think anonymous or random sex might seem to be far preferable, since you don’t think you need to worry about emotional complications, or possible betrayal. And given the generally parlous and shallow state of interpersonal relationships these days, that really does makes certain sense. But once again, this plays more into the hands of men, who don’t get pregnant, and don’t risk much more than getting STDs. But why even bother with another person when nowadays there are so many other options?
I sympathize with the female end of things, but wait till you hear the male side. “ Such fools these mortals be”, as Puck would say.
It’s just a game, trying and often failing to lose your virginity. Once you’ve lost it you’re c**k-a-hoop for a few days (you can always spot the apprentices who’ve got lucky over the weekend as the literally skip onto the site) but then it becomes an irrelevance and you move on to the next one
Sex without emotional attachment comes in a step or two below masturbation (where you at least get to choose the perfect imaginary partner!). I had many partners, but never went into sex without the possibility that this one might be the one who counted. There were a lot of mistakes along the way, obviously, and I should probably apologize to anyone I met before age 35, but for incompetence, not indifference. I wanted to love them all—which is why 90% of the conversation around the male half of the equation reads as stupid and prejudiced.
So you never had sex without emotional attachment but can authoritatively say that it’s inferior to masturbation. Well done Ben, you’ve defeated the scientific method.
I found a quick read through this article to be refreshing and reaffirming being broadly in line with my own opinions. Somewhat disappointing were the comments.
I am still trying to better understand the significance, meaning and place of sex for human beings. It entails the expenditure of a huge amount of time and thought and encompasses a spectrum of activity from love to hate. I suppose in the end one’s own views are the only ones that matter to you, each to their own but to separate the act from some show of love, friendship or relationship is to put it on a par with a w**k but possibly with significant unwelcome physical and/or emotional consequences. To lose ones virginity as described is sad.
I wonder if the modern approach of sex for its own sake might be missing something very deep and integral to human happiness and contentment.
this reminds me of a Canadian film of a few years back, entitled Young People f*****g. As one wiser critic said, the film was good, only the words of the title were misordered. It should have been labelled f*****g Young People.
The strap-on scene was somewhat different, but unrealistic. These people were directionless.
If humans only came into heat periodically, like other animals, I wonder if a more rational human race would achieve so much more.
Not, Hypersexuality is an indirect payment for intelligence. The human baby depends on the mother for too long, which increases her dependence on the father.
Not in the UK. The state and welfare replaced fathers decades ago.
Do you think that a few years of welfare can replace hundreds of thousands of years of evolution?
Human beings need constant sex for emotional bonding. It keeps the pair together to protect the offspring from mommy’s new boyfriend.
Can’t help but notice but most of the comments here are from men.
Most of the comments on Unherd are from men. What’s your point?
The c******s?
Back in the day an eevil patriarch made a joke about this:
“Women give sex in order to get love; men give love in order to get sex.”
I wonder what his eevil patriarchal design was behind that sexist and oppressive and harmful remark.
The best thing I can offer girls is to lose their virginity in the arms of an experienced, ethical and woman-loving partner. Then all this drama of losing а virginity will turn into one of the most pleasant memories.
The sort of experienced older bloke who spends his weekends trying to take home young naive virgins generally isn’t the most ethical of men
I don’t really understand why I have to explain to everyone that in the case of a young virgin, I meant a young guy of about 25, and not Harvey Weinstein or Clinton.
However, on the Internet it has long become necessary to add the word “sarcasm” to any sarcastic remark, but even this no longer helps.
My remark was not sarcastic, but it was quite reasonable.
In the same way, it is quite reasonable if a young man has his first sexual experience with a woman older and more experienced than him.
Perhaps they don’t believe that any man of 25 is experienced, ethical and woman-loving. Or at least, not all 3.
I probably think too well of people
The lads I know of that age bracket were never all 3. You don’t tend to be experienced at that age if you’re ethical and nice to women, and likewise if you are nice to women you don’t tend to be very experienced. Hence my assumption they were talking about the older cad type of gent