From reading this it looks to me like you’ve been told why over and over but you can’t seem to grasp the emotional content or the concept that desires can change along with life situations. I’m sorry if this is a rude question but have you ever been in love or had a long-term relationship? From your posts it seems like you don’t have a lot of experience.
Maybe this is a simpler example that you can grasp. Suppose some guy is out partying every night and picking up girls all the time, and one night he picks up one that he really falls for and that falls for him back. Up until that point they have both been enjoying NSA sex with like-minded partners but now they’d rather spend their nights together. They’re both ready for a serious relationship now that they’ve found the right person and NSA sex doesn’t seem like that much fun anymore. Can you at least understand it this far?
First of all, as I guy I have to take exception to this statement. Not every single guy is looking to be a “playa” and “tap as many hos” as he can get his hands on with no strings attached.
You’re a woman, right? Doesn’t “Sex and the City” more or less explain all this stuff?
It is no longer assumed that you date your high school or college sweetheart exclusively for 1-5 years and then get married and stay together for the next 60 years. Women aren’t going to college for an MRS degree anymore. They graduate college, move to places like New York or Chicago and they want to have some fun, just like the guys do. In fact, when I was in college, formal “dating” seemed more the exception than the rule. Mostly people just hooked up at parties and had booty calls and whatnot. When you saw a girl walking down from the fraternity houses or a guy walking up from the dorms and sororities at 10am on a Sat or Sun, it was referred to as the “walk of shame”. It seemed frequent enough that there wasn’t any actual shame involved though.
The thing about NSA sex is that while it can be fun to have sex with random people in bars and whatnot, emotionally it isn’t really satisfying. You aren’t developing any sort of relationship or emotional connection with the person and afterwards you just go back to being alone.
As for why you can’t do it when you are in a committed relationship, well let me explain it a different way. If my girlfriend have an agreement (stated or implied) that we are exclusive to each other, then I don’t want some other dude banging her. If she is free to have sex with other people, then so am I. And if we are just doing whatever the heck we want, what is the point of being in an exclusive relationship?
Well, my experience is that - judging by the conversation my girlfriends and I had this weekend - a dozen married women - they all enjoy occasional sex, but they all have a drive for sex that is less significant than that of the person they are married to. Its a generalization over a population - which means there is significant difference between individuals - but I would say that as a generalization, the women I know are significantly less inclined towards sex for its own sake than the men I know are - whether that is cultural or natural I do not know.
And these aren’t exactly chaste virginal women - these are women where we can have conversations about group sex we’ve engaged in, dildos we prefer, whether women actually are better at giving other women oral sex than men are - from experience, and whether a shower head on a hose or the tub jets are superior…
Because “committed” means strings are now attached. Why has our culture attached those strings as our default “committed relationship” marker? Paternity, STD’s, unwanted pregnancy, etc. We like to know who’s related and who’s beholden to who, and curtailing sexuality to named and labeled parties makes that easiest. Once we figured out that men have something to do with baby making, we realized that someone’s got to keep track of this stuff.
My car isn’t sacred, but I’d be really pissed off if my husband lent it to someone else without asking me first. Being in a relationship means accepting limits on your autonomy.
I wonder why it’s still women that bear this burden of guilt around NSA sex, when now in our culture it’s far more likely to be the man who’s the “victim” if unwanted pregnancy occurs. She’s got options - he doesn’t. I keep expecting that to result in men being more hesitant to have NSA sex, but it doesn’t seem to be happening like that.
No such thing. Once the relationship is committed enough (that is, marriage or something like it) all time is “relationship time”. Add kids into the mix, and it’s even moreso - unless you’re talking about taking time out of work, or quickies during the lunch hour.
Two reasons:
Because most people are extraordinarily *bad *at NSA sex. I mean really, really NSA sex. Much (most?) of the time, emotions get involved, people get hurt, and that can put strain on all the relationships in the person’s life. I’ve sat up nights crying on my husband’s shoulder when I made a stupid choice, and also consoling him when some woman ripped out his heart for fun or crazy. I can see why some people wouldn’t want to do that.
Other reason? Because many (most?) people really aren’t that fond of NSA sex once they’ve had committed sex. Just like you prefer Mom’s spaghetti sauce to anyone else’s, even if she’s not the best cook ever. The bonuses of emotional closeness, greater knowledge of the person’s body and likes and dislikes - these can make sex even better than the excitement of the unknown hook up. Add in the risk of getting emotionally involved, or getting the NSA partner emotionally involved and destabilizing the committed relationship as a result, and most people deem it not worth it.
Many people LIKE monogamy when they find the person that’s right for them. Doesn’t mean they didn’t like the search before that!
I find it less likely that I’m singularly lacking in estrogen than that SavvyMiss is starting from a flawed premise.
I freely concede that my experiences are neither unique nor universal. But I’ve sure as hell never had a “post-coital love surge” for anyone I didn’t love pre-coitus.
Seriously? I know a lot of people, and my conversations with them leave me with no reason at all to believe I’m unique in this regard.
We may indeed be working with different definitions of “love”, I suppose. To me, it means a significant and lasting emotional attachment. Not “afterglow”.
“Afterglow” is the oxytocin effect I’m speaking of. For many people, it’s strong enough to mistake for love, especially if they’re new at this.
And, oddly enough, caffeine can lower the effects of oxytocin in much the same way as testosterone. It’s possible (although far from proven) that the shift we’re seeing (or think we’re seeing) with girls more likely than in yesteryear to embrace NSA sex is at least partly due to the massive increase in caffeine consumption in the last 20 years. Remember when teenagers didn’t drink coffee? I do, and I’m only 34.
But I’m willing to hear other hypotheses, of course. The ocytocin effect explains an awful lot of the stupid behavior I see people display, and women moreso than men, but if you’ve got another idea, I’m all ears…
I don’t *have *any especial hypotheses about why women are naturally more inclined to equate sex with emotional attachment, because I don’t accept the premise.
And while oxytocin likely does have different effects on different people, I think that the human body and mind are a little too complex to reduce any specific behavior to the effects of a specific hormone.
I think I may understand the problem. I think you may be one of those people who doesn’t believe anyone can every truly change his or her stripes. But in my observations, NSA sex isn’t cut off suddenly by a meaningful, long-term relationship (e.g. engagement then marriage). Most people go through a casual sex phase in their late teens to mid-20s, then only indulge occasionally while they consciously decide to look for something ‘more,’ whether because they’re tired of waiting at the free clinic, are looking for stability or because it just doesn’t thrill them like it used to.
It’s also worth noting that as much as a woman can enjoy sex, IME they have a harder time finding a good sexual match. Some prefer to take it slowly and establish an emotional connection with a good communicator who they know will take direction, while others take a Cinderella approach.
Whatever the attitudes on the board may be, I do think it’s still quite common for people, especially older people, to be shocked by young women’s sex lives (however many episodes of SATC and Gossip Girl they’ve been exposed to). My grandma thought female orgasms were a myth. The BC pill may have been developed in the 1960s, but at 10 milligrams it must have had pretty hellish side effects for the women who used it. They had to either really not want kids or really, really enjoy sex (though, as it is now, a lowered sex drieve was a common hormonal BC side effect). Anyway, the dosage was lowered in the 1980s, yadda yadda yadda, and we haven’t got three decades of sexual ‘freedom.’ All the while, of course, the clitoris was being debated and the ‘g spot’ found and re-found, chastity pledges taken, endless Cosmo articles written by retarded children.
I think I’m going to disagree with the conventional wisdom in this thread about young girls and NSA sex.
There is a definitely a traditional belief that women in general attach more emotional significance to the act of sex than men. Whether this is purely socially imposed or whether there is a biological basis for this belief is not a topic that I can debate intelligently either way. However, the fact of the matter remains that there is some societal pressure on girls to not “give it up” to just anyone, and further many people assume that if a girl sleeps with someone she never sees again, she was used and is probably hurting from it. This belief is changing but I think most girls still grow up in a culture where these values regarding women and sex are somewhat prevalent.
So, most young (by which I mean between the ages of 16-21) girls are operating within this cultural milieu regarding sex. Those who chose to have frequent NSA sex with people they don’t know are engaging in a somewhat taboo behavior. Now, there are two reasons for this that I can see.
They like NSA sex
They like violating a taboo.
I think for many young girls like CalD described, it’s some combination of the two. While I fully agree that older women can be self-actualized, assured, and confident enough to give social mores a big “fuck you” and have sex with whomever they want, whenever they want, for the most part young people are still seeking to define themselves with a social context. That is, I think it’s really difficult for them to disregard completely the social implications of their behavior. Therefore, I think that they gain some satisfaction from knowing how others will react to their behavior. I point as evidence to the giggled whispering about the NSA sex to the friend in the OP’s story. If the girl really just enjoyed random sex, would she feel the need to share the story? Especially in giggles and whispers, which show that she still understands the “secretive” nature of her behavior.
I’ve only seen maybe five episodes of Sex and the City, but the character to me that seemed the most confident and who really appeared to be only after NSA sex was, not surprisingly, the oldest, Samantha. The most neurotic, from what I recall, is Carrie. And, again, from my five episode sample and imperfect recall, I remember that Samantha seemed to do the least giggly dishing about her bedroom exploits.
I’ve known a lot of girls who sleep with relative strangers and, typically, as WhyNot said, most people are really bad at NSA sex. Strings become attached and people get hurt, quite often.
However, in those cases where I’ve seen NSA sex take place and there don’t seem to be any guilt/regret/bad feelings/etc, it’s usually because of one of two reasons: extreme objectification or a lack of romantic intimacy. By objectifying a man into something to be “won” and taken home, there’s less chance for any strings to form. They aren’t seeking a relationship, they’re seeking a bed partner. He isn’t looked at as anything else than a potential sexual partner and, so, there’s nothing involving strings in the girl’s mind. With a lack of romantic intimacy, it’s usually a case of two friends who find they’re sexually compatible but have no interest in one another romantically. These often become train wrecks, because somewhere along the way there’s usually some one-sided romantic notions.
However, there are times when both causes can lead to mutually satisfying, guilt-free NSA sex.
And neither of those causes would apply to an actual, healthy, committed relationship. A normal relationship isn’t going to be based on objectification or purely lust, but emotional intimacy. Room might be made for multiple partners, or an open relationship, but in the majority of cases it won’t. The person now in the monogamous relationship may not condemn her earlier NSA sexual activities, but she will also be uninterested in pursuing them, because she’s got a big string called commitment now.
While I’m not the casual sex type, I don’t see any hypocrisy in this, nor do I see where someone who wants monogamy must categorically condemn casual sex as morally wrong. Part of being in a committed relationship is having commitments. A single man living with his friends in bachelorish squalor is perfectly alright, but him doing so when he has a wife he should be living with wouldn’t be.
It might help to think of it in terms of the risk/reward ratio involved in NSA sex for singles versus “NSA” sex for couples.
When you’re single, having sex with a relative stranger has certain risks and rewards associated with it. The risks are STDs, pregnancy, date rape, a bad evening, etc., while the reward is getting to have sex.
When you’re in a relationship, the risks are not only your risks, but risks your partner assumes; it affects them if you’re traumatized, diseased, or pregnant, and you have to deal with it as a couple because your partner is important to you. The reward is getting to have sex, which you get to do with your partner anyway. For many people, the risks versus rewards of NSA sex with others when you’re already in a relationship make it seem like an undesirable option. As most people don’t want to be exposed to risks over which they have no control, a simple and effective solution is for both partners to be monogamous; it avoids conflicts over unfairness if one partner is having more partners than the other, eliminates insecurity about whether a one-night stand is going to turn into something more, and eliminates exposing your partner to risks over which they have no control. The reason people do it is because it’s a simple solution to a complicated set of problems. People with open relationships can solve these problems with safer sex, testing, and communication, but it takes a lot of effort to make that work. To a lot of people, monogamy is far easier.
Lights a candle for Grandma, because that’s the single saddest thing I’ve ever read here
Which reminds me of my earlier question… Gestalt, I realize you’re not advocating this position, but seriously… my whole life I’ve wondered, and I would so appreciate any attempt at explanation…
What is she “giving” that she’s not also “getting”?
(I know you didn’t ask me but…) In many cases? An orgasm. In some ways I think it’s as simple as that. If women came as easily as men through penetration, I imagine the supposed connection between emotion and intercourse would be much more tenuous.
DianaG, I think the idea that girls are “giving it up” and losing something when they have sex freely with uncommitted men stems from a few somewhated related ideas.
A presumption, perhaps incorrect, that men “need” sex more than women, so a woman having sex with a man is an unequal trade. It’s like you and I having lunch together in the cafeteria. You’re starving, I’m barely hungry, and I trade you my carrot sticks for your . . . I dunno, something better than carrot sticks . . . banana split?
Men orgasm more reliably during sex and, from what I hear although I could very well be wrong, the quality of the orgasm tends to be more consistent. Thus, the woman could very well be getting less pleasure from sex. And while she can instruct her lover on how to better pleasure her, the fact of the matter remains that it’s easier for a guy to get his rocks off.
This last one sounds really outdated, but I think it was true up until the turn of the century, which is relatively recent when we’re talking about the history of western culture. From what I know, historically, women have held sex as a bargaining chip, largely because of point 1. Sex is what a man gets in return for something else . . . emotional security, financial security, whatever.
So for these reasons, if a woman has sex blithely with men, she is considered to be on the losing end of an encounter.
Access to her physical interior. In a 1970s sort of feminism sense, women having sex is much more invasive - a man’s sexual experience is physically external to him (unless you are using an anal dildo on him), a woman’s mean sexual experience involves penetration. Whether this is, in fact, a big deal or not - I would suspect you would not believe it is - is left to the judgment of the individual. But there is little debate about the act being physically different for women than it is for men.
It would be interesting to explore whether bottoms in gay relationships tended to view themselves as “giving more” than tops.
