I’m fascinated by the assumption that exposure to sex
will make people bored with it. After all, sex is one
of our deepest, most fundamental animal drives.
Our interest in it isn’t going anywhere.
Jaded by Sex? Never!
We’re exposed to food every day, several times a day,
But we show no sign of becoming jaded or bored with it.
Why do we think being exposed to sex all
day would make us jaded or bored with that?
In American society, our interest in sex is often
tied up with anxiety, taboo and secrecy.
Our popular culture has the fucked-up paradox of being
saturated in sexual imagery yet being pathetically
lacking in sexual information. We have exposure, but
do we we really have what I would call familiarity.
Sex is seen as forbidden and bad. So exploring sex
gets all tangled up with the thrill of crossing
lines and exploring forbidden territory.
Sex is seen as something that should be kept secret.
It means our fascination with sex becomes confused
with our fascination with secrets and mysteries of all kinds.
Sex is seen as something to be anxious and frightened about.
The excitement of sex gets mixed up with the fear of it.
These tangled threads run so deeply that they are
confused about which part is the mystery and the
frisson of fear and the thrill of the forbidden,
and which part is the pure, raw, animal libido.
It’s something that has been hard-wired into us
through millions of years of evolution, via billions
of ancestors who successfully reproduced because
they were horny.
Young Women Want Lots of Sex
We’re programmed for pleasure.
It’s just society’s built-in
misogyny throwing a wrench in
biology’s plan for women.
Girls Are Programmed for Pleasure
We sleep with people we’re not sexually compatible with because we don’t value our own sexual needs enough. Even ‘liberated’ young women who have lots of sex before marriage have this problem.
We buy into the heterosexist view that we must partner up with strong providers, ones that will make good dads. Some of us need to admit that we’re dealing with massive father complexes.)
We’re unconsciously parroting evolutionary psychology’s conventional view: women are meant to be monogamous, bring up the babes and thus propagate the species, while men are meant to spread their seed.
The underlying assumption is that we aren’t really into sex. We value motherhood and shopping more.
Let’s get something straight: We’re are programmed for pleasure. It’s just society’s built-in misogyny that throws a wrench in biology’s plan for us.
We’re not taught to value our bodies, our sexuality and our desire enough. Imagine if we taught teenage girls the value of sexual pleasure at their first period? What if we gave our daughters not just a box of tampons but a vibrator, too?
But no matter how important it is to honor pleasure, expecting hot sex to be the only foundation for a relationship is ridiculous. You can’t always build authentic intimacy with someone you’re desperately chemically attracted to.
Often the one you lust for will not be the one you want to have a conversation with in the morning. Yet sometimes off-the-charts one-night-stands turn into long-term relationships.
There’s no map for this stuff. Life is messy and unpredictable. When we know the difference between love and lust and find someone that stimulates both mind and genitals it’s all kinds of magical, but this confluence can feel as rare as a finding a peacock on your fire escape.
This is why so many of us end up with “good men” who don’t know how to properly please us. Remember that oxytocin released at climax, is the same hormone that floods your body to make you forget the vicious pain of childbirth.
It also apparently makes you forget when a guy is great in bed but a grunt the rest of the time.
If we can get rid of the Madonna/Whore complex, maybe we can kill off the “boring but good man/sexy bad boy” complex, too.