Perhaps it’s from watching the torrid restraint and excess of various BBC series (Mistresses, Downtown Abby, Skins), but the topic of sex in love has been on my mind of late. It seems everything is a mish mash these days with too much of one or the other. With very few people wanting the same thing at the same time..much less with each other. To put it in less vague terms when I look around these days I see the following combinations.
1) The person who wants love and will forgo sex until they have both pieces together
2) The person who wants love and sex, and will not wait for love to have the sex
3) The person who only wants sex and love should never play into the equation
I feel, that in the past love and sex were much more closely tied together. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that casual sex is a new concept! Prostitution is the oldest profession right? Clearly, horny teenagers have been groping in the car, tweens have been fervently dry humping during 7 minutes in heaven, and kids have been playing “doctor” since time began. But there seems to have been a shift in the “grown-up” behavior of sex in love. When I was in high school the pressure was to put out to keep your boyfriend. Very shortly after, the high school game became putting out to get your boyfriend. Now, I think, the game is what boyfriend, we just sleep with who we want. And that “anything goes” mentality is the new adult relationship model that we operate in today.
In re-reading that last paragraph, even the phrase “love” sounds wrong. It’s almost like the word “love” should be replaced with “commitment”. Perhaps you didn’t “love” the person you were banging, but you were certainly committed or invested in keeping that relationship going. Most likely because the cost of entry to finding another person to sleep with was too high and why not stick with what you’ve got. So what lowered that cost? And is that a good thing? (I’m genuinely asking, I can see both sides)
I cringe at this next section because its exactly the kind of thinking that abstinence advocates point to screaming, “see the downfall of our society is education and access to family planning!” It’s not you Neanderthals, but we’ll get to that later…in another post. For now, yes, obviously, the lowering cost of sex is due to the female population having access to birth control and family planning. We have several generations of sexually active adults that think Row v Wade is a choice of how to get across a river, not a major battle to gain reproductive control of our bodies. These women have grown up in a world where birth control is normative and abortions are at least an option if the primary defense fails. When I was in junior high we were just finishing up the era where three things were absolutely true
1) The kid with the pager in school was the drug dealer.
2) The girl on birth control was a sure thing and had slept with everyone on the football team, and most the basketball team too.
3) The girl who had an abortion told NO ONE, lest she be shunned.
The birth control pill was so revolutionary to our societal identity that its simply referred to as “the pill”. No one asks, “what pill?”. They know. Not even Viagra could supplant “the pill” title. Viagra is Viagra, but “the pill” means you don’t have to pull out. The pill means you don’t have to weigh the cost of giving up all your hopes and dreams against allowing your libido to override you at a moment’s notice. All hail the pill because it means that we (women) finally have a level playing field when it comes to sex…our cost to play is the same as yours (99.98% of the time).
Here, take a quick look at this PBS Pill Timeline. I think you’ll be shocked to see that mainstream acceptance didn’t occur until the 1980s. The 80s! In the 70s the government was very much still fighting to control access to the pill. When that battle was settled (80s/90s) the pill was accepted, but it still meant “you were having sex.” It was a prescription with a stigma. It was meant for older women who wanted no more babies. Not teens that wanted to get freaky. That is….until the magical blend of horny girls (sex) and shareholders (profit) wanted to work together. Doctors started prescribing it for off label uses – cramps/acne. Shareholders saw a rise in their profits and teens got access to the goods with saying why they really wanted it. Parents could remain pleasantly ignorant about the fact that Molly was having sex because that prescription…oh that was for her horrible cramps. Everyone wins. In the early 90s we witnessed an absolute explosion of teenage girls having apocalyptically painful cramps, that just had to have something done about them. Wink wink, nudge nudge. Everyone played their parts beautifully. The teenage girls gave Oscar worthy drama performances insisting on relief from the monthly agony of their period, while the drug companies subsequently jumped through the FDA hoops to make off label uses, acne/cramps, primary label uses. Suddenly, there was an explosion of pills that were not only contraceptives but also aided in depression (ever meet a teenage girl? We are all crazy. Seriously, pray for a son or take a long vacation through her 14th through 17th birthday), skin appearance, cramping, even migraines. All of which was true, FDA approved…and oh yeah, golly gee - it just happens to still work for avoiding pregnancy, what a qawinky-dink.
Okay so why the uber quick history on the pill’s acceptance into the minor population? Well, because I believe that was a pivotal moment to our current sexual climate. Just like Title 9 gave gender-equality in sports, taking women off the sidelines (cheerleaders) and onto the court/field (players), minors on the pill meant girls didn’t have to choose between being “good” or “bad”, they were finally in the game of sexual conquest just like the boys.
All of those late 90s teens are now late 20-somethings. They grew up in a much more lax sexual climate…coupling without commitment.
So go back up to the three types of people. These days I would say that the vast majority of people are twos – probably want love, but aren’t waiting around for it. Sex is just so easily attained these days, why wouldn’t you partake? Every study ever done on sex shows the immense physical and mental benefits received from a healthy romp. Got a headache – have sex! Depressed – release that dopamine, have sex!! Blood pressure a little high? – have se…you get the idea.
In the past I would say that most people were 1s or 3s, which would be fine if we had simply progressed from old to new. But with divorce putting older people back on the single’s market and single women making their own money and not wanting to settle down, well every type of love/sex combo is out there resulting in a whole lot of confusion about how to proceed. There are 3s running games on 1s and 2s…we’ve got 1s trapping 3s by getting pregnant…two 2s find each other but mess it up because something better –might- come along. It’s a mess and some days I feel right in the middle of it, as my texts will attest. Another layer of complexity is that people change what they are over time. Easy sex is a heady thing and often will drag a person from their natural inclination. God help the natural-1 who is acting like a 2 if they meet a suave 3. Broken hearted-ville will occur. Its confusing and exhausting trying to navigate these waters. Especially when the hot bodied 21 y.o. are giving it out left and right because that’s how they grew up. PLEASE, do not take that as a judgment on their personal choices! Either male or female, if you want it, and that’s your style more power to you. I’m just saying it makes it harder to find someone because, who wouldn’t be easily distracted by a hot bodied 21 y.o. with a no-strings-attached attitude?? To put a personal note in this, I believe that I missed the opportunity for something real because I was distracted with an easy play thing. Easy play thing was fun and uncomplicated. Easy fun thing is gone and so is the person who could have been more (good for the woman that snatched him up!). These days it almost feels as though wanting to be in love is often considered weak. That makes me sad. That makes me (personally) think. Why for so long have I been a 2/3? Am I actually a 1/2? Why can't I even commit to one box at a time?? I honestly don’t know. But I do know that I think it takes a strong person to stand up and say, “I reject this easy shit because I’m looking for the real thing,”. Look at your friends, who among them has gone more than 3-4 months without sex? Probably not a lot, and we all kind of judge or pity them juuuuust a little bit if they have.
Hmmm, so what is my point here. I guess it’s this. Sometimes I feel like, because sex has become such a free flowing commodity, the urge to sacrifice anything to invest into a committed relationship seems to have ebbed. Why make sacrifices to hang onto this one relationship when it’s so much easier to hang with your friends (chosen family if you will) and rotate a new, fresh, exciting relationship every three months or so? It’s as though friends are the new family unit providing the emotional stability and support; and the sex/love bit is a seasonal thing. Relationships are starting to feel a bit disposable. Is that a good thing? I don’t know. I can see both sides of the fence on this one if I leave it as a case by case basis of the individual. But, taken to a high level, I know it’s not a good thing from a societal perspective. Look at Japan and Asia in general. Women, as a whole, have given a big flippin’ bird to the idea of “must get married and have kids”. As a result they are heading for an economic disaster.
So there is the spectrum for today’s single woman. She lies somewhere between “no strings fun” and an “economic disaster” in the making. Confusing. Especially since I can’t even manage to figure out which kind of person I am these days. I used to be staunchly anti-love, bucket 3! Recently though, I have gingerly placed myself into bucket 2. But, like a skittish ferial cat, don’t stare at me too hard lest I bolt back to my “I don’t need anybody, pfffft! Yay bucket 3!” safety zone.
If you have someone you love and are settled good for you. No, great for you! Cause apparently you are not only happy, you are preventing an economic disaster…well only if you have kids. If you don’t have kids apparently you are also falling down on your duty, though not half as bad as me. So get to it…cause somebody has to save the global economy and its not looking like I’m the woman for the job. ;)
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