Sex Talk

Pictured: A Distraught Cat, Source Unknown

I think that a lifetime of growing up as a person who is relatively open to the world about my sexual habits and interests has dispelled many of the common myths that like to permeate through high schools, colleges, and households of the modern day. There are these strange stereotypes that many of us have accepted that just aren’t true: women rarely actually want sex, if there isn’t an orgasm then it was bad sex, men are always horny, every man wants to rape you, girls tease you to get what they want, if you’re in the friendzone then you can never get the girl, guys need to be tamed. Lies told from an egocentric worldview.

The first lie that we’re going to tackle is that women rarely want to have sex. From a scientific standpoint, this potentially has some validity as women have less testosterone than men on average and thus have a lower libido. In reality you do not need to have a pair of gonads squeezing testosterone through your system to enjoy sex. It’s pleasurable. Humans want sex. If something is good and pleasurable then people will want it. To say that women never really want sex is to say that your sexual partners in the past haven’t been very sexually active and potentially disliked having sex with you because the sex was bad. Otherwise? Humans like sex.

Orgasms are supposed to be a benchmark of successful recreational sex. I mean, they feel great, don’t they? If you’re not getting your partner to orgasm during sex then you must be bad at it and they aren’t going to enjoy the sex, right? Na. Orgasms are great but just the act of having sex is pretty enjoyable. I mean, do you masturbate solely for the purpose of getting off or does it feel pretty good along the way too? You also don’t have to have an orgasm right away. I’ve come under the impression that you sabotage yourself if you race to make yourself or your partner orgasm and fall into despair if you fail on either front. It’s cool. Have as much fun as you both possibly can and if you didn’t orgasm or they didn’t orgasm, then take care of it afterwards. Heck, maybe they can even give you a hand. There’s a good chance that they know how to get their rocks off and you know how to get yours off.

Gosh, going through grade school and into college there was this myth perpetuated that men are always horny and want to sleep with everyone and anyone. No. Creeps, guys or girls, that haven’t learned any self control are always horny and want to bang anything and everything. Normal guys are just like normal girls and they probably have a few people they fancy, a few people they wouldn’t mind a friends-with-benefits relationship with, and a lot of people they would never touch for a variety of reasons. I’ll grant you that some people are willing to sleep around a lot more than you are and they go far to perpetuate this though. I wonder what the statistics would look like if people were polled on how many people they would want to sleep with out of everyone they know and meet? This is entirely a guess but my assumption would be a stark drop off at the 5% mark and a rapid approach to 0 once you got past 50%. Undoubtedly someone would be on the 100% mark of wanting to sleep with everyone they know and meet but it’d be an awful lonely position.

Now the mindset that every man wants to rape you is a fair one, if only because it only takes one person out there intent on raping you to make things dangerous. I’m not saying that you should be afraid of the world, but being in the mindset that every situation can be dangerous keeps you on your toes and watching your drink for date rape drugs. No, most guys and people out in the world actually don’t wish you any harm. They are probably entirely ambivalent towards you or wish you well. Most of the time people will even stand up for you or back you up if things go bad. The problem is that there’s someone out there with unscrupulous morals and it’s hard to identify them until after they’ve struck. The only word of caution that I really want to put up about this is to not let the fear engulf you. Most of the world is full of fine people and if you’re careful that one scumbag isn’t going to ruin your life. What people do is they’ll ruin their own lives so that they never even have the chance to meet that scumbag. I’ve had friends turn down huge opportunities to advance their education, career, and other momentums in their lives because they’d be leaving their bubble and they could be raped outside of their bubble. This is crippling to them and very sad to me.

Something strange that I’ve seen is that girls will tease you to get what they want. Okay, so picture this situation. A person goes through life talking to people. This is strange, I know, but bear with me. While talking with people, they figure out that by flirting just a little bit, the person that they’re talking to will be friendlier with them. God, that’s so wrong of them, right? Now, when they do this with 99% of people, the other person gets that this is how conversation works and fun is had. Then there is the odd person out that hears a compliment and thinks that means they will get sex if they buy this person things. Ya. You’re being gross when you think you can buy sex from people. As a guy who has had a lot of gifts thrown his way, I find it outright revolting when the other person immediately cuts contact with me because they find out they’re not getting sex from me. Maybe you should have asked that person if they were single and interested before you started trying to barter sexual favors from them.

Now onto the friendzone. The friendzone is that place that people like to slink off to when it is obvious that a friend they are interested in is not interested in them. The friendzone is a make-believe place and you get there by being friends with someone and hoping for a romantic relationship when they aren’t interested in more. The reason why you’re stuck there is because they are not interested in you. But if they’re not interested in you why are they still friends with you? Not all human contact results from wanting romantic relations. You’re stuck in the friendzone because they aren’t interested in you romantically. They’re interested in having you as a friend. If you’re going to keep fawning over them like that you should discuss it with them like an adult and explain that you aren’t sure if you can maintain your friendship due to how you feel about them romantically. Otherwise it’s not the friendzone, it’s just friendship.

The last thing that is especially annoying in some relationships is that it doesn’t matter what your personality is like, your partner only needs to look for looks because they’re going to be remodeling your personality anyway. No, you’re really not. Your partner is someone. They have their own personality, habits, and behaviors. Some of these things shift on their own pretty naturally and others will alter themselves over time to fit better with those around them, namely you. However, when you try to change the core of a person to better suit you, you are being manipulative and controlling. This makes you a bad person, is making your partner unhappy, and is probably making you pretty miserable too. The solution to this is to date someone who you actually like rather than just someone who is pretty.

The things I’ve listed off are just the tip of the iceberg and I’m sure you’re familiar with some of them and a bunch of your own. When something sounds wrong, I’d really advise doing some research on it and whatever you do, don’t just discount your empirical experiences as wrong when they contradict. You’ll be a richer person for it.