Are we past the point of taking sex as an act of love? Do we really need penetration to be coupled with gazing into each other’s eyes and confessions of love? Yes. Yes, I think we are.
Why can’t we strip sex back to carnal desire – why does it always have to be paired with romantic motifs? In my opinion, sex purely for romantic value is an outdated belief. So tell me, guys, why so serious?
Perhaps it’s true that the idea of loveless sex is associated with acts of impulsiveness, with one night stands and the illusive “fuck buddy” situation. This is troubling. But in 2012, we should be able to separate one act from another.
Yahoo statistics tell us that 45% of people have enjoyed one night with a stranger within the past year, which I found relatively low. Apparently more people have faked an orgasm! These statistics also show that only 19% of people preferred to have sex with a partner.
Reading an online forum in which people share their one-night experiences exhibits that men enjoy it because women lose their inhibitions when they don’t believe they'll see their sexual partner again.
Apparently we aren’t all as shy as we think. Although if this is true, it scares me a little that women apparently feel more comfortable with their bodies with a one-time visitor than with a partner.
Anne Campbell, a psychologist at Durham University said that after one-night stands, "Often [women] said things like, 'I felt so flattered, so happy that he found me attractive. It was so nice to be wanted… What women don't seem to see is that men drop their standards massively for a one-night stand.” She concluded, "No woman should be flattered because a man wants to have sex with her once."
This preference for sex with a stranger makes me wonder, why does the media ultimately display sex as an act of love, when it seems to be an act of manipulating the body? Mutual masturbation, if you will.
Great sex relies on chemistry between partners.
Image via xraydeltaone's Flickr