Sex Is Awesome (and Makes You Stupid)

Was chatting with a chick at work the other night who is a virgin. Good on ya (or not actually) I say. Why? Why not? I think that getting married before you've slept with someone is a massive error, but choosing to keep your cookie intact, your wick dry, these are things I fully support if that's the way you want to do things.

After all, virgins tend to think and talk about sex a lot. They plan for it, imagine what they want, and are obviously quite picky about who they give it up to. Not necessarily a bad way to go about it. In fact, it's far more mature than most of the sexually active people who would rather fumble from one embarrassing drunken hook up to another than actually discuss the sex they are about to have, or want to have, or just flat out fantasize about.

My father, in conversations that were mortifying at the time, used to say, "If you're not mature enough to talk about sex, you're not mature enough to have it." Wise dude.

Oddly enough it usually feels much more intimate to honestly discuss a sexual relationship than to just get down to business. After all, sex without context is just organic IKEA. Slightly confusing at first, but fairly intuitive as to how to put it together.

But people EXPECT sex to be intimate, so they do stupid things like starting a relationship just because they nailed someone. Which is silly. If two people want to get it on, then get it on and let it be that. Don't make it more than it is. Also, if you don't JUST want to get it on, then don't pretend like you do. If sex creates an emotional connection for you then you should be damn careful who you let or get inside (figuratively and literally).

Do you know why a great hug feels so great, and sex often leaves you feeling so hollow? Because a great hug is physical, intimate, non-demanding and shared for mutual pleasure. Nobody's keeping score or bragging to their friends about the great hug they just had. Nobody's manipulating people with great hugs.

But that's 'cause we're not so damn conflicted about hugs.

Sex is the ever present pink elephant in the room. It drives us on the most base level and is a constant factor in our human interactions, but no one wants to acknowledge it. So people end up with all sorts of regret about the sex they DO have because they don't have the support, the courage or the gumption to talk about the sex they WANT to have.

So you get drunk and hook up with some beautiful/handsome (or not so beautiful/handsome) idiot one night. Instead of going into it saying to the person, I don't see much in common between us, but you make me so damn hot that I want to bend you over and roto rooter your plumbing, people try to turn that reasonable one night of fun into a relationship because they think that sex should be special.

Two things you need to know here.

First, sex is not by definition special. It's actually a quite common and typical part of the animal kingdom. We've just been raised to hold it on a pedestal while at the same time feeling shame about wanting it. No wonder we're all so screwed up.

Second, you cannot change a person by fucking them.

Allow me to repeat that - YOU CANNOT CHANGE A PERSON BY FUCKING THEM!

People will act all sorts of dishonest ways to get sex, but eventually the person you is be the person you is. No quantity or quality of sex can stop that from coming to the fore.

Why do you think most relationships end with someone saying "they're just not the person I thought they were". It's because when we're trying to fuck someone for the first time we'll contort ourselves into all sorts of positions that aren't natural to us to show that we're just the kind of dance partner they want. We'll say anything, try anything, go anywhere.

If dating were honest you could establish at the start if rimjobs and snowballing are a preference or a deal breaker. Instead people hide what they really want from sex out of embarrassment or lack of trust in their partner, and then 30 years later grandma and grandpa break up because they went outside of the relationship for swallowing and trains instead of giving each other the chance to fulfill their needs.

Stupid fucked up shit. Lack of honesty about sex is probably the number one communication issue in relationships and the major reason for infidelity, small pox and the economy.

So while I generally think virgins who make that decision from a standpoint of moralistic superiority, or my fav, a predilection for stating that it's not that big a deal, have an immature perspective - so do most of the people having sex in the world.

Personally I'd rather see rolling orgiastic plains of informed and honest sodomistic partnering than dry fields of scrapbooking pajama parties, but that's because sex feels awesome and I don't think there's any reason people who want to have it shouldn't be having reams of it.

But if you can't tell the person you're about become a Siamese twin with for the next 30 seconds to half hour that you wish they'd choke you and spit on your face then maybe you shouldn't be on that flesh train with 'em in the first place.

I don't mean we should get all Antioch College about sex - "May I touch your breasts?" "Yes." "May I chew on your nose?" "I'd rather you didn't."

But seriously, for anyone out there wondering why you keep getting stuck in bad relationships, or keep waking up unhappy with the figure in bed next to you. Try limiting yourself to bumping uglies with people you talked about the act with beforehand. You're quantity will drop like bombs, but your quality will become a phenomenon!

Clearly I'm punchy at this point so end of blog. Go find someone you dig and talk about the dirty things you'd like to do to them. And then do them!

Of course your relationship ended badly (or in FIGHT CLUB speak, "You are not special")

Enough OK. Please don't ask me to care about the ins and outs of how your relationship ended. Most relationships end. And when they do, they end badly. Otherwise they wouldn't end. Also please don't bother me with tales of all your "good" breakups.

A good breakup involves at least one person lying or a lack of passion for the damn thing in the first place.

Now I get some heat all the time for not being a particularly supportive person when it comes to heartbreak. And I'm not. It's like asking me to give a 5 star review to a movie sporting a plot I've seen a thousand times. It just gets old.

There will always be two aggrieved parties. There will always be he said/she said (or s/he said, s/he said). There will always be a battle for the allegiance of mutual friends and a pissing contest to lock down shared hang outs.

This is what comes with a break up. It's the cost of getting intimately involved with another human. Want to avoid the risk? Get a pet and a vibrator. Or a fleshlight.

Moving to a cave is another option.

Otherwise you're risking chest crushing hurt every time you date, and you do so with the full knowledge that I won't care about the particulars when it ends.

Why?

First of all, you're not really in the best place to give me an honest account of the relationship, and in the case of things like this I'm not interested in fiction.

Second, I'm unwilling to be ammo in the constant salvos you want to lob at the other person, or that they want to lob at you.

Third, most of your drama is something that those around you saw coming from a mile away.

So please don't expect me to care or ask about details or think you're a better person for all you're going through. Welcome to the human existence.

Now if you want to talk about how you can barely breathe right now and are wondering how you can possibly believe that things will get better, that's a conversation I'm happy to have.

If you want to talk about the fact that your desire to go out, drink yourself into oblivion and hook up with random strangers to get back at your ex seems to be hurting you more than them - happy to talk.

And God knows, if you want to really sit down and look at what went wrong, starting with what you messed up, then I'm there.

But if you just want someone to nod and say "What a bitch/dick," you've got plenty of people who feed off the misery of others that will happily fill that role for you.

Oh, and for my next blog I'm gonna give you a good idea of what probably went wrong.

HINT: When you try to turn the desire to have sex with someone into a reason to bond with them, then you've made the most common mistake that our fucked up view of sex causes.

Make sure to tune in cause we's havin' some fun next time!