The lack-of-relationship culture / Maybe it's time to start talking about love, then

... and intimacy...


"Are rising rates of unhappiness contributing to the sex recession? Almost certainly. But mightn’t a decline in sex and intimacy also be leading to unhappiness?"

"[Ian Kerner]... works with a lot of men who, inspired by porn, “are still masturbating like they’re 17,” to the detriment of their sex life. “It’s taking the edge off their desire,” he said. Kerner believes this is why more and more of the women coming to his office in recent years report that they want sex more than their partners do. [...] for one thing, many straight women told me that learning about sex from porn seemed to have given some men dismaying sexual habits.

[...] “my undergraduates tell me they try hard not to fall in love during college, imagining that would mess up their plans.

[...] ”the overwhelming majority of matches don’t lead to so much as a two-way text exchange, much less a date, much less sex.

[...] Many online daters spend large amounts of time pursuing people who are out of their league. Few of their messages are returned, and even fewer lead to in-person contact.

[...] In my interviews with young women, I heard too many iterations to count of “he did something I didn’t like that I later learned is a staple in porn,” choking being one widely cited example. Outside of porn, some people do enjoy what’s known as erotic asphyxiation—they say restricting oxygen to the brain can make for more intense orgasms—but it is dangerous and ranks high on the list of things you shouldn’t do to someone unless asked to.

[...] A 31-year-old in Phoenix explained that in her experience, porn has made men “expect that they can make any woman orgasm by just pounding away.”

[...] Research suggests that, for most people, casual sex tends to be less physically pleasurable than sex with a regular partner.

[...] If young people are delaying serious relationships until later in adulthood, more and more of them may be left without any knowledge of what good sex really feels like.

[...] Other sources of sexual inhibition speak distinctly to the way we live today. For example, sleep deprivation strongly suppresses desire—and sleep quality is imperiled by now-common practices like checking one’s phone overnight. "

Option paralysis: The tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none (a term popularized by Black Mirror).

FOBO: fear of a better option.

“spectatoring”—that is, worrying about how you look and sound while you’re having sex.

Article: Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?