Dating : Remind Me Why We’re Having Sex

No friends, no benefits.

Billy Crystal once observed, “Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place.”

If he were on this platform now, he’d issue a retraction for that quip. It seems we are approaching equity, with many modern women feeling just as randy, just as free as men to scratch their itches.

Part of me says, good for them. It’s high time we laid to rest the double standards that shame women and applaud men for the very same behavior.

As long as it’s consensual, sex is good for every body. We are social animals — we need touching, we need pleasuring. Any moral or religious system that attaches guilt to sex, probably is sick in lots of other ways as well.

As long as it’s consensual, sex is good for every body

But is more always better? Why the urgency to couple with so many different partners, rather than establishing a few connections that might last beyond the evening?

Part of it I understand: variety. The excitement of the first undressing for new eyes. Unfamiliar partners who can add new steps and shimmies to our favorite dance. Different bodies, hands and mouths and genitalia, different skills and styles and energies. That thrill needs no explanation.

There’s also an appeal to simply sharing pleasure with an amiable stranger or a new acquaintance, one you don’t expect to see again. To leave your civilized identity behind, drop your past and future in the corner with your clothes, and become the universal man or woman for an hour or two.

To leave your civilized identity behind, drop your past and future in the corner with your clothes, and become the universal man or woman for an hour or two.

Yes, we’ve come a long way since the days when sex was theoretically reserved for marriage, or at least for love. We’re free now, free of the concern that anyone will think, just because we’re having sex with them, it means we are in a relationship. Or that, beyond a courteous concern that they experience some pleasure and some satisfaction, we actually care about them. No, it doesn’t mean that anymore.

Now it means . . . well, what? When sex is “casual,” does it mean anything?

I believe it does, just because our human nature looks for meaning in our actions. But what it means, in these confusing times, is getting lost. It must be more than just, “I’m horny; you’re convenient.”