I’m twenty years old. When my grandparents were my age they were married. They loved each other, and this is what you did if you loved each other and wanted to have sex in that generation. Anyone who is having sex now is at liberty to do as they please. Unmarried, out of love, there are no longer any of the shameful connotations that would have existed previously. However, is this sexual liberation causing us to stray away from romance?
It’s not a question that has a straightforward answer and it’s not something that you can view through such a narrow lens. There are a lot of contributing factors. Historically, people often got married because they wanted to have sex in a capacity that wasn’t viewed as a sinful, or to conform to other socio-economic regulations. It’s great now that this social stigma around sex is being dismantled. It’s not uncommon for two people who don’t love one another to have sex now and that’s great; people are free to do something that feels good, and they should.
On the other hand, casual sex can, to some, sound a bit bleak. Should sex be linked to love, intimacy and romance? Is this increase of casual, throwaway hookups destroying romantic endeavours as we know them? If you can go out and have sex with as many people as you want freely, why would you settle for commitment? Perhaps the issue here isn’t sex, it’s commitment. Living in a world where you can go anywhere and do anything, there is a constant sense of ‘will something better come along?’ We no longer live in a society where you will inevitably meet and marry someone local, and this can lead to a fear that maybe we aren’t making the right choice if we do choose to settle.
As mentioned previously, this all depends on the way sex is viewed. If sex is seen as an act of expressing love, it could be said that this culture is destroying romance. A great deal of emotion is often expressed during sex and, consider sex scientifically, it should be noted that the hormones which are released after sex promote bonding. When you have sex with someone, you show them some of the most private parts of yourself. Surely this creates something deeper than what is included in the confines of a casual relationship? Treating sex so carelessly can raise the question: when do we stop seeing someone as a person we are sharing an experience and instead as a means of obtaining gratification?
However, this is a problematic view. There is a fundamental difference between casual sex and romance. When engaging in casual sex, the efforts to impress or seduce a partner can often disappear after the sex has happened. Frequently, the pressure to maintain and nourish the relationship is lessened as the probability of sex reoccurring increases, regardless of the amount of time put in. With love and romance, the level of consideration given to the other person doesn’t decrease after sex is had. It stays the same, or may even increase, due to the element of care for the other party. In this dynamic, the implication that sex will reoccur is usually not the first priority.
Love is something deeper and it needs time. You can have sex with someone and feel nothing or everything, and either is completely fine, as long as you’re both safe, consenting adults. Sex shouldn’t be viewed as something necessarily sacred – it’s just an act, and the idea that by having casual sex, we are somehow corrupting love, we begin to gatekeep the idea of sexual liberation. Sex is always going to be just sex. While it can coexist with love, it sometimes doesn’t, and it shouldn’t have to.
