I struggle with the concept of casual sex

A generation ago the teens were horrifying the adults in their life because they espoused the viability of sex without marriage. Many felt that the adults’ values were antiquated and that sex was a potentially positive force within the context of a loving (albeit young and thus very possibly, superficial) context.

 

Now that same generation (while we have become parents or even grandparents) seems to bemoan the sexual activity of the current younger women because they have gone one step further and divorced sex from emotional commitment. What might be observed among our children’s peers is that they often take part in sex as merely a physically pleasurable activity or perhaps one with short-term emotional pay-outs.

 

Maybe it’s time we “older women” (the mothers) challenged ourselves and examined our need for a “meaningful relationship” attached to sex as another version of the “needed marriage." “Maybe the current view of sex is okay. Maybe it’s just another step in the road to demystifying and taking away some of the over-dramatizing of sex.

 

I can already feel the angry eyes upon me. “What????? You are suggesting that sex be so casual that it is OKAY outside the context of a meaningful relationship”? Well…Maybe. Maybe that’s not what I want. Maybe that’s not what you want. Maybe that’s not what you want for your child. Maybe in the long term most of us are looking for a meaningful relationship and love that includes passion. It is totally fair, even important, to communicate those values to your children.

 

But maybe, just maybe, for some people sex can also exist in a context outside of a meaningful relationship for its own sake — and maybe that’s not such a terrible thing. It’s just something for us to think about.

Untitled-2

Written By

Dr. Bat Sheva Marcus

Sex Therapist & Relationship Expert  |  Author of Sex Points & Satisfaction Guaranteed: How to Have the Sex You've Always Wanted