Advice for Our Sexual Culture: Part III

Answering your questions on how often a single young man should have sex, judgement around non-monogamy, not liking the women who like you and just wanting to make out.

Hello and welcome to Many Such Cases.

Apologies for the delay in getting this segment out! I’ve been sick and out of commission for the last few days, but I have returned. As I mentioned when I first launched this advice column, it was originally pegged to Valentine’s Day. Now that that’s over, though, it seems like something I absolutely must continue. I love writing my essays here, of course, but hearing from many of you anonymously and contemplating your problems has instilled a new energy. Thinking so much about the Internet has hardened me; reading about your wants and anxieties has softened me back up.

It also has me thinking about what other ways I can continue to interact with you all in the future. Perhaps live streams or chatroom sessions are on the horizon. In the meantime, I am going to work through the remaining topics and questions from the previous edition before sending out a new Google Form for readers to submit through, and will hopefully repeat this cycle in perpetuity. Many respondents also proposed themes that could be expanded into future essays, such as the so-called “liberation” of choice, or whether our culture really is more hypersexual than the past. So, if a submission doesn’t get directly addressed here in the advice column, perhaps it will appear in an essay, instead.

This week, I answer questions on what a normal sex life for a single young man looks like, non-monogamy, just wanting to make out and offer some tough love for a guy who isn’t attracted to anyone who is attracted to him. Let’s get into it.

First: The women I want. I'm into attractive women, but not a kind of "unobtainable" attractiveness, who are a few years younger than me and with appealing personalities.They'll be kind, patient, artistic, outgoing, etc. I don't think this too unrealistic for me to ask for. I see these women around a lot. A lot are on dating apps but also out in the world: at bars and shows, sometimes at my work too. On the apps our conversations will usually fizzle out so I don't get too excited. But in real life I can get far with flirting, sometimes I'll get her number. I'll be on a first date with a woman I actually want to go out with once a quarter, sometimes less. I'm not great with closing though. I rarely get a second date, I usually get ghosted after about a day of texting after. And it's been a long time since I've slept with a woman who I wanted to have a relationship with.

Second: The women I don't want. I'll see them like me on an app or the very come up to me at a bar. These women are usually unappealing to me in some way: they'll be lumpy and carry their weight in an odd way, have some fucked up haircut or be older than me. They'll be too shy or obnoxious or strangely horny. I don't put much effort into our conversations. But despite my lack of enthusiasm, these women are into me. I'll sometimes go out with them because it's still nice to be desired, but also to see if there's some hidden spark or there's something about them I can find attractive about them. There never is.

I am not explicitly attracted to women who don't want me. In fact I find this awful. I’ve also tried to treat the women I like with the same disinterested tone I treat the ones I’m not interested in, but this just causes those women to not care about me. How do I break out of this cycle? I am tired of being alone but compromising on somebody I'm not very into feels even worse. — 34, male, Chicago

I’m glad you reached out to me for this, but I do have to ask: do you hear yourself? Do you hear the way you talk about women? There’s something rotten about it — “lumpy,” "strangely horny” — to the point where I’m worried I’m being trolled. But I will nevertheless address it at its face and assume you have good intentions. I really don’t mean to speak down to you.

You aren’t meeting women you like who also like you back because you prefer this cycle of chase and disappointment. It’s more fun for you than confronting that your standards may in fact be too high, or that there is a humanity and value to women you don’t immediately deem as attractive. The reason why you don’t find women who are attracted to you to be attractive back is because you also don’t really like yourself. That’s why you prefer the women who aren’t all that into you: to reveal some sort of desire for you would be a flaw in your eyes. The language you use to describe the women who are attracted to you reveals as much — highlighting their weight or their shyness is a crutch you use to write these women off without really knowing much of anything about them. It’s as though your brain is immediately searching for a disqualifier, when you’ve already disqualified these women on the basis of them being attracted to you.

So, my advice to you would be to be a bit more generous with yourself and others. This isn’t going to turn into Shallow Hal where you learn some big lesson about how ugly people are actually morally good. And I really don’t even think this situation is that bad. It is reasonable to have preferences for attraction, and for those preferences to adhere to the norms of youthful, thin beauty. I’m not asking you to entirely change that. But nevertheless I think you need to look a bit inward and think further about why you are repelled by women who are attracted to you. Try being nicer to yourself and these women. Stop calling them lumpy. Maybe instead of treating everyone with the same disinterested tone, treat everyone with the same interested tone. Will a spark follow then? I don’t know. But you’ll probably seem like less of a jerk.

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Hooking up chastely. I wanna kiss w tongue on the dance floor occasionally, perhaps even have a steamy make out sesh with an acquaintance on my couch but I DON’T want to have sex with randos - is this possible? How can I communicate this desire? — Female, 22, Sydney

Dance floors were made for kissing strangers and leaving it at that! Go to a club where actual dancing happens, find a guy to dance with and make out. You probably don’t even need to say anything to each other! Sure, he will probably ask to take you home, but you are completely allowed to slip away into the night undetected or just say… no! This is all a totally normal and acceptable practice. A very healthy one, I think. As for make out sessions at home, that’s a bit trickier. In this intimate, private environment, it’s a lot easier for guys to try to advance things further. Most people will respect your boundaries, but the risk of course is that not everyone will. And moreover, I think a lot of guys might take an invitation to “just make out” as one to try and push those boundaries and sleep with you. There remains a pervasive belief — one that isn’t actually totally unfounded — that women need to be “convinced” into sex. Some women do ultimately enjoy this slow process of foreplay and making out before deciding that they do, in fact, want to have sex. Obviously, this isn’t universal, though, and the fear again is that someone won’t respect your decision either way. But, if you find someone you’re interested in and sense you can trust, it is perfectly fine to say “hey, I’d like to spend time with you at my place and maybe make out, but I am not interested in having sex currently.” You are totally allowed to just lay that out there, and plenty of people will be eager to enjoy that for what it is. You’re also allowed to communicate this sort of thing on dating apps. I’m surprising myself in saying this, but maybe try Feeld? That seems like the sort of place where you could rather freely state that you are strictly looking for someone to makeout with and nothing more, and you’d have a better shot at finding people who respect that. All this is to say — yes, what you want is out there!

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My friends think I have too high a sex drive. My friends and I were discussing sexual habits recently (not something we usually chat about) and they all were shocked about how often I have sex. I usually have sex daily, sometimes more often, and I think the longest period I’ve gone without sex in the past twelve months is about a week.

I’ve never really thought much of it; my sex drive has been this high for as long as I can remember and I don’t think I have symptoms of compulsive behaviour or sex addiction. I don’t watch porn and I don’t masturbate more than once a day, which I think is typical. I am single, which may have been the thing that surprised them, but I do know of couples who have sex as frequently as I do, which did make me think my habits were pretty “normal” so to speak.

Anyway, I suppose I was wondering if this was a sign of something more serious or more run of the mill. It hasn’t negatively affected my life for what it’s worth, but I’d like to know if I’m so far out of the mainstream that I have hypersexuality or something. Thanks in advance! — Straight man, mid 20s, London