An interesting statistic published in the most recent issue of Psychology Today states that 50% of men aged 18-25 think about sex at least once every five minutes. Yowza! The drive to copulate stays pretty healthy as men age, too. According to that same study, only 25% of men still couldn’t go five minutes without sex coming to mind. That’s a whole lotta sex going on in our heads, although not necessarily in our beds. I wonder why this might be. If men are thinking about sex that much, there’s gotta be a certain percentage of the gals who are thinking about it, too. But how come there’s all this thinking without as much doing. How come we’re not having as much sex as we apparently want, or having exactly the kind of sex we truly desire?
British philospher Alain de Botton has a theory. In his new book, How To Think More About Sex, he states that most people lie about their true desires. We’re not gettin’ it the way we want it, because we’re not being honest about exactly what we want.
The problem, according to de Botton, is complicated. What’s erotic to one person can just as easily be disgusting to another. Revealing what we desire sexually to our partners makes us vulnerable and open to ridicule. A guy who longs to give his gal a facial might be met with a look of revolt and annoyance. How could he even consider such a thing?! And just like that, revealing his desire gets him nothing more than a big fat reject slip. But let’s say that the girl is cool with having her face sprayed with his cum; in fact, thinks it’s the most intimate thing she’s ever heard. That’s what makes moments of true eroticism so intense, says de Botton, because the revealed desire is accepted and welcomed rather than scorned and rejected.
Sex is a wonderful thing, but it’s also exceedingly complicated. De Botton says that it’s always going to cause us angst because we often suffer privately with our sexual thoughts. Well, that in itself is kind of dismal, but I can see where he’s going with it. Sex isn’t just one thing. It’s not merely the psysiological act of intercourse. It’s the whole ball o’ wax. The longing, the arousal, the shared intimacies, the (hopefully) shared desires which all lead to sex.
This is another reason why I love erotic romance. The stories reflect how we feel, how we struggle, how we perform the dance of love and sex. It doesn’t all have to be a journey of sugar-coated happiness. Our characters can be put through their paces, they can be tested, they can suffer. But along the way they have really hot sex where no one is rejected, where women always achieve orgasm, and they end up happily together in the end. Fantasy? Sure. Escapism? Absolutely. But if, in real life, we have to suffer through everything including our own desires, then I’m cool with leaving those struggles behind when I open the pages of a hot erotic romance.
Hmm, I think I’ve got some reading to do. Have a great weekend!
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