I’m the last person to judge you if you told me you lost your virginity before you turned 20. Or, if you’re still a virgin at 30. Although I’d be slightly baffled about the latter, I mean, is that for real? Do people still wait that long these days?
Last month, I was talking to a friend who recently got divorced after being married for 10 years. It was devastating, but she wanted to move on and decided she would date again. When she got back into the dating sphere, she said she was lucky to find some genuinely nice guys until they proposed sex on the second date!
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“I mean, is that normal these days? Or am I an outdated fossil making a big deal out of nothing?” she asked me over our telephonic conversation.
“I wouldn’t know, maybe sex isn’t sacred anymore,” I replied impassively.
Image source: Pinterest
But it seems to be that way, because these days, sex is like any other form of recreation, and I’m not talking about prostitution out here. I’m referring to how people would play a sport like cricket or badminton at a club house. I’m talking about adults meeting other random adults and simply getting between the sheets without even knowing each other’s middle names or without any emotional connection! In other words, we’re talking about one night stands, or having meaningless sex, like we call it.
A dull coffee conversation became very interesting when a guy friend told us how he and his mates met some girls at a bar (for the first time), and by the end of that night, two of the three guys got lucky with those girls! He’s had similar experiences in the past where he slept with five such women he met randomly, women he never knew before that night, and, which he said was far fewer a number than what his friends’ score cards looked like (he assumed I was judging him).
And this is not just with the men, it’s the same with women too. Women aren’t far behind when it comes to their recreation, and they have made peace with the idea of hooking up with relative strangers, no strings attached. Why must they lag behind? If men can do it, so can we. Right?
Image source: Pinterest
I wasn’t really shocked, but I had to ask, “But how could you simply strip in front of a stranger, do it, and then pretend that it never happened the next day?” Well, don’t get me wrong here, it’s not about ethics or values I’m concerned about, it’s perhaps the idea of getting intimate with a stranger, that is beyond me. Intimacy manifests over time, time spent with someone, getting to know them, and to start liking them. I could never really meet someone over drinks and simply head to their place for you know what… However, there’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s too far-fetched an idea to implement for me personally.
I’m not saying sex is sacred, I’m not even saying it isn’t.
But having sex like drinking a cough syrup is a thought that is unsettling, especially with people you barely know. It’s weird alright, or perhaps I’m the one who’s weird. I just can’t make peace with the whole idea of being with someone I didn’t know at all.
Forget the awkwardness or intimacy, what about the fears of contracting STDs? Or the fear of being filmed, or killed, or worse? At one point, we’ve all read about the guy who was found in a bathtub of ice cubes with a missing kidney! Or seen the girl who was filmed without her knowledge and an MMS that was circulated on the internet ether!
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
People aren’t worried about safety either.
So, what is it that drives these men and women to go all out without any inhibitions?
The fact that these days everything is so transparent may be the reason. Awareness is one thing, but the lack of it, or the mis-interpreted information is as hazardous as is the concern with our ozone layer depleting. I mean, look around and everything is sexualized.
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Sellers of deodorants, fruit juices, bikes, and denims are making advertisements which literally say that if you buy any of these products, you could get some. So buy them! Like…now… immediately!
“Baby ko bass pasand hai,” if you’re listening to this song on the radio while dropping your kid to school, you would try to change the station, but your child already knows exactly what baby likes. So, inadvertently, there is so much sexualization shoved down our throats that we think it’s normal, and therefore, okay.
Yes, sex is normal. It is a very natural act, but what these adverts don’t convey is that it isn’t as casual as they make us believe it is.
Has sex really become such a casual affair that it isn’t special anymore? Was it special in the first place?
Image source: Dollarphotoclub
Sex is an emotion. An emotion that comes out of other feelings, mainly love. That’s why it’s often called ‘love making,’ so when you feel close to someone, when you care for them, or when you’re in love with them, you feel a need to show those feelings to them physically. It’s simply a way to say you feel them, you want them, and that they’re special. They’re so special that you aren’t afraid to show yourself to them in your most vulnerable state.
Because, as far as we’re concerned, we associate sex to be the activity we perform with either people we are committed to, been married to, or are in love with. So, we’re familiar with these people, we know them for a while now, we are comfortable getting naked with them knowing that there might be a future with them. So, we do it. This is what we know and this is how it’s supposed to be. At least that’s what we were taught.
But really, is it? Is this how sex is supposed to be? Who is to say?
Sex is sacred, we heard that from our parents, and our teachers in school and almost everyone who had nothing to do with our life while growing up. We’ve been imparting the same to our children too, secretly hoping they remain virgins until they’re thirty, or until they get married, whichever comes first.
Image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
But with changing trends and times, it’s hard to believe that sex is sacred anymore. Let’s for a moment, consider that perhaps the older generation got it all wrong. That the idea of sex being sacred was simply exaggerated. It isn’t a big deal and never was, it simply was how they ‘misinterpreted’ the whole concept.
You could very well argue about the word ‘sacred’ itself. It is understood differently in different cultures. While some cultures believe that humans, animals, and the universe itself is sacred, some could believe that relationships that tie them all together are sacred.
So, let’s put religion, ethics, values or any such things aside for a moment, and think about it. Doesn’t matter if there are two consenting adults, or does it?
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Unemotional sex is what is causing damage to people; people are getting hurt because there are no emotions involved. Duh! So, typically, if you wanted something casual, you could get it, but does that really feel good? Make you happy? There are enough people who are capable of doing it, but there are more people who do it and can’t handle it later on. You see, the irony is that in an unemotional sexual encounter, what is supposed to ‘unite’ you, is the same thing that ‘breaks’ you.
So, leave alone the whole sacred aspect to sex, let’s deal with the outcome of this act in an unemotional and uninvolved setting. What happens when you go about making sex a casual affair? Apart from contracting STDs and risking your safety in other ways, you’re also building a wall around your emotions. Something you don’t want anyone to cross, something that is built brick by brick with no limitations that it grows so high up that you stop feeling like a human being anymore. You aren’t able to let anyone in, even if you want them to breach that barrier and reach you. When someone tries to break that huge wall around you, it simply is impossible. Even if they succeed, it takes a long time for you to get used to the idea of someone around you, or it leaves a thousand broken pieces that are hard to let go.
Featured image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
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