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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27875 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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But the substitutes pale in comparison to the real deal. I don’t get it.

Sex is a skill. [cw: spoilers are pretty tmi]

It's more obvious when bottoming, where depending on gender you're either going to simply struggle to take it, freeze up, and/or have something gross happen. But a top that doesn't know what they're doing has a lot of opportunities to have a Bad Time, ranging from the minor embarrassing stuff to just not doing what they need to really enjoy themselves to actual injury to themselves. And if you care about your partner(s)'s enjoyment, that gets even more complicated. Even the better sex toys pale in comparison to a good lay, but there's a lot of room for lackluster or even bad sex, and a lot of people start off with lackluster or bad partnered sex.

There's bad masturbation, too! As anyone who's tried using soap as a lubricant has discovered the unpleasant way. But those failure modes are uncommon and easy to avoid, and can be learned in mostly easy and solo ways.

The extent this matters clearly can't have been static across the years. I want to think there's some biochemical reason. The secular collapse of testosterone is a popular target, but it would mostly cover men. Some sex studies suggest it's more common among people who haven't had partnered sex before their mid-twenties, but it's hard to separate cause and effect, and it's very hard to come up with explanations why this would be a new issue now rather than the many periods in the past where access to sexual partners was much more difficult. The soccon emphasis tends to go the availability of porn, but neither communities where people abstain entirely and programs like No Nut November don't turn people into rutting beasts by the third week. And, as anecdote, abstaining for months hasn't gotten me into that mood where I just need to fuck/get fucked by someone.

It comes with a lot more social cachet, but revealed preferences tell another story. The substitute doesn’t need to be superior in every way to displace the original, it starts on the margins. And the margin is some costly, impractical, subpar sexual encounter versus a costless, unbounded, coolidge-effect boosted masturbation fantasy. But there will always be a niche for real sex purists, like the people who weave their own clothes.

Well I guess sexual satisfaction less cost to acquire could be greater in situation one v. situation 2 even if situation 2 has greater sexual satisfaction.

It seems like marriage solves the cost to acquire factor though…

It seems like marriage solves the cost to acquire factor though…

Ha! You must not be married.

For real though, dating is for having an easily accessible sexual partner. Marriage is for having a partner in life in general. And unless sex is the most important thing for one of the partners, that means it is going to take a lower priority than other things.

Been married for 8 years. Still have regular sex! Shouldn’t be something you give up. Honestly it makes the other stuff easier (eg free and intimate entertainment)

IIRC married couples are more sexually active with each other than dating couples in general.

I think there must be a high degree of variability between married couples.

The physical aspects of our marriage are very important. I don't know that we'd have been married if the sex wasn't there.

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