Thursday, September 19, 2013

Soapbox Preaching: Why I Hate the Phrase "Sex with the person you love is the best sex"

There are a lot of versions of this phrase that float around on twitter, and every time I see them retweeted on my feed, I kind of lose my shit. My twitter feed was recently treated to a shortened burst of this rant, but I thought I should elaborate just in case my 140 character posts came across as terse or mystifying (I am frequently mystifying, so I understand.)
But really, I thought they deserved more elaboration than I was able to give them in mini-rant form. So, here we go: Why the phrase "Sex with the person you love is the best sex" (or any iteration thereof) pisses me off.

Sex is an extremely personal thing- whether it's casual, monogamous, polyamorous, or committed in any other way. That's the key here- "personal"- and every person is different. If you, personally, only have sex with people you love, cool, that's your prerogative. But you don't get to decide your sex is BETTER than sex other people are having simply because you're in love with someone.

Another thing- this phrase sets a super dangerous precedent where uninformed or young people mix up their oxytocin rush after sex for "True Love". Oxytocin is a hormone that is released after sex which causes feelings of bonding, affection, and trust which can feel a whole lot like LO-V-E. 
The reason that this is dangerous is, post-orgasm, someone who treats you like absolute shit can start looking like the love of your life. This could be someone using another for sex or money. This could be a mentally or physically abusive person who this person needs to get away from. This could even be a good person who is only invested in the physical part of the relationship who will become freaked out and defensive if the person they're sleeping with suddenly starts proclaiming love. A man. A woman. Anybody. 
People who have never had sex before, be they young or old, could potentially base their entire post-sex mentality on this phrase. This is not a harmless retweet, this inaccurate phrase could actually be harming people's relationship psyche and setting them back on their healthy-relationship learning timeline. People are going to get hurt.

Finally, people are never going to grow sexually in relationships if their entire basis is this phrase. They'll assume that because they are in love, the sex has to be the best they're ever going to have. It will get stagnant, it will get boring, and you're going to look for ways to "spice things up". Basically, stagnant sex=bad sex and this phrase encourages stagnant sex.

So, what really makes sex good/better/best? It happens through communication, honesty, chemistry and knowledge of BOTH sex and your partner. The point I'm arguing is that not a single one of these things is exclusive to love. Does love make these things easier for some people? Tooooootally! that's what's supposed to happen when you're in love! But it doesn't mean that people who aren't in love can't have sex that's every bad metaphor for good sex all rolled up into one. Get out there and learn all you can about sex. Learn how to give yourself an orgasm, ask your partner what they need to orgasm. Don't fake it. Have good sex.

No comments:

Post a Comment

We are benevolent comment-modders, but will not accept: homophobia, blatant sexism, spam, or unnecessary rudeness.