Sex: Friends Without Benefits
Do you know someone who needs some nooky?
“The administrator at my job!” exclaimed a doctor in downtown Miami. “She does everything she can to make others miserable. She turns small issues into big problems and nobody likes her. We know she’s so cranky because she hasn’t had sex in such a long time!” Apparently, crappy moods and irritability are symptoms of sex starvation.
“Pent-up, moody, and edgy – especially around ovulation time,” is how a divorced mother, who hasn’t has sex in over two years, described herself. Anslem Samuel, a popular male blogger who founded Naked With Socks On, wrote, “A few years back, during a dry spell, I found myself constantly snappin on people, super aggressive and easily agitated. A few weeks later, when I finally got laid, I went back to my more jovial self.”
If sex has such a significant impact on emotional well-being, why stay celibate?
A beautiful single woman in her early forties said, “Between working and taking care of everything by myself, I just don’t have the time or energy to find someone to date.” The last time she got seduced was four years ago.
“I just haven’t met someone I like and want to share my body with. I got used to being alone,” explained an accomplished, attractive executive who’s never been married and hasn’t had sex in 2011.
Many acknowledge that prolonged abstinence may negatively affect mental health. Which is kind of ironic, especially when you consider how having sex with the wrong person might also mess with your head. Sexual health is tied into self-worth and studies show that people who haven’t had sex for years report feeling inadequate, unattractive, and rejected. Especially when married.
Sheri and Bob Stritof, authors of, The Everything Great Marriage Book, conducted a low-sex marriage poll. Approximately 15,000 people responded and 88% answered “Yes” to the question, “Do you have a low-sex marriage.”
Many survey respondents shared their personal story with Bob and Sheri, and described feeling unwanted, unappreciated, rejected, hopeless, and helpless because a spouse refused regular sex. The authors concluded that, “A low sex marriage may seem okay to one spouse and yet may be viewed as a huge problem by the other.”
Some are willing to stay in sexless marriages but others get fed up and seek satisfaction elsewhere. When differences in sex drive leave one partner unfulfilled, some therapists even advise an affair as an alternative to divorce. It may work for some, but that’s a risky distraction that could devastate an already deteriorating marriage.
Just like vegetables and exercise, sex can be really good for your health. Sex relieves stress, boosts immunity, burns calories, improves heart-health, and enhances self-esteem. But everyone is unique and needs a different amount veggies and activity to stay healthy. Likewise, people who want less sex than others may not be unhealthy or starving for sensual satisfaction.
The spectrum of sexual desire ranges from asexual to hypersexual, with most of us falling somewhere in between. An asexual does not experience sexual attraction but has the same emotional needs as everyone else. The term Gray-A describes people who don’t normally experience sexual attraction, but do sometimes. Demi-sexual refers to people who experience sexual attraction only after a strong emotional connection has been established. I know lots of ladies who fit into that category.
And since I’m a college professor, I also know lots of young men on the other end of the spectrum. Psychologists describe those with frequent urges or thoughts about sex as hypersexual and the World Health organization includes “Excessive Sex Drive’ into the International Classification of Diseases. But does high sexual desire really qualify as a disease?
A handsome law partner said, “I’m not the type of guy who would hold long periods of abstinence against someone. But sexual compatibility is important and needs to be discussed from the beginning. I like to have sex and I’m not going to end up with someone who doesn’t like sex. But there are other people who don’t want sex and they should find each other.”
His buddy agreed, “Wanting sex often is not an illness. We only have so many years alive and when one goes too long without sex, they miss whole eras of their life. It’s like, they never had sex while Michael Jackson was popular, or they never had sex when their hair was styled a special way. But if they don’t want sex, why should they have it?”
‘Lack of sex’ or ‘lots of sex’ are often viewed as social problems. We all know folks who get cranky when they go too long without it but not everybody needs sex in the same way. Many asexual people never desire sex but still fall in love and get married without ever experiencing a desire for intercourse. Rather than focus on ‘fixing’ someone’s sex drive to make them a better match, it may be more valuable to look for a compatible partner with similar sexual desires.
Some people can go without for a very long time and are perfectly healthy. Others are like Ray, a smiling business owner in South Beach, who said, “I will never find out how long I can go without. My approach is to always look for the next opportunity.”
By the way, Ray’s colleagues confirmed that he’s almost always in a good mood.
