Sex and Intimacy are separate pillars of a relationship

Women know this, but pretend that they don't. They're actually better at this than men are

If you read over the mountain of Red Pill material that’s been pissed on to the internet over the years, especially if you consume a lot of it in a short span of time, as a group we seem pretty obsessed with sex. That’s to be expected. When the focus of a body of information is a topic like “male sexual strategy”, sex is going to come up from time to time.

Really, though, sex is important. Extremely important.

On a fundamental level, it’s how humanity reproduces and continues existing. Both on a species level and on an individual level. On a species level, every single culture that exists has to account for and allow for sex of some kind so the species doesn’t die. And on an individual level, every single culture that exists has to account for and control for the fact that every individual in the species is going to try to further their own genetics through whatever sexual strategy they can pull off within the constraints of their culture, because that’s what members of the animal kingdom are hardwired to do.

Sex is also very important socially. On an interpersonal level, it’s one way that humans bond and connect. It makes relationships stronger through both biochemical and sociocultural aspects of the act. Even causal sex is a form of connecting with other humans. If casual sex was really only about the orgasm and not about the connection, we’d just masturbate and call it a day. Sex is healthy for the body. For the psyche as well. Humans who aren’t having sex eventually get kind of messed up psychologically after long enough time without that kind of connection.

Obviously, sex is not the only thing that matters in the universe, or even the biggest thing, but it’s a pretty darn important thing humans do. So don’t let anyone tell you that having any kind of desire or focus on sex, or expending energy and effort toward your sex life, is some kind of unimportant, shallow, trivial thing. It’s important. Yes, not the only thing we ought to be doing with our lives. But important.

Sex is also the fundamental difference between a romantic relationship and a platonic relationship. If there is no sex, there is no romantic relationship. If you’re not having sex with someone, she’s just a friend.

I love many of my friends, but I am not having sex with them. Therefore, we do not have romantic relationships, only platonic friendships.

I love my children more than anything. I would do anything for them. But I am not having sex with them. Therefore, they and I do not have romantic relationships.

I love my mom and dad. But no sex. So also, not a romantic relationship.

Even a woman you’re dating - if there’s no sex, your relationship is not a romantic relationship yet. You are still just friends.

Some people might be inclined to challenge that last idea, but think about it. You can go out to eat with anybody. Your friends, your mom. You can watch TV with anybody. Your children, your dog. Until we add sex into the mix, all of the “dating” things you do with a woman are things you could do with literally anybody. (Obviously, there are romantic types of touch, like kissing, sexual petting, and so on, that you are not doing with your dog or your children — I hope — but this is foreplay to sex. So I’m lumping it in as an activity that’s closer to sex than it is to watching TV.)

So sex is the literal differentiator between friendship and an actual “relationship”, whether casual or serious. If you’re not having sex, she’s just a friend.

Which means sex is pretty foundational for any successful relationship.

A lot of people — primarily women, feminine men, and many modern relationship coaches and influencers — like to float the idea that having a good, strong relationship comes first. Lots of love, attention, thoughtfulness, respect, etc. Essentially, they’ll tell you a very strong level intimacy is key. Then, sex manifests as an extension of that intimacy. Sex being the cherry on top of a great relationship, rather than the foundation. Their preferred relationship idea is that intimacy is king, while sex is one of many possible ways people express intimacy, but on its own is kind of trivial.

We Red Pill men know better. Women know better, too, and are quite good at separating sex and intimacy. Better than men actually. I can’t speak for the feminine men or modern relationship coaches.

Sex is a wholly separate entity from intimacy. Lots of people have sex with people they aren’t in love with. And lots of people love people they don’t have sex with. Sex is clearly not tied to intimacy.

And sex is critically important all on its own, as a foundational element of a relationship.

If a woman is not sexually attracted to the man she is with, this manifests in every other aspect of the relationship. Because sex is part of the foundation, not the cherry on top. If there are problems with the sex, the relationship is failing. Don’t get me wrong. Intimacy is important, too (more on that later), but sex is an equally important pillar.

If a woman is intensely sexually attracted to her man, he can be the biggest jerk on the planet. Her friends and family will tell her this. She will brush them off and claim they just don’t understand him like she does. They don’t know how nice he is when it’s just him and her. He’s not nice, but she will feel like he is. And she’s not just making excuses for him. Her mind will literally see reality differently, because one of the brain’s jobs is to help us further our genetic line, so her brain feeds her a reality that helps lead her to make babies with a guy who’s hot and and will make attractive children that hopefully carry her genetics forward for many generations. He doesn’t have to do much for her. That one time he did something trivial for her six weeks ago will still feel super-important to her, and every time he does absolutely nothing for her while she cleans up after him and does him favors, she’ll barely notice while she hums a happy tune licking her lips waiting for bed time with him.

If her man is kind of meh and dumpy and she’s not attracted to him any more, he can be the greatest, most thoughtful guy on the planet, and she will be angry with him all the time anyway. None of the useful and thoughtful things he does for her will ever be right or good enough. All of it will feel creepy and manipulative, like he’s just trying to perform and worm his way into her good graces. She will feel trapped and unhappy. Her mind will rewrite history. Her brain, doing it’s job to keep her from accidentally getting pregnant with a guy who will not make attractive babies with her, will feed her a reality where she hasn’t been happy for months (she may have been just fine last week, even happy). In fact, her mind may tell her she was never happy with him, the relationship was wrong from the start, and something about the guy has always been kind of off. Kind of creepy, controlling, abusive, whatever.

So no, sex is not the cherry on top of the strong intimacy of the relationship. It is the very foundation. Without sex, there is no relationship. She’s just a friend. And if sex starts to fail, the relationship fails.

This isn’t to say that sex is the only thing that matters in the relationship. But a relationship doesn’t survive on love alone. You love your dog, your mom, your children, and your friends. Yes, you also love your wife or girlfriend. But sex is an equally important pillar of that relationship — every bit as important as the love.

But intimacy is also important for a relationship to succeed. Those women, feminine men, and relationship coaches are correct about that much, at least.

In fact, a separation between sex and intimacy is something women do better than men.

For men, sex is intimacy. Sex is how a man feels close and intimate with a woman. If a man spends a great deal of time with a woman engaging in behaviors that build intimacy together, and then she rejects him sexually, he will often feel that all of this intimacy was performative and manipulative on her part. He will feel used, rejected. The message he receives is that she maybe feels kinda sorta a little bit intimate with him, but not all the way intimate with him.

For women, the connection between sex and intimacy is more complex. This issue is compounded a bit by the expectations women have, the roles in their stories they mentally assign to us, and the promises we make to them. Essentially, women categorize us based on the level of intimacy they feel we have agreed to have with them.

If you’re just a random guy from the internet meeting a girl for a casual hookup, all you have to be is reasonably attractive, fun, discreet, have decent game, and not blow it. That’s the level of intimacy she is expecting and that you have agreed to. That guy could still blow it. If he’s not attractive, not fun, not decent at the game, then he is failing to have the level of intimacy he initially sold her on when she agreed to meet with him. She won’t want to have sex with him and will feel kind of angry and manipulated. But as long as he meets the baseline level of intimacy she expected, she’s excited to have that casual hookup. She’s meeting a fun, charming guy, they’re having a discreet little rendezvous, a fun private romp, and that shared story is exactly the level of intimacy she wanted from the encounter.

However, if you agree to be a woman’s boyfriend or husband, she is now expecting you to have a level of intimacy with her commensurate with that role. If you don’t meet this expectation, this is hurtful to her and pisses her off royally. And perhaps rightly so - you promised something and didn’t live up to it and she feels wronged and manipulated. If you end up in this situation, even if you’re hot enough that she would have had a fun hookup with you and the sexual attraction is there, the lack of the promised and expected intimacy is going to turn her off.

This is tough for a lot of men in relationships and marriages, because men and women love differently. As noted above, for men, sex and intimacy are connected. In fact, sex is intimacy, and a sexual rejection devalues all of the other intimacy he was feeling. But for women, intimacy and sex are separate.

And women are the gatekeepers of sex. So for this aspect of sexual strategy, women get to be right. I guess the feminine men and relationship coaches, too.

While sex is and remains a critical and foundational pillar of a relationship, and the absence of sex means the relationship is a complete failure just as surely as if the love were absent, a man who wants a relationship with a girlfriend or wife to succeed for more than a few months needs to develop something that’s a bit of a learned skill for men: Fostering intimacy (or at least the appearance and feelings of intimacy) that is separate from sex, even in the absence of sex.

If the only time you’re ever nice to a woman is when you’re angling for sex, if the only time you ever touch her romantically is when you’re trying to escalate toward sex, she’s going to start learning to distrust your touch and your kind words. And avoiding them. She’ll feel like you aren’t living up to that level of intimacy you sold her, and she’ll feel used and manipulated and won’t want to have sex. So she’ll continue to avoid your attempts to foster intimacy, fearing it’s all just a manipulative bid for sex, so she’ll feel even less intimate, then even less like having sex, then avoid intimacy even more, and so on, and this spirals right into a break-up or divorce.

Just remember to be sexy when you do this stuff. Touch her in a way that gets her thinking about sex, but then YOU pull away first for a change. Say complementary and slightly dirty things like you’re describing what you had for lunch then go on about your day. Plan a date if she’s been doing a good job meeting your sexual needs and doing other nice things for you. And if the sex starts to taper off, be around less. Maybe not at all if things get serious.

It’s not ideal. It’s more work than we’d like for sex. But less work than going out and finding a new girl. And if you actually like a girl, having a little intimacy is kind of nice anyway. Some days, you need a backrub more than a front rub.