The (Illusion of) Connection is the Point of Sex

If it was all about the orgasm, everyone would just masturbate

For modern humans, sex is a lot more than just a physical act. It inherently has a lot of meaning and emotion tied to it. The specific meaning and the specific emotion tied to it are different for every person. But sex is more than just the physical component.

If sex were just friction on the genitals to achieve an orgasm because it feels good, everybody would just masturbate and avoid having to deal with other people for sex. Because other people are annoying. Especially about sex.

Some might say the entire point of sex, versus just masturbating, is the involvement of another human. The specific meaning and emotions we each attach to the involvement of that other human may differ. But having some kind of interaction and connection with another human is the whole point. Otherwise, your hands never say no, don’t cost you any money, and don’t insist you speak to them using their preferred love language. Or at all.

Obviously, in a world where many people have causal sex with strangers off of the internet the first time they meet, or with someone they just met at a gathering place, this “connection” the two people share isn’t often very strong, meaningful, or long-lasting. In fact, people will often hook up and have casual sex without really planning on or caring if they see the other person again. Sometimes even with the specific intent to never see the other person again.

There’s still some kind of connection there, but it’s faint. Like an illusion of an actual connection. You don’t derive all of the feelings you’d get from a deeper connection, but you also don’t have to put a whole lot into the interaction to get this illusion of connection.

While each person is a bit different in this regard, some people get by just fine with the illusion of connection. Some need a stronger illusion than others to be willing, and for a few people out there, the illusion doesn’t cut it. But for many, just the whiff of an illusion of connection is fine.

For example, most guys don’t like having sex with prostitutes or escorts. A few guys are really into it because that slight illusion of a connection is enough for them. But that’s actually pretty rare. Most guys prefer a bit more. They at least want the woman to be willing to have sex for the sake of sex, rather than hired to have sex to make money. That willingness implies that she’s also seeking at least the illusion of a connection with him as well.

Many married men with nearly-dead bedrooms will tell you that the sex is almost as bad as the absence of sex. Duty sex with a wife who is only barely willing and is only having sex to shut you up because it’s been six weeks, who disconnectedly lets you do your thing to tide you over for another month, is pretty soul-crushing. Barely more connection than a prostitute.

I feel for those guys, putting in the time and spending away their very lives to support a family, hoping things may change, but every day is just more of the same until they’re old. Then eventually dead. Many men out there are going to die — for real die — never knowing what it’s like to truly be desired by a woman. They will never know real sex, or love. They waste away, alone in their limbo marriages.

Duty sex isn’t limited to a wife who hates her husband. Some wives out there aren’t that sexually attracted to their men, but still like the guy for being a decent human and provider, and like their lives and like their family. For example, many “trad” or religious women will, out of a sense of duty, have fairly frequent sex with their husbands, even when they don’t really want to, aren’t really into it, maybe even when they aren’t that sexually attracted to their husbands at all.

Duty sex with a woman who actually vaguely likes you as a human is better than duty sex with a woman who hates you, but this type of situation still doesn’t fill the desire for connection for many men.

After all, the number-one consumers of OnlyFans content are married men. And it’s not just because the women are pretty and the men like masturbating while looking at boobs. You can find all manner of free porn if you just want to masturbate while looking at a naked woman. OnlyFans is popular for the chat. The women interact. The men feel like they come to know these women through those interactions and stories. This parasocial relationship provides the illusion of connection better than many of these men’s real lives do. How sad is that?

In our modern feminist society, the prevailing viewpoint regarding casual sex is that it is empowering for women to be able to explore in this way, and the most egregious of sins to judge women for doing so. A lot of modern women don’t want or like the expectations that come with a formal relationship and prefer to meet their sexual needs - and their need for connection - through hookups, friends with benefits and “situationships”, short-term “relationships” that are intentionally temporary, and so on.

But women are very clued into the fact that sex, even when casual, is still about the illusion of connection and not merely a physical act.

One example of this we see come up every few months in the gender war circles of the internet is the dreaded “age gap” relationship.

On its face, it might seem logical to ask why the ages of two adult casual sex partners matters if it’s just casual sex. If a 21 year old woman and a 21 year old man in college have causal sex, with no expectation or desire for a future relationship, and this is acceptable and empowering, wouldn’t it be the same if the man in this situation where 31 years old? 41 years old? 100 years old? (Okay maybe not 100.) With the same understanding that these encounters are solely casual sex with no future relationship? It’s just casual sex anyway, right?

Not so. Because a 41 year old man enjoying casual sex with a 21 year old woman pisses on the illusion. There is very little illusion of connection there. Casual sex with a hot, age-appropriate 21-year-old frat boy — even if this is understood casual sex — looks like what relationship sex looks like, even if it never becomes a relationship. And these two kids in a similar place in life with more things in common will have a slightly stronger social connection. And there’s always the remote possibility of a deeper connection developing.

The illusion of connection in a similar-age hookup is much stronger than in the hated age-gap situation, where there is a very in-your-face assumption that these two different-age humans are just trading friction on their genitals.

The age-gap relationship is just one example. Chad, the hot player jerk/cad, slumming it with a bunch of average girls. Brad, the rich guy, “manipulating” and “taking advantage” of girls who desperately hope there’s a chance of something more with him that will lead them to a lavish lifestyle. Pretty much any situation where the man has the power to minimally invest and enjoy himself sexually while the woman is more invested than he is results in a frowned-upon pairing.

Because the illusion of connection is very weak, or even absent, in those cases. And depriving women of that illusion pains them.

Society is especially protective of younger woman in this regard, because stealing a chunk of a woman’s prime years (when she at her hottest and is supposed to be landing a husband) is an egregious sin. Especially if you’re not even giving her the illusion of connection.

Given this notion that the primary purpose of sex, as opposed to masturbation, is to connect on at least a very basic level with another human, one might think that going out and spending time with the opposite sex, being friendly and connecting, then heading home alone to masturbate ought to address that need for connection, right?

Definitely not! It is the act of sex itself that fills this need for connection. Not talking, not flirting, not having things in common. At least for men. Maybe some women might feel differently.

So one weird outcome of this confluence of casual sex and the illusion of connection is that when people go out and interact with a member of the opposite sex — arguably, actually “connect” with them — then end up going home without having sex, this is an enormous disappointment. For both sexes, not just men — a lot more women feel this way than you’d think.

Weirdly, both sexes find dealing with the opposite sex socially and non-sexually to be kind of annoying. (Arguably, both sexes often find dealing with their own sex, and with most humans, to be kind of annoying.)

At the end of the day, most humans don’t deeply, truly, and genuinely like most other humans. But we sure as shit aren’t going to go without sex as we spend decades searching the earth for the one or two humans we might actually like and might actually develop a real, deep, fulfilling connection with. So we engage in the dance, the illusion of connection, maybe with the slight hope we end up actually liking the illusion we’re having sex with.

Internet men: If any of this sounds like you, that’s fine. You’re pretty normal. And if any of this sounds really off-putting or even a bat-shit crazy way for things to work in the world, that’s pretty normal too. Have fun out there!