Haight and Ashbury, the San Francisco center for the counterculture movement in the late sixties; a melting pot of psychedelic drugs, sexual freedom and creative expression.

Sex without commitment is losing its appeal for both men and women. The idea of waking up with someone we don’t know or trust or would not even choose as a friend is far worse than having no partner at all. If women were ever lured by casual sex, it was our way of overcompensating for past repression, of breaking out the Victorian closet with the advent of the Pill. To be sexually unrestricted was considered Nirvana; it was our total declaration of independence. We could finally enjoy the privileges men had enjoyed all along, including the right to “sleep around”. But the emotional casualties of the new freedom were very high.

The reason: Early conditioning and deep-seated values cannot suddenly be erased by fool-proof contraception and adopting even the most liberated outward behavior; they can’t be easily overcome by progressive or radical social trends. The resulting conflicts experienced by many women in the throes of the sexual revolution manifested itself in a variety of ways. The failure to feel or respond, a sense of numbness, the inability to get aroused, and most frequently to have an orgasm were among the consequences. (Without romance, without intimacy, feelings are going to inevitably be dulled). But probably the most dramatic outcome was the appearance of performance anxiety. A perennial male problem, it began showing up in women in the late seventies. (I’ll go into that in tomorrow’s blog.)

Yes, women are more assertive, opening up areas that were closed to them. On the other hand, some women focus on orgasms, and emphasize performance as much as men do; and can miss out on the sweetness, intimacy, love, joy and pleasure of great sex.

And men, while they’ve been relieved of some of the male burden of always having to take the lead, are often confused. Their old macho role has been discredited. But they still focus on performance — rushing to bed and rushing to intercourse, as if that were the goal of making love. If they haven’t learned sensitivity and tenderness, men don’t know what’s expected of them in lovemaking. Sometimes a man is the target of a woman’s anger when what they both need is empathy. Sure roles are changing, and there’s more sex — but sexual communication between men and women is still stuck back in the 20th century.

What I see now is sex without intimacy, sex without pleasure: people trapped in destructive, repetitive habits, doing things they don’t want to do, uncertain and afraid to try the things they’d like to do — men needing to know more about the sexuality of women, women needing to know more about the sexuality of men.

What do you think? Is sex without commitment losing its appeal for both mean and women? Is the idea of waking up with someone we don’t know or trust or would not even choose as a friend far worse than having no partner at all? Send me a youtube link of your thoughts and I’ll feature it on this weeks blog!