Why does sex seem to be just a commodity these days?

Absolutely. I had a FWB for a few months when I was young. We hung out and did stuff other than having sex. Neither of us was looking for a relationship and even if we had been we both understood that our lives were completely incompatible. But he was a lovely guy, good company, smoking hot, and I have very fond memories of the time we spent together. More so than I do of several relationships I've been in.

Years ago I read a very good viral online analysis of this question. I expect if you have time to google it and explore you can find it. It was illustrated with line drawings and was on a website of its own not Reddit.

It went back to the middle ages/history and outlined it in terms of scareness and commodities. This is very paraphrased but gist of it was that in the past because of lack of DNA testing etc, it was important for men to know their child was actually their genetic child. So the world evolved to make sex outside marriage a terrible thing, women who had affairs were the devil Scarlet woman. Morality and social ostracisation meant that your wife only had sex with you and you could guarantee as close as possible your son was your son. In this world sex was a rare commodity for men, difficult to come by and prized. Women were guarding it. For the average man, they had to get married to get regular sex or go to prositutes.

Invention of the pill, contraception and DNA testing meant that women started to have sex more freely. If some women are doing this, then this affects all women because the value of the commodity goes down. It's easy to find for everyone so no one values it any more. A woman who won't sleep with a man on a first date is no long A Virgin To Be Prized To Seek The Hand In Marriage Of. She is an inconvenience to a man looking for sex so he will go elsewhere. Because women know this, in turn it means they become more willing to have sex -even if they wouldn't naturally be inclined to at that point.

This was the theory. Basically about market forces, scarcity and value. Flood the market, goods devalue. Not my theory but interesting I think.

The sexual revolution was quite a while ago now, OP...

I don’t have committed serious relationships. They have nothing to offer me.

Instead, I choose to have multiple friends-with-benefits. It’s neither complicated nor difficult, and my feelings are similarly neither complicated nor difficult.

Agree with this - it’s actually LESS like using sex as a commodity to ‘give it away’ to anyone you fancy, than to cling onto it and wait until someone has ‘earned access to your body’ by sticking around for the prerequisite 5 dates or whatever.

And if you have a FWB the emphasis is often as much on the ‘Friends’ as the ‘benefits’, so you absolutely DO know them, like them, respect them etc, you just - for whatever reason - don’t want a full on relationship with them. That could be due to timing, lifestyles (my FWB travelled a lot so wasn’t in the country long enough to sustain a relationship, but when he was in the UK we had some lovely evenings) or maybe just that you’re not ready to jump into a new partnership after divorce etc.

However we choose to engage and connect with others is 100% acceptable, presuming both parties are consenting adults with all the info they need to make an informed choice.

I wonder about women and sex though. I am one by the way. It's difficult to know because it's so personal and women don't actually talk about this stuff all that much. We all know that men will mostly have an orgasm from any kind of sex - they might miss a deep connection and all that but they will generally have a good time. But do women, really? do they get physical pleasure from every casual encounter? I get the sense that in the majority of cases it's more of the thrill of being attractive but as usual men's wants are the focus in this type of encounter and the actual sex is not that good.

When I was in the casual sex phase of my life the sex was CRAP. Getting a 'body count' and feeling attractive was fun but the actual sex? Boring or stressful or a bit gross generally. I don't get the sense women are better at telling men what to do to make the sex physically pleasurable these days. I would love to be wrong though, I really would, so I'm happy to hear of different experiences (without wanting to sound hairy of hand). Maybe older women having casual relationships do have orgasms etc from casual encounters?

We're far more puritanical about sex now than we were for most of human history. It's just sex. If you want to ascribe deeper meaning to it, go right ahead. Many people do not and just enjoy a shag

Women have a choice now.
They are opting out of marriage/relationships, especially Gen z

Look at certain asian cultures for our future (South Korea)..very few children

Yes, agree with this. If something changed in my and DH's monogamous relationship, I certainly wouldn't rule out one or both of us having sex with other people, if that was what we both agreed.

Not necessarily. I'm married and monogamous these days, for example, because that works for me and DH, but I think sex is a morally neutral, pleasant thing that doesn't necessarily involve any deeper feelings. When I was single, I had wonderful sex with people I didn't know well, or indeed much like, and bad sex with people I was genuinely fond of. In neither case did it plunge me into complicated and difficult feelings.

Do the people who think that sex is something fun you can do with your body, like going for a run, have open relationships? If sex doesn't necessarily have deeper meaning to you, would you want to have sex with random people while in a serious relationship? My impression is that sex is actually more of an emotional thing than we like to admit, and it tends to plunge most people into complicated and difficult feelings.

Relationships/marriage/kids are looking incredibly unappealing.

Every other day there’s a woman’s story with her terrible husband and the kids she’s responsible for now (including the video gaming, porn watching husband son)

hell, just walk down the street and there will no doubt be a man staring whilst next to his wife/new baby (these are the worst)

Theres no selling point anymore. Women have to be masculine and feminine to live and nobody wants a man baby. Not saying they are all that way, just the majority.

I’m not cheap, I’m free. I’m an adult woman who is quite picky about who I have sex with. I want to have sex with people who enjoy it, people who like me delight in the pure space of meeting another naked human and touching each other. Because there are literally millions of men and women who like sex as a form of physical connection, this means I have had a lot of sex. Such great days and nights, lovely memories.

I’m now with dp. I am monogamously faithful in relationships where that is the agreement between us. If dp was interested in changing that, or if one of us becomes unable to have physical sex, we might revisit that or we might not. I’m quite happy.

Because we don’t all want or need some deep and meaningful connections before having sex.

it’s a pleasurable activity that consenting adults choose to engage in. Why must it be something to be valued or restricted?

I’m 58, throughout my life I have, depending on other circumstances and my needs and wants at that time, I have fluctuated between wanting something deeper and wanting frivolous fun, abd I don’t think I’m alone in that. I’ve had one night stands and I’ve had intense love and passion. I also don’t think this is new, I went to uni in the 80’s and bed hopping was very common. I’m nearing 60 and I have friends who are living their second youth and are having a fabulous time after years of being in committed relationships.

I am married, we split up 2.5 years ago and I didn’t want to bounce straight into another deep relationship but didn’t want to give up sex forever, so my next relationship would’ve been just for fun, as it happens DH and I are back together. At 58, I’m a long way off dead and still enjoy sex, in all its forms.

Because sometimes, a shag is just a shag. A bit of fun with someone you fancy. And, if you’re doing it right, it is fun.

Could people please tell me why so many find it acceptable to jump into bed with a man on their first date these days

I could equally ask why you think it's not? There's no inherent requirement to know or have a deep emotional attachement with someone before you have sex: i.e. it's physically possible regardless of how long you've known each other. So the choice to wait or not is purely based on a person's own individual wishes. Some people may not see the point in waiting.

Or why sex seems to be so cheap now?

What an interesting phrasing. What 'price' do you think should be paid? Should one or both people be 'earning' it? This is fascinating and I'd genuinely be interested to hear what you mean.

From reading posts on here, It seems to me that it is considered quite OK to have a 'friend with benefits'

Yeah. Some people like having sex but don't necessarily want a relationship. I've had FWBs where we got on great as people and had brilliant chemistry in bed but weren't in a position where we wanted anything more than that.

Don't people want to get to know a prospective sexual partner and develop a relationship with them before indulging in sex any more?

Again with the telling wording. 'Indulging' - it's not an indulgence to do something fun.

It all seems a bit sad and soulless to me!

If you find the idea of having orgasms sad and soulless I don't know how to help you! Sex to me is just an activity that feels good that I can do with my body, like going for a run or doing yoga. Sometimes it's as much about the emotional connection but sometimes it's just about having a good time: also, the power of good sexual chemistry is pretty strong in itself, it doesn't need to be romantic. I don't know why I would deny myself something I enjoy?

It's always been a choice. I have had ONS in the past. I slept with my now husband on our first date (although we had been friends for a while). Other people I never slept with as we never connected enough.
Unless you feel pressured into it I don't see the problem.

Good for you. 💯

Haha yes. Surely the OP is commodifying sex herself by using words like "cheap".

I've never thought of sex as 'cheap'.... I never paid for it and have never been paid for it... completely free.

Yeah, right. Are you not very good with words, OP, that you seem to think 'cheap', 'sad' and 'soulless' are neutral terms?

I personally think people are living in some kind of puritanical, gendered Judaeo-Christian hangover if they don't see sex for what it is, an enjoyable physical activity which doesn't need to reserved for Special Relationships.

When I was dating, I almost always had sex as early as possible, because why would I want to date someone who was selfish or awful in bed, or who had incompatible kinks?

You seem to be the one commodifying it, OP - you’ve just described consensual sex between adults who are not in a serious relationship as ‘cheap’. Your implication is either that someone’s behaving ‘cheaply’, or that someone’s getting something on the cheap.

No strings sex can definitely be transactional, but if honesty is involved, no one’s vulnerable or getting hurt, and both parties are getting what they want out of it, then surely there’s no cost to be quantified? Not everyone wants every shag to be ‘til death us do part’, and not everyone feels that having one lifelong sexual partner is the ultimate ideal.

Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, this type of sex has always been around, it’s just a hell of a lot more visible now that women have agency over their own sex lives. In the past they were controlled by their fathers, their families, their economic status, and fear of pregnancy, abandonment and societal shame - plus the fact that having sex equated to a perceived devaluation of them as human beings.

You do realise that the only people advocating a return to that world are the likes of Andrew Tate, fundamentalist Christian MAGAs and the Taliban?

Mainly from a safety perspective I mean re a younger adult - I (did my homework) met him via an app and a friend and I googled all he told me to make sure he was a genuine person, I made sure he knew that someone knew where I was/his address etc. I don’t think I’d have thought to do any of that at 21!

It being just about sex for the sake of sex made it more fun I think, I didn’t feel worried about what I looked like or what we were doing because I knew I probably wouldn’t see him again - felt so much more relaxed and more able to have fun.