Dealing with sexual frustration

[OrientXpress]

I am not referring to myself here but wider human experience. In the media sex is commodified and made to look easy, attractive people effortlessly hook up and have mutually fulfilling intimacy.
However in real life this is only one of many different experiences. I was recently thinking back to a very open conversation with a straight male friend who described his own feelings of contempt and self anger at his own very high sex drive, especially in his 20s. There was no question of buying sex, and porn was nothing like as ubiquitous, so essentially this was a person who described psychological torture where their body and desires went unfulfilled for years and years. Low self esteem, body image issues, chronic shyness, living at home with conservative parents until age 30 all played roles. Clearly there will be straight women and gay people who also experience this. This man became an extremely heavy drinker in an attempt ro drown the frustration. Eventually things changed for him. I just wondered I this scenario is something that needs to be talked about more.

What would you suggest as a more conventional way to meet people? People say that like it's easy, but I really don't think it is for a lot of people.

I heard a R4 radio programme some years ago about why Gen Z were having less sex. Dating apps were mentioned (I think) and I think they must be relevant as but the point that really stood out was an academic who said that that it may just be an uncomfortable truth that in the past women would settle for men for financial reasons and now they don't have to. The result, he said, is a pool of men who will find it hard to have any relationships.

As an aside I don't think this point has anything to the 80/20 thing that incel culture goes on about.

The programme then had a frank discussion about what single men were doing about this. Sex work for got mentioned above. The Internet has diversified what this means. I imagine far more men (including ones in relationships of course) will engage with Onlyfans and cam models than would have hired prostitutes in the past. I live in a jurisdiction where sex work is legal and regulated. For pragmatic reasons I think that's right but I think as a matter of morals certain things are better not bought or sold and sex is one of them. I would hardly have thought it a cure for loneliness.

Going back to the OP I remember feeling that way myself but it was very much bound up with a lack of relationship, not specifically a lack of sex. Like this Louis Macneice poem: https://voetica.com/poem/6896

It really would be very very unusual for an intelligent, funny, fit, decent looking, solvent, well socialised and emotionally available man not to find any interested women

I think there's a couple of things here. Firstly, quite a large nunber of men arent ALL of these things, though they might be some. Eg it's harder to be solvent now wirh insane housing costs.

What I have only recently realised is, for all the ridiculous entitlement, harassment, bad behaviour from many, there's quite a significant and generally unspoken of cohort of straight single men who have looked at the criteria that some straight women have or vocalise re online dating, realised they dont live up to all of them, then internalised thr idea that this means all women are looking for all these criteria all the time. They dont go for a walk and see in real life what a variety of types of people are in good relationships. One guy I was speaking to said he had stopped working out as he realised he could never get like the really buff guys, and thought this physique was a basic requirement to ask someone out. He works very long hours and doesn't meet people through his job.

Re what someone earlier said about Japan, it is indeed very sad to see how much men and women have grown apart. Women socialise with each other and men live mostly online. Cross gender friendships are very rare too.

I think you might have hit the nail on the head here, that sounds right. And (generalising) men don't tend to talk to friends about it whereas women's friends will emphasise all your good points and tell you that any man would be lucky to have you 😀I just don't think men have enough of that in their lives so they're perspective gets skewed.