Looking at myself, for example, I can safely say that I'm a bit of a loner. But the truth is that I get a fairly decent amount of social interaction through the internet. In some ways this meets my needs better than real life: I can't think of any real-world 'community' quite like this one, for example.
But in other ways it's become very clear to me, usually when I am forced to get out and be around people and suddenly realize how much I needed that kind of interaction, that my online communities are lacking in fundamental ways. I suppose porn is an even more concrete example of this. Another example would be the ridiculous amount of 'quality' shows/movies that offer a surrogate for experiencing relationships and places and events.
The convenience I have of being able to stay at home and 'interact' with others in particular way, on my own terms, has the disadvantage that it requires me to know what is good for me and actively manage that, in the same way that the convenience of porn makes it easy for me to not bother 'grooming my feathers', so to speak, and heading out to meet potential mates.
That's not to say any of these things are inherently bad, of course.
Being alone and being lonely are not the same thing and not necessarily even related. Loneliness is an unmet emotional hunger that is not automatically met by being around other people.
Being lonely while not alone is a kind of hell that simply being alone does not begin to match. While married, I really thought I could never tolerate being single. But it turns out my marriage was emotionally vampiric and actively draining me of any ability to experience contentment.
My post divorce experience has not gone remotely like I expected. It has been wonderfully better than the dystopian nightmare I had envisioned for so very long.
Which is not a rebuttal of your remarks. Just some late night thoughts on the topic that hopefully add something to the conversation.
Sounds like a familiar source of contention...
Without wanting to generalise individual needs, I wonder if men and women are having trouble bridging their differences now there is less pressure of being a married couple. I imagine that's a large factor in young people trying to stay independent for longer.
No. And your inaccurate inference is obnoxious.
I wonder if men and women are having trouble bridging their differences now there is less pressure of being a married couple.
This is heteronormative. I see no reason to believe that it is only heterosexuals who are putting off sex.
It wasn't all that long ago that people who were not heterosexual felt enormous social pressure to appear to be heterosexual. As one example: A friend of the family dated women for some years before embracing the fact that he was gay and establishing a committed long term relationship with another man.
These days, people have more latitude for arranging their lives where they don't have to put on such appearances while figuring themselves out. Being able to meet potential dates online goes a long way towards reducing or eliminating certain social elements from the process that can be insidious if you can't avoid them.
Of course any discussion about popularity of and reasons for marriage over the last century or so is "heteronormative", for obvious reasons. Still I think men and women experience sex differently, even beyond individual needs. I have several gay friends, but I can't really tell whether any differences they have in sexual needs would be amplified if they were a different gender, potentially influenced by different biological needs.
I, for one, think that anything that helps nerds (defined as those who pursue their intellectual interests while neglecting their social lives, often not developing social skills as a result) ease their social pain while they focus on their intellectual interests is a very good thing.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who's realized this. I may not particularly like getting out at the time I decide I should, but I never regret it. I've been attempting to do it a little more often.
I knew a guy older than me who came of age in the hippie era. He had slept with a lot more people than me. He once said "TV channels stopped broadcasting at 9pm. There wasn't anything else to do after 9 o'clock at night besides sex and drugs."
You can now get TV and internet 24/7 and even in small towns you can sometimes find stores and eateries open at all hours. Also, I think historically people turned to sex to get certain emotional needs met that can now be met a variety of ways.
As one flippant example: These days, you can post selfies to get adoration from many internet strangers telling you how gorgeous you are. You don't necessarily need a sex life to get that kind of feedback. Back in the day, an ordinary person who was not a celebrity could not get something like that any way but from a sexual relationship.
In my marriage, we spent thousands of dollars on furniture because it was one of the few things we agreed on and, outside of sex, furniture shopping was about the only time I had his undivided attention. We could have saved scads of money if he had just been willing to have more of a goddamn relationship with his goddamn wife.
For that and other reasons, I have spent a lot of years thinking long and hard about the myriad different reasons people do things. And we just have a lot more options these days for getting some need met without sex that, at one time, we would have had sex to try to meet.
I don't think that's a bad thing.