By Back in the 1970s and 1980s, when the sexual revolution was going strong, the casual-sex mantra was “slut shame” — as though jumping into bed with a complete stranger was somehow shameful, or, even worse, doomed to failure.
However, as women’s lib became a national cause — and particularly among white liberal women — another idea cropped up: that if you wanted to remain on the right side of the anti- slut divide, you needed to quit your job, shed your responsibilities, and have a social life. You had to stay up until 2am on Saturday nights and have lots of friends.
And that, as more women became educated, pursued careers, and more of them (purchasing undergarments for instance) bought ready-to-wear, the casual-sex vibe went from “slut shame” to “come for the weekend and get drunk together and hook up.”
Then as now, it was assumed that once a woman put herself in the experience of casual sex, she would be spending quality time with “smart” men who had more potential in the future than a sexual encounter — I mean she could go on to have a romance with the guy in a few months.
Research, of course, does not support this assumption — women and men who have been casual in the past are much more likely to be single than those who do not.
But even if that wasn’t the case, it’s the established assumption that casual sex is a gateway into a future of relationships and long-term fidelity.
New research finds that, for many women, it is in fact the other way around.
One study of 25,000 single women found that those who had had casual sex in the past were less likely to pursue romantic relationships than those who hadn’t been as promiscuous. Another study, in 2010, found that roughly one in five women in their 20s and 30s reported having no steady relationship. The share of women who admitted to being single was three times higher than it was a decade earlier.
Another study of American women reported in the University of Pittsburgh’s journal Sexual Health, surveyed 2,600 people on their sexual histories and found that those who reported having had more casual partners in the past were much less likely to have been married, separated, or divorced — even if that number of partners had been in the single digits.
The casual-sex lure, it seems, can act as a repellent
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“You can also be a carefree, self-affirming, enterprising, autonomous, and confident adult,” says psychiatrist and sex educator Dr. Michelle Tishler of the University of Manitoba, “but casual sex is a way for you to enjoy other people in a healthy, safe way.” It’s also one of the best things you can do for your mental health. Regular sex greatly improves your mood, sharpens your sense of humor, boosts your sex drive, and boosts your “self-esteem levels and feelings of self-worth,” says Eric Schoenbiel, the chief medical officer of nonprofit San Francisco sex therapists The Sex Institute, which owns the sex-ed app Good Vibrations.
But though casual sex is good for your mental health, good for your sex life, and good for the good of humanity, it can also be bad. Often those relationships are hardly worth the entry fee.
Casual sex is how some people make new friends. They might meet through a group of friends, say, or a study abroad program. In theory, a casual meeting could go on to be a committed relationship — but in theory, it could also end up in someone wanting to take your coffee money on a monthlong trip to Iceland. They might agree to meet once every couple of months. Then they might “see other people,” getting to know you just well enough to not want you getting in the way of their sexual adventuring. That is what is known as “casual sex.” Like most things that sound fun on the surface, it’s not always as exciting as it seems when the reality of the situation hits.
That’s not to say that casual sex has been thought of as “bad” or “wrong” by all cultures. There are even plenty of countries that view the practice and its offspring as healthy and normal, if not encouraged. “I think when you say ‘casual sex,'” says Carlotta Weiss, author of Sex and the City 2: An Interview With the Center’s Director, “You might be limiting what sex can mean.”
For example, “Let’s say you meet someone, you like them, you have sex, and then the next time you see them you leave it at that,” says Weiss, who’s a consultant at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. “But if you say ‘It’s casual sex,'” you’re actually limiting “what sex can be and mean.” It’s not just about how often you see each
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