30-Something Year Old Men Are Not Having As Much Sex As We Thought...I Also Don't Care

The other day I came across this video on TikTok of Trevor Noah on the Daily Show doing one of his between takes where he talks to the audience about a variety of stuff. This ranges from current events to whatever is the latest topic being debated on social media. In this instance, he was talking about an article published by the Washington Post that read men in their 30’s reported on having less sex or rather not as much sex as they would like or what they believed was needed. Basically, the men these days are not getting any and this should raise eyebrows of concern throughout our society. This article seemed to have sparked a lot of conversation between both men and women and one of the main points was how men seemed to behave with a level of entitlement to women’s bodies and right to engage in sexual acts with us.

As I continued to watch the clip of Noah delivering his response to this article peppered with punchlines and witty comebacks, the gist of what he was saying was heavy. Men are not really missing the sex; they are missing the intimacy. And it is only through sex that men feel like they can experience intimacy. With the lack of a sex life happening, men are forced to re-evaluate how they can experience intimacy and more importantly leaving them to contemplate on how to be vulnerable. For many women who were listening this wasn’t really a shocking revelation, especially since women have been saying this for years. Through the patriarchal lens, intimacy is often seen as something women need for the experience of sex to seem worthwhile. Men have always been taught that sex and intimacy are mutually exclusive, when in reality they are mutually inclusive.

This doesn’t just stop as some arbitrary social media post for click bait. As of late there have been several articles that have been published that highlight the issue concerning men and their relationship to sex and sexuality with women. Opinion editorials seem to be popping up everywhere from the New York Times to various Podcasts. Society seems to have taken an interest in the future of our society. With reports of 1 in 3 men not having sex in the past 12 months and men in their 30’s not being able to obtain and sustain meaningful relationships, we are slowly creating a dangerous being in our society which is lonely, isolated men who have a plethora of emotional issues. These are the type of men who have the potential to become rapist or mass shooters. Now granted this may sound far fetched to some. But if you think about it, is it really? I mean we are talking about the same society that makes light of rape culture and coming fresh out of the ‘Me Too’ movement this is nothing to take lightly.

Think about the men in their 30’s and how they’ve grown up. For some, they have witnessed their fathers not being around much if at all, whether they were married to their mothers or not. Men from the generation before us had a certain parenting style that’s proven to be damaging to some extent. You know that old saying of papa was a rolling stone? Imagine being a boy growing up and you witness your father treating your mother without kindness or empathy. Living in a home where infidelity and abuse was part of your upbringing, you will have a hard time with your relationships as an adult because the behavior has been normalized. And even if women divorced these types of men or if the boy came from a single parent home, you have witnessed behaviors from your father and his interaction with women (mother or not). My point is that certain behaviors can seem normal if that is all you have witnessed. What I’m saying is not rocket science, anyone can come up with this conclusion, but somehow, we still found ourselves in the position as if we’ve unraveled this discovery for the first time. Like I said in my previous statement, women have been saying this for years…YEARS! We’ve spent years telling our stories of how men have been the common denominator when it comes to these issues. It’s the mindset or one’s outlook about sex and their relationship with women that the men need to work on. Once you change your state of mind and expand your way of thinking, you will be able to have the bandwidth to adapt the emotional maturity needed to tackle the issue and then real work can begin.

I applaud Trevor Noah for sharing his thoughts on this article and shedding light on the subject matter. What I loved most about his take on this, was that for once women were not really part of the conversation as much as we were able to listen in. Whenever there are some new findings as it pertains to men having an issue with their sex life, it almost always seems to shift the focus on women being the remedy. Like why women always must come up with some solution to the “problem”. As I listened to Trevor Noah, he forced men to look in the mirror and do a deep dive on themselves and forcing them to do the work. It is up to you to find the intimacy you are seeking; it is up to you to do the work on finding the emotional connections and most importantly understanding why there is a disconnect to begin with. When men can start their journey of self-reflection and begin the healing process then maybe the love they are seeking will begin to flow. But until then we will remain here, not patiently waiting.