What comes first, an emotional relationship or sex? 

Like the chicken and the egg, this is a question for the ages, and I’m not sure that we’ll ever have an answer.

Hell, I don’t even know what I think: I love free sex, but I also love dating and actually “connecting” with people; I think that as a whole, our generation is losing touch with that. 

In the same way that Facebook, MySpace and txt-msgng allow us to communicate without actually talking and experiencing a conversation, we are allowing our obsession with sex to prevent us from actually emotionally reaching each other.

A couple weeks before spring break, my good buddy “Adam” met a nice girl named “Eve” with whom he quickly became involved with; she was good conversationalist, total dish, the whole package, basically.

“One hundred percent awesome,” according to Adam; he told me that she was relatively liberally-minded about the whole “sex thing” and that they had disclosed of their sexual histories to each other, which basically consisted of Eve’s laundry list of exes, since Adam is, shall we say “inexperienced” in that department.

He had made the resolution to wait at least a couple of months to be really sure about the whole thing before undertaking his first sexual relationship (which I approve of; virginities should not be taken lightly).

When they saw each other after their Spring Break, Eve sat Adam down and declared that she could not wait so long to have sex with him and therefore that they were breaking up! 

Needless to say, Adam was blown away by the news. What I can figure—and what I told him—is that he may have thought that he wanted to give his virginity to her, but apparently he didn’t because she’s not actually as awesome as his impression of her, which sucks.

What kind of a world do we live in where someone backs out of a promising relationship because sex isn’t part of it?  When did sex become a requirement to dating?

Our generation appears to have accepted the idea that romance and emotional commitment are dead.

Guys expect girls to put out, and girls expect guys to push their boundaries.  Our twice a year come the bacchanals of Spring Break and New Year’s, which generally consist of copious amounts of alcohol and an equal portion of unattached copulation.

MTV doesn’t exactly help either; we’ve got twelve-year olds singing “Buy You a Drink” by T-Pain with lyrical content like: “I know the club close at 3 / what’s the chance you rollin’ with me / back to the crib / show you how I live / let’s get drunk forget what we did.” 

“OMG, you’re kidding, right?”

Nope, I’m not.  I worked at a summer camp in Maine this summer, and that’s really what they listen to and internalize.

Now, I’m not saying that sex is bad, dirty or otherwise.  I'm not proposing monogamy on any level.

I'm polyamorous—look it up—and when it comes to sex, frankly, I’m all for it.  It’s a healthy, natural way to release pent-up energy.  Sex is fun, and I would recommend it to anyone who thinks that they’re ready for it, provided that they recognize the inherent risks and use protection.

Who we have sex with, when and where we have sex with them, and how many of them there are isn't the problem.

The problem is that our “need” for sex is growing steadily more disproportionate with our “need” for healthy, emotional relationships. The callously expectant nature of the “ideal” sexual lifestyle is destroying our ability to actually be intimate with each other.