“Where were you when I was 19???” “In middle school.” “Oh. Never mind, then.”
While on Gchat with Panama last Thursday, he showed me a couple sex-related quotes with considerable overlap that he was going to include in his Friday post. One had to do with the fact that the older you get, the “easier” it seems to have sex. The other was about the idea that those arbitrary 60 to 90 day waiting periods some women set on new potentials before considering sleeping with them are usually null and void if she likes you enough. Basically, be her Jay-Z.
I (obviously) agreed. In fact, I’d bet that if we polled all the 30+ men and women on VSB, most would agree that it’s substantially “easier” (more on why “easier” is in quotes a little later) to get someone you actually like in bed now than it was when you were 21. Ironically, for those who went to college, this theory still may hold true despite the fact that you might have literally lived within four blocks of thousands of eligible singles at that age.
Anyway, while I have no doubt that age makes us easy, I spent all weekend (and by “all weekend” I mean “the 240 seconds it takes me to drive from my house to Giant Eagle“) thinking about why. Here’s what I’ve come up with.
1. Sex Just Doesn’t Matter As Much
Ok. Ok. Ok. Ok. Put down your pitchforks and rotten tomatoes. I don’t mean that age makes sex meaningless or unimportant or irrelevant or any other adjective you’d use to describe Swizz’s role in the Magna Carta Holy Grail spot. Sex is great and wonderful and magical and murderous and shit.
But, as a grown up, the actual act of having sex with a new person just doesn’t have the same gravity as it does when you were younger. As you get older, sex morphs from that THING that has a tendency to define a person’s social status and their entire perception of their own self-worth to a thing that people who like each other (or just happen to be drunk next to each other) do. Or don’t do.
And, when you remove all the social baggage—as age tends to do—getting some becomes less overwrought with metric tons of external and internet conflict and context and just, well, easier.
2. You’re Better At Vagina Vetting (and, um, Penis Protecting)
I imagine that most of you reading this have at least a few people in your dating histories that make you cringe, crack up, or cry (or all three) when thinking of them. These don’t even have to be people you dated seriously. Maybe it only lasted for one date, but you shake your head at the fact that you even accepted an invitation from that guy at the bus stop with the plait beads and the Coogi jumper who wrote your number down with a magic marker.
No one is above this. But, hopefully those types of stories happened more often when you were younger. As you get older, though, you (should) start to get more of a grasp on what you like and don’t like. Maybe you don’t have the exact answer yet, but the spectrum of what you’re willing to consider gets smaller and smaller each year.
As the spectrum shrinks, you’re less likely to interact with people you know you have absolutely no future with. Naturally, this makes you more likely to date people you actually like. And, if you’re spending more time around people you actually like, you’re probably more likely to like them enough to sleep with them. You’re not necessarily “easier,” just more thoughtful about dating people you could be easy with.
3. You Just Know More About The People You Consider Sleeping With
2007 was the last time I did a cold, context-free approach. I’ve met/approached numerous different women in that time period, in numerous different venues, and in numerous different manners. But, in each situation, there was some commonality. Maybe we were at a house party and shared friends. Perhaps we were at a happy hour and belonged to the same professional organization. And, maybe we knew who each other were before actually getting to know each other.
Point being, it’s extremely rare for me to meet someone new without any type of back story. And as I get older, it’s becoming rarer. (I am a pretty big deal and shit.)
Perhaps this doesn’t happen as much in cities with higher populations or with people who travel more often than I do, but I bet my experience is more the norm than the exception.
I’m bringing this up because this familiarity—even if it’s faint—causes us to relax ourselves a bit more than we would with someone completely new, and this relaxation tends to lead to quicker asswaxation. Maybe we don’t knowknow them yet, but we know where they work, know who’s in their circle, and know that we have 118 friends in common on Facebook.
And, like with all other things, context can be good (more informed choices about who we actually decide to date) and not so good (“I know I shouldn’t hit it raw, but she’s a lawyer and a Delta so we’re probably good.”)
4. You Give Less F*cks
And, when you give less f*cks, you do more f*cking!
5. The Power Shift
At the risk of offending 77.8% of the people reading this, I’ll keep this short. When younger, women (generally) wield most of the sexual/dating power. The first 21 or so years of most men’s life is a perpetual quest for “Yes.”
The power dynamic starts to shift as we get older, as (generally speaking) “committed relationship” replaces “sex” on the top of the “Thing Wanted More Than Anyone Wants Anything Else” list.
This change, um, changes things.
(And that’s all I’m going to say about that.)
.—Damon Young (aka “The Champ”)
