this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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It's literally the most natural thing in the world to equate reproductive effectiveness to worth. All life is "worth" their reproductive effectiveness. So not having sex is very relevant to our entire existence as a species.
As such, our mental faculties put a heavy punishment in the form of mental pain, i.e. "self-worth attached to getting laid", on this whole thing.
This has very little to do with societal expectations. It's simple biology. Not getting laid is supposed to be one of the worst things for an organism.
You're rationally right with what you say, but it's simply not very relevant. Rationality does not help with our most deeply rooted biological desires. The only thing that helps is getting them fulfilled, i.e. having sex.
Everything you wrote is nonsense. Pointing at a process that often occurs - evolution - and then working backwards to claim that organisms must feel pain when they don't reproduce is completely antilogical. Evolution may be caused by feelings of pain or suffering when otganisms don't reproduce, or it could be something completely different. You are putting the effect before the cause.
Trying to do evolutionary psychoanalysis on something as cognitively complex as a human is practically guaranteed to give you wrong conclusions. What's more, this sort of bullshit is part and parcel of a lot of bioessentialist rhetoric, so if I were you I would definitely consider revaluating a few things.
It's not though. I'm not working backwards. I'm just not writing a dissertation. It's possible to observe lack of sex leading to psychological pain in all the different societies throughout all of history we have as humans. It's incredibly more likely to be caused by our biology than by artificially created societal expectations.
I agree with you because it's my anecdotal life experience. I'm quite successful in terms of my career and finances. I'm pretty good looking and outgoing. I'm also a single dad and I'm in a nearly year-long dry spell. My self esteem is awful. Not having sex is torture for me and it has nothing to do with societal norms. It's just biological misery.
There's always more to it as well. That's maybe what people don't get. Yeah, not having sex is terrible, but if it's the only thing unpleasant it's bearable. But if other shit starts piling on top, then it becomes misery. Then people might say "oh it's only society".
Hope you'll feel better friend. Seems you've got the masturbation going nicely already, so that helps 🤣
Lol what else can you do I guess.