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Sex Dissonance
I have known for a long time that I do not want children, and today I had a small epiphany that helped me understand why: my intellectual, emotional and sexual attitudes towards having children are all in alignment.
Intellectually, I think that having children in this current world is deeply problematic; we already have seven billion people on the planet; any child we bear might well face some heinous life circumstances (and will consume lots of resources to boot). I also realize that I am not in a good financial situation to support kids, and that supporting children would add many financial and social burdens to my life that I don't want. My genes are not that good, and it is no big loss to the world if I don't pass them on.
Emotionally I have deep aversions to being a caregiver. For one thing I value my independence; for another I have had (and caused) many traumatic experiences when put into such situations. Many of the events I regret most in life happened when I was put in charge of helpless dependents. Overall, children stress me out a great deal.
Sexually, I tend to be attracted to older/middle-aged men and women -- demographics that tend to be past their childbearing years. If I was ever to become sexually involved with such a person, it would be unlikely that pregnancy would result.
This makes living a childfree life easy. There are few areas of my life in which I have been able to make decisions I unambiguously feel good about; this is one of them.
I wish I could say the same about relationships and sex. As of this writing I am single and celibate, and I know of no ways to change this situation that do not result is heartbreak and disaster. This is because different aspects of my personality want dramatically different things.
Intellectually, I value my independence, and strongly engage in certain practices (frugality, avoiding cars, even vegetarianism) that most other people would find difficult or abhorrent. Subjecting a partner to these practices is unreasonable; even given my misgivings about some of these practices I am too old and set in my ways to change them. Therefore I see cohabitation (or marriage) as unreasonable and undesirable.
Emotionally I am a trainwreck. I crave intimate companionship. I want to be held and stroked and valued by another person. I want to be cared for and about. But I don't want to be entrapped in situations where I have to be the caregiver to others. I don't want the people I care about to get sick. I don't want them to die. And as callous as it sounds, I don't know that I am either capable or willing to care for these people in their times of need. I keep thinking about the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s, and the generation that got sick and died. Some of the gay men during that plague took care of their lovers and friends, watching them deteriorate and helping them die with dignity. If I was living during a similar crisis I think I would have been one of the ones who fled. How unfair and hurtful would such a rejection be to somebody who is already facing a health crisis?
The nature of HIV in affluent North America is different than it was in the 80s and 90s, but many of the same issues are relevant to my life today. Older men and women tend to be at that stage of life when they start facing chronic pain and serious health conditions. If I was to enter a committed relationship then I presumably would also have to commit to supporting my partner if/when health crises come up.
Putting aside health crises, I don't even want to deal with the additional drama and complexity that relationships entail. There are the conflicts within the relationship itself, and the many social connections the partner brings to the relationship, such as children from previous relationships, ex-partners from previous relationships, and parents-in-law. All of these connections impose social friction and obligations I see as burdens. I have been doing a reasonable job of avoiding Christmas while alone and celibate. Entering an intimate relationship would make the "happiest time of year" as fraught with stress and drama for me as it does for everybody else. And that's just one example! Factor in age differences and life gets really complicated. Some of the people I find myself attracted to have children that are close to my age. If that is not a recipe for awkward interaction then I don't know what is.
As far as I can tell, most of the time being in a relationship is more work than fun. Certainly that has been my experience in life so far. As a single celibate person I feel a deep loneliness that consumes a lot of time and energy. But it is not clear that being in a relationship will alleviate that loneliness, and even if it does it is not clear that the benefit is worth the cost.
Sexually, it is clear the cost is not worth the benefit. I am glad that the person who invented masturbation did not take out a patent, for this technological breakthrough has made being single a whole lot easier. I can fantasize about as many or as few different partners as I wish, and unlike real people these fantasies don't let their own needs, insecurities and annoying habits get in the way of contributing to my sexual pleasure. It's true that this attitude is disturbing, shallow and self-absorbed, but my libido does not care. Overall, I am already getting most of my sexual needs met.
So what would I gain by engaging in sexual relations with another living, breathing human being? It would be better, I guess. But it might not be a lot better. Real sex is slippery and awkward and expensive, and so many of the things that feel good in fantasy don't live up to expectations in reality.
Furthermore, sex is dangerous. There is no question that becoming sexually active puts you at greater risk for a lot of ailments (and emotional heartbreaks) that are easily avoided among the involuntarily celibate. Sex between men is even riskier. Mainstream gay male culture treats sex quite casually. When you enter that world it's best to assume that your current partner has had many sex partners in the past, and could very well be maintaining concurrent sex relationships now. Emotionally, I despise the Canadian Blood Services position on gay men giving blood, but despite the sexually-active gay men who could give blood safely, I can't say that I disagree with this policy intellectually.
Also problematic is that I don't even know what I want. Maybe I want a single, stable emotional and sexual partner. Maybe I want to engage in sexual relations with several people. Having said that, I am fairly sure that casual sex with strangers is off the table for me. Putting aside concerns of disease, the risks of rejection and heartbreak are too high. I have read too many blog posts of people meeting for the first time, hooking up, and then refusing to acknowledge each others' presence in the grocery store a week later. I don't necessarily need to fall in love with every sexual partner I have, but it would be nice to fall in like with them, to appreciate them as people outside the bedroom. I certainly don't need the emotional rejection of being rejected by someone who had been caressing me in bed the weekend before. Emotionally I suspect that I would prefer having sex with friends or good acquaintances, but to do so (or even invite friends to engage in sexual relations) is to jeopardize those friendships, and I have so few friends that I can ill-afford to lose any.
Maybe I want something between the gay male culture of casual hookups and the straight female culture of relationships with an eye to marriage. That is an interesting intellectual ideal, but I don't know whether it is possible to maintain something in between without expectations of the relationship veering one way or the other emotionally.
Add to this the fact that many older men and women have libidos that are dormant or in decline, and I seriously wonder whether I should bother. I am too much of a mess, and the things I want are too conflicted and unrealistic -- there is no way to express what I want without revealing that I am a self-centred callous jerk. Certainly, most of the people I find attractive would have no sexual interest in me. I know that I am a terrible person who will cause a lot of pain to my potential partner, and I strongly suspect that I am not worthy of being loved even if I am capable of being loved. I recently read something along the lines that relationships involve making efforts to improve the lives of our partners, so that our partners are better off than they would have been without us. That was a wakeup call: I realized that I am primarily looking to exploit potential partners, not improve their lives.
It appears that I should stay single and celibate, for now and maybe for the rest of my life. Given the many conflicts between my intellectual, emotional and physical desires, I am in little danger of entering a relationship any time soon. Still, the idea of long-term or lifelong celibacy -- and the associated loneliness -- is difficult to bear.