The Secret to More, Better Sex

Young Americans seem congenitally indisposed to take advice from their elders. They have learned in school that the older generation is totally out-of-it, especially when it comes to what happens between the sheets.

Why try to learn sexual technique from people who don’t have any?

More than that, young Americans believe that older Americans are agents of sexual repression, offering up bad advice in order to ensure that the young do not have a good time.

After all, the meaning of life is having a good time, don’t you think?

American culture has turned youthful narcissism into an article of faith. The attitude arose during the heady days of the Vietnam War counterculture. Then, someone somewhere told college students never to trust anyone over thirty.

If you think that the blind should be leading the blind, this advice is for you.

In truth, young America would have been better advised never to trust anyone under forty.

If you are young, someone who is under thirty, even under forty is your competition. Someone who is over forty is better suited to be your mentor.

Who should you trust, your competition or your mentor?

This all came to mind as I was reading about the latest study of the sexual satisfaction of college women.

Lindsay Abrams reports on the results of a survey of college women who were either involved in romantic relationships or who had contracted friends-with-benefits (FWB) arrangements.

In her words:

Those in FWB relationships had a lot more sex -- an average of 6.37 lifetime sex partners to date, over the others' 1.9. To a lesser degree, those in traditional relationships had more frequent sex with their significant other, and they also spent more non-sex time together -- and they reported having greater satisfaction with both.

Unfortunately, Abrams confuses having “more sex” with having more “sex partners.”

Happily she corrects herself in her second sentence when she notes that women in more traditional relationships had “more frequent sex,” spent more time together and had “greater satisfaction” in both.

The conclusion is inescapable: those of us who have been telling young women to reject hookups and FWB arrangements in favor of more traditional relationships were giving advice that will point them toward more, better sex.

And you thought we didn't care!