Should We Have Casual Sex? A Few Philosophical Questions First

When I was in high school, I was humiliated I hadn't had sex. I was convinced everyone else had, and that being a virgin meant I wasn't really a man yet. I was in a rush to fix this — and I never once stopped to ask whether I should be in a rush. The pressure was so total that "should I?" wasn't a question I knew how to ask.

This is the question I want to ask now, with the benefit of a couple of decades of distance. And I want to say at the outset: this isn't about judging anyone for what they've done or haven't done. That's not my job, and frankly I'm grateful it isn't. The point is to give people the chance to think about it before they decide, which is the chance I didn't really give myself.

There are two main arguments you hear for sleeping with a lot of people. They're worth taking seriously, and then they're worth examining carefully.

Argument One: "You're Missing Out"

You only get one life. The moments are precious. Sex is one of the most intense pleasures human beings get to have. So, the argument runs, every moment you spend not having it is a moment of pleasure forfeited. The more, the better.

Two problems with this.

The first is that "intense pleasure" isn't by itself a reason to do something a lot. Crystal meth produces intense pleasure, too. We don't take this as a knockdown argument for doing meth. The pleasure has to be weighed against the consequences — and there are almost always consequences, for good or ill, to any significant choice we make. Pleasure on its own isn't the whole calculation.

The second problem is older and goes deeper. The philosopher Harry Frankfurt, in a famous essay on free will, introduced the concept of a wanton: a person who simply acts on whatever desire is loudest at the moment, without reflection. You want it, you take it. What you want is pleasure, so what you do is chase pleasure. Frankfurt's point is that wantonness is what distinguishes animals from full human persons. Animals don't reflect on their desires; they just have them and act on them. The exercise of being a person — being someone who steps back and asks whether a desire is one she should want to act on — is what makes you more than your impulses. Living purely by pleasure is, on Frankfurt's view, a way of forfeiting that distinctive human capacity.

You can disagree with Frankfurt — he isn't the last word. But you can't disagree with him by saying "pleasure feels good." That's exactly the position he's diagnosing.

Argument Two: "You Should Try Before You Buy"

The second argument runs more like this. People are different. Sex is different with different partners. You should know what you like and what you don't like before you commit to one person for life — otherwise you might end up sexually incompatible with your eventual spouse, or you might never know what you were missing.

This sounds practical, but it has hidden costs the argument doesn't usually mention.

For one, the experiences you accumulate before marriage don't disappear when you marry. They come with you into the marriage bed — as memories, as comparisons, as a baseline against which you can't quite help measuring the person you've committed to. What might have been uniquely shared with your spouse becomes something you also did with several other people. There's a real loss there, even if it doesn't always show up immediately.

For another, the "sexual compatibility" framing assumes sex is something you discover about a partner, like a fixed attribute they have or don't have. But for many couples, sex doesn't really come into its own until they've learned how to have it together, over time, with someone they fully trust. The compatibility isn't found; it's built. And it's built much more easily in a relationship that isn't competing with a roster of past comparisons.

Finally, and most bluntly: if "the sex isn't compatible" turns out to be the reason a marriage fails, the sex usually wasn't the real reason. A good marriage is more conducive to overall happiness than great sex is, and the things that make a good marriage — fidelity, trust, mutual sacrifice, time — are not things you can shop for ahead of time. They have to be built together.

Where This Lands

I'm not going to pretend this is a knockdown argument, or that anyone has to reach my conclusions. But I do think the two main pro-promiscuity arguments are weaker than the cultural mood around them suggests. "It feels good" is true but not sufficient. "You should know what you're getting into" sounds wise but doesn't survive contact with how marriages actually work.

The question that mattered when I was sixteen wasn't am I a real man yet, though it felt like it at the time. The question was: what kind of life am I trying to build, and does this choice make that life more or less likely? That's the question I wish someone had asked me then. It's the question I'm trying to ask now, on the other end of a few decades.

Watch the Full Video

In the video I walk through both arguments at more length, share the embarrassing details of my high school predicament, and consider what we should make of the appeal of "missing out" once we've thought it through.