Not only TV series have killed sex. For four decades, the practice of sexual relations has been declining in the West; whose inhabitants, as productive as exhausted, have looked for pleasant successors. Our most intimate relationship is usually with the mobile phone; so much so that when we think we have lost it we feel truly helpless. Virtuality raises expectations to the detriment of physical contact, to the point of extending (especially among young people) the laziness to interact beyond the screen.
“I only have three hours to return incoming calls: at 8 am, 2 pm and 9 pm”, a manager in the automotive sector confessed to me a few days ago, and I allowed myself to imagine his intimacy: “I’m overwhelmed” , he would say to his wife when he arrived home devoid of desire, but on the other hand, happy to have fulfilled the ideal of life he had forged.
Like him, most multitasking professionals have done away with impromptu plans. It is increasingly difficult to stay with friends, because the notion of leisure has changed; and at the very least we greedily take the remaining time envelopes to pass out in our air.
In the culture of transition there was an enormous greed to discover the flavors of the body. That wretched Spain that demanded television programs about sexuality, surrendered to Eros to overcome the long hangover of repression. Immediately, the market went wild, from sex shops to swingers’ clubs, and sexual paradises flourished.
Voyeurism ended up triumphant. Fresh bodies, thongs and prosthetic buttocks, twerking and semi-porn numbers occupied the visual scene. The films of French couples discussing after the first key what kind of relationship awaited them, became as outdated as the nudes in the magazines. Tinder, seemingly fun fast sex and chemical drugs to card for three days straight. Disposable sex. nothing important But the banalization of sex did not remove the violence, which has survived culturally under the alibi of amour fou.
Progress has not managed to stop the bleeding, so in those prosperous cities, where couples space their hot nights and young people prefer to get hooked on a series, a rape is reported every three hours. That formula of “having sex with a stranger”, which used to be advertised as exciting, today causes real panic. The experts claim that feminism has also had an impact on our sexual activity, raising awareness of what a consensual, free and reciprocal relationship is.
In Retén el beso (Anagrama), Massimo Recalcati reflects on the meaning of love, which can be lasting if it declines towards tenderness. While sexual passion fluctuates and ends up being exhausted. Recalcati uses a quote from Sartre: “The joy of love consists in being waited for”. But do we have the necessary time to feed the desire if we don’t find a moment to call friends?
Routines, a veritable nest of cobwebs, thicken the attraction. And, while artificial intelligence continues to try to square the circle, the vast majority of couples warn that they want more – and better – when they go on a trip, since in the solitude of the hotel they find the time to be able to rework the ‘ideal of his love and make room for desire. No, the phone hasn’t replaced the reunion kiss yet.
