Do you talk about sex with your friends?
Like genuinely talk about it. Not jokes or bragging but actual real conversations about what you like, what you're figuring out, what confuses you.
I have friends I can talk about literally anything with EXCEPT this. And then I have one friend who will casually drop the most personal detail imaginable over brunch like it's nothing. There's no in between.
Is this a cultural thing? A generational thing? I grew up in a household where this topic simply did not exist so I'm curious how other people navigate it.
Replies:
I am 100% the brunch friend lol. I will tell you everything about my sex life over eggs benedict and I genuinely don't understand people who can't talk about it.
But I think it depends on the friendship. Some people just aren't there yet and that's fine. You kind of have to test the waters and see who's open to it.
Guys do NOT talk about this with each other. At least in my experience. We'll joke about it but actually being vulnerable about it? Nah. There's this unspoken thing where you're supposed to already know what you're doing and admitting you don't is like admitting weakness.
It's dumb but it's real.
I have a few that i'm pretty open with two... seems most are very opposed to talking about it a all - straight from cafecito's world :P
I really have to segment my friendship groups when it comes to this topic.
There's one friend I have that I can divulge all details about any sexual topic with, and I've known him 20+ years going back to elementary school. It's such a breath of fresh air to know someone like that. We trust each other with info we'd never share with anyone else.
However when it comes to friends I have via Christian/church-type settings, it's a far more muted topic.
The first time it ever came up was during an anti-porn series that had lots of inaccurate information that I later corrected people on. I'm the token sex-positive person among that crowd and I've been fortunate enough to change a few minds on the subject of sexuality.
I wish I had someone other than my wife to talk to freely about sexual experiences and reflections. It is not, and never has been, unacceptable for white heterosexual men, even among close friends, to talk openly about sexual experiences, good or bad. I never, as a child or young man, spoke openly to my own father about feelings and sex. I find that the problem is closely related to the general inability of men of my generation to openly acknowledge and stand by their own vulnerabilities. We think that those around us expect us to be able to do everything and never need help from others - they don't, but the result is nonetheless that we grow up expecting it of ourselves. For myself, it was a slow and difficult process that I went through without involving others, going from "I am immortal/invulnerable and can do everything myself" to reaching a more balanced philosophy of life where I am able to understand and face my own weaknesses with self-care and without fear of what others think. In reality, it is probably still with fear of what others think, but that fear has become much less, and I no longer let it control me. Only then have I been able to meet the weaknesses of my peers with appropriate understanding and care. It is both regrettable and tragic; a terrible waste that I, and many other men like me, have held back my life for so many years and, in significant aspects of my life, isolated myself from my close friends and them as well. It was as if my approach to everything related to emotions as well as sex was being overinterpreted in a misunderstood version of Wittgenstein's philosophy of "tacit knowledge" (which revolves around the epistemological fact that we know more than we can put into words. The distinction between what can be said and what simply needs to be shown is central). My wife is beautiful and lovely. I love living and sharing life with her, including discussing, laughing, arguing, making love gently or just fucking, but since we are also very different and of different genders, I actually also miss a community of men where an open and unbiased conversation about the above can take place - it is difficult to change both your own habits and the dynamics of your friendships without the friendships changing. But when you discover that what you are doing is not working or even completely wrong, you have to stop and do things differently. In a gentle way you can shake the world and slowly the world will change; first yourself and your own little world, but over time it will spread like ripples in the water