No One Owes You Sex

I recently came across an idea so simple and so obviously true that I was stunned that it had so little currency in the world at this time: no one owes anyone else sex, love or companionship.

It seems obvious, but many, if not most people, go out into the world expecting to have their sexual/amorous needs fulfilled. We learn as kids that someday 'the right person' will come along just to fulfill those needs. As kids we absorb this lesson, and the implication that God or the Universe or whatever has specifically designed another human being whose purpose (even if it is one purpose among others) is to fulfill our sexual and companionship needs.

And yet, not only is this assumption not true, it's rather appalling. To believe someone else is set aside for my sexual and/or companionship needs is to reduce the agency of this prospective person relative to my own. It makes this person an object. And so, I go out into the world specifically looking for a humanoid object whose purpose is to meet my needs.

In other words, when we go out into the world specifically seeking satisfaction for our sexual and/or companionship needs, we aren't looking for another human being; we're looking for someone fulfilling a role, a role that is specifically designed for our fulfillment.

The consequences of having a society of people out looking for objects, for role-players, is at the least a lot of sexual frustration. At worst it results in dehumanizing relationships, rape and violence. If a person feels very strongly that he is owed sex and companionship by someone, and if this desire overwhelms his morality and ethics, he may force another into fulfilling those needs.

Our society's norms on marriage and sex are changing, and our ethics and traditions haven't kept up with those changes. It used to be that a man exchanged some livestock for a woman, and the woman became his property. Later, marriage was pursued via a period of courtship, but economic factors were the prime motivator (i.e., the man exchanges bread-winning for housekeeping and childbearing from the woman, and decisions to marry were based on a mix of relative prosperity and whether the two believed they could tolerate one another for a lifetime). Now, with the rise of female financial independence and non-heterosexual relationships, the quest for companionship is based largely on our beliefs about love.

But we don't know how to find that love because we start out with the premise that we deserve it, which implies that someone out there owes it to us, rather than simply being worthy of it. And when we pursue something we think we deserve, we can become too aggressive and we disregard the wants and needs of others.