Promiscuity

I am asked the question:
Are women becoming more sexually aggressive?
Do women now make the first steps in approaching a man rather than the man always being the first one?


I answer with:
I have counselled men and women over 25 years and have listened to them talk candidly about love, relationships and sex within the safe confines of the counselling room and confidentiality. From what I have seen in the last two decades, women are indeed becoming more likely to approach a man rather than always waiting for the man to ‘make the first move’.

However these approaches by women usually remain sexually limited to first base only. Most women will not sexually approach a man with the idea having full sexual contact. That motive for the sexual approach remains in the realm of the male psyche, so not much has changed really. This is because relationships and sex have different psychological meanings for men and women.




For most women sex and relationship are intimately interwoven. They go together. For men this can also be the case but does not have to be. For men relationships and sex can be intertwined but men can also have sex without a relationship attached. The most obvious example of this is prostitution. Every society on earth has female prostitutes for male customers. One does not find male prostitutes for female customers because one can assume there is no demand.

However it must be noted that men have just the same needs for emotional closeness and intimacy as women. They have the same wants for non sexual physical and psychological closeness. In this way men are in a more difficult position because sex can get in the way and complicates matters. They can loose their understanding of the need for emotional intimacy and get lost in the pursuit of sex.

There is however one exception to this hypothesis. There are a group of women who can be quite sexually aggressive in their approaches to men with the motive of full sexual contact. These women can have a number of different male partners in a relatively short space of time. Most women who enter such a phase of promiscuity are in a poor psychological condition. They are emotionally messed up and by the end of the phase they are even more disturbed. It’s just not a natural thing for women to do.



They may be promiscuous because they have mixed up sex with love and affection in their own mind. They usually have a low self esteem and the repeated sexual contacts can be a kind of self harm which is an expression of their self loathing. In other instances there may be a rebellious aspect where the woman is being promiscuous as a rebellion against strict parental or religious sexual prohibitions.

Then there is the man who has a series of female sexual partners in a short space of time. At one level society can view this man as successful and a ‘big’ man, however that is not really so. At a more base level I don’t think people view such a person in a favourable light.

He may have quite a number of associates around him. For him to have a number of female partners he must have some kind of charisma, or wealth or fame that causes the attraction. But those around him (men and women) don’t really like him but are there for some personal gain of their own. Such a man is not ‘liked’ because at the bottom line this man is using women for his own personal gain and nobody likes or admires a ‘user’. He is certainly not treating other human beings with respect, In my view people see this and make their assessments of him accordingly.

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