Maybe Sex Doesn’t Need an Abundance Mindset

by Toscane Dumon

I find it odd that our parents were having more sex at our age than we are now. We have dating apps, situationships with their own anniversaries, and enough shirtless men online to populate a Hawaiian island. And yet, we’re not getting laid. Why?

Among our American peers, only two thirds of us have knocked boots in the past three months. I belong in the other third of that statistic, which feels egregiously wrong given that my grandparents had my mother at 18. To add insult to injury, they had earlier curfews, stricter parents, and higher social costs than I do.

And yet here I am, with a dating app telling me someone is two blocks away and ready to mingle. Why is my bedroom so quiet then, if I can arrange a hookup before my Uber arrives?

Dating apps promise that the “right” person is a swipe away, and we’re so busy searching that we rarely get around to the sexy bit. Abundance of choice creates a new scarcity—not of potential partners, but of motivation and follow-through.

In our generation’s infinite tech-savviness, we assumed technology would make finding sex effortless. Convinced that nobody meets offline anymore, we’ve outsourced the process to dating apps. But in doing so, we’ve turned seduction into security clearance. We swipe through profiles like border agents, checking height, occupation, politics, and attachment style before granting anyone entry.

By the time I meet someone in person, after weeks of awkward texting, two rain-checked dates, and one miraculous alignment of calendars, I’ve conducted full private-equity due diligence.

Even when I find that perfect person who ticks a generous 45 percent of my boxes and doesn’t ick me out by the third message, my brain whispers: What if there’s someone better out there?

Abundance makes people feel replaceable. Why settle for a 9 out of 10 when someone funnier, sexier, or smarter might be a few stops down the 1 train? Is the grass really greener, or does it just have better lighting and a more alluring profile? I’d have loved to say that Groll’s game theory class taught me when to stop searching—it clearly did not.

Sex in this economy feels like online shopping. You put someone in your cart, savor the anticipation of delivery, then abandon the purchase. If you check out, the product often looks better online. There’s no customer service, just post-hookup silence. At least it’s good material for bottomless brunch.

We were supposed to be the lucky ones, beneficiaries of a premium subscription to sexual freedom. Birth control separated sex from pregnancy while the sexual revolution separated it from marriage. Courtship and chivalry are now seemingly optional (I’ve opened my own door on more dates than I’d like to admit), and chaperones obsolete (not that I’d bring my dad on a date).

The irony? Once sexual opportunity became accepted and abundant, it lost some of its rebellious appeal. Its forbidden-fruit quality lent sex sensuality and eroticism: the lingering glance, the thrill of not knowing what happens next, the “but what if we get caught.” It's hard to build sexual tension when sex is already everywhere.

Perhaps we’re fatigued from being surrounded by marketed, ubiquitous sex. Porn is a click away, sexual innuendos flood TikTok, and celibacy has its own Netflix show. And it’s no surprise why everything is sexualized; sex sells. And yet for all of this sex we’re visually, passively consuming, we’re not actually having more of the real stuff—embodied and messy.

I don’t think we’ve stopped desiring. We’ve just stopped pursuing it. We live in an isolated society, glued to our phones and accustomed to everything being delivered, which has left us out of practice in real-life interaction.

Actual sex, it turns out, requires showing up: putting down the phone, rummaging through your closet for a cute fit, and going out into the world. It means dealing with another person’s body, differing expectations, and potentially catastrophic pillow talk. It means accepting the risk that witty Hinge banter might not translate under the sheets. Scary, I know.

But isn’t that the beauty of it? Our generation inherited the freedom to figure out what we want—in bed and out of it. Freedom was the gift, the infinite shopping cart was the catch. We’re all playing along with the fantasy that the next swipe might be the best one yet, and the joke is that the promise of endless possibility is precisely what keeps us from finding anything, or anyone.

Somewhere in the scroll, the human being underneath the sheets got a little lost.

The good news? They’re still right there.