Sex: The new handshake

If there is one topic that gets nearly everyone fired up, it’s sex. Whether you like it or not, almost everyone will have sex at some point in time during their lifetime. It wasn’t too long ago that sex was a meaningful act between two people who declared to love each other.

Today, we find that people are having sex at younger and younger ages, and the number of partners a person has is on a steep rise. Especially in college, it seems all too easy to just sleep with someone once or a few times while only being engaged in a quasi-casual relationship. It almost seems like having sex with someone has become the new handshake.

There are many people who claim to know the true reason behind the transition in our generation’s attitude toward sex. There are some who say we have become morally corrupted by the media. Others say that it is part of the cycle; we’re closed-minded to something, then open-minded, then closed-minded, and so forth.

However, I think that it is more deeply rooted than cyclic changes or moral corruption. Remember when it actually meant something to say “I love you”? This simple phrase, I think, is responsible for the change in our attitude toward love and relationships. Many of us say “I love you” all too frequently, and have little to no meaning to go along with it. Then there are those of us who never say it, and we really should.

We are throwing around this phrase that means so much. Love is a powerful emotion that many of us still probably have not truly experienced. People should wait to say this to someone until they actually mean it because by tossing around these special words, it loses its importance. When love loses its importance, so do relationships as a whole.

When you ponder why sex is so casual these days, ask yourself if love itself has become all too casual. I strongly urge people to think about this. Those are the three words that we say too much but without meaning. With the way the world is today, we need to find love again. Real, meaningful love. Sex shouldn’t be as casual as a handshake, and love should be special.