I try not to date guys under the age of 35, and I generally prefer dating men who’ve already hit 40. It’s not that I have daddy issues or Anna Nicole Smith-esque intentions. I’m in my mid-30s myself. Sure, younger guys might still catch my eye, but I’ve dated guys who were younger than me in the past only to be unpleasantly surprised by the two different world we clearly came from. While I’m not overly fond of stereotyping entire generations, I don’t like dating like it’s a hobby or a Barneys New York Warehouse Sale and we’re all scrounging for that diamond in the rough. I’m sure there are a handful of guys out there who would prove me wrong, but I’m not on an ABC reality show that pays me to find them by handing them roses. Otherwise, I’d be totally game.
How Different Generations Can be
My general rule of thumb is that I only date people who were sad when Kurt Cobain died. If a date insists he didn’t ball his eyes out over Kurt, that means he was either wearing diapers or marrying his first wife at the time, and is therefore too young or too old for me. I’d like to be more flexible with my one rule, but my generation on its own is confusing enough to navigate. Half of us grew up in households that weren’t remotely hip to the latest trends in technology. By the time I was in high school, we had a basic home computer my entire family shared that was capable of printing essays and making depressing birthday banners, but that was about it. I didn’t even have an email address until my 20s, and I still barely answer my cell phone promptly because being “connected” just isn’t something I take as a natural part of life. The other half of my generation seems to have grown up in homes that celebrated advancements in tech, despite how archaic these new inventions from just decades earlier now seem. Their parents were the first to have dangerous car phones with giant cords monopolizing the former coffee cup holder-friendly arm rests of front seats’ past. They got everything first, from cell phones and coloured-screen monitors to the most glorious invention of all: the internet.
How Accessible Porn is These Days
The world didn’t exactly change overnight. In the beginning of the internet era, searching for photos of porn only meant staring at your computer screen for two hours as it slowly loaded the naughty image you weren’t even sure you wanted to see in the first place for minutes and sometimes hours on end. It was still easier to buy porn, steal it illegally for your TV, or rent the odd X-rated movie on an overnight hotel trip, for those who really, really wanted it. It wasn’t readily available, so most of us just didn’t bother with it all that frequently if at all.
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These days, porn is casual. Porn is a 2-second Google search. Porn is free on YouTube. In fact, porn is so free that producers in the industry are struggling to make films for “niche” markets just to make something people will actually pay money for. Celebrities make sex tapes when their stars seem to fall or need that extra push onto the D-list.
Cultural critics make a big deal about what the prominence and accessibility of porn has done to the younger generations sexually, but the problem is that they often look at males and females separately and differently. Women of the younger generations are often pitied for how porn star images have contributed to the trend towards hairless female nether regions and the growth of plastic surgeries from breast implants to vaginoplasty. On the flip side, there are tons of studies that link male sexual dysfunction to the growth of online porn due to the inability of men to apparently get aroused by real-life people and experiences. But let’s forget about body issues for a second and just talk about the porn itself. Can we all just agree that porn has made a lot of people, men and women, just legitimately bad in bed? It’s particularly damaging for those who grew up with it at their fingertips.
The Difference Between Porn & Good Sex
Porn doesn’t exactly portray “good sex” to anyone who genuinely knows what good sex is; it’s a performance piece, but imagine being virginal in the internet era. With feature porns one click away, wouldn’t you watch a few YouTube films just to see what you were getting yourself into, literally speaking in many regards? I can only imagine that’s exactly what I would do if I was coming of age in this era, especially since these days I’ll even read both professional and amateur reviews of restaurants and check out the photos online before even making a reservation in a new establishment. Careful not to get so entrenched, that you get addicted to porn. Believe me I’ve read some interesting case studies of very normal people who cannot control themselves. As far as my sex life goes, I had no choice but to learn about sex the old-fashioned way: by having it. I figured it out along the way, and I’m pretty happy with where things are at now. I haven’t really watched that much porn in my life, mainly because it often just seems comical. It’s not real to me. But I’ve dated below my age range enough to know their are generations out there that think that it is.