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Having casual sex with no intimacy or long term involvement is a lower standard for two reasons. Either the person is enjoying sex without missing a major component (intimacy) or they want intimacy and are settling for sex without it. Either way, sex without intimacy (which requires more than a fleeting introduction to a person) is a lower standard than sex with intimacy.

Yes. Everyone I know, myself included, prefer sex with people they love.

However, being a virgin at thirty and above is an even lower standard. Who wants that? Nobody I grew up with ever wanted that.

If the guys are getting what they want and the women aren't, then the women are being used. That seems pretty simple to me.

One of the things I want is to measure up to other people. One of the things I want is love. I prefer to have both, but I can have the first without the second.

But maybe you should consider the downside, particularly for women, of having non-monogamous sex with guys who are also promiscuous including unwanted pregnancies, STDs, cervical cancer, and psychological issues related to intimacy.

Fair enough. Teenagers do have a habit of only performing one-half of a cost/benefit analysis, especially on sexual issues.

The downsides of sex do decrease with age. After all, at fifty-five unplanned pregnancies are almost impossible.

And what age is that, exactly? And why?

Sometime between twenty and thirty. Certainly by thirty, everyone a person would meet would have had prior partners.

A lot of heartbreak and stress over finding a mate would not exist if everyone found a spouse at fourteen. But that is like wishing there was some magical force to prevent airplanes from crashing. In the real world, airplanes crash. In the real world, people who get married past twenty-five or so marry someone who have had prior sexual partners.

However, being a virgin at thirty and above is an even lower standard. Who wants that? Nobody I grew up with ever wanted that.

So maybe the goal shouldn't be no sex or shallow sex but intimate sex with a person you love and will be with for a long time. The problem is that shallow sex is often detrimental to the goal of achieving the higher standard for a variety of reasons, thus by settling for the lower standard (out of fear of dying a virgin) people never reach the higher standard (and thus die lonely and used, instead). Yes, there are people who manage to transition from casual sex to a lasting faithful marriage but it has a corrosive effect on the odds of that happening over all. So we have a few less people who die unhappy virgins but also plenty more people who die never married, who get divorced, who never have children, and so on. Society would be better off with a few more disappointed virgins and less divorce, more intimacy, and more children.

One of the things I want is to measure up to other people. One of the things I want is love. I prefer to have both, but I can have the first without the second.

By grabbing at the first out of desperation, you move the second further away from your grasp. Patience and delayed gratification is part of adulthood. Or at least it once was. And society was better for it.

Fair enough. Teenagers do have a habit of only performing one-half of a cost/benefit analysis, especially on sexual issues.

It's even more than that. When society told girls it was objectively wrong to have sex before marriage and a shotgun marriage was always a possibility, a girl who didn't want to had sex always had a ready objective and impersonal way to say no to sex. Did premarital sex and abortion happen before the 1960s? Of course they did, but not as frequently and when the premarital sex resulted in a pregnancy, the woman held all of the cards and could get the guy to marry her.

But now if a guy wants sex and the girl really doesn't want to, what can she really say? Not with you? Not now? And as any guy knows, that can be worn down by making it a matter of personal rejection and feeling hurt, thus emotionally blackmailing the girl into sex. Plenty of girls are having sex that don't really want to. They are having sex for the wrong reasons and for bad reasons. Guys don't necessarily have the same problems but lets not pretend that young women aren't being used and aren't having any problems because of it.

The downsides of sex do decrease with age. After all, at fifty-five unplanned pregnancies are almost impossible.

The odds of a woman finding a guy willing to hook up with her for anything more than cheap casual sex while intoxicated also decreases with age for women.

Sometime between twenty and thirty. Certainly by thirty, everyone a person would meet would have had prior partners.

And what does it tell you if they don't?

A lot of heartbreak and stress over finding a mate would not exist if everyone found a spouse at fourteen. But that is like wishing there was some magical force to prevent airplanes from crashing. In the real world, airplanes crash. In the real world, people who get married past twenty-five or so marry someone who have had prior sexual partners.

And perhaps if society had different expectations or women made different demands, that wouldn't be the case? Things weren't always that way and don't have to remain that way until the end of time. So, no, it's not like a magical force preventing airplanes from crashing unless you can point to some time in the past when such a magic force existed and worked.