we're in a sexual recession

No one’s having sex anymore. No one wants to fuck. No one wants to make out or dry hump or even flirt. Everyone’s tired, touch-starved, overthinking, and confused.

Especially in the heterosexual dating world, it feels like men and women have no idea what to do with each other anymore. And honestly, there are a lot of reasons why we've ended up here.

First off: Gen Z women are some of the most educated and financially independent women in history. We don’t need men to provide for us. A lot of women in older generations partnered up because they didn’t have access to education, to financial freedom, to anything that would allow them to sustain themselves without a man. So they had to settle. They had to tolerate emotionally unavailable, mediocre men because survival was tied to marriage.

That’s no longer the case.

Now, we want men, but we don’t need them. And that changes everything. It means we’re not tolerating weaponized incompetence, or a man who doesn’t meet our emotional needs, or someone who forgets our birthday, or who doesn’t look at us like the moon and stars hung themselves just to reflect in our eyes.

And here’s the problem: men were raised to think they’d still be able to get away with what their fathers and grandfathers got away with. They were told, “just make money and a woman will come.” But now the economy’s fucked, most of them can’t provide financially, and even if they could, that’s not enough anymore.

Now they're expected to be emotionally available. To be present. To listen. To reciprocate. And they were never taught how.

Honestly? A lot of men aren’t even good friends to each other. They don’t go to their boys for emotional support or real care, so they offload all of that onto women. And women are saying, “If I’m doing all this emotional labor for you, I expect you to do the same for me, especially if I’m not relying on you for money.”

And then throw Roe v. Wade getting overturned into the mix. Now, it’s like… wait. You want me to risk pregnancy in a country that’s attacking my bodily autonomy, for what? You’re not offering financial security. You’re not offering emotional support. You’re not offering romance or commitment.

Why would I have sex with you?

So now we’re in a weird place. A standoff. The men are online complaining about a “male loneliness epidemic,” which let’s be honest, isn’t really about male loneliness. Men have friends, they just don’t use their friends for what they’re meant for: emotional connection. What they’re really upset about is that women have raised the bar, and now they can’t clear it.

And women? We’re confused too. Because we still have needs. But we’re also becoming more aware of how much patriarchy has dictated what our sexuality is “supposed” to look like. For example, the idea that women shouldn’t be ‘hoes’ or should only want sex in a relationship? That’s patriarchy. That’s misogyny.

Women are human. Humans have desire. Women want sex too, just like men but we’re not willing to prioritize sex over our actual wants and needs anymore.

Because giving your body to someone who won’t even buy you flowers or plan a nice date or commit in the smallest way? It feels like a scam.

So now everyone’s horny and repressed and annoyed. The economy sucks. The world is on fire. And no one’s fucking on top of that.

Men still say they want soft, emotionally in-tune women, but they don’t want to do the work of creating the conditions where softness feels safe. Before, maybe a woman could be demanding or high-maintenance and still have a partner, because he handled the finances while her friends handled the emotional labor. Those days are over.

Now? Men aren’t providing. They can’t cover bills, nails, hair, dinner, or vacations. They want the rewards of partnership sex, comfort, companionship, without doing the work.

And women are saying, “No. Absolutely not.”

This sexual recession isn’t just about dating. It’s about systems that are no longer sustainable—capitalism, patriarchy, even the fantasy of the American Dream. Marriage, the white picket fence, the gender roles we were handed….none of it leaves room for real intimacy. Everyone is burnt out, underpaid, anxious, and touch-starved. And underneath all of that, still so deeply horny.

But I don’t think the answer is going back to how things used to be. The “tradwife” aesthetic doesn’t work, and neither does this hyper-casual situationship culture that leaves everyone feeling a little more empty than when they started. We need to reimagine what intimacy, relationships, even marriage can look like moving forward. We need something mutual, intentional, emotionally safe. We deserve romance. We deserve real connection. And we deserve good sex—with people who see us, value us, and aren’t just there for what they can extract.

And no, I don’t think women are the ones who need to step up. I think men need to do the real work. They need to go to therapy. They need to start talking about their feelings—to each other, to themselves, and learn how to feel in the first place. They need to show up emotionally, not just financially. They need to start providing something deeper. Because women are not lowering the bar just to make things easier. We’ve raised it for a reason. And the truth is, I don’t think men are happy with how things are either. Not really. They’re trapped in expectations of what it means to “be a man,” disconnected from real emotional safety, settling for surface-level relationships that don’t challenge or nourish them. But staying stuck doesn’t protect them, it just prolongs the loneliness.

It’s time to end the recession. I want everyone to get what they deserve: great sex, great love, great stories. Let’s give each other a reason to fuck again.

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