Right and wrong. Smart and dumb. Tall and short.
Binaries are a brilliant development in human understanding. Rank ordering is tedious and inefficient, so it saves time and brainpower to simply form an imaginary line and decide if a thing falls on one side of it or the other.
However, sometimes it is worth dedicating more time and brainpower to an idea, and one idea I’ve spent more than my fair share of time and brainpower on is sexual ethics. I grew up understanding that sexual ethics were black and white. Committed heterosexual monogamy with the expectation of parenthood is good sex. Everything else is bad. Easy.
Then I started to see the way the rest of the world treats sexual ethics and the whole thing turned into a blotch of ugly grey. I was lost. What is right? What is wrong?
After over a decade of study and contemplation, I have figured it out: Virtue is a spectrum. Think of climbing a mountain. Everyone starts at the bottom. In a perfect world, everyone would end up at the top. Certain obstacles trip some of us up while others seem to glide right by, but every step uphill is a step in the right direction. And while summiting Everest is a major achievement worthy of celebration, no one would criticize a skilled mountaineer who never got enough of a break in the weather to pass base camp.
On the topic of sexual ethics, the top of the mountain is still committed heterosexual monogamy with the expectation of parenthood. It’s the absolute pinnacle of success, blending trust, service, companionship, and bringing up the next generation with the satiation of a hunger that starts all the way at the bottom of the lizard brain.
But there are plenty of worthy goalposts along the climb, and each goal is worth pursuing, even badly, even though we fail over and over.
GET ATTRACTIVE
The bottom of the mountain is the broken, useless, lonely husk we are on our own. And we have to stumble up the base of the mountain to become, first, not repulsive, then socially acceptable, striving to reach the first goalpost: attractiveness.
As people like me have gotten lost in the grey blotch and cried out for a binary, a growing online movement has claimed to have found one: Get attractive. Bad sex is ugly, desperate, powerless sex. Good sex is smart, fit, powerful sex. Once you are desirable to as many people as possible, once you have enough sexual access so you are no longer desperate, then the sex you have is good sex.
And the reason that it is such an attractive message is that it is correct. Philandering misogynists who follow Andrew Tate’s advice are better men than men like me who sit and cry in basements watching porn. It is a huge leap forward, a massive improvement. In the same way that a second grade student has made massive improvement since preschool. But the second grade is not where we ought to stop improving.
COMMIT
Once you find yourself capable of attracting the opposite sex, a new kind of obstacle rears its head: self-control. Abstaining from meaningless sex is no virtue if you’re incapable of attracting a partner. But once sex becomes easy to get, then indulging in the childish fantasy of unrestricted hedonism is lazy and undisciplined just like indulging in the childish fantasy of constant cookies and porn is lazy and undisciplined.
Commitment is a huge and terrifying responsibility. And, on par with the level of risk, it is the most rewarding thing that humans can do.
Some animals are designed to live as selfish, solitary hermits. Others are designed to thrive in groups. Humans fit unequivocally into the latter category. And, as a part of our social hardwiring, doing things for ourselves can never possibly reach the heights of joy and meaning to be found in serving and being served by someone we love.
As hard as it is to understand and negotiate with our own selves, it is harder still to understand and negotiate with a whole other person. But when both do, when both enter into a union with a commitment to communication and service, the whole that is created transcends what either could be alone.
Commitment is a leap of faith. If you do not understand when you go into the commitment just how much power you are giving over to the other person then you are naive and you will be taken advantage of. And if you believe that keeping that power for yourself is the only safe thing to do then you are a coward and you will rob yourself of the greatest joy that humans are capable of experiencing.
RAISE CHILDREN
Committing to another human being, taking the leap of faith to allow someone to hold that power over you, is the first step in the critical stage in adulthood when you realize you’re not supposed to be the most important person in your world.
The great joys and meaning in life can only be found when someone else is more important to you than you are.
The first person who is more important than you are is your partner. But that relationship is a mere hint at the overwhelming significance of parenthood. Your children become your world, your reason for existing. So many people think of children as a burden. And for fools, they certainly are. But taken seriously, having children is freeing. Children bring life into focus. They clarify your priorities and liberate you from the hopeless chore of digging for joy and meaning in the barren temptations of modern life.
This crazy world is not supposed to be Instagrammable perfection. You are not supposed to be the envy of your peers. Life is about doing your best surrounded by people you would give up anything for.
SYNTHESIS
The synthesis of each of those goalposts is the pinnacle of the mountain of sexual virtue: be attractive and commit to a single partner with whom you have children and raise them together.
We’re all born perfectly selfish and the lessons of growing up take us slowly to the ideal selflessness, first learning to consider other people, then learning to value them, then learning that your whole life is meant to revolve around a select few of them.
We each struggle with our own demons, we each trip over our own obstacles, but by keeping that North Star in our sights, we can keep moving in the right direction. Each of us has the opportunity to climb that mountain and each of us can get closer to the top than we think.
