Sexual Relationships
+1 y

Men, True or False: "We need sex to feel intimacy and emotions, much like you need intimacy and emotions to enjoy sex."?

Credit to @BarryLiverstone for inspiring this question.

Pink Anon, 25-29: Men do you really NEED sex?

BarryLiverstone: "We need sex to feel intimacy and emotions, much like you need intimacy and emotions to enjoy sex.
Understand?"

Asker: "I really pondered on that being so. So sex for men is the same as “cuddling” feels for women?"

BarryLiverstone: " You got it. That’s how we really know she loves us and when we feel connected to her. Now you may understand when someone refuses sex in a relationship how it hurts us."

_____________

I know the answer, but many females seem to not. I think it's important this is understood.

Let's also see the proportion/breakdown of male votes and opinions.
Men, True or False: We need sex to feel intimacy and emotions, much like you need intimacy and emotions to enjoy sex.?
Men, True or False: We need sex to feel intimacy and emotions, much like you need intimacy and emotions to enjoy sex.?
Men, True or False: We need sex to feel intimacy and emotions, much like you need intimacy and emotions to enjoy sex.?
Men, True or False: We need sex to feel intimacy and emotions, much like you need intimacy and emotions to enjoy sex.?
Men, True or False: We need sex to feel intimacy and emotions, much like you need intimacy and emotions to enjoy sex.?
Men, True or False: We need sex to feel intimacy and emotions, much like you need intimacy and emotions to enjoy sex.?
Physical intimacy personified
Physical intimacy personified
True
Vote A
False
Vote B
I'm Female/No Vote
Vote C
Select gender and age to cast your vote:
Girl Guy
2 8

Superb Opinion

  • To begin I’m honored to have inspired a question and so thank you very much for the props. Also appreciate the 15 answers already given as they show not only the diversity in men but also the layers of this topic. So I’ll try to be concise but welcome any follow ups for the discussion.


    Men don’t NEED sex to feel intimacy or emotions all the time. I have been in relationships where I started to have feelings for someone before having sex and been in intimate situations without having sex. So as I can be a literal person at times that’s true. In addition as others have pointed out men can have sex completely devoid of emotion as it’s just a physical act for some often as one night stands or casual sex.


    However generally the context I meant is within a long term relationship or marriage I believe sex or what I prefer ‘making love’ is essential for men to allow us to confirm and strengthen intimacy and emotions. When I have been in love and had sex I’ve experienced trust/intimacy/joy at the highest levels and each time felt a stronger connection to her. That validation of love in action I do believe is needed by men in those relationships.


    Which is why I followed up pointing out without sex or when rejected we feel hurt. I’ve never been married but imagine when a husband wants sex and his wife turns him down that emotional and intimate connection suffers and weakens in his mind. Now it may well be she also has felt a weaker connection and that may be her reason for rejection but overall in a sexless marriage I believe both suffer.


    I’ll conclude by saying no one is a mind reader and we all know communication is key. So would encourage everyone if sex is a need then tell your partner, don’t assume they will figure it out. in my opinion telling someone you desire them and need to make love to them is damn sexy!

    • Yay, Barry commented 🤛. You will definitely need to get MHO, my friend. Thank you for the extra details. I realized, once the comments started rolling in, that this topic was a lot broader and more layered than I may have provided for. Even thinking about an Update, I was unsure of what to say. (Although admittedly, sometimes I really like very binary polls. Some of my other polls are so detailed; gotta keep 'em on their toes, you know, not do the same every time.) "Which is why I followed up pointing out without sex or when rejected we feel hurt. I’ve never been married but imagine when a husband wants sex and his wife turns him down that emotional and intimate connection suffers and weakens in his mind. Now it may well be she also has felt a weaker connection and that may be her reason for rejection but overall in a sexless marriage I believe both suffer." You are absolutely correct. In my mind, I thought of your initial comments (on the other q) as being related to within an already-existing relationship; not the beginning. This is definitely not about a player tactic. Anyway, very well said, all of it. You're a very organized writer (and thinker, I presume.) Following you now. P. S. Are you using an ipad, by chance? I am trying to get to the bottom of the double paragraph spacing that occurs sometimes.

    • Using an iPhone. Woah you are right, I see the double spacing above. This is one space on my iPhone. This is no spaces on my iPhone.

    • My iPhone does the space thing too.

Most Helpful Guy

  • I voted "true" although this is one of those where my thoughts are something between "true" and "false" like "mostly true". The way I see it is that sex is the sole activity and form of communication that only lovers exclusively share. As a result, I consider it the most valuable and most intimate form of communication between lovers.

    All other forms of communication are not exclusive to lovers from my perspective. I can hug my friends and family. I can hold a little kid's hand on the street. I can cuddle with my pets and hold them and shower them with kisses. I'm an extreme case, but I can share my deepest thoughts and feelings with even people I've just met. I can hang out and have one-on-one fun with a close friend. I can do all of these things and more without a lover, but I cannot have sex without a lover.

    So a big part of what keeps me from thinking a woman is just a friend and elevates her to a romantic partner is sex. If that begins to decline, I might still feel affectionate towards her and care for her and we might have our share of intimate conversations, but that would not distinguish her from a close friend or family member in my mind and I would not feel quite as close to her in such a context.

Most Helpful Girls

  • I believe some need to feel sex to have the emotional attachment but it depends because some guys just want a piece of ass, nothing more nothing less, no strings attached. For me I find myself the attached type most of the time but I lost my virginity to a guy who just wanted sex but 0 interest in me, no attachment whatsoever so I suppose it all depends how he expresses his feelings and carries himself.

  • It depends on the type of sex:
    Making love (intimacy)
    Sex for favors (drugs, alcohol, money)
    One night stand (fucking, getting, laid, however you put)
    Pay for play ( this could be a desire for intimacy something you lack at home, roll play, BDSM, various sexual desires)
    Just my opinion ✌️

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What Girls & Guys Said

2 56

  • I used to think that way, then had more dates than I can remember turn into one night stands. Sex is sex, if there's going to be a sexual relationship, then yeah, sex needs to be a part of it, or that isn't a relationship, but some other dynamic. I don't expect sex to necessarily open up intimacy like ascending a ladder one rung at a time though.

    Most encounters I've had with women, they just wanted some dick, and then to forget I existed. I just won't play games to get laid, and know if sex suddenly stops, they're getting it from somewhere else, time to get out, and get tested.

  • I think that guys who are saying it's true are taking from a girl they already care about in their minds or girlfriend or wife - Most guys - and by most I mean 80% at least of guys - Can sleep with a woman having absolutely no emotional connection with the woman - she's just sexy - But from personal experience - the ones with girls you care about are by far much better than just when you're horny and the opportunity is there - so no it's definitely false.

  • I think both genders can feel sex pleasurable and intimacy pleasurable with partners of their choice right out of the gate.

    In my experience woman have told men they need 3-6months of date to guys they view as plan B material while sleeping with chads on night one right out of the gate and loving it.

    I also don't think as a male that I have to have sex at all to enjoy intimacy. I often love cuddling with a female partner at a drive in on the first date or having an intimate moment on a park bench after a nice walk through the gardens on date 1 before we've even suggested the topic of sex at all, let alone fucked 2-3 times.

  • This is fascinating. Here for the results 👀👀

    • Yes, isn't it! Has really got the guys analyzing. Love it.

  • I'm promiscuous, so I obviously do not emphasize with this- but I think understand what they are trying to say.

    But I'm replying because I'm interested in how men, who are majority capable of casual sex, reconcile this idea with, well, their ability to have casual sex and simultaneously, apparently, base "love" on something they are otherwise capable of engaging in entirely non-consequentially.

    Also, another interesting thing- the one woman I actually (think) I liked on a romantic level, I did NOT find sexually attractive, and she was the one woman I wouldn't MIND not engaging sexually with, but strongly wished to continue connecting with regardless.

    So this is even more baffling for me.

    • Ooh good point. Yes, 'riddle me that, Batman'... boys! Yeah, interesting. At first I thought, "Yeah, that's confusing." But then... maybe it's quite common, actually. Neutrality physically is sometimes enough, if the personality and compatibility are very strong. And then, add to that arranged marriages, which still happen in half the globe. Everything sort of ends up blending together at some point, quite often.

    • To be honest, I'm not sure if that was love- I'm not sure if I'm capable of love, even. It was a very strong sense of belonging towards a person that I have never really felt before, I think it was romantic, because I have experienced some degree of jealousy (but at the same time, I also think this "jealousy" was different in nature from what I feel about the concept of sexual non-exclusivity). They weren't particularly attractive, and I did not have any strong sexual interest in them (not any more so than I would have in any random woman of their appearance, which is to say pretty little) largely because they weren't really interested sexually in me either (they were very sexually conservative, which would normally turn me off from a woman immediately). I think I would wish to continue that interaction, and continue deriving the same kind of satisfaction regardless of whether sex and physical intimacy would ever become a part of it.

  • I agree absolutely. I'm surprised by the poll results.

    For a woman to give herself completely, both physically and emotionally, is the greatest gift. And it inspires me to reciprocate. My heart swells with love, gratitude and admiration when my romantic partner trusts me with her body.

    There is no better hug than to be invelloped inside her warm, tender body. And when she craves it, I feel craved as a person. There is no greater acceptance.

    There are many things that inspire intimacy and trust, but sex is the ultimate.

  • I wrote a myTake about this issue:

    Men, Women, and Sex: We Both Want It...But Not Necessarily at the Same Time! ↗

  • Women often argue that we men are not "into you".
    and yet, after a period of time getting to KNOW one another emotionally & mentally,
    biologically YOUR physically experiencing and accepting MALE DNA
    orally, anally or vaginally LITERALLY "into YOU" is being REJECTED
    ... WHO is REALLY rejecting 'intimacy'?

    We're NOT talking reproductive copulation.
    We're speaking of the innate evolutionary behaviors
    that trigger the neurological release of the addictive bonding hormones
    Oxytocin, Seratonin and Dopamine... post-climax afterglow!

  • When a guy says that, he is just trying to get into the girls pants, he isn’t serious about the relationship, or not as serious as he needs to be.

    • That's not true. Not for all men. This is not about the very beginning of a relationship/meeting; this is in general. And there are many men for which this is true.

    • I didn’t know that, interesting.

  • It's true. A healthy couple will have a healthy sex life, and a couple with a healthy sex life will have a healthy relationship.

    If a woman is fully into her man she'll want to have sex with him. If she isn't interested in sex, unless there's some kind of hormonal/medical issue which is affecting her sex drive, it's because she's not fully into him.

    In fact I think that a lot of people really under-estimate the importance of sex. Sex isn't everything but they go to the the other extreme when they speak about how it's not important at all.

    • I just have to throw in a female perspective here. Emotional validation is so important. When I felt unheard and steamrolled outside the bedroom, I lost interest in the bedroom. It wasn’t that I wasn’t into him. It’s that I needed him to validate me. The sex is back on fire.

    • @loves2learn Yeah it's not an either/or thing, both are linked. What happens outside the bedroom affects inside the bedroom and vice versa.

    • Well said. :)

  • In a relationship where you cut the guy off after you're already intimate? Yes. This is going to make us disconnected from each other. It is a physical silent treatment and is not gender specific, but women do it when they hate themselves and their man. Men just don't do it. Before then? No. You can fall in love before you sleep with someone.

  • I would say yes.

  • False, I don't normally have sex with someone unless I have feelings for them already and I have not had sex in over ten years and I feel emotions daily.

  • Before I state my personal opinion I will tell you something very important that I've learned over the years. Don't generalize people under a single idea. Everything will vary from person to person and as diverse beings the range of our spectrum is very wide. Some men will need sex to feel close while others will need emotional connection to feel close before sex. It depends on the individual 100%. Always remember that and live by it.
    Now onto my personal preference. I don't need sex to feel an emotional connection to someone. Nor do I prefer to be connected to someone before sex. I love cuddling and kissing and romantic stuff, but I also love sex and everything sexual. I guess what I'm trying to say is that sex isn't a single way for me to feel connected to my partner. It's one way out of several ways. It's an endless list from holding hands to having sex in the shower.
    _____Hope this helps!

    • Thanks for your comment and opinion. But I don't think it's fair to criticize me for "generalizing" when by the very act of me asking this question, I am opening up a discussion for men to give their own specific opinions. Polls can help to distill complex down. They are not a perfect science by any means, but they can be a talking point, or a sometimes useful distillation. This part, not the title question, was actually the key part: BarryLiverstone: " You got it. That’s how we really know she loves us and when we feel connected to her. Now you may understand when someone refuses sex in a relationship how it hurts us."

  • This is absolutely false for me. I don't require to have sex in order to feel emotions or to have intimacy.

    To me, the three stand by their own, and are not conditional to one another, although... they can be quite closely related and involved with one another.

    There's a quite a vaste range of emotions, and within each of them... levels of intensity.

    And the same goes for intimacy, there are many ways in which you can be intimate with someone you connect, and it doesn't have to be (always) about sex.

    There is just so much more to significant others and also relationships.

    If I cannot be intimate and emotionally connect with someone first, then I don't really consider sex in the picture. I have not ever, not once... had sex first, and then developed the emotions and intimacy that I like to have in a relationship with someone.

  • Hmm not quite that simple I guess for me.


    I would say I don’t need sex in order to have an emotional connection to a person I want a relationship with but it’s still a vital part of what helps those emotions stay strong and push the relationship forward.


    I very much love sex, I have high libido but I also understand that I thoroughly enjoy a relationship for everything that makes it unique such as communication, experiences shared, values, overcoming things, etc.


    I can’t speak for other men but I know what works for me. However, if there isn’t any form of sex or lack of it in a relationship, I would feel not as happy as I could be.

  • I'm going to say yes and no. We don't need sex to feel intimacy and emotions yet we really can't experience the fullness of emotions without sex. So we don't need it but without we can't know the fullness of emotions and intimacy

  • I said yes when I truly can show my intimacy and emotions without sex. I feel as though in my eyes where a man can really let his love and emotion for his woman out through actions of the most passionate act two individuals can share.

    Men are used to being "on" in the sense that they cannot be vulnerable or display emotions without the threat of their masculinity coming into question by their peers or worse, their girlfriend/partner/wife. While we can show our love through our actions, we feel as though we see the amount of love and desire our woman has for us when they want to have sex. Not from a sense of just sex or conquest, but more on the aspect that that is the most intimate thing a woman can do. Her walls are down and her emotion is being shown during this act for the one she has the utmost love and desire for.

    Women want to be loved and given emotional focus and attention and men want respect and to feel desired by the woman he is with.

    • That is a stellar answer.

    • Thanks @amandayvr I appreciate the compliment

  • Sex and emotions are two very separate things for me and one is not required for the other to happen.

  • intimacy is more than just sex with somebody and not have penetrative sex at all or any kind of sex for that matter intimacy is a deep connection with a person on a level that is hard to describe in my opinion I mean plus there’s several kinds of intimacy besides just physical which is what most people think I want to hear intimacy but I like being intimate on a mental level So hot having deep intellectual conversations with a man you know and challenging each other and I don’t know it’s just hard to describe intimacy than just sex is what I’m getting

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