Influential Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote that,“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” His observation resonates on both scientific and metaphorical levels: sex releases a symphony of chemicals in the brain that promote feelings of attraction, pleasure, and attachment, regardless of whether the people having it have anything in common. Studies show that sexual partners also leave traces of their unique “genital microbiomes” on one another after intercourse that can be detectable for up to two weeks. At the cellular level, intimacy leaves measurable traces. So can sex ever truly fit the definition of “casual”? 

Merriam-Webster defines “casual” as something that occurs by chance; it lists casual sex as an example of something done without serious intent or commitment. Sex without strings attached was presented as an exciting break from the status quo of lifelong commitment for Gen X and millennials, and exercising personal choice in one’s sex life was packaged as female empowerment. Now it seems that the inverse is true for my generation. While copious research demonstrates a steady rise in public acceptance of non-marital sex since the start of the twentieth century, a study conducted by The Times found that Gen Z is 43% less likely to engage in one-night stands, and 18% more likely to consider marriage relevant than our millennial counterparts were in their twenties. I sense a growing emphasis on discernment in sex and dating among my peers that is more than just a response to societal factors such as COVID and increased economic pressures. In short, it’s not thought of as an accomplishment to have a lot of casual sex.

Countless think pieces have noted my generation’s surprisingly conservative views on sex, marriage, and gender roles in comparison to millennials, but research largely does not account for sex within the informal dynamics of friends-with-benefits or “situationships.” As a twenty-four-year old, even I don’t understand the trappings of situationships, and it seems that neither do those who participate. Outside of my relationships, I’ve gone through years of abstinence and I’ve had casual sex that made me feel renewed. I’ve experienced the ways in which sex can make you feel disembodied and the ways it can color your world with excitement and mystery. It’s clear that sex often functions as casual, but my intention is to explore the implications of this practice. After asking some friends and coworkers, I breached the question of whether sex can really be casual given its physical, spiritual, and emotional implications in an Instagram post. Here’s what my peers had to say. 

My twenty-four-year-old male coworker, who identifies as queer, shared that since he has never been in a monogamous relationship, sex has always been casual: “I define casual here as like… we’re exploring this interesting grey area in our relationship and we’re not romantically monogamous to one another,” he said. However, he believes that sex carries emotional, spiritual, and societal weight that makes it “impossible to separate who you are” from the act. I agree because sex leads us to conclusions about how desirable and valuable we are. Even if we aren’t actively having sex, each person’s sexual development plays a role in their self-concept, which in turn affects how they interact with the world. In a society as preoccupied with sex as the United States, the way people, especially women, choose to use their sexuality also has a heavy influence on how they are perceived by others. Sex cannot be separated from the self because our culture does not allow it to. 

A twenty-two-year-old single female mutual follower on Instagram, who considers herself sexually fluid, replied that “Sex can be engaged casually, but the motives for doing so can be about more than physical pleasure. When loneliness, which is a hot topic now, comes into play, it creates confusion on if it’s casual or not. I also believe that because casual sex is so common, there’s people trying to force themselves to enjoy it when they really don’t.” The pursuit of and participation in casual sex is somewhat of a learned behavior; we are driven by biological need, but also by social pressures and our own craving for validation. It feels good to have sex, but the ego boost of feeling sexually desired can feel even better. Many people, especially young women, participate in non-committal intimacy that falls short of their desire for love because it seems abnormal to abstain. When I wasn’t having sex in college, I felt like an incomplete adult, an unrealized woman. But there was also something liberating about opting out of the entire matrix of obligation because it wasn’t good enough; because it was predicated on disconnection. I knew there was nothing empowering about hoping someone would like my body enough to give caring about me a chance. I recognized that even if I were to have “casual sex,” there was no way I could be casual about it because what I really wanted was a boyfriend.  

My twenty-nine-year-old male coworker, who has been in a relationship with his wife for nine years, stated “I think sex can never be casual, because you’re giving a part of yourself up every time, whether it be physically or mentally. Even if you tell yourself it’s not a big deal.” Two of the respondents to my post framed the question of whether sex can be casual as a gendered issue. A twenty-four-year-old straight girl in a relationship from my hometown expressed her belief that it is “impossible for the vast majority of women to truly be casual about sex, while I think a lot of men can. I feel like it just comes down to biological differences between the sexes. Also, females have been conditioned to be more concerned about the quality of partners, while males have been conditioned to be more concerned with the quantity of partners.” While I’m not an expert on the science of bonding and sexuality between men versus women, our social conditioning runs so deep that the differences might as well go down to the bone. Girls are encouraged to consider their biological clocks, fantasize about their weddings, and assign themselves a score of womanhood based on their sexual desirability from the time they become sentient. Men are taught to affirm their masculinity through the amount and caliber of women they have sex with. Both are taught to link the value of a woman to her “body count.” These are all social constructs, but they’re so pervasive that they function as if they’re innate. 

One of my straight, single female friends said that while sex can be casual and even liberating for some people, “the reason there is the stereotype that women can’t enjoy casual sex as much as men is because of the orgasm gap. Perhaps their intention may be to fuck for pleasure, but if there is no orgasm, the primary payoff of the exchange, at least in my mind, becomes closeness, oxytocin.” She’s right in that there is a widely-known disparity in sexual satisfaction between straight men and women, with men reporting orgasms at 22%-30% higher rates than women. She went on to say that while all women can engage in casual sex, it is likely easier for women who can orgasm more easily during casual encounters to do so solely for the physical pleasure rather than for the feeling of bonding. It’s natural to want to connect with someone on the most intimate level, but that desire for bonding can be so strong that we as women forget the risks involved. We forget that all sexual encounters create the potential for sexual assault. Almost every girl I know has had a sexual experience in which she felt coerced or forced into the act and suffered emotionally. There have been times when I ignored my intuition in situations that felt unsafe because I wanted to feel connected with that person so badly. Needless to say, it was never worth it. 

Another female mutual follower in her early twenties described sex as “too connecting” to be casual in any sense: “Even those who feel they are being casual are still receiving or taking something from the other person, whether they want to acknowledge it or not,” she said. “Casual means no ties, and this exchange of energy (in any form) forms a tie (strong or weak).” Thought processes like this, which I have come to agree with, remind me of the ancient concept of sex as an energy exchange. In some esoteric philosophies of Tibetan Buddhism and Hinduism, where the physical body is considered a manifestation of previous karma, it is believed that even a simple touch can transfer karmic residue, consequently altering a person’s energetic frequency. This is why devotees of renowned yogis travel thousands of miles to sit at the feet of their spiritual teachers; they believe that enlightened beings vibrate at such a high frequency that even being in their presence can awaken dormant energy within them. 

While it’s easy to dismiss the concepts of “energy” and “vibrations” as woo-woo prattle, they come with some scientific backing. Basic physics tells us that everything in the universe is in constant motion at the atomic level: vibrations simply describe the repetitive to-and-fro movements that every object makes. Energy is transferred when things vibrate; when you ring a bell, the energy you transfer to it causes it to vibrate and produce a sound. Frequency is how fast or slow the vibration happens: higher frequency means faster vibrations, while lower frequency means slower ones. In alternative spirituality, high frequencies, or high vibrations, are associated with positivity, freedom, and clarity, while low vibrations describe negativity, powerlessness, and confusion. This logic is extended to individuals who exhibit low-vibrational qualities such as jealousy and vindictiveness, which is why some alternative spiritualists warn against welcoming those who can lower your vibration into your life. I don’t take these precautions literally, but I find their resemblance to the wisdom of various religions that speak on sexual discernment worthy of note. 

In Taoist Secrets of Love, author and Taoist practitioner Mantak Chia writes that sex without discernment can “easily lower your energy if you choose partners with moral or physical weakness. If you lie with degenerates, it may hurt you, in that you can temporarily acquire your partner’s vileness. By exchanging subtle energy, you actually absorb the other’s substance.” This echoes the concept of “karmic residue” in Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as the idea that two people who engage in sex “become one flesh” in Christianity. While little research has been published about the exchange of energy in sex, it is well-established within the medical community that human beings are sustained by constant electrical activity: the brain communicates with muscles and organs through electrical impulses, while the heart generates rhythmic currents that can be measured by technologies like EEGs and EKGs. In this sense, the body quite literally produces its own electromagnetic field, which echoes spiritual traditions describing humans as energetic, or “vibrational” beings. Physician and medical writer Dr. Po-Chang Hsu wrote “we are energetic bodies, and during sexual intercourse, the energy of each partner mixes…Therefore, a sexual relationship isn’t a purely psychological or physiological, mechanical act. Rather, it’s an energetic action.”

I’m glad that in the twenty-first century, American culture is more permissive than ever of the exploration of sexuality in all its complexity. We’ve moved past the understanding of sex as a moral act and we’ve begun to recognize how it can function as an ego boost, a distraction, and a weapon. I’m also happy to see women in my generation evolve past the simplified idea that exercising choice in their sex lives is inherently empowering. We know now that it’s more complicated than that, and it’s a positive development that many young women are opting out sex that falls short of true connection. Learning about the concept of sex as an energy exchange in various religious disciplines made me think more carefully about who I choose to have sex with. It challenged me to ask myself whether I should really be having sex with anyone whose character I don’t respect. It led me to interrogate whether sex can truly be casual. Would sex be woven into every corner of pop culture and marketing if it were casual? Would sexual assault be traumatic if sex was a matter of little significance? Would sexuality be contested across every religion and culture if it didn’t carry some level of otherworldly magnitude? It seems that if sex is casual, we sure have a hard time being casual about it. And I think that’s a good thing.