Why Men Keep Demanding Sex From Their Partners Over and Over

Touch isolation is creating an epidemic of sexual scarcity thinking among American men.

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In American culture, we simply don’t trust male touch. We believe that men always have a sexual agenda. We believe that, given the opportunity, men will collapse into the sexual at a moment’s notice. That men don’t know how to physically connect otherwise. That men can’t control themselves. That men are dogs.

There is no corresponding narrative about the sexuality of women.

This distrust of male touch applies not only in mens’ daily interactions with women, but also with other men and even with children. A stranger at the park is first and foremost a potential predator. A man who touches a woman at work, wedding ring on his finger or not, is seeking sex. A man who puts his arm around another man for longer than a few moments triggers homophobic suspicions. No matter what the context, we sexualize male touch. We do it automatically.

It has become every man’s job to prove they can be trusted, in each and every interaction, day by day and case by case. In part, because so many men have behaved poorly. And so, we prove our trustworthiness by foregoing physical touch completely in any context in…