• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, April 4, 2019

Americans are having less sex. 

If you are my age, this news comes as no surprise, but I have a couple of boys in their 20s who from their experience and perspective would argue that this is nonsense. (Also reaffirming that youth is wasted on the young.)  

The tendency among people who have been married a while and are not getting any is to blame the other. Often to the point of absurdity: Her: “You rejected me last night.” Him: “What? When?” Her: “When my toe touched yours.”

But there is good news: You can now blame it all on technology. 

People are said to be spending more time using social media, playing video games and, yes, watching pornography, instead of interacting with each other in the real world. “There are a lot more things to do at 10 o’clock at night now than there were 20 years ago,” one researcher said. “Streaming video, social media, console games, everything else.”

What a relief. 

All that time I was convinced it was because I was losing the waistline battle to the sweet tea and ribs. And at this age, I can affirm that going to the gym six days a week might extend your life a few years, but it does not get you laid any more often.   

It is probably an easy decision for you to hit the YouTube videos of guys in Guiana building a swimming pool out of sticks, bamboo and mud rather than roust your snoring spouse with a 90% chance of hearing, “What the hell do you want?” vs. “Let me pee first” — which is not particularly romantic, but not an outright rejection, either.

I tend to fall back on technology when I have already been rejected or am pretty sure that the response will indeed be, “What the hell do you want?”

In fact, technology should become a universal code word for refusing to have sex. When your wife drops a hint that she will be white-wine-armed and dangerous on Saturday night, you don’t have to -- for the 200^th time -- explain the importance of the March Madness semifinals. You can just say, “Sorry; technology.”

And wouldn’t it be nicer, when you ask your wife if you are going to get lucky tonight, for her to skip over the usual “In your dreams” and just exhale, “Technology.”

But all of this is just temporary, since it's only a matter of time before we can have virtual sex any time anywhere, with anybody we can imagine (or build).  

Then the answer to why we are not having sex tonight can honestly be: technology.