Reading OPs post and the responses… What even is sex? Are we just rubbing genitals and hoping both parties get off without paying attention to each other?

Even casual sex requires synchrony, alignment, flow, attentiveness etc. That’s part of what makes it enjoyable. Climaxing is the outcome of the connection made, however temporary, by that synchrony and alignment.

Treating sex like a race to the climax will only make you worse at it over time. Depriving it of initimacy and spirituality will make it so that you need to chase more and more physical stimulation to make it pleasurable.

The process is as important as the outcome (moreso even). Focus on that process if you want to make the experience better for you and your partner.

Muscular Christianity (its real, look it up) is the basis of all modern toxic masculinity.

This is a tough one without further context. Were you making diligent efforts to reciprocate pleasure and they gave even though you felt you were making inroads? Did you make it clear that you wanted to get them off without the vibrator and they were open to that but it wasn’t working?

I think the way you felt is fair. I think attentive partners want to reciprocate pleasure and ideally do it with just their presence if the situation allows. I wonder how they would have responded if you said you wanted to try without it or if they felt there would be deeper meaning (rather than pure hedonism) to not using the vibrator.

It helps that he starts as a normal guy / kid, not ridiculously rich or an alien. And that he’s not overpowered.

Marvel has been following a dry formula since Avengers Infinity War, arguably before that.

The problem is the Western and now global conception of masculinity is broken (for many reasons) with social media acting as an accelerant.

At some point Stoicism got bastardized into being emotionless and that got imbued into Western masculinity also.

We’re going to have to go back to actively teaching boys how to be men if we want to course correct (rather than having Rogan or Peterson teach them).

https://streamable.com/m9dshd

Abrahamic religions generally frown upon non-procreative sex. Not to justify their hate, but they generally see sex for pleasure as inherently sinful.

Romans but yes Christian Romans after the religion took over the empire.

Hitler approved demographic.

Western nations really need to teach their kids about colonialism. There needs to be an honest appraisal of the harm that went into creating the global imbalance we see today. Without it, the average person ends up cognitively deficient in discussions of global geopolitics (there are far too many that fit this bill).

I still meet too many people that hold onto a colonialism happened because we’re awesome attitude with a profound knowledge deficit on the number of genocides that went into the process.

They argue a Western technological advantage which can be a reasonable assertion but also Western moral superiority which is so laughably misinformed they might as well have not gone to grade school.