More and more young people say they feel less interested in casual sex and prioritize emotional connection over the number of sexual encounters. The phenomenon, which some have begun to call “Gen Z celibates”, raises questions about the new ways of living sexuality: is this a generation with different values or a response to an era marked by hyperexposure, immediacy, and fear of rejection?
For the psychologist, psychoanalyst, and sexologist specializing in bonds and couples therapy Jacqueline Orellana Rosenberg, with whom Para Ti spoke in this piece, the answer isn’t found in a supposed lack of desire but in a profound change in how people relate to one another.
“There is no less desire, but desire traversed by new cultural conditions”
–More and more young people say they feel less interested in casual sex. What have you been seeing in your practice? Is it a shift in values or a response to the current context?
-I think there’s a bit of both. Many young people no longer question casual sex for moral reasons, but because they feel it often leaves a hollow feeling. However, I also observe that the context carries enormous weight.
We live in an era marked by hyperexposure, constant evaluation, and fear of frustration. Dating apps have deeply transformed encounters: before meeting someone, we already evaluate them, filter them, discard them. The bond begins under a logic of consumption.
Today we try to reduce all uncertainty before the encounter, and paradoxically, desire arises exactly from what we cannot control. The more we strive to ensure that the other fits perfectly into our lives, the less space we leave for desire to appear.
Modern society rejects negativity, difference, and conflict. Yet loving involves meeting someone who will never be exactly as we expect.
“Desiring intimacy does not mean you are prepared to go through it”
–There is talk of a generation that prioritizes the emotional bond over sexual frequency. Does this reflect a healthier way of relating, or could it also hide fear of intimacy and rejection?
-There isn’t a single answer. Prioritizing the emotional bond can be a sign of greater emotional maturity when it involves recognizing that sexuality gains depth when trust exists.
But it can also function as a defense. In practice, many young people say they seek a deep connection, yet at the same time abandon the bond as soon as a difference, frustration, or disappointment arises. In other words, they desire intimacy but fear the psychic cost it entails.
Every true encounter implies a degree of vulnerability. There is no intimacy without the possibility of rejection, hurt, or disappointment. To expect a bond without that risk is, in essence, to try to love without exposing oneself. The other can never be reduced to our expectations. Love begins when we accept that otherness instead of trying to domesticate it.
“We consume more eroticism, but we tolerate less the real encounter”
–Some specialists argue that desire hasn’t diminished, it has changed the way we experience sexuality. Do you share that view?
– Yes, I agree. I don’t think there is less desire, but desire shaped by new cultural conditions. Today sexuality coexists with a massive overabundance of stimuli: social networks, pornography, apps, artificial intelligence. There is a huge access to images, but fewer real-life encounters.
We consume more eroticism, but often tolerate less the uncertainty involved in truly getting to know someone. Moreover, there is a very high expectation for relationships. We expect our partner to be a companion, best friend, lover, emotional support, a life project, and, in addition, that everything flows naturally.
When the first difference appears, many feel they chose badly and return to the infinite catalog of possibilities. Desire needs time, distance, and construction. The culture of immediacy often hinders precisely those conditions.
“Artificial intelligence offers a present, available, predictable, and conflict-free presence”
–Meanwhile, ties with artificial intelligence and technology-mediated interactions are growing. How does this impact the way young people build emotional and sexual relationships?
-Artificial intelligence offers something very seductive: a presence that is available, predictable, and without conflict. It listens, responds, validates, and never demands too much. That can be quite reassuring at certain moments. The problem arises when that logic begins to become the model for all relationships.
Because no human being can respond as an artificial intelligence does. Real bonds involve different tempos, silences, miscommunications, differences, and frustrations. That is precisely where intimacy is built. The current challenge is that technology does not end up displacing the experience of meeting a truly different other.
“A sexual pause can be healthy when it arises from a choice”
–What signals help distinguish a healthy sexual pause from emotional isolation that might require attention?
-The difference is not the amount of sexual encounters, but the subjective stance toward desire. A pause can be completely healthy when it stems from a choice, when the person remains interested in relationships, maintains projects, friendships, curiosity, and the ability to meet others.
Instead, it becomes worrisome when it stops being a choice and starts being organized by fear: fear of rejection, conflict, disappointment, or not being up to it. There, the person not only renounces sex but begins withdrawing from the experience of meeting.
The desire always involves a lack and a risk. We cannot eliminate that uncertainty without impoverishing the possibility of love as well. Perhaps the great challenge for this generation is not to return to casual sex or to reject technology, but to reclaim the willingness to meet someone who will never fit perfectly, and to discover that it is precisely in that difference that an authentic bond can emerge.
Jacqueline Orellana Rosenberg is a psychologist and psychoanalyst, specializing in bonds and couple therapy, and a sexologist. @psi.sexóloga
