Intimacy Is Dead: How Sexting Ruined Phone Sex, Which Ruined Real Sex

Two Sundays ago, I found myself indulging in a cold glass of sweet champagne and a dozen fresh oysters with my dear friend Amanda.

I always say if you wish to have sex with me, take me out for oysters and champagne. After all, oysters are a notorious aphrodisiac, and there is nothing that turns me on like a glass of f*cking champagne.

Maybe it was the oysters, maybe it was the warm champagne buzz, or maybe it was the electricity of a sunny New York City day under a teal blue sky, but for whatever reason Amanda and I just could not stop talking about SEX.

Can you think of a subject matter more fascinating, exciting, complex, and humorous than matters of the bedroom? I don't think so. In fact, I don't f*cking think so.

"I'm sexually blocked," Amanda confessed, tying her gorgeous golden locks in a knot above her head. "Sex feels so empty. My sexting life is better than my sex life."

She hungrily bit into her oyster and took an aggressive gulp of her champagne. She had been throwing back the bubbles at an impressive rate, and the truth was starting to come out.

I gazed longingly at the last oyster on my porcelain plate. I began to fear the fun of eating oysters coming to an end and no longer being able to enjoy the heaps of salty, gooey gorgeousness in my mouth. The whole thing was so damn satisfying that I didn't want it to be over.

"What ever happened to phone sex?" I asked, popping the last sexy oyster in my mouth. It tasted sensual and arousing, and I washed it down with a stealth sip of champagne.

"Sexting killed the art of phone sex," Amanda coldly answered.

Defeated and oyster-less, we swiftly got our checks and went back to our respective homes.

The next evening, I was snuggled up on my slate gray couch with a leopard print blanket strewn across my legs and my dog snoring loudly in the background. "Orange Is The New Black" was on the television in front of me, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was lost in thought.

My conversation with Amanda wouldn't leave the surface of my confused brain.

If sexting killed the art of phone sex, did phone sex kill the art of actual sex? Are so many of us sexually unsatisfied because we're expressing our sexual desires through phone, text and email? Are we so awkward about sex because we've become so f*cking removed from human interaction?

Is technology wreaking havoc on our sex lives?

I clutched my teeming hot cup of herbal tea with my freezing cold, shriveled fingers as I fervently contemplated this hard-to-swallow concept. It seems that the more immersed we become in technology, the less intimate, satisfying and desirable our sex lives are.

First of all, let's talk about sex.

And I mean raw, face-to-face, sharing-the-same-breath, lip-biting, back-scratching, crawling-inside-one-another, sweating, screaming, body-folded-into-body sex.

There is nothing in the fine universe more intimate than real sex.

When two naked bodies are pressed up against one another, there is nothing to hide behind. You're putting yourself in a wildly vulnerable position by allowing yourself to feel pleasure from your partner.

There is also an element of losing control during sex. Breaking down the walls. Getting lost in the moment. You trust your partner with a part of yourself that you generally hide.

There is nothing calculated about sex. It's all about the two of you exploring what feels good.

But phone sex, the first way that technology has degraded real sexual intimacy, removes this exploration completely.

It’s true that while phone sex isn't nearly as intimate as actual sex, it can still be an intense experience.

The voice is an incredibly sexual tool. You can get turned on by a husky, breathy voice. You express pleasure and make wordless sounds of irrepressible ecstasy through your voice. You beg and plead and ask for more.

Engaging in phone sex is vulnerable. It's raw. It forces you to use your words and describe exactly how you feel and what you want to do to your partner.

And the more phone sex you have, the far better you will get at dirty talk when you're having actual sex too (that's a bonus).

But at the end of the day, phone sex only provides you with a voice. That’s it. And you need oh-so-much-more to have really good sex.

Skype sex also encompasses those aspects of voice, but with video, too. It seems like it's a step up. But it's not.

Skype sex has only really emerged as a digital sex trend in the past decade. But anyone in a long distance relationship will confidently inform you that it's a game changer.

Whether you're dutifully pleasing yourself in front of your partner, mutually masturbating, or putting on a porn-esque strip show, it's pretty damn intimate.

You can see your partner. You can hear your partner. You can look one another dead in the eye as you orgasm.

Despite the fact that there is video, though, a few essential aspects are still sorely missing: touch and smell.

Our senses are key ingredients in stimulating our sexual prowess. After all, isn't sex about getting lost in your senses? Don't you love to breathe in your partner's scent while you have sex? Don't you want to trace his or her body with your fingertips?

At the end of the day, having sex on Skype means you're having sex through a static, unsexy screen.

And as steamy as it can be, you're perpetually reminded that it's DIGITAL when the connection gets lost and you find yourself staring at your partner, frozen mid-orgasm when the connection gets bad (and no one, I repeat, NO ONE looks good mid-orgasm).

But the good news is that at least Skype sex allows you to be hands-free when you’re recording video.

FaceTime sex, another way we have sex on video, is just f*cking weird.

How can you concentrate on pleasing your partner when you're holding a phone in one hand and attempting to angle it in a flattering way that suits you?

When we're FaceTiming, do we even look at the person we are FaceTiming with? Hell no. We stare right at ourselves and wonder whether we're wearing too much or too little eyeliner.

And let's get real, kittens. The best sex happens when you're not feeling self-conscious and when you're lost in the heat of the moment.

At the end of the day, though, the worst of the degradations simply has to be sexting.

I will confess that I absolutely love the art of the sext. It adds a little thrill and chill, spicy shards of excitement to the mundane, bleak work day. I love to receive a sexy text from my partner in throes of work or while suffering through the terrible subway ride home.

I feel like it's our little secret that we share. And secrets are sexy.

You can always tell when someone receives a scandalous text. A little flush makes its way across the contents of his or her cheeks. You don't know what the text says, but it makes you wonder. And wondering is mysterious, and mystery is sexy.

However, during sexting, you're safely hidden behind an iPhone. All the incessant sexting in which our generation partakes only disconnects us more and more from actual, intimate sex.

The tricky thing is that we end up saying things over sext that we would never have the courage to say in real life. Like drugs or booze, sexting gives us a falsified sense of confidence.

We get so used to hiding that once we are stripped of our technical devices, we are too afraid to look each other in the eye, let alone share a teeming, hot, intimate sexual connection.