I have spent the last week watching the reality series, Love Island, after the ITV2 program started sweeping awards over more well-known shows. I wanted to know what the hype was.
In all fairness, the series that have broken viewer records for the UK TV channel especially with its fourth season, is quite entertaining as various individuals try to find lasting love and possible marriage, all in eight weeks!
But this is not a review of the show. Only that it left my eyes popping at how casually the West approaches the quest for love and marriage, compared to Africa. Yes, even modern, urban Africa.
In one episode – remember it is an eight-week reality show – a 22-year-old male contestant revealed he had slept with 200 women. And still counting, considering he was also over-indulging in the Love Island villa and beyond the show.
A 29-year-old female contestant said tongue-in-cheek: “I am the oldest here…” This, as she flipped over a card that revealed she had so far slept with 30 men.
A 23-year-old female contestant had a more ‘conservative’ number at 20, while a male colleague’s card showed “50-ish”.
I was baffled. They were not talking about pagination for books they were penning, or the number of chickens in their coops. These were numbers of people they had had mostly casual sex with.
I was struggling to not judge and keep a straight face like their fellow contestants, where the person with the least sexual ‘conquests’ revealed a card with ‘just’ nine.
Still, I was left thinking, no wonder they are trying to find long-lasting love and possible marriage through a quite unconventional method.
Look, one or two sexual encounters before settling for marriage can be enough to leave one quite confused by what they have finally settled for… Some have confessed they struggle not to compare their marital sex with past flames burnt during casual encounters.
But imagine settling down with one person for the rest of your life when you have 200 different experiences to compare with. It must be a head-spinning dilemma!
No wonder marriages seem to have a shorter lifespan as we progress, partly because the sexual adventures before settling down could have set the bar too high in some cases.
How do you even stay faithfully married when you have trained your body to respond sexually to a different person every few hours?
On the show, the ladies took to the confessional room to lambast anyone who dared judge them for loving and enjoying sex just like men, if not more.
Now, I am all for women embracing the fact that sexual enjoyment is not just a man’s thing; not having to apologise for enjoying “too much” the sex with their spouses, but the statistics some of those girls revealed left me massaging a dull headache out of my temples.
I imagine it can make finding a lasting, exclusive union quite challenging. Psychology Today’s Dr Marina Adshade says on the therapists’ forum: “Driving up your bedfellow-count while you are single could reduce the quality of relationship you have when you eventually settle into a more serious, long-term relationship.”
“Sexual history is an interesting personal quality in that it is both a choice and, once done, is beyond our control. It [nonetheless] is a quality that many people care about when looking for a husband or wife.”
So, while seeking to add as many notches as possible to your bedposts, remember there is indeed such a thing as ‘too many sexual partners they become a turn-off for the potential real deal’.
It is just the reality, whatever Western political correctness may dictate, these days.
carol@observer.ug
