Is fomosexuality destroying your sex life?
OUR lives have been overtaken by the concept of FOMO, and this ‘fear of missing out’ on anything is pushing us to quick fixes and further dissatisfaction.
Even our relationships are no longer safe, with the emergence of what I like to call ‘fomosexuality’ taking control.
As a sexologist, I fear that dissatisfaction in the bedroom is more frequently starting with this fear of missing out. Instead of being able to celebrate what is going well and focus on what feels good, people now seem to be more worried about what they are not doing and rating their sex lives based on this.
Are you not having sex for long enough? Are you are not having enough orgasms? Is your sex life not kinky enough? Thanks to the internet and modern media, we are now surrounded by false perceptions a happy relationships that we feel we can never live up to or achieve.
And I’m not just talking about porn. Relfies (relationship selfies) can do just as much damage. When we see other couples posting photos with romantic filters, making their lives look perfect, it makes us question the reality of our own relationships.
No wonder so many people are unhappy with their sex lives. We are so fearful of missing out, we don’t know how to be happy with what we have already have.
I used to think that the mindfulness movement was something just for hippies. But when I realised that mindfulness was really just another word for focusing and living in the now, I became a convert. We not only need to focus on what is right in front of us to find enjoyment but also go one step further and celebrate what feels good.
The alternative is to be fearful of what is not happening or what we are missing out on, taking us further into a negative headspace with other aspects of our lives. So just maybe positive mindfulness is how we fight against FOMO, not just in relationships but in general life too.
We spend so much trying to improve our lives that sometimes I wonder if we ever actually take the time to live and enjoy them. Life will never be perfect, sex and dating will never be perfect but it’s not perfection we should be aiming for. It’s enjoying and celebrating what we already have and what we are experiencing right now.
Spicing things up and finding love will not be solved by meditating with a smile, but it is somewhere to start. We are all in someway fomosexuals, but maybe we always have been. It’s just now we are faced with more false comparisons than we ever have before.
There is a choice.
You can join the mass movement of dissatisfaction, believing your life, love and sex life never feels good enough, or focus on what is working and feels good and enjoy exactly what life has to offer now.
JOMO (joy of missing out) is not the solution to FOMO, but enjoying what is working in life right now is.