Dear Diary,
I have been thinking about how, for decades, a specific phrase functioned as the ultimate masculine safety valve. It was always delivered with the casual, practiced confidence of a public service announcement, usually right around the time the emotional temperature in the room threatened to rise above lukewarm.
‘It is just sex.’
Four little words. Simple. Efficient. Structurally sound. Historically, the translation was understood by all parties involved, even if it was never explicitly written down. It meant: Do not expect anything. Do not read into this. Do not confuse physical access with emotional affection, and for heaven’s sake, do not mistake chemistry for commitment. Forty-something-year-old women have heard this specific linguistic waiver so often, across so many generations, that it should be permanently embroidered on decorative throw pillows.
We heard it after spectacular, five-star dates that ended in the early hours of the morning. We heard it after abysmal, painfully awkward dates that should have ended three hours earlier. We heard it after six months of intense, pseudo-domestic cohabitation, and we heard it after precisely six minutes of a fleeting encounter. It was the standard post-script to conversations that felt exactly like relationships, and the epitaph for relationships that, somehow, never quite managed to become honest conversations.
But we have listened.
Now, to be clear, we did not listen in the way men historically expected us to. We did not listen while secretly harbouring a hope that if we just stayed compliant enough, or pretty enough, or quiet enough, the terms of service would change. We did not listen and treat it as a personal challenge to our womanhood, convinced we could be the magical exception that would make him change his mind. Instead, we flipped the script. ‘It was just sex,’ we say now, because frankly, we still want the big O, we just no longer require the emotional loops that came attached to them.
Right now, somewhere in a trendy lounge in Kampala, a man is staring blankly into the middle distance, his drink sweating through its napkin, entirely paralysed by the universe’s sense of irony. The woman he has been casually seeing, the one he genuinely likes, the one who occupies a comfortable, low-maintenance slot in his weekly routine, has just looked him dead in the eye and handed those exact four words back to him.
‘It was just sex.’
Suddenly, he wants context. The man who previously championed the virtues of casual simplicity is now desperately searching for nuance. He wants a deep dive. He wants a retrospective analysis. Frankly, he behaves as though there ought to be a televised panel discussion to unpack the emotional weight of it all. Because as it turns out, that specific set of words sounds entirely different when they are being broadcast from the opposite side of the table.
When he calls her on a whim on a Thursday night, she is not sitting by her phone waiting to be chosen; she is genuinely busy. When he disappears into a black hole of unresponsiveness for four days, she does not spiral into an anxiety-induced frenzy; she simply plans a girls’ weekend in Zanzibar. And when he finally returns with a weak, delayed text, there is no gruelling interrogation waiting for him. There is no emotional investigation. There is no 10-page witness statement carefully prepared and submitted to the high court of relationship justice.
Instead, he is met with a pleasant, breezy smile and the serene, unbothered energy of someone who has simply accepted the terms and conditions of the contract. Entirely. Without footnotes. He wanted absolute freedom. She agreed to the parameters. Now, he is left sitting in the quiet of his own apartment, wondering why that very same freedom feels so remarkably lonely. The truth that a lot of men are currently forced to confront is that they never actually expected women to become fluent in the language of detachment. They expected women to tolerate it because we had to.
They expected us to adapt to it, to complain about it over brunch with our friends, and to clumsily navigate around it while trying to sneakily build a future out of crumbs. They certainly never envisioned a world where we would outperform them at it.
But once a woman realises that not every single physical connection needs to be treated as an investment portfolio for a hypothetical future, something fundamental shifts inside her psyche. The waiting stops. There is just existence, good sex, and a glass of Singleton with her name on it.
The woman who used to spend her Tuesday nights with her group chat, obsessively analysing the punctuation, timing, and existential meaning behind a lazy ‘hey stranger’ text, is now asleep by 10 o’clock. The woman who once spent weeks trying to interpret mixed signals has finally learned to treat them exactly as they are advertised; mixed. And right there, in that exact pocket of absolute clarity, is where the masculine panic begins. The phrase ‘it is just sex’ sounds incredibly empowering when you are using it as a shield to protect yourself from the heavy burden of emotional responsibility.
It allows you to enjoy the benefits of intimacy without paying the tax of accountability. That same phrase sounds considerably less empowering, however, when you realise that what she actually wants is morning glory before her Monday meeting with the boss from hell. Funny how that works. The coin did not disappear. The rules of the engagement did not change overnight. XoXo,