Wanting Love Before Sex Has Become So Rare, They're Labeling It "Lover Girl Energy"

If you’ve ever hooked up with a guy and been left feeling hurt after the exchange, you’re not alone. For quite some time now, sex-positive feminists have been encouraging women to have sex “like a man,” despite numerous studies proving women are generally left feeling hurt after the experience.

Instead of exploring the biological reasons this may occur, women have been told it’s the sexist society we live in that’s causing these feelings of shame and guilt. To overcome this, women have been encouraged to “avoid eye contact” with their casual hookup to avoid catching feelings or take cocaine or methamphetamine to stop bonding with a sexual partner. This seems like a lot of work to avoid the blatant truth.

If sex-positive feminists were to delve a little deeper into the biological differences between male and female sexuality, they’d find a very simple answer to the issue: sociosexuality. This refers to how comfortable someone is with casual, emotion-free sex. Women consistently score lower, meaning they prefer sex with emotional connection and commitment. Men generally score higher, meaning they’re more comfortable with casual encounters.

The “lover girl,” as PopSugar calls it, is a woman who prefers to wait to have sex until she’s in a committed relationship with a man she loves.

Understanding sociosexuality sheds light on why so many women feel out of step with today’s dating culture. When casual sex is celebrated as the ultimate form of empowerment, women who naturally prefer emotional connection can feel alienated, pressured, or even flawed. In reality, the desire for love before sex is neither new nor abnormal. It’s a reflection of biological wiring that has been largely ignored in discussions about modern dating.

It’s a biological reality that has shaped women’s instincts for decades, even if pop culture has only started recognizing it in the past few years. The “lover girl,” as PopSugar calls it, is a woman who prefers to wait to have sex until she’s in a committed relationship with a man she loves. Their post on the “new” trend highlights celebrities like Khloe Kardashian and Rachael Kirkconnell, who have admitted to abstaining from sex for years. PopSugar claims “lover girl” is a woman who only wants and prioritizes “meaningful sex.” “Call it a dry spell or just selective dating, but for me, it's about wanting experiences that mean something. Lover girls aren't anti-sex — we're just pro-connection,” writes Haley Lyndes.

One look at the comments on this post and it’s clear to see how relatable this attitude toward sex and dating in women is. “YES!! Omg I thought it was just me. This isn’t talked about enough,” comments one woman. “I’ll stay celibate forever rather than be intimate with a man I feel no connection with and have no future with. And more than half the time it’s not even good. I’m good. Lover girl here and celibate for more than 2 years now,” writes another.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen typical female sexuality repackaged as some new sexual preference. Previously, the term was “demisexuality.” This was explored in an Elle magazine article in 2021, and it’s actually quite a laughable read once you know the biological differences in female and male sexuality. “There's a select few members of society who don't just strive to attach feelings to sexual attraction, but view it as a necessity, which means casual sex, a one-night stand or—in some cases—a kiss with a stranger is pretty much a no-go,” write Katie O’Malley and Becky Burgum for Elle. The article depicts demisexuality as a “sexual orientation like gay or bisexual” and ignores the obvious truth: women prefer sex in committed relationships.

So it’s no wonder women are confused. They've been told for too long that their biological instincts are abnormal. That’s why it’s important to know that if you’ve ever felt used and hurt after casual sex, that's completely normal. If you’ve ever wanted to wait until being in a committed relationship, or even marriage, before having sex with a man, you are so normal. If you can’t be intimate with a man, whether that be a kiss or something more, until you’ve grown a real, true connection, you are normal, and you should listen to your instincts.

Female sexuality doesn’t need a new label; it needs recognition.

Too many women, including journalist and researcher Leah Fessler, have written about going against their natural instincts to participate in situationships and hookups. “We were desperate to know what it felt like to be wanted; desperate for a chance at intimacy. Desperate for a hand held in daylight, for public affirmation of desire typically expressed only after too many drinks. Desperate to try commitment, then decide if it wasn’t working, rather than being prematurely cut off from it. I wished that I could be like the guys, who seemed not to care at all,” writes Fessler, describing her and her friends’ disappointment in hookup culture while attending college. Most damagingly, she describes a friends-with-benefits situation, where the guy admitted he didn’t think of her “as a human while [they] were hooking up.” Ironically, once they stopped hooking up and became friends, he actually developed romantic feelings for her.

It's so difficult for women to act on their natural instincts in dating today. Some men are so used to having sex within the first few dates that they are genuinely confused when a woman wants to wait for commitment before being intimate. It's disheartening and tiresome, but women shouldn’t have to amend their dating preferences for men. Men should be amending their sexual appetites to align with women’s for a variety of reasons: women are at risk of pregnancy, STIs are generally more dangerous for women than men, and women become emotionally bonded to men they sleep with, no matter if it’s a boyfriend or casual hookup. As British journalist and author Louise Perry writes, “hook-up culture is a terrible deal for women and yet has been presented by liberal feminism as a form of liberation. A truly feminist project would demand that, in the straight dating world, it should be men, not women, who adjust their sexual appetites.”

What PopSugar and Elle have failed to realize is that female sexuality doesn’t need a new label; it needs recognition. Women aren’t “lover girls” or “demisexual.” Women are simply human beings with biological instincts that deserve to be respected by themselves and the men they date. Empowerment isn’t having “sex like a man,” it’s honoring our unique biology and dating in a way that best serves our needs.