Why Do the Psychos Get All the Good Sex?

Welcome to Taking Liberties, a weekly column that cuts through the cultural insanity to help you feel unapologetically yourself. I took my audience up on a book recommendation. It was brilliant. And equally unhinged. I loved it. So much, in fact, that I’m not sure what that says about them, me, or society. The sex portrayed in Alex Michaelides’s The Silent Patient was passionate, uninhibited, and… always happening. Truthfully, I was a little envious at times. Yet all that hot, intense sex also comes with a wife who shoots her husband in the face. Five times. Are we OK? Don’t answer that. Name a book in which somebody can just have an orgasm and renew their wedding vows. The freakish vampire sex in the last Twilight saga installment doesn’t count. Again and again, fiction reserves its most unleashed sex for its most destructive characters. Then I read Colleen Hoover’s Verity , given all the hype around the movie . It simultaneously turned me on and did absolutely nothing to restore my faith that fictional people can enjoy mind-blowing sex without murdering someone that day. Let it be known: smut isn’t my genre. But the infamous scenes of bite marks in the headboard left me wondering whether my bedroom furniture was living up to its true potential. In Verity , forbidden desire thrives in a love triangle between three attractive, unwell, ambiguously murderous people. You’re somewhere you shouldn’t be, reading something you shouldn’t read, and wanting someone whose wife is still upstairs. Grief, jealousy, and competing versions of the truth turn intimacy between Verity, Jeremy, and Lowen into a perpetual guessing game. Everyone brings their own deep-seated psychological dysfunction into the bedroom. Will they murder me in bed? Or just murder… someone? We don’t know, but we want to find out. Earth-shattering sex with a side of mortal danger is a pairing that’s been portrayed in novels and films for decades. If we’re not seeing high school seniors getting it on in a car with a murderer on the loose, is it really a horror film? The combination taps into something so primal and unbounded in the human psyche: the universal rush of feeling exposed, anticipating the unknown, and relinquishing control. But the fascination goes beyond danger and sex. It’s what’s happening in these characters’ minds. It’s the longing to be wanted beyond reason, inspire an obsession, or feel something so consuming that restraint becomes impossible. Again and again, fiction reserves its most unleashed sex for its most destructive characters. In other words: trauma bonding wrapped in ecstasy and irresistible jawlines . Art keeps handing that intensity to people whose instability, possessiveness, and cruelty make them spectacularly gifted at pleasing each other. Our appetite for that particular disaster goes back centuries. Enter: Wuthering Heights . Emily Brontë’s 1847 classic depicted an iconic passion between Catherine and Heathcliff. Yet the addition of vividly explicit sex scenes in Emerald Fennell’s 2026 film adaptation starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, and our cultural obsession with it, says it all. The leads turn wounded pride and frustrated longing into emotional punishment, dragging other people into marriages neither can separate from their obsession with the other. Nearly two centuries later, we’re still on the moors. We’ve just taken more clothes off. Which makes the contrast with actual modern love lives so fascinating. If it’s increasingly difficult connecting in person, is it any wonder we’re living in a national resurgence of Fantasies Gone Wild? A recent Kinsey Institute survey found that young adults reported low levels of sexual activity despite moderate to high desire. In this year’s Singles in America survey , 45% weren’t actively looking for a relationship, but would welcome it if the right one came. Meanwhile, the U.S. fertility rate reached a record low in 2025 . Those findings don’t inherently tell us that smut is replacing relationships. Although it’s certainly giving them a run for their money. The numbers do make me wonder about the discrepancy between the wild pages and the real-life sheets, and women’s expectations around it. Because at this rate, it feels like unless we’re on a date with Armie Hammer, we’re bored. Beneath it all is a destructive emptiness. In escapism, the uncontrolled fantasies are safe because that’s exactly what they are. Fantasies. In real life, those dynamics are toxic. You cannot have the total security of a partner who’s unconditional, and the terrifying rush of someone who might destroy you at the same time. Let’s be super clear about who these characters are. They use high-adrenaline sex to fill what’s missing and avoid confronting what’s underneath with no real accountability or emotional safety. The most disturbed, insecure, or wounded parts of themselves stay hidden, temporarily drowned out by the chaos and moaning. Beneath it all is a destructive emptiness. Because the brain, particularly the female one seeking security and stability, simply cannot sustain that intensity. Which is why eventually it all comes to a screeching halt. In these stories, usually with someone dead. Women in committed relationships face another dilemma. The usual script is that dating is electric, then marriage comes and takes everyone’s libido with it. Stable couples are so often portrayed as having sex with all the erotic appeal of a blender. If they get any at all. The fantasy becomes an impossible bar for people, and could understandably leave them feeling inadequate or FOMO, at the least. When we finally get the good, stable guy , that script can make us question whether the peace we’ve found is actually boredom. So we penalize our real-life husbands, or ourselves, for not making us feel the desperate, toxic anxiety of a cat-and-mouse game. Must emotional stability always be the thing that kills the vibe? Why can’t Stacey down the cul-de-sac be a freak? Are we supposed to read these stories beside our sleeping husbands and quietly accept that the furniture’s best days are behind it? Refusing to live in a toxic fantasy doesn’t mean settling for a blasé sex life. It’s actually the exact opposite. True safety is what sets us free. Because what we really want is protection, security, and deep, connected intimacy. When you are with a man you trust with your life, you have the strongest foundation to push your boundaries and thrive. You can play with power dynamics, explore hidden desires, and let your most uninhibited side out. You can invite the monster into the room, together. Refusing to live in a toxic fantasy doesn’t mean settling for a blasé sex life. Stop treating sex like a test we have to pass and more like a playground we explore hand in hand with our husbands. We can bring the heat and rush of newness by watching them in public and in their element, where they’re not solely ours. Play with role play and fantasy, shamelessly flirt , send the note you’d blush reading out loud, seduce like you’ve just met, and dare to try somewhere unexpected and trick the brain into seeing your husband as someone brand new. Life gets busy, schedules fill up, and children need things. None of that means our erotic imaginations must retire while the fictional psychopaths have all the fun. We can redefine having it all, and it’s not having what they have. It’s a completely different, quieter value in intentionally adventuring in our committed relationships for a night, rather than trying to live there indefinitely. It’s an embodied energy, not a single act. Absolute safety gives us the ultimate freedom to get weird, play with our power, and discover ourselves, while knowing exactly who is holding us when the lights come back on. You don’t need to crack the code of a toxic psycho for a thrill. Be the real plot twist: a woman whose secure relationship gives her even more room to explore and let her imagination run wild.