Being chosen vs feeling chosen is rarely discussed in conversations about human sexuality.
Sex is often explained through pleasure, yet pleasure is only the visible layer of the story. Beneath it lies another function sex quietly carries: the need to confirm one’s own existence. Being chosen is not merely a physical act; it is a psychological signal. One of the most primitive ways of saying, “I am here.”
Evolutionary narratives frame selection as a biological outcome—appropriate partners, suitable genes, successful transmission. But humans do not stop there. For humans, the issue is not being chosen, but feeling chosen. Because feeling outlasts outcome. Someone may choose you, yet if that choice does not register as meaning, the event remains incomplete. The mind is concerned not with what happens, but with what it signifies.
This is why rejection cuts so deeply. What is rejected is not the body, but the sense of value. “Not you” often translates to “you exist, but you are unnecessary.” Sex, at this point, ceases to be about pleasure and becomes a reality test. Through being chosen, the individual gathers proof of selfhood.
For a long time, this proof was rare. Choosing carried risk. Being chosen carried consequence. There was time, waiting, uncertainty. Every selection left a trace because each encounter existed within a context.
Modern Dating and the Loss of Meaning
Modern dating disrupted this balance.
Today, choosing is effortless. Through the internet, access is immediate. Faces appear, disappear, reappear. Contact is instant. This abundance increases choice but diminishes its weight. Because when choice involves no risk, it carries no gravity. The same applies to being chosen. Selection is no longer an event; it is a notification. And notifications rarely leave marks.
Value, once produced by rarity, is now expected to emerge from repetition. But the human mind does not fully adapt. Because feeling chosen is not created by quantity, but by context.
Modern dating is often described as decay. A more accurate reading sees it as a directional shift. Human sexuality is not static; it adapts. In hunter-gatherer societies, sex was tied to proximity. In industrial society, it aligned with status and continuity. In the digital age, it has moved toward speed, visibility, and availability. This is not corruption. It is adaptation.
But every adaptation comes with loss.
Modern dating has transformed sexuality from a ritual of selection into a test of accessibility. Being chosen is no longer confirmation; it is a temporary match. Sex increasingly serves not to build connection, but to reassure the individual that they are still selectable. Desire is stimulated more frequently, yet deepens less often. Proximity increases, but meaning dissipates.
Modern dating has not only transformed how people choose, but also how much they expect to be understood. People connect more frequently, yet explain themselves less. As speed increases, carrying meaning begins to feel like friction. At that point, the question is no longer about finding the right person, but about how much of oneself is actually understood.
This tension reflects a broader psychological pattern — the conflict between being right and being understood. I explore this fracture more directly in Being Right or Being Understood?, which examines the same underlying struggle from a different angle.
Sex as a Signal, Not a Bond
This transformation does not expand human sexuality; it redefines it. Sex shifts from a site of encounter into a surface where self-perception is repeatedly checked. The modern individual may not be having less sex than before, but they are accumulating far less meaning.
And this is where the transformation leads.
As sex loses its capacity to create bonds, the need to be chosen intensifies. As that need intensifies, sexuality is activated more frequently. Yet each repetition erodes the sensation it seeks to preserve. Eventually, sex ceases to be an encounter and becomes a reminder—performed to avoid disappearing.
Being chosen has never been easier.
Yet feeling chosen has never been rarer.
And perhaps the issue is not sex at all.
Perhaps it has simply become one of the last remaining spaces where people can still feel noticed.
