“The biggest ick (repulsion) is when a man says ‘I would like to make love to you.’ My vagina closes up. All women know what I’m talking about,” says Charlize Theron on SubwayTakes, a short interview program recorded inside the New York subway. Its creator, Kareem Rahma, asks her why that expression seems so unpleasant. “I don’t want you to do anything to me. I want you to do something with me,” replies the actress.
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Cecilia Martín, director of the Psicode Psychology Institute, assures that nowadays, many people find it more comfortable to talk about ‘fucking’ than ‘making love’ because sex without emotional involvement is a way to protect oneself. “Saying ‘fucking’ sounds freer, more modern, and less emotionally committed. On the other hand, ‘making love’ can generate rejection because it implies intimacy, tenderness, romance, and a certain emotional surrender, and that makes people who have suffered from love in their past and have learned to protect themselves emotionally very much uncomfortable,” she says before indicating that it also influences that for years, female sexuality has been closely linked to romantic love and the idea of ‘giving oneself.’ “Many women claim sexual pleasure separate from that emotional obligation. The problem is that sometimes, in that search for self-sufficiency and emotional detachment, we end up normalizing superficial bonds and having difficulties building deep intimacy,” explains the author of Ghosting, jealousy, breakups, and other modern dramas (Vergara, 2026).
When ‘fucking’ emphasizes passion
Data indicates that the sexual life of Spanish couples is not at its best moment. A study by the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) indicates that one in four Spaniards (24.6%) has not had sexual relations with their partner or others in the last 12 months, mainly due to lack of interest or sexual desire. Who knows if the insistence on ‘making love’ is not responsible for the sheets becoming boring…
In Orgasmic Love (Vergara, 2026), Cecilia Martín gives the guideline to integrate the practices of ‘making love’ and ‘fucking’ as a way to have novelty and explore new roles and fantasies. “That keeps passion alive over the years. For a long time, there was a fairly classic (and very sexist) division between the woman ‘to love’ and the woman ‘to desire.’ The girlfriend or wife was associated with tenderness, stability, and romance, while more explicit, transgressive, or purely physical sex was reserved for other women. And even today some people continue to reproduce that separation without realizing it,” she assures. She considers that the problem with that view is that it fragments desire and intimacy, as if a stable relationship had to be more emotional and less sexual, or as if certain practices were incompatible with stable love. “Healthy couples who maintain passion over time integrate both things: emotional connection and sexual desire. It is also true that today we are questioning those old sexual scripts a lot. Many women no longer want to occupy the role of ‘the good romantic girlfriend’ versus ‘the sexual woman.’ They want to feel desired, free, and emotionally connected at the same time,” she explains.
However, the study Verbal Communication about Sex in Marriage: Patterns of Language Use and Its Connection with Relational Outcome points out that although in the past data indicated that men were more accustomed to talking about ‘fucking’ than ‘making love’ when having partner relations, there are hardly any significant differences in their use anymore. “Although the results showed that men report a slightly higher use of cruder slang terms — a finding that fits with existing data showing that men use more obscene language than women — these data generally suggest that the sexual language use of married men and women is more similar than different,” say its authors, Tina Coffelt and Jon A Hess.
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In Buffalo Counter, in 1952, we already find allusions to how language really shapes relationships, emotions, and even sex. “The metaphor and your flowery language are there, but that’s not the kind of ‘making love’ that pleases any woman. ‘You make love’ through your knowledge of language, not with me. When a man really makes love to a woman, he stammers, babbles, says things he doesn’t mean and then retracts, saying something less appropriate instead. Your way of making love shows too much experience to be spontaneous when you resort to your vocabulary instead of your heart,” says the character Imogene when her lover tells her he can no longer make love to her. “Do you know how clumsily a duck scratches its ear and how often it stumbles and sits down trying? That’s how a woman likes a man to make love to her,” she points out.
The fear of emotional risk
Both Martín and Moñino agree in highlighting that in reality, a sexual practice without emotions or feelings is impossible. “If there is attraction to the other, an emotion or feeling is already being experienced. This can be controversial because it can generate doubts, since in popular language, talking about emotions or feelings means that people feel infatuation, with all that stage entails in people,” says Moñino, while Martín considers it problematic to live in a culture where many people want to enjoy pleasure while avoiding emotional risk. “It is easier to have sex without getting too involved than to open up emotionally and risk suffering. But human beings need connection, attachment, and to feel emotionally chosen. And there lies the current contradiction: we seek intimacy, but at the same time we raise defenses not to depend on anyone,” she says.
There is no doubt that language acts as the emotional and physical scaffolding in relationships, so the words chosen can foster trust, set boundaries, and awaken excitement, while the use of problematic expressions or words can instantly erode emotional bonds and end the couple’s sexual desire. The real ick is always trying to run away from connections and emotions and forgetting that even in a one-night stand, a certain bond is instantly established. And from there, each one acts according to whether they want something more or just sex, because both are fine.
