Are You Getting Any? I’m 22, and I’ve Never Used a Dating App

Quality of sex overall: 6/10
Frequency of sex: 10/10
Intimacy levels: 10/10
How you feel about the people you fuck: 8/10
How happy you are with the amount of time you have for sex: 5/10

VICE: When was the last time you had sex?
Larissa: It must have been about a month ago.

You gave a five out of 10 for how happy you are with the amount of time you have for sex. What’s getting in the way of you having time? 
It’s work and studying. They’re pretty dominant in current society, so overall there’s less time for yourself, which maybe equals to time you can make for yourself. We don't really have enough time for ourselves these days in general. 

Do you feel like fitting in sex is at odds with the amount of time you have to have sex? Or do you see sex as self-care?
I do see sex as self-care very much. I also think that the way you approach sex, or the way you feel during sex, or how it makes you feel, definitely shows what's going on with you in general. I think it's a very big part of your mental state in general.

Would you say that sex is important to you? 
I do! It’s important to have sex because it's a way of being in contact with yourself, [which] is always something you should make time for or put work into.

OK. So what do you think of the British Medical Journal research? Is social media to blame for us all shagging less?
Well, I do think it's pretty big statement to say that older generations had more sex than we do now. It really depends on how you define sex. I can imagine that maybe my grandparents’ [generation] just had sex in a less free way, in a way that I wouldn’t really call sex anymore. 

So our definition of sex has changed? As in, we’re past referring to only penetrative sex as “sex” and we’re more all-encompassing today? 
Yeah, exactly – the way we approach sex has definitely changed. I think it became more of a mutual exchange. So it’s just different sex maybe, not less. 

Do you think we’re more open about it? I mean obviously, we’re doing this right now, but have you always been open about sexuality?
I have a friend that does workshops in high schools in the Netherlands to tell [students] how they can relate to sex or how you can handle yourself in certain situations. I do think she definitely opened up my mind about how I could approach sex maybe differently. Even before I have sex, I’ve definitely become more talkative about it. I’ll talk to the person for maybe 30 minutes and I feel like the sex gets a lot better because of that. 

You’re in your first year at university. What’s that been like for your sex life or the people around you? 
[Hook-ups] happen a lot and I think it's something beautiful as well. You can feel very intimate with a person in a certain way at a certain moment and if you feel like you need that, you can definitely relish it. I think that's a beautiful thing. I do feel like people are more open-minded about sex here.

OK so you gave your quality of sex a six, which is a fair score, but what could make it higher? 
I just feel like there's so much more to explore with sex for me; I feel like I haven’t experienced and experimented much. For example, I just only just heard about tantra therapy and I think that's definitely something that is gonna help me experience more with sex. It’s definitely a journey for me.

Where do you usually meet the people you sleep with?
It’s quite diverse. I once met a person at a marketplace. I don’t know if you have it, but in the Netherlands, it’s where you go to meet someone to pick up something secondhand in your neighbourhood. We started dating and then we have sex. Once I met someone when I did my theory exam for getting my driver’s licence. Or often in parties, especially when we start dancing.  

That’s really interesting. A lot of people I speak with are very dating app-focused. Have you ever tried one?
No. 

Do you think you would ever want to, for ease? 
No, I love it like this. Sometimes when we’re out, I’ll say to my friends, “I’ll show you that I can get a date tonight!” But also I’m a very analogue person and a lot of friends of mine only use Nokia phones, so dating apps aren’t on there anyway.

If you’re 18-30 years old and want to be featured in the Are You Getting Any? series, send an email to nana.baah@vice.com with the subject “Are You Getting Any?”.

@nanasbaah / @darinacreative