Love, Sex, and the Uncomfortable Questions Nobody Wants to Ask
Most philosophy columns about romance end up somewhere between greeting-card sentimentality and academic detachment. Michael Huemer takes the third road: a blunt, unsentimental examination of what people actually want from sex and companionship, and why the two rarely align as neatly as anyone hopes.
The Ethics of Mating Deception
Huemer begins with a problem that has circulated through online forums for years — a reader who wants casual sex but finds that most women want something more, leaving him trapped between three unappealing options: celibacy, commitment without genuine interest, or pretending to want commitment he doesn't feel. Huemer doesn't flinch from the question. Instead, he treats it as a genuine moral puzzle.
As Michael Huemer puts it, "it's wrong to let someone believe that they're going to get a long-term commitment from you when you know that is not the case; it's similarly wrong to let someone think that they're going to get sex when you know isn't the case."
This is a position that cuts across ideological lines. Huemer argues that both sexes engage in deception — women understating weight, age, and partner count; men inflating height and income. These deceptions, he says, are not serious wrongs when you barely know someone. But they become morally significant once a relationship deepens and investment grows.
It is more serious to deceive someone about the character of your relationship or your long-term plans. This includes misleading implications as well as outright lies. It also includes lies of omission, or intentionally failing to mention something that you know the relevant and would likely affect the other person's desire to interact with you.
Critics might note that Huemer treats this symmetry between male and female deception somewhat generously. Social science research on dating platforms consistently shows that the scale and consequences of deception differ substantially between sexes — and that the harms of romantic fraud, particularly when it involves time invested during fertile years, fall disproportionately on women. Huemer's evenhandedness is philosophically tidy but may underestimate the asymmetry in real-world stakes.
The Case Against Collective Guilt
Huemer then addresses a common justification for deceptive behavior: if the other side does it, why shouldn't you? His answer is uncompromising.
"There is no collective guilt. Women as a class are not blameworthy because some women—or even a great many—act badly. It is thus impermissible to retaliate against women in general."
This deserves emphasis because it runs directly against the logic of entire online communities that have built their identity around precisely this kind of retaliatory reasoning. The connection to Bryan Caplan's recent post on the same topic — exploring the same reader's dilemma about casual sex, commitment, and the ethics of pretense — is worth noting. Both philosophers arrive at a similar conclusion: individual people must be treated as individuals, not as representatives of a gender whose aggregate behavior is held against them.
Critics might also push back here. If certain patterns of deception are so widespread that they constitute a structural feature of the dating market rather than isolated bad actors, does the "treat each person as acting in good faith until proven otherwise" standard become impractical? Huemer's principle is morally sound, but it offers little guidance to someone who has been burned repeatedly by the same pattern.
Prostitution and the World's Oldest Profession
Huemer offers a practical — if controversial — solution to the trilemma: legal prostitution. His argument rests on a straightforward premise about voluntary exchange.
"Obtaining a benefit from someone by giving them something they want in return, and being completely up front about what you're offering, is not using them; that's the opposite of using them."
He frames opposition to prostitution as an "ethical superstition surrounding reproduction" — a cultural hangover rather than a reasoned position. Whether one accepts this argument depends largely on whether one accepts that sex work operates under conditions of genuinely free consent. Huemer acknowledges that his position "takes the original poster's goal of casual sex as given and as the whole story." He then pivots, suggesting that casual sex, even if readily obtainable, is not actually what most people need.
Love as the Answer to Meaning
This is where the essay shifts gears entirely. Huemer recounts a moment from his senior year of high school, when his English teacher asked the class what they wanted most. One student said power. Another said knowledge and experience. Huemer said love — and believed it was what everyone wanted.
"You may not believe this now, but if you find love, you will believe it."
He connects this to the question of life's meaning, arguing that two things matter most: forming intimate, loving relationships, and acting with moral character. Wealth, power, and fame can be enjoyable but do not make life meaningful.
Love does.
The argument is old — as old as the philosophers themselves — but Huemer's framing has a certain clarity. He even offers a theological observation worth considering: the chief gods in most mythologies represent thunder, power, or the sun. The Christian God, in a key thread of the tradition, represents love. "To serve God is to serve love."
Finding — and Becoming — the Right Person
Huemer is skeptical about the popular idea that there is someone for everyone. Humans have restrictions on who they can love — sex, physical attractiveness, intelligence, moral character, the absence of annoying habits. Some people, he says plainly, score low enough on multiple dimensions that they are simply unlovable.
"If you're a basically normal person, there probably is someone out there for you. And since you're reading Fake Nous, you're probably an unusually interesting and discerning person."
But the more important question, he argues, is not how to find the right person. It is how to be the right person. Get in shape. Wear clothes that fit and have them tailored. Interact in good faith. Don't manipulate. Don't mistrust without reason. Don't complain about small things. Try to give your partner what they want, not what you want. "Everyone is born selfish, so you have to learn these things."
Critics might note that Huemer's practical advice is somewhat thin — get fit, dress well, be honest — and that the deeper structural issues around loneliness, social atomization, and the collapse of community institutions are left unexamined. Casual sex debates are, in part, symptoms of a society that has dismantled most of the traditional spaces where people met, bonded, and built commitments. Huemer's focus on individual ethics is not wrong, but it may be incomplete.
Bottom Line
Huemer's essay works because it refuses to separate sex from the larger question of what makes life worth living. The trilemma of celibacy, commitment, or deception dissolves once you recognize that casual sex was never the real goal for most people — it was a placeholder for something harder to articulate and much harder to find.