A BILLION WICKED THOUGHTS...

SEX IS SERIOUS BUSINESS

What would it be like if we could look into the deepest and darkest desires of the human mind?

What could we learn about ourselves?

How might we grow?

Could it help us navigate our collective lives with more clarity, more compassion — and perhaps more virtue?

Thanks to the internet — and the obsessive data collection it fuels — we’re now able to peer into a mirror we never had before. It’s not always flattering. It’s not always easy to face. But it’s real.

The results are in.

In my last piece, Virtue over Vibes: A Modern-Day Courtship Manifesto, we looked at step one in reviving the lost art of courtship. The first thing we need to do when looking for a partner is to know thyself, and what we learnt there is that, underneath all our carefully curated personas, we are searching for virtue — and our ultimate goal is to become virtuous.

As we look to know ourselves, we encounter obstacles. Sexual desire, though sold in the modern world as the path to intimacy, can actually become a major obstacle in finding someone we can stand for more than a week.

I spent my twenties jumping from one bad boy to the next, having no idea why I was doing it.
‘I’m the victim here,’ I would say to my friends, crying. ‘Why are they doing this to me?’
I had no idea… I was doing this to myself. I had absolutely no awareness that I was living out — or attempting to live out — the ultimate female sexual fantasy.
These men, these beasts, these vampires, these sadistic surgeon types who would cut your heart out with a neg... were all a part of my deepest and darkest fantasy — and I didn’t even know it.
I kept putting my hand into the mincer.
‘It’s love,’ I would tell myself.
‘I’m a good, loving person, and these monsters are just monsters. Poor me.’

But now, after reading the book A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What The Internet Tells Us About Sexual Relationships and after analysing myth and being blown away by the female interest in true crime, Christian Grey, and Edward Cullen... I realised: I wasn’t in love with any of these difficult men in my twenties.
I was getting off on the whole saga — because women’s sexual fantasies are intrinsically tied to stories, to sagas, to beasts that must be tamed by misunderstood beauty.
It’s eyes-rolling-into-the-back-of-your-head intoxicating. Hypnotic.
And anything that can hypnotise a young man or woman who is trying to find healthy courtship and a strong partner in life... is dangerous.

What we find is this: men and women say they want one thing — but their subconscious is often seeking something else entirely.
That’s the unsettling and illuminating premise of A Billion Wicked Thoughts, which analyses billions of online searches and clicks related to sex, romance, and fantasy.
It doesn’t tell us what we should want — it shows us what we actually want, when no one is watching.
And what it reveals is that our erotic imaginations don’t always point us towards our higher selves.
They can lead us into confusion, compulsion — even darkness.

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For Women

Women must be especially reflective about the desire to be dominated — even violated — in fantasy.
This isn’t about shame. It’s about awareness.
These deeply ingrained fantasies, seen again and again in erotic fiction and search data, often involve being taken, controlled, or possessed — and then, crucially, winning over the ‘bad boy’ and owning him emotionally.

But here’s the danger: what begins as fantasy can shape our expectations in reality.
We begin to conflate drama with love, power with passion, and chaos with depth.
And in doing so, we may chase what wounds us, rather than what builds us.

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For Men

Men, on the other hand, face a different temptation: the visual trap.
Pornography — and its endless variety — has rewired male sexual attention towards novelty, fragmentation, and instant gratification.
A woman is no longer a mystery to be discovered — she becomes a category to be clicked.

This isn’t just about lust. It’s about losing the capacity for devotion, for patience, for presence.
The male mind becomes overstimulated and undernourished — always seeking more, but rarely finding meaning.

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So, how do we move forward?

With honesty. With humility. With eyes wide open.

If we want to revive courtship, we must begin by interrogating our desires — not just indulging them.

We tell women they don’t want the alpha, but what they end up chasing is the alpha of the alpha — the very monster the hero is meant to defeat, rather than the hero himself, who has come to serve and protect.

We tell men they shouldn’t be superficial but they then just turn to porn — a wasteland of Botox and bloated body parts, an empty bank balance, and no real woman to raise children with.

Women, you want an alpha. You want a strong, protective man.

Men, you want a beautiful, real-life woman.

We don’t obsess over these truths, but we don’t ignore them either.
We allow them to be what they are.
We don’t twist them out of shape to fit ideals.
We work with who we are — and we attempt to be led by virtue.

I entered the dating world at 18 without a clue — no awareness of my deep need for virtue in an alpha male, nor of the dark desire I carried for the beast I was craving to tame.
I believe much of the dysfunction in modern-day third and fourth-wave feminism is born from women deeply wounded by this experience in their twenties — without the faintest idea that they were participating in it.

Don’t get me wrong — men have abused this truth, and women on OnlyFans have abused it too.
There isn’t one sex to blame.
We are all in this together, trying to find our way back to love and healthy relationships.

I remember walking the Camino de Santiago to reflect on my bruised and butchered romantic escapades. I stopped mid-walk and said, clearly and calmly, as if I was finally understanding something:
‘I will have a king… or I will have nothing at all.’

It was a declaration that put those desires in their place.
Two weeks later, a king appeared.
These thoughts — these declarations — matter.

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And if we want to find our way back to love — the kind that builds homes, raises children, and lets us rest in each other — we need to do more than look inward.
We need to look around.
The revival of courtship doesn’t just start with knowing ourselves. It deepens when we begin listening to the people who know and love us best.

In the next piece, I want to explore what happens when we stop swiping in secret and start bringing our families into the picture — how their insight, their instincts, and yes, even their protective opinions, might be the missing piece in finding someone truly worth building a life with. Because maybe love isn’t just a private feeling.
Maybe it’s a collective discernment — one that begins in the heart, but is strengthened by a village that sees you clearly, and wants the best for your soul.

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