The Value of Pleasure: How Lust is Costing Black Males Extra Than They Understand

By Trish B., Award-Successful Writer + Cultural Commentator

Lust is simple. Self-discipline is divine.

In a society that rewards bravado and conquest, too many males—significantly Black males—are sacrificing their futures for fleeting pleasure. The price is just not all the time instant. It is available in moments missed, legacies fractured, and potential left unrealized. It comes quietly, within the type of unhealed wounds and patterns that repeat themselves era after era.

There was one man—let’s name him Marcus.

He was charismatic, gifted, and raised within the Black church. His mom prayed over him. His father taught him to steer. By his mid-thirties, Marcus had fathered kids by three totally different girls, misplaced his marriage, and watched his once-promising profession unravel. He wasn’t violent. He wasn’t careless with phrases. However he was careless with vitality—and lust was his drug of selection.

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Each time life pressed on him, he sought short-term aid in a brand new physique. A brand new thrill. A brand new phantasm of management. He confused consolation with readability. Intercourse with connection. Attraction with value. And behind each climax was the sluggish erosion of function. He as soon as admitted to a buddy, “I really feel like I’m all the time beginning over. Each time peace will get shut, I wreck it.”

What Marcus didn’t say—however what his life revealed—is that this: he had by no means mastered the artwork of claiming no. His physique led. His thoughts adopted. His future waited. And his legacy wept.

However Marcus is just not alone.

Throughout communities, Black males are conditioned to measure manhood by efficiency—what number of girls they’ll appeal to, how fascinating they seem, how dominant they appear. However dominance with out self-discipline is just not energy. It’s a lure.

In actual fact, the systemic constructions already stacked towards Black males—mass incarceration, financial disparity, misrepresentation in media—are solely made extra harmful when lust turns into a life-style. The identical society that hypersexualizes Black males additionally criminalizes them. It earnings off their pleasure and punishes their ache.

In response to The Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships, unresolved trauma—significantly childhood sexualization and grownup emotional neglect—can manifest as hypersexual habits, particularly in Black males who have been by no means given language for emotional expression. Within the absence of therapeutic, lust turns into a coping mechanism. However in contrast to therapeutic, lust all the time asks for greater than it provides.

And much too usually, it’s girls—and typically even male companions—who change into collateral injury in another person’s pleasure. It’s sickening. It’s disgusting. And it’s not often acknowledged.

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We see this on social media, the place male validation is tied to what number of girls they appeal to, not what number of they honor. We see it in actuality TV, the place toxicity is repackaged as attraction. We see it within the barbershop, the locker room, the group chat. And we see it within the numerous damaged properties the place love as soon as lived, however ego moved in.

Let’s be clear—this isn’t about demonizing sexuality. Intercourse is sacred. Connection is highly effective. However something sacred misused turns into harmful. The reality is: lust makes males predictable. And in a world constructed to take advantage of that predictability, Black males who lack restraint change into straightforward targets—for emotional manipulation, monetary drain, and non secular decline.

Girls know this. Some exploit it. Particularly in a tradition the place social capital and financial acquire might be tied to who you sleep with, who you expose, or who you lure. From influencer scandals to entrapment schemes, from OnlyFans to false intimacy—many ladies have realized tips on how to flip male weak point into leverage. In interracial relationship, this dynamic turns into much more advanced, as Black males are typically lured by aesthetic softness and submission, whereas unknowingly strolling into relationships that don’t nurture their full identification—solely their fantasies.

However this isn’t nearly exploitation from others. It’s about accountability inside.

As a result of the true flex? The actual evolution? It’s not in what number of girls you may sleep with. It’s in what number of temptations you may stroll away from. It’s in selecting function over pleasure. Peace over patterns. Calling over chaos.

Each time a person says no to what doesn’t serve him, he says sure to every part that may.

This isn’t about disgrace. It’s about awakening. As a result of on daily basis a person provides in to lust, he abandons a chunk of himself. His vitality scatters. His focus fades. His future delays. However when he chooses self-discipline, he chooses legacy. And that could be a energy no system, no stereotype, no seduction can steal.

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It’s time we increase the bar for our males. Not with perfection, however with imaginative and prescient. Not with punishment, however with function. The world doesn’t want extra males who can attraction a room. It wants extra males who can conquer themselves.