Sex, for me, is no longer casual because the same intimacy that I feared in my teens and early twenties that led me to treat sex like a plaything is the same intimacy that I now crave, respect, and will hold in the highest regard if I'm blessed to fully experience it with another person.
I've never had a male best friend because, in my opinion, we can't be best friends without emotional intimacy—and in my experience, both emotions and intimacy are things that most men do their very best never to be caught experiencing, especially by other men.
It seems to me that the whole “old and mature” thing us middle-aged people do is a bit of roleplay—a persona we project at work and in public to help perpetuate the conspiracy of age equating to maturity.
