"If we were in a physical relationship, you just lost sex tonight." Grammatically correct? [closed]

Solution 1:

Technically, the sentence is not grammatical. The speaker is using the subjunctive mood to express something hypothetical and/or counter-factual (in reality, they are not in a physical relationship). A more grammatically precise rendering would use the subjunctive past imperfect in conjunction with the conditional:

If we were in a physical relationship, you would have just lost sex tonight.

In spoken, colloquial language, the sentence rendered as it was in the TV programme is nonetheless perfectly intelligible, although I'm sure there are lots of self-declared English language authorities who would issue red-faced, frothy-mouthed diktats to the contrary. I will note, however, that as an Englishman this rendering sounds very American to my ear.

Edit:

Here's a webpage with some nice explanations of the subjunctive mood: https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/grammar_subjunctive.html

Solution 2:

If we were in a physical relationship, you just lost sex tonight.

Seems perfectly fine to me.

The first part is expressing a conditional which is not real. We are not in a physical relationship, but if we were, then what follows would be true.

The second part means that the person who is addressed just did something that caused him not to have sex with the speaker. However, he was not going to have sex with the speaker, as the speaker and the addressee are not in a physical relationship.

For the us of this kind of conditional, I believe there is no better reference than the famous song If I were a carpenter: