What should we expect from
sex, and what should
we give to it? An obvious answer could be: we get as much as we put in. And
while there is some truth in this, in that a person who is sexually repressed
and inhibited will not experience the sexual joy and fulfillment that a sexually
uninhibited and expressive person will, it is a rather dubious answer. It
encourages a cost-effective attitude to sex, considering it from the point of
view of inputs and returns, or a moralistic attitude, regarding it in terms of
rewards according to deserts. Yet today many people are inclined to think of sex
in terms of giving and getting orgasms, thus reducing one of the most vital
experiences to quantifiable economics.
There is no denying that there is good sex and
bad sex, in the sense that some experiences make people feel enriched, fulfilled
and vital, and others make people feel degraded, spent, and joyless. But studies
in psychosexual pathology have shown that good and bad in this sense do not
correlate with the moral equivalents. The most sadistic rapist may have intense
and satisfying orgasms, but no personal enrichment. From the standpoint of the
glorification of the orgasm, it is more correct to say that people get out of
sex what they demand of it.
Obviously to demand is not so commendable as to
give, and there are a surprising number of men and women, particularly married
men and women, who consider that they fulfill their sexual function by knowing how to
give a woman an orgasm although they themselves remain unsatisfied. They are
undemanding, and they will rationalize their conduct altruistically, even though
they realize that it involves a degree of pretense and deception, which may
sometimes include pretending to reach orgasm. Before the sexual revolution many
women took this line of conduct, being unaware of their sexual potential. But
whether it is the man or the woman who acquiesces, the quality of the sexual
experience for both partners will be diminished. Over a period of time it
diminishes so much that either or both may seek new sexual partners, or else
both may become indifferent to sex, regarding it as a youthful activity that
naturally declines with increasing age.
Growing up and growing older involves planning,
predicting, and often settling for compromises. But this is a dangerous and
destructive attitude when applied to sexual
matters. For sex is not merely a mechanism of
species reproduction which incidentally affords some pleasure, but an activity
that enhances human beings' enjoyment and understanding of life. It contributes
to personal growth and
development for men and women, spiritual growth, sexual and emotional union,
and it is conducive to a longer, healthier, and
happier life. These are the rewards to expect from sex, but not as payment for
services rendered. The rewards come to the person who does not make compromises
or does not accept second-best, and who demands sexual fulfillment for self and
partner. If fulfillment is missing he or she does not accept the situation but
seeks the reason for the lack. These may not be characteristics generally
considered as belonging to people in love, but they are characteristics of
people who value remaining in love and understanding what love is, and they are
not incompatible with tenderness, passion, and considerateness.
One of the problems of the sexual revolution is
that many of its advocates have put more emphasis on the understanding of sexual
pathology and on the cultivation of sexual
positions and techniques than upon growth and
understanding. It may have given people more freedom to love, but it has not
given them a profounder understanding of love, life and sex, and indeed in many
ways it has confused such understanding and tended to give people an unbalanced
view. Love, so wise men tell us, is the answer, but for
many love is the problem. Just what it is, how it
happens and why it disappears, whether it can
endure, and how, if at all, it relates to sex, are
questions that have preoccupied generations. In
their efforts to understand love, people have
distinguished many different kinds: spiritual and
carnal love, romantic and rational love, Eros and Agape, to mention but a few. Love has been
equated with compassion, sexual desire,
unselfishness, loyalty, admiration, altruism,
communication, pleasure, surrender, and even
sickness. The list is endless but no single term nor
any combination of them can pin love down
convincingly. It is as difficult to define love as it is
deliberately to experience it. When we experience
it we know, or think we know, but still we cannot
define it, only convey what we are undergoing. No
subject has been written about so much, and none
will oust it as the most important theme of painting,
music, sculpture, and literature.
Falling In Love
We speak of "falling in love," and the phrase
implies that the experience is unsought, accidental, and irresistible. The
person who falls in love does not do so from choice, and probably did not expect
a passionate involvement. According to ancient mythology, the act of falling in
love suspends consciousness, will, and judgment. The mischievous little god
Cupid shoots his dart and the victim becomes hopelessly infatuated. The object
of the person's love may be utterly inappropriate, like the donkey-headed Bottom
that Titania dotes on in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, for love, they
say, is blind.
"Love," said Samuel Johnson, "is the wisdom of
the fool and the folly of the wise." The world's literature and history bear
witness that love and the pursuit of love have been major preoccupations and
follies of mankind from time immemorial. The Trojan wars were fought over
rivalry for a woman's love; Julius Caesar urged his armies into unpopular
campaigns for Cleopatra, and Mark Antony sacrificed his career and his life for
her. "The world," says the poet John Dryden, "is well lost for love."
Traditions, legends, folklore, and facts of history combine to show that
prudence, sense, judgment, even the basic animal instinct for survival, can be
overwhelmed by the passion called love.
Most of us do not have empires, kingdoms, or fortunes to sacrifice for love, and
few of us are ever called upon to give our
lives for it, but many come close to giving
all they possess. The man who in middle
age leaves the house he has worked to buy,
his children, and possibly his reputation
for the freedom to go to another woman,
and the person who commits suicide after
being rejected by a lover, show that the
legends and the literature do not exaggerate.
Love is a passion that can override all other considerations, and although
falling in love can be a delightful experience it can also be a most
inconvenient and even a disastrous one.
The metaphor of falling is also often used for
the abrupt cessation of love. For a person to fall out of love can be as
bewildering and distressing an experience as falling into it, but without any
compensation. Adolescents have their own terms for intense but ephemeral love;
for instance they speak of "having a crush on" somebody. Often they wonder how
they will be able to distinguish "true love" when it happens to them. The best
that they are told is that they will know when it happens, because the emotion
of true love is quite unique, while the cynic would reply that there is no such
thing, that love is a snare and a delusion. The young of every generation have
to find out the truths about love for themselves, and very often this proves a
disillusioning process. "The joys of love," says the popular song, "are but a
moment long. The pains of love last a whole life through." The fact that
thousands of poems, songs, and stories convey the same melancholy message
indicates how perplexed men and women are by the seeming capriciousness of the
emotion that is the source of both their greatest joys and their greatest
miseries.
In Plato's Symposium, there is a parable. Humans
were once spherical creatures so clever and energetic that the gods felt
threatened. So they cut each human being down the middle, making of it two
halves which became male and female. Thereafter the creatures devoted all
their energies to trying to become whole again, to unite male with female, and
so they ceased to be a challenge to the gods.
The parable not only states that love is such a
consuming passion in human beings that some impractical and metaphysical
motivation must be assumed to be behind it but gives a reason for our sex and
love drives being so powerful and compulsive. It suggests that through the
experience of sexual love people may attain a wholeness of being and a sense of
expansion and transcendence that makes them feel godlike. Could this be why some
lovers often behave as they do, rejecting prudence, wealth and success in their
quest of a
sexual experience that some would see as only an ephemeral and temporary
joy? And this joy exacts a heavy price: at best prolonged servitude and at worst
distress and even death. And yet the same patterns repeat themselves generation
after generation, and the reason must be deeper than a congenital deficiency in
the makeup of man.
