On Love and Sex
To anybody who has ever been in love and engaged in sex with their beloved, the difference between such sex (lovemaking, we’ll call it) and mere sex (the kind without love) is wholly and clearly evident. It is the difference between, say, the Pacific Ocean and your neighborhood retention pond; the Himalayas and a pile of topsoil; the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and your Aunt Gertrude belting out “Embraceable You” after three Manhattans.
This is not to say there is necessarily anything wrong with ponds, or piles of dirt, or Aunt Gertrude’s singing. Taken by themselves, there might be nothing objectionable about them at all. But placed in comparison with oceans and mountains and wonderfully sonorous choirs, respectively, they suddenly become completely and utterly unsatisfying, and unworthy of one’s consideration. Even profane, one might argue (and in fact I think I will).
To understand why mere sex (sans love) is so unworthy and so unsatisfying in comparison to lovemaking naturally requires an understanding of why lovemaking is so worthwhile and so satisfying. Lovemaking is, first (and foremost, I would say), a complete surrender of oneself to the other, a complete giving of oneself, where one places oneself in extreme vulnerability to one’s lover. One is vulnerable in mere sex as well, but the difference is in the motivation and perspective. To give completely in lovemaking, to surrender oneself, is to become as one with one’s lover. This is a voluntary act to achieve a closeness not felt in any other way. In coitus, in fact, the partners are actually sharing the same space. There is something of an exchange of power where each partner is willing to surrender to the other in exchange for the closeness, in exchange for the sharing of space, in exchange for being – if even for a moment – as one. One hesitates to call it an exchange, in fact. It is more like a coming together in a creative way to make a sort of “oneness.” The “I” becomes lost in “us.”
In mere sex, by contrast, the exchange is for one’s own physical gratification. The surrender, the release, the orgasm, is an independent goal arrived at separately (even if at the same moment) for individual purposes (even if those purposes happen to coincide). It is not, in other words, a concern (indeed maybe not even a desirable goal) for the couple having mere sex to be “as one.” Consequently, there is no “oneness,” the defining characteristic, I would say, of lovemaking.
The act of lovemaking is, then, a creative act. Something is made where something was not before, namely the aforementioned oneness. Two have joined together to become one, a stronger whole, something beyond the sum of the parts, at least as measured by love, the barometer of all barometers. Mere sex, by contrast, is the ending of something, namely the ending of the biological sexual urge. It is a quenching of thirst. Lovemaking is a beginning; mere sex, an ending.
It is little wonder, then, that loving relationships are strengthened by lovemaking. It is also little wonder that mere sex can result in confusion. The psyche – the heart – has experienced a sort of faux oneness with another human being, even if the consciousness – the brain – had no such objective in mind, at least not as anything more than just a necessary step on the road to physical gratification. Relationships, unfortunately, are often started by this confusion. Hearts get swept up into the moment and are fooled into thinking love exists when, really, only lust is present. Satisfaction, both physical, with orgasm, as well as emotional, with the thought that we are found attractive by somebody else, becomes a kind of drug that we have a hard time quitting. We can mistake the satisfaction for love, and proceed with a relationship under essentially false pretenses. Happens all the time. Eventually we discover the error. Our divorce rate seems like pretty decent proof of the rampant confusion.
How then to determine if love is genuine? At the risk of seeming flippant, one who is genuinely in love has no need of such a question. The lovemaking becomes a gauge in and of itself. When one’s main concern is for the sum, and not the parts (or a part), then one is lost in love, one has tapped into that which is divine in nature, and has made, with the help of another being, a new and unique entity, namely the oneness that rests between the two, a place where they both give and partake and loyally anchor their hearts. The relationship may fail in time, but the failure is never the fault of love. “Love never fails,” the apostle Paul reminds us, but we can fail love.
In comparing, then, in real depth, the two approaches to sex, one is struck by the sheer profaneness of using the same essential act that creates and harbors such beauty as lovemaking, for the purposes of selfish, sexual gratification. This is not meant to be a moral judgment. If one decides that sitting at the edge of the retention pond is a decent substitute for beholding the ocean in all its glory, this is not then open for debate. These are personal preferences. But sometimes we need to consider the ocean to fully understand the difference, and to know – really know – what it is we are either striving for, or settling for, as the case may be. And sometimes, we just need to believe in the ocean, even if we can’t see it.