Love and Life

I read a review of a book the other day--a book I have heard of or come across many times in the last few weeks--and it got me thinking about sex and love. The book is called Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both by Laura Sessions Stepp, and the reviews describe it as a screed against the hook-up culture and the damage purely sexual relationships have on the psyche of American young women (getting quite a bit of flack for using data only from 9 young women she interviewed). I haven't read this book, and I don't imagine I will, but it got me thinking.

Sex gets blamed for a whole lot of wrong in our culture. I am not saying sex doesn't have its share of pitfalls but so does ice cream (if you want to get real picky) and we let little kids eat that. But I feel that a lot of the blame that gets heaped on sex, is really more about lying. People lie to eachother--about their feelings, their experience, their past, and even their present (because no one I know has ever told anyone that it felt better then it did)--and they lie to themselves. Oh lordy do they (really we) lie to themselves! They build a sexual experience up in their mind to be the gateway to something else, and it can be, but isn't a one-night-stand more likely then not to be something else? Isn't that how it got its name? So, let's not blame that let down on the sex.

Blame it on the person who convinced themselves sex would automatically lead to something more emotional, something more attached. Let's blame this let down on Hallmark cards, Valentine's Day, and the buttoned-up society we grew up in. This mother culture tells us that sex is special and only for the one you love, but, as many people I know have experienced, the corollary isn't also true. Having sex with someone doesn't magically make them into someone you love who (more importantly) loves you back--except when you have sex in the hot tub of love in Sims2, a couple rounds there=true love, but let's not start to get into all the ways why the Sims2 and real life are not the same--also it is the hot tub of LOVE.

Sex is a physical experience, love is an emotional one. Yes, it can be very, very nice when the two join forces like all those little kids with their magic rings on Captain Planet, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that the two are mutually exclusive--the kids all had separate live on Captain Planet too, they could only do their magic as a team, but they could still live without each other. Sex doesn't need love, and there are many, many kinds of love that require no sex (lets just start with filial, paternal, and maternal love for now, because seriously, seriously!). I can say from first hand experience, that you can have good sex with someone you don't even like, forget about love, and I love many people who I will never have sex with (not to mention a few pets).

Sex is about the quick, chemical spark between two sets of hormones. Love and commitment are as much about friendship, admiration, respect, agreement, promise, willpower, and trust. The best marriages (legal and otherwise) that I have ever known are between two people who have agreed to tread the same path together no matter what it takes. It helps that they are both a little ga-ga over each other, but the main point is that they share an emotional connection and bond of trust that makes it worth it to ride the sometimes rocky road. Yeah, they probably have some good sex too--again with making the rocky road worth it.

A hookup isn't necessarily some sort of life destroying, soul eroding experience. It is if you are always expecting it to end with a knight in shining armor or big diamond engagement ring. It is if you aren't being honest with yourself or your partner about what you actually want out of it. And it is if you keep pursuing it as an activity, if what you are really looking for isn't sex but someone to love and someone to love you. Temporary worship at the temple of orgasm ain't a marriage(or necessarily the best road to one), but it can be a nice holiday for a marriage to take (as often as possible)

Of course I say all of this being happily single and recently celibate (because, well, no one has been worth it lately). So maybe my advice on what makes a good marriage or a true love is all bullshit? My sister might say I am making this argument to justify some of my own personal lifestyle choices. Maybe she is right, but I also happen to believe in all of the theory I just spouted. . . . So there.