What
is most human about human sexuality is our unique capacity for intimacy. It takes
guts as well as gusto to get any of the glory.
One
of the the great myths of American culture is the belief that we achieved sexual
liberation the 1960s. That was the era we convinced ourselves that sex is a natural
function and gave ourselves permission to like sex. The squeaky clean effectiveness
of "the new sex therapy" encouraged our technocratic society to believe
we could break sex down sex down into its component parts with the right technology,
study it, and subdue it. We were about to discover the secrets of eroticism the
same way we had cracked the atom.
Many
people think it has already happened--that it happened way back then. Not long
ago, clinicians thought that sexual happiness was inherent in sexual function
and successful completion of the sexual response cycle created as much pleasure
as any sane person could want. There are many today who still believe this.
The
notion that sex is a natural function was actually a giant step forward from the
moral degeneracy view of sex that prevailed until that time. It was so widely
believed that masturbation led to moral and mental decay that Kellogg's Corn Flakes
was originally marketed as a cure.
The
trouble is, the belief that sex is a natural function reinforced another widely
held idea: the notion that good sex just happens. We expect good sex to happen
naturally, especially if we love our partner. The idea that good sex just happens,
like that of sex being a natural function, is predicated on the notion that sexual
response is biologically programmed for all species.
But
when good sex or good sexual function doesn't happen, some couples conclude they
must not love each other enough. Or they wonder if there's something really screwed
up because good sex supposedly happens naturally in the absence of pathology.
When the expected genital response does not materialize, you're unwittingly predisposed
to jump to conclude that there is something wrong with you.
In
my 16 years as a sex therapist I have found that the "naturalized" view
of sex is not so liberating as it once appeared. It pressures people to have sexual
desire and genital response while it makes worrying about sexual performance seem
inappropriate. And it obscures what is quintessentially human about human sexuality:
our capacity for intimacy. The sex that comes naturally is reproductive sex. Intimate
sex, however, is a learned ability and an acquired taste.
I
was trained in the conventional beliefs. Blinded by the still-popular rationale
that "natural" is naturally good, I never asked myself whether the people
I treated for sexual dysfunctions were actually sexually happy. They got happier
when their genitals worked. Then problems of sexual desire came into focus.
The
fact that some people whose genitals worked and who had orgasms could have little
desire for sex upset the entire field of sexual therapy in the late 70s. Problems
of sexual desire violated basic assumptions about the way sex worked. But rather
than change directions, sex therapists made sexual desire "natural"
too, comparing it to the desire for food. Low sexual desire was thought of as
"sexual anorexia," a kind of illness.
In
the 60s, approaching sex through a medical model legitimized it for scientific
study. But the price has been a limited focus on anything more than just functional
sex. The shining promise of the sex therapy of the 1960s and 70s never materialized.
We must now face the difficult notion that what many of us regard as our "most
meaningful sexual experiences" are only a pale version of what we are really
capable of--profoundly transcendent communion with another human being.
We
are likely to respond to such an assertion by defending our personal experience
of sex as reflecting all there is to it, and that's understandable. Nobody gets
a yardstick that measures "good sex," and no one gets a manual outlining
the limits of human sexual potential.
Society
has never promulgated views about sexuality and intimacy to help people get the
best of what human sexuality can be. It has always been a palliative for the masses,
and as long as it works somewhat okay, that is enough. As a result, we lack a
language and concepts to guide us through the long traverse to sexual bliss. For
example, we use the words intimacy and sex interchangeably, but they really do
not mean the same thing. In fact, we use one to avoid the other.
What
our confusion of terms does, however, is make us think they often occur together
for most people. Actually, being profoundly intimate during sex is one of the
pinnacles of personal development, and a stunning step for our species. Intimacy
during sex is, as I shall later discuss, the cutting edge of human evolution.
INTIMACY
Sex
can express the best that humans can be and also be a powerful vehicle for getting
to that point of personal development. Sex can be ecstatic, self-realizing, and
self-transcendent all at once. The great feelings of self-affirmation and declaration
of our personhood can make our most powerful genital sensations seem like mere
trifles. Experienced together, the physiological and the psychological make a
very interesting concoction.
Sex
can be more than just a euphemism for "making love." It can be the actual
process of increasing love, of sharing it, of whetting your appetite for it, and
of celebrating life on its own terms. This process, as I will show, is actually
built into the nature of committed relationships. It happens almost spontaneously;
the hard part is going through it.
The
most important part of "making love" does not involve "skill";
it has more to do with personal development. That link is partly obscured by our
attempt to reduce sex to a set of behaviors, and partly by the way we view intimacy.
We think of intimacy as involving reciprocity, the expectation that your partner
is supposed to understand, validate, and "be there for you" when you
disclose your deepest secrets. In practice, intimacy commonly becomes, "I
reveal something about myself and you tell me I'm okay. If you accept me, maybe
I'm not as bad as I thought I was."
However,
our common misconception destroys intimacy in long-term relationships and stops
sexual novelty. It blocks people from moving forward sexually because it prevents
the introduction of anything new. When we are young--or perpetually immature--our
sexual preferences are more determined by avoiding what makes us too nervous,
rather than by doing what we really like. The typical sexual relationship develops
by each person ruling out what he or she won't do, and then doing whatever options
are left. That means a couple is already doing everything consensual. To do something
new, one has to suggest something the other has more or less ruled "off limits."
De
facto, expanding a sexual relationship involves doing things that one partner
doesn't want to do. And if you are dependent on your partner validating your sexual
preference, you're stuck. You can't expand your shared sexual repertoire because
your partner is not likely to stroke you for suggesting new things. And while
I'm in no way encouraging marital rape, the path to expanding how we feel good
sexually is paradoxically often through things that don't make us feel good at
first.
The
fact that most people without sexual dysfunction still have utilitarian mediocre
sex reflects how few of us are willing to make the journey. Better sex is not
a matter of technique or dexterity. To get it, you've got to hold onto yourself.
That is the paradox: You have to learn to hold onto yourself emotionally while
holding onto your partner physically.
While
other-validated intimacy has its time and place, marriage is not often one of
them. What is more often necessary and important in long-term committed relationships
is a nonreciprocal intimacy I call self-validated intimacy. It involves self-confrontation
and self-disclosure in the presence of a partner. Period. It doesn't say what
your partner does.
It
feels good when our partners agree with and validate us, but you can't count on
it. If you demand it, you can land in the crazy conundrum that creates eternal
insecurity: We put a spin on what we reveal about ourselves in order to get the
response we want. Then we can never feel secure with those who accept us because
we know they don't really know us. When you are willing to validate yourself,
you can afford to let your partner know you as you are. You stop presenting yourself
the way you want to be seen, and you just disclose with no other goal than being
truly known.
Self-validated
intimacy sounds like: "I want you to know me before I die. I want to share
with you my days, which would otherwise be less meaningful. It would be nice if
you agreed with me, wonderful if you liked me. But most of all I want to know
that somebody really knew who and what I am. More than I fear your rejection I
fear never reaching across my mortality, which separates me from you and others.
I will care for my own feelings, Just know me--including my sexuality."
Intimacy,
it should now be clear, is not always soothing and doesn't always "feel good."
It is, however, how we forge ourselves into the people we would like to be.
Our
culture is replete with misinformation about sexual intimacy--meaning intimacy
during sex. Women' s magazines, for example, regularly advise readers to dress
themselves in Saran Wrap or do something else new. Everybody knows it is necessary
to introduce novelty. Why don't we? Because it's a function of personal development,
not knowledge.
It
could be very exciting to do something novel like greet your sweetie at the door
stark naked. The problem is the next step: What happens if he or she walks right
by and asks what you fixed for dinner? Most of us would take our partner's response
personally and feel devastated. We won't risk that because we lack the inner strength
to handle this possibility. When you're so exposed, it's a test of personal integrity
to remember your partner might be so frightened the only way he or she can handle
it is to focus on pot roast. But don't make the common assumption that you "failed
to communicate" just because your partner didn't handle your "question"
well and you didn't like the "answer."
It's
unrealistic (but common) to expect a partner to make the work of life easier--or
to make sex easier, for that matter. For ease and efficiency, masturbation wins
out. But sex with a partner can be a great teacher about life and relationships--and
about oneself. A monogamous long-term relationship is a powerful way to explore
the mysteries and paradoxes of human connection. Fundamentally, we are social
animals. Deprived of feel-good human contact comfort, infants fail to thrive.
FEELING
GOOD
Feeling
good drives human evolution and our capacity for sexual experience. Sociobiologists
like Helen Fisher, Ph.D., author of The Sex Contract and The Anatomy of Love,
report that our ability to feel good with other people has literally driven the
shape of human evolution--and prompted us to further evolve our capacity for feeling
good. This is the force behind human females' evolutionary shift from estrus-related
sexual receptivity to nonseasonal sexual desire; the development of a forward-tilting
uterus permitting face-to-face intercourse; the natural selection of men for their
capacity to pair bond; and our complex sexual-emotional interpersonal signaling
system.
Bonded
together by the ability to make each other feel good, our ancestors began staying
together year round and paved the way for language, and with it, our capacity
for self-reflection, our ability to bring high meaning to sex. All of these abilities
came into being through our neocortex, the latest part of our brain to evolve.
And with them came the ability to raise the "I/Thou" distinction, fundamental
to intimacy, into an art form and to a spiritual plane. Perhaps if we were more
open to the integration of sexuality and spirituality, we would not be so surprised
to see sex, intimacy, and Martin Buber as bedfellows.
What
we in Western society have previously considered human sexual response is more
accurately a model of mammalian sexual response; it is purely physiological. True
intimacy, however, is a self-reflective process, and the concept of self is rooted
in the neocortex. This is what is most human about human sexuality.
Our
neocortex increases our ability to give meaning to life. No other species has
the capacity to bring to life and sex the meanings that we can, because of the
subtleties we can make in meanings. Through intimacy we participate in evolution.
In
contrast to a physiological model of human sexuality, I have developed a model
of human sexuality, called The Quantum Model, that takes into account our neocortex
and the impact of meanings and meaningfulness. We are meaning-making animals;
the more meanings we bring to sex, the more richness our life has--and the greater
our ability to feel good.
Several
hundred thousand years ago, our species traded programmed sexual regularity for
the ability to bring meaning to sex. The involvement of our neocortex in sex,
however, not only paves the way for satisfaction--it's what causes most sexual
dysfunctions. The receiver's mental and emotional processes, how we feel about
what we're doing during the time we're doing it, is a bigger determinant of the
overall level of stimulation we experience than the tactile maneuvers. How we
perceive physical contact can either potentiate, mitigate, or debilitate the sensate
dimension, and plays a large role in whether our bodies function the way we think
they're supposed to. It plays an even bigger role than orgasms do in determining
whether or not we're "satisfied."
SEX
AND SPIRITUALITY
The
point of all this talk about brain function and intimacy is to help us recognize
the significance of common experience. Our involvement in sex can vary from absolutely
superficial--where two people are just triggering reflexes in each other's bodies--to
the point of profound meaning. When we are profoundly involved in sex, it taps
the core of who we are. In other words, we often have untapped sexual potential
for feeling good.
Having
sex at the limits of one's potential involves profound connection that takes place
on multiple levels. The obvious one is profound connection with your partner--but
there is also something higher. There's the the experience of the oceanic, doing
something that every generation around the world has done from time immemorial.
You join the passing generations, part of the flow of life.
Strange
things happen when we have sex at the limits of our potential. That we hear so
little about this spiritual side of sex reflects how few people ever reach their
sexual potential.
o
There is time stoppage. It is a consequence of profound involvement.
o
There's also a lack of awareness of pain. I work with people who have arthritis.
I advise them to have sex in the morning, so they will have less pain--but to
have less pain they have to be involved.
o
There is a laserlike focusing of consciousness. Deeply engrossed, you become oblivious
to extraneous noise, day-to-day reality fades, and your world ends at the edges
of your bed. There is often a vacation like sense of transportment.
o
Age shifting is another phenomenon. You may be holding your partner's face in
your hands and suddenly see, in a very loving way, what he or she will look like
older, or exactly what he looked like when he was eight years old. It is very
moving.
In
the timeless connection of profound sex--if we have the strength, and that is
an important caveat--we have the opportunity to drop our mask, to drop our character
armor, and to let ourselves be seen behind the eyeballs, metaphorically and literally.
It's where we see ourselves and our partners against the backdrop of the mystery
(and absurdity) of life. For this reason, I note how many people insist on having
sex with their eyes closed or in the dark, and help my clients learn to have sex
with their eyes open.
Another
facet of the spirituality of sex reveals itself when people approach their sexual
potential. There is a spontaneous shift in the nature of desire, from desire out
of emptiness to desire out of fullness. The "blue-balls" or "horniness"
biological model of desire that currently pervades both professional practice
and society, is desire out of emptiness. It presumes that once you reach orgasm,
you aren't interested in your partner anymore.
People
who desire out of fullness find they're already emotionally satisfied. They seek
out their partner not for purposes of reassurance or validation but to celebrate
what they already feel. Orgasm doesn't diminish desire for their partner, or for
sex either. Afterwards, they don't roll over and go to sleep. They want to keep
going until their soul, not just their body, is done.
Desire
out of fullness carries with it a wonderful feeling of finally feeling clean about
your sexuality. Your sexuality actually enhances your personhood rather than diminishes
it. You feel desirous and desirable in and of yourself and learn about desiring
others. If the Garden of Eden were recreated on earth, I think it would take form
in our bedrooms through our capacity for sex and intimacy.
Slowly
a different conceptualization of sex, a spiritual sexuality, is starting to evolve.
There's a lot more to it than just shouting "Oh God" in mid-orgasm.
Part of that great feeling lies in realizing you've reached a level of sexual
development beyond what occurs between adolescents in the back seat of a '57 Chevy.
Western
culture, however, has been highly sex negative (and continues to be in subtle
ways). This is a result of the mind-body duality that has dominated Western thinking
for centuries. For too long society has preached that liberation of the soul involves
rejecting the pleasures of the flesh. In reality it occurs through sexual development
and feeling good, rather than self-abnegation. Even the secular world has almost
no culture of happy romantic love, and certainly not within marriage. There is
little foundation to support modern expectations for feeling good in long-term
relationships, which is one reason why so many feel so bad about trying to feel
better about sex.
SEXUAL
STYLES
Most
people think of sex as something that they do. We are here redefining sex as an
expression of who and what you are. Eroticism determines who you copulate with
and which behaviors you like. Eroticism is what turns you on. It's the style and
manner in which you want to engage your partner sexually. It is the way you want
to have sex. Eroticism is not the same thing as behavior, but is expressed in
the nuances of behavior. It determines not just whether or not you like oral sex
but the style of that oral sex.
Eroticism
shows up in your sexual style, and people who give play to their eroticism often
find style is more important than technical skill. Technical skill is just a tool.
You need enough technical skill to express a variety of intents. The most important
part of eroticism is a function of personal development--the breadth of meanings
you can bring to sex.
Meanings
are conveyed in the minute nuances of sexual style. The more meanings you can
bring to sex, the broader the possibilities for engaging your partner. The more
subtleties you can have, the more novelty you can have--because there are limits
to the ways to juxtapose two sets of orifices.
Sex
is like a language. Some of us can converse just enough to get along, like travelers
in a foreign land, limited to merely making love and/or the exaltation of body
sensations. Some of us, however, are poets; we bring a large vocabulary of meanings
to sex. As a wordsmith recognizes fine distinctions among words, the sexual poet
can bring so much meaning to sex it takes all we can muster to figure out the
meaning, even if we can't author the message the same way.
It
is the meanings in sex that drive us crazy. Think, for instance, about one partner
performing oral sex on the other. What about the issue of gusto? If your partner
really doesn't like it (or you), you can tell him or her how to move their hand
or mouth till their fingers fall off--you're not going to get what you're looking
for. Your partner may be stimulating your genitals to exact technical specifications,
and you'll still be frustrated because you know something is missing.
You
can bring another to orgasm and withhold from them at the same moment. We do that
all the time. I call it normal marital sadism because it is so common in long-term
relationships.
Eroticism
is-not for the weak because recognizing there is more to get involves realizing
that you're not getting it. The question is, why? Am I not up to it? Is my partner
not up to it? Is my partner up to it but withholding from me? And how am I going
to get it out of him or her?
SEXUAL
PRIME VS. GENITAL PRIME
In
the process of teaching medical students and physicians at Louisiana State University
School of Medicine in New Orleans, I've learned that reading textbooks can be
a liability. Textbooks teach us that men reach their sexual peak in adolescence;
women supposedly reach theirs shortly thereafter. This is untrue--but people live
down to it just the same. The textbooks are actually focusing on genital responsiveness,
the quickness with which a man will have an erection, his speed in getting a second
erection, and the strength of his ejaculations.
It
is true that men reach their genital prime in adolescence. And it is downhill
from there for everyone--if sexual prime only measured by how quickly your body
responds. But if you want intimacy with your sexuality--which has a huge psychophysiologic
impact--then there isn't a 17-year-old alive who can keep up with a healthy 50-year-old.
Intimacy has to do with what's inside you; there just isn't that much inside a
17-year-old.
As
people get older, their capacity for self-validated intimacy--and intimate sex--increases.
At age 16, a girl might let the guy "do it to her." When she's older,
she'll "do" her partner. This ability arises from acceptance of herself
in general and of her eroticism in particular. That usually doesn't happen until
she's got a few stretch marks and cellulite. Maybe we've "had sex" or
"made love" with one or more partners, but many of us have yet to "do"
somebody or allow ourselves to be "done." In terms of sex at profound
intensity or emotional depth, most of us are virgins.
Our
mistaken emphasis on genital prime gives rise to what I call the "piece-of-meat
model of sex." One consequence is that what you do sexually is a consequence
of what your body looks like. Women often don't do behaviors they might otherwise
like because of the way they think their body might appear to their partner. It
makes people self-apologetic and not expect much as they get older. When you don't
expect too much, and feel you don't deserve too much, you don't go looking for
much.
Confusing
genital prime with sexual prime also creates a power struggle inside the typical
American family. Most families with an adolescent have a topsy-turvy power hierarchy.
Everyone at home believes the teen has more sexual potential than do the adults
(who are supposedly past their prime), with negative impact all around. The unstated
assumption that parents are over the hill fosters defiance and the belief that
parents are advising teens against sex only because they want their offspring
to be as sexually frustrated as they are. There are not many parents who want
to tell their kids: "Look, your Dad (Mom) and I have been banging away for
30 years and we're just getting to the point we're getting good at it."
If
we teach teens that they won't reach their sexual potential for another 30 years
or so, they can relax (and parents can too). It suggests teens may have a reason
to listen to parents about sex. It means less pressure to be sexually active now,
and less disappointment with the experience if they are.
No
other culture expects young kids to do what older adults can. Only in our youth-dominated
society do we end up with the perverted view that adolescence is the epitome of
sexuality. It fits our model of romantic love: two strangers who really don't
know each other.
DOWNHILL
PHALLACY
Most
people never reach their sexual potential. Those who do so are often well into
the fourth,fifth, and sixth decade of life. Yet, for most people sex does run
downhill with age, although it doesn't have to.The problem is not age, but expectation.
Conventional beliefs and rules result in mediocre, downhill sex. We never realize
our experience is a function of how we approach it--we think it reflects irreversible
physiological processes.
As
long as couples take a phallocentric approach to sex--as our society teaches--sex
indeed is going to run downhill, because men's genital response slows with age.
And if women always "stay in place"--which means one step behind the
men sexually--then couples will often stop having sex when they get older.
The
research is clear. Studies of geriatric couples in good physical health who stopped
having sex found husbands and wives in agreement: it was the man who called the
halt. In sex, the lowest common denominator always runs the show. Early in relationships
it's often the woman's reluctance that controls sex; in later life, it's the man's
real or anticipated difficulty getting an erection that prevails.
It's
not hard to understand how this happens: We believe that men in heterosexual relationships
are supposed to be the sex experts and initiators. As the relationship starts
out he is happy because he feels competent. She likes it because she doesn't have
to demonstrate that she knows more about sex than he does; she feels taken care
of. The two grease each other's identities and egos. He stimulates her and turns
her on, and when she's (half) ready to be penetrated, he does. This works for
17-year-old boys because they have an instant erection, but the erection has nothing
to do with their partner--seeing a brassiere on a clothesline has the same effect.
Over
time in a relationship, more stimulation of every kind is needed. Sex gets boring
because the couple is doing "the usual." In addition, the man now requires
direct stimulation of the penis to have an erection. The woman needs comparable
stimulation to become fully lubricated. The problem is, everybody believes the
way you had sex at 17 is the way you're supposed to do it forever.
Until
there's a problem, nothing in their experience suggests to the woman that she
is supposed to stimulate his penis, or to the man that it is okay for her to do
that. He feels inadequate because he "shouldn't need it." She feels
awkward doing it, and possibly thinks he finds her attractiveness fading. She
doesn't want to start something he may not want to finish and she'd unfortunately
probably take it as personal rejection. The result is two people believing they
are not desirable to each other on account of their misbeliefs. They are less
likely to get started, and more likely to interpret anything that happens negatively--in
line with their misconceptions.
Indeed,
men who focus on the sensation in their loins report a roll-off in sexual intensity
as they get older. (Women often report the opposite, because they finally allow
themselves to revel in their experience.) But couples who learn to integrate their
increasing capacity for intimacy in their sex often report the most intense encounters
of their lives. Intimacy acts as another kind of stimulation; it has a whopping
psychophysiological impact.
Profound
intimate connection, often experienced for the first time when spouses are well
over 45, can do more than compensate for the role-off in physiological responsiveness.
Many of the people who come for therapy or who attend intensive couples retreats
connect with their partner at levels some people don't even know exists. The result
is often stronger erections in men, and more intense orgasms for both partners,
than they've had in years--or ever. But the process isn't "easy."'
Achieving
sexual potential requires the strength to change the rules in your relationship,
usually with a reluctant partner. It's hard to do this as time goes on in a committed
relationship because your partner becomes increasingly important to you (even
if you don't like them). We get less willing to risk our partner's rejection,
and less willing to show them a part of ourselves they have not yet seen. People
often have to get to the point of desperation.
You
also have to stand apart from almost everything you've ever been taught about
sex, and use your own sexuality as a compass to explore what human sexuality can
be. You have to follow what actually works, instead of a preconceived notion of
what works. You have to become your own sexual scientist. In a sense, we are all
pilgrims: Our capacity for intimacy has been around for a fraction of geologic
time, and we don't yet have the owner's manual.
Long-term
sexual partners can give up on themselves, or shed preconceived notions that worked
(partially) only when they were younger. You have to claim your own life and your
own bed, muster the courage to accept yourself, throw away the rule book, and
see what works for you. It takes a tremendous amount of integrity and self-respect--often
much more than people have. And yet, the challenge furthers the process of self-development.
THE
SEXUAL CRUCIBLE
Very
often, the reason we go on this ultimately liberating exploration is because our
relationship is sinking. If you're able to float along with "adequate"
genital functioning, you figure the old way is the right way. We want those sexual
rules dear; they are our sole extant yardstick of adequacy. The difficult and
frightening alternative is to believe in yourself. It usually takes sexual difficulty,
sexual boredom, or the possibility of divorce to open us to a different course.
This
is what I call the sexual crucible: When couples think they are falling apart,
they are often on the verge of having the best sex of their lives. The fact that
the relationship gets sexually boring eventually makes you push and shove in your
relationship to create something new. It produces the stimulus for people to grow.
It increases your level of personal development, forcing you to stand on your
own two feet---or get divorced.
Sexual
boredom is a dynamic part of committed relationships: It is often the catalyst
in the sexual crucible, stimulating us to become people capable of having the
sex we want. And in the midst of this anxious process, we stop being afraid of
being anxious. Life rarely offers us the choice of being anxious or not. Adults
realize that the choice is about which anxiety you're going to have. Ironically,
the path to feeling good often involves recognizing things that don't feel good
at all.
This
just hints at the elegance of committed relationships. They are people-growing
machines. What we think are "problems" are often the process of pushing
ourselves (and each other) to become people capable of having the marriage we're
angry we don't have.
The
marital bed is where we play out our rituals of development. The Quantum Model
offers a challenging solution: If you want better sex, you have to mature.
EYES-OPEN
SEX
Normal
sexual styles are designed to limit intimacy to tolerable levels, while getting
one or both people to orgasm. Intense intimacy makes people nervous, particularly
during sex. Therapists (who often have no greater capacity for intimacy than anyone
else) have created a technology that can jump-start your body and bring you to
orgasm while it destroys intimacy.
Take
the sex therapy approach of "bypassing," which teaches that you should
fantasize about somebody or something else during sex if you're angry at your
partner. This is the style many of us actually use without lessons from a therapist.
Therapists have trained people, and couples have trained themselves, to have sex
in a nonintimate fashion, to focus on your body, not on your partner.
Consider
my favorite example: people commonly have sex with their eyes closed. We like
to think it's really a preference, or it's more "romantic." I believe
it's one reason we think love is blind. We would seemingly rather have sex with
the fantasy in our head than the partner in our bed. Then we turn around 10 years
later and complain, "You're not the person I thought you were." If you
want intimacy, open your eyes during sex and look inside your partner, behind
the eyeballs, while your partner looks inside you.
Having
an eyes-open orgasm is the epitome of intimacy, and relatively few people get
there. To do it, you have to integrate your partner into your mental sexual pattern
to such an extent that your awareness of him or her enhances (rather than distracts)
your sensory awareness of your own arousal. When you get down to it, awareness
of our partner during sex is often a "distraction." It's an elegant
demonstration that most of us are not profoundly intimate during sex.
THE
COURAGE TO FEEL GOOD
Feeling
good takes courage. Contrary to conventional wisdom, feeling bad is easier than
feeling good. If feeling good were easy, there'd be more happy people. Being unhappy
requires much less of you than does being happy. Feeling good involves the courage
not to fold in the face of life's disappointments and frustrations. As it happens,
the invitation to develop that courage comes in the visage of a partner who refuses
to do something new sexually.
Loving,
it turns out, is not for kids. It is not for the weak. The end result of every
good relationship is that one partner buries the other. That's what it means to
love on life's own terms. How many of us have the strength to love our partner,
embracing what the character of C. S. Lewis says in the movie Shadowland: "The
pain then is part of the pleasure now"?
SEX
AND THE ART OF ARCHERY
Sex
is a lot like Zen archery. The preparation to shoot the arrow is arduous. Shooting
the arrow easy. Once you do the hard work of personal development, you do is let
the arrow go. The arrow shoots itself. Sex flows.
Throwing
away the rule book and holding onto yourself can be framed as believing in the
God within, believing that there is a good part of you inside. The bedroom, then,
becomes a place for spirituality to emerge. Spirituality is the application of
faith to everyday life, including when you have your underwear down.
By:
David Schnarch Originally published by Psychology Today:Jul/Aug 94
