Sex, or Seek Emotional Connections
I think there was a time in my late teenage years when I put too much emphasis on the notion of sex. Of course, I knew that was a bad idea intellectually, but because of its position in our culture, I still secretly craved for it. I've been sexually active for a while now, so I can finally put down some fuller thoughts on it.
I think sex has taught me a somewhat valuable lesson about people. The thing about sex is, it's this thing that feels good for a few minutes but then ends. On its own, sex is rather uninteresting. It feels good, but it's only exciting if you're excited about the person. My sort of earlier, naive craving for it seems to me now misplaced. I should really crave the person first and foremost, crave some kind of rapport and relationship, so that the sex doesn't actually matter that much. The thing about sex is it can be great but it can also quite easily be just average or poor. You don't want the main thing about the relationship being the sex. You want it to be an additional thing only, a cultural symbol of intimacy in addition to the rest of your relationship. That's what I want to view sex as: a cultural symbol of intimacy, not this super valuable thing to be hunted and trained in, not this haven of pure ecstatic bliss. Sex is just the highest symbol of physical intimacy.
I think sex can only be a thing that's purely about pleasure if you otherwise have a very unintimate relationship with the person you're having sex with, for example with those infamous one night stands. Even then, I can imagine the psychology involved must be strange as it normally feels natural to cuddle after sex and generally be intimate.
It's easy to be beguiled and lured into sex, just because of its status in our culture and also because it feels good if done at least averagely. I think the psychology of it, though, makes it best to try to stick to doing it with people who you want to symbolically show superlative intimacy (it really is superlative intimacy: it's seeing each other naked; it's being inside of each other in a way you'll never be with the majority of people you ever meet or know -- think about that, think about the different grades of tactile intimacy one gets in normal exchanges, then think about what sex involves: touching strictly Private Parts, exchanging fluids, making contact where contact simply can't be made in most scenarios).
I'm definitely pro-sex. Even if it can be messy and embarrassing, I think it's really fun if you do it with someone you're comfortable with. I just think it should be with somebody you want to be superlatively intimate with too. If you ever have sex on a constant basis with somebody, that's its own specific kind of relationship. If at the same time part of you doesn't want to be intimate emotionally with that person, then constant sex, with its peculiar psychology, is going to put you in a really strange position regarding that person. As always, I'm speaking for and to myself now more than anybody else. My first continuous sexual relationship was with somebody I didn't want to be emotionally intimate with, and that's a weird place to be in psychologically, because you act emotionally intimate with them in person, because you realise that makes the sex better and more likely to happen, but then away from them you try to shut down the pathways of thought that allowed you to act that way. Basically you're in a state of emotional deceit towards them and yourself.
In short, I don't mean to say you must adore the person you have sex with; I just mean you must either like them and be willing to be emotionally intimate with them (in which case, you may as well just call them your lover -- that's a good test actually; would you be willing to call them your lover?), or you must not have any kind of intimacy at all with them outside of the sex, so it is purely about physical pleasure.
I would submit that the best parts about sex aren't just the purely physical stuff, for two reasons really: one, masturbation can give you a good enough simulation of the physical pleasure (though it is admittedly very different; masturbation still makes you come though); and two, sex can sometimes be bad, short, and awkward, and if you were just doing it for the physical stuff, you'd be getting very little out of it on those occasions. Whereas if you do it as a symbol of superlative intimacy, then you have the whole edifice of your feelings for the person to support it, no matter how awkwardly it goes.
Anyway, my original point was, to wrap it all up, that it's best then not to just seek out sex, but to seek out the person, and then if the sex comes after, no matter how good or bad it is physically, what matters is the emotional/cultural symbolism with the person, which is contained in the act itself (not its quality or evaluation), so it's okay either way. Seek emotional connections; let the sex be an afterthought.
I think sex has taught me a somewhat valuable lesson about people. The thing about sex is, it's this thing that feels good for a few minutes but then ends. On its own, sex is rather uninteresting. It feels good, but it's only exciting if you're excited about the person. My sort of earlier, naive craving for it seems to me now misplaced. I should really crave the person first and foremost, crave some kind of rapport and relationship, so that the sex doesn't actually matter that much. The thing about sex is it can be great but it can also quite easily be just average or poor. You don't want the main thing about the relationship being the sex. You want it to be an additional thing only, a cultural symbol of intimacy in addition to the rest of your relationship. That's what I want to view sex as: a cultural symbol of intimacy, not this super valuable thing to be hunted and trained in, not this haven of pure ecstatic bliss. Sex is just the highest symbol of physical intimacy.
I think sex can only be a thing that's purely about pleasure if you otherwise have a very unintimate relationship with the person you're having sex with, for example with those infamous one night stands. Even then, I can imagine the psychology involved must be strange as it normally feels natural to cuddle after sex and generally be intimate.
It's easy to be beguiled and lured into sex, just because of its status in our culture and also because it feels good if done at least averagely. I think the psychology of it, though, makes it best to try to stick to doing it with people who you want to symbolically show superlative intimacy (it really is superlative intimacy: it's seeing each other naked; it's being inside of each other in a way you'll never be with the majority of people you ever meet or know -- think about that, think about the different grades of tactile intimacy one gets in normal exchanges, then think about what sex involves: touching strictly Private Parts, exchanging fluids, making contact where contact simply can't be made in most scenarios).
I'm definitely pro-sex. Even if it can be messy and embarrassing, I think it's really fun if you do it with someone you're comfortable with. I just think it should be with somebody you want to be superlatively intimate with too. If you ever have sex on a constant basis with somebody, that's its own specific kind of relationship. If at the same time part of you doesn't want to be intimate emotionally with that person, then constant sex, with its peculiar psychology, is going to put you in a really strange position regarding that person. As always, I'm speaking for and to myself now more than anybody else. My first continuous sexual relationship was with somebody I didn't want to be emotionally intimate with, and that's a weird place to be in psychologically, because you act emotionally intimate with them in person, because you realise that makes the sex better and more likely to happen, but then away from them you try to shut down the pathways of thought that allowed you to act that way. Basically you're in a state of emotional deceit towards them and yourself.
In short, I don't mean to say you must adore the person you have sex with; I just mean you must either like them and be willing to be emotionally intimate with them (in which case, you may as well just call them your lover -- that's a good test actually; would you be willing to call them your lover?), or you must not have any kind of intimacy at all with them outside of the sex, so it is purely about physical pleasure.
I would submit that the best parts about sex aren't just the purely physical stuff, for two reasons really: one, masturbation can give you a good enough simulation of the physical pleasure (though it is admittedly very different; masturbation still makes you come though); and two, sex can sometimes be bad, short, and awkward, and if you were just doing it for the physical stuff, you'd be getting very little out of it on those occasions. Whereas if you do it as a symbol of superlative intimacy, then you have the whole edifice of your feelings for the person to support it, no matter how awkwardly it goes.
Anyway, my original point was, to wrap it all up, that it's best then not to just seek out sex, but to seek out the person, and then if the sex comes after, no matter how good or bad it is physically, what matters is the emotional/cultural symbolism with the person, which is contained in the act itself (not its quality or evaluation), so it's okay either way. Seek emotional connections; let the sex be an afterthought.
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