I recently came across what is essentially a manifesto against pleasure. Its title: “Ways To Be Intimate Without Having Sex”. The content is in the form of a list of around 80 items. Some examples: “Give compliments”; “Plant things”; “Find a secret spot to call your own”; “Record a voice tape of special messages”; and – oddly enough, 30 or so items down the list – “Say ‘I love you’”.
Such a list is symptomatic of a doctrine that plagues our society: a hatred of sex fueled by the belief that it is dispensable and evil. This has led to a two-fold false and lethal dichotomy in the practice of non-platonic relationships: those who avoid sex and those who have sex promiscuously.
The first group is generally of the Judeo-Christian mold, though not necessarily. To most members of this group, sex is only to be had after marriage (e.g. mainstream Protestants) and/or only for procreative purposes (e.g. Catholics). The first criterion views sex merely as the completion of the magical marriage ritual because it brings God’s love into the mix. Thus, Christians view sex as a three-way with God, but no one ever seems to call Christianity out on this. Sex is thereby reduced to the meaninglessness of a rubber stamp to the ineffable marriage ritual. This same view is included in the second criterion with the addendum that sex may only be had in order to make more worshippers of God, thereby reducing man to swine, and sex to the mere act of the manufacture of more swine. In other words, both criteria view sex as permissible only when it is purified by God. The logical conclusion of this view is the consistent ascetic view of the Shakers: sex itself is evil under all circumstances and must never be practiced. Such people fear what sex will reveal about how they really feel about their partner and, by extension, themselves. The hallmark common amongst this entire group is the view that sex is a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless.
The second of the aforementioned groups is the hedonists, those who know nothing but whim and unquestioningly follow nothing more than their own immediate urges. It is these who have one-night stands. To them, the mindless writhing of two anonymous persons for a couple of hours is the most to which we can aspire. They are swine who revel in the mud and engorge on the slop. These individuals secretly fear and/or know that they have nothing in the way of substance to offer in an organic and sincere relationship. Thus, they run once the sex is over so that the other person cannot leave them first. According to this group, sex is a necessary evil, but a necessity nonetheless.
The truth is that a sincere, organic, romantic relationship between two loving adults requires both the non-sexual and the sexual. To reduce a relationship to a dogmatic Weight Watchers-style sexual substitution program is to encourage sexually active adults to engage only in sex. There simply is no substitution for the sex that comes with a meaningful relationship. It is the necessary effect of having a healthy relationship.
The view that marriage should come before sex is not only ridiculous, but is actually destructive. Sex serves an extremely important function in addition to being the metaphysically greatest pleasure imaginable: it serves as a barometer of the relationship’s health. “Trouble in bed” might be the result of trouble elsewhere. To know that this is the case, one must of course first rule out other possible causes, e.g. erectile dysfunction, stress from work, exhaustion, etc. However, once one has established that such factors are not viable explanations, then the explanation is that something is wrong with the relationship. It does not necessarily mean the end of the relationship. A relationship’s being healthy is not the result of never having problems; it is the result of being able to resolve those problems honestly and effectively.
In cases where such problems are indicative of a fatal flaw in the relationship – i.e. one or both of the partners is not fully convinced that theirs is a relationship to which they are willing to commit – imagine what it would mean to that couple if they were to first marry before having sex. How much of an emotional toll must it put on two individuals to discover after years of courting and anticipating marriage and sex to discover suddenly that they do not truly love one another? That is why the abstinence movement is destructive.
Anyone who truly believes in the sanctity of a loving relationship must embrace sex as the greatest joy that one can ever achieve. It is a reflection and a summation of a relationship. It is a necessary good.
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