@partyrock You know the difference. I can tell from the way you talk about it.
What surprises me is how many other people don’t know the difference. I think people tend to get divorced from their emotions. A lot of it comes from having bad luck in love, or worse, from not being raised to understand what love is by parents who know what it is, themselves.
I think a lot of people try to divorce sex from emotions, like it’s a sport, almost. They come to think it’s all about technique, but the truth, I believe, is that when people get close to each other, no matter how much they may deny it, they are looking for something much deeper than an orgasm that results from mutual masturbation.
Rubbing bodies together means something Seeing someone else’s eyes, and kissing or touching all express feelings. They are all gifts to another person, whether the other person gets them or not. Simply being there, and opening your legs to let a guy enter you, or the guy being there and achieving an erection to enter you—that’s more than just sex, even though so many people try to divorce themselves from that reality.
I believe people all seek “connection.” Not sure how to define that, but it has a lot to do with not feeling alone. With feeling understood at some deep level. Known, perhaps. Even loved.
Maybe it’s built into us genetically. Maybe it’s a kind of chemical thing. But we also make it into something meaningful because that’s what we humans do. We make meaning.
Making love is about making meaning. It’s about building a connection and, hopefully, expressing the deep feelings you have that can not be expressed in words or any other way. The ecstasy we feel through the sensations and the orgasm are the physical analogy of the wonderfulness of that connection.
Having sex is about trying to have ecstatic sensations without all the rest. It is a cynical or hopeless gesture made by people who, I believe, have given up hope for themselves. They don’t think love is possible and so this is the next best thing. It’s too hard to trust someone enough to be vulnerable enough to connect, so instead they put a barrier across the road to the other person and they tell themselves, sex is enough. sex feels good enough. It is the best we can get, so let’s just stick there and leave it at that and yes, elevate it to a sport… a competition.
Because, as a a compitition, we can rank everyone on how good a lover they are, and in doing so, dehumanize them. It’s no longer about building a connection or making love; it’s about seeing how well we can punch someone else’s buttons, and how well they punch ours. Who gives the best head? That’s the lover for me. Who has the biggest dick? That’s the lover for me.
I say this with sadness and compassion, I hope. I am not judging. I don’t think people get to this position without being hurt an awful lot, and I think that for some people, it makes sense to give up on love and accept sex instead. It’s better than nothing.
But it is very sad, I think. Sex can be so much more. It is the door to connection. It is the way we know we are not alone. We are connected in some completely visceral way that is beyond words. We feel it so powerfully. To have given up hope for that; to even deny that exists—to say it is just a fantasy—it just so terribly sad.
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