…And Sex
Immature love is a mere feeling, but mature love is a feeling and a practice, like a religion, or an art. That means you feel a growth of attraction and concern for someone, and then you take up a new culture of living, with and for this person and yourself, to sustain that feeling. You follow precepts, or rules, if you will, lest you let love die.
True Love requires submission to its power, but concentration as well, since you will likely feel the incipient calling of love all the time in life, from new sources, in its basest forms, but the measure by which you can resist it, and can focus on the true love you decided on and want, is the measure of your ability to succeed in it and to be faithful. Simply put, you have to decide on one love, to have true love, and you must practice in the ways that will invigorate, stimulate, inspire, and “raise” that love, like a child between you and your lover.
Romantic love is physical and emotional attraction and the inspiration that grows into the dedication to share with the one you are affected by. You find yourself wanting to be with this person more than with any other person; not because s/he is perfect, or because s/he fits some childish fantasy of the perfect mate, but because you feel you can be real with this person and because this person is real with you; because this person makes you feel like you want to be a better person, and because with this person, you know you can be such because this person believes in you, and your humanity, faults, talents and all. S/he brings you to experience the full range of emotions, “good” and “bad”, as a human being, making you laugh, cry, dance, sing, and feel wonderful for whom you are, and making you feel that it is okay, good or bad, because together, you know you can accomplish virtually anything.
Feeling and being in true love is being inspired, and wanting to inspire the one you are attracted to most; to foster growth in him of her, and in yourself, by being together. It is wanting to share all possible experiences-good and bad-with him or her, over anyone else. It is wanting to give and receive fulfillment from him or her, and from oneself–while fulfilling your beloved. And it requires constant growth as you come to build that new culture between you.
When involved in love, “sex”, is love itself in one of its purest forms, in that it requires an acceptance and a physical “worshiping” of the self, and the beloved and his or her self-overcoming insecurity, pride, feelings of superiority, and the sense that you are saving yourself for someone else (ego-based greed and escapism). In this way, “sex” is love, but love, obviously, is not exclusively sex.
Sex is not merely about procreation, otherwise the pleasure in it would mean that it is merely a trick in our biology meant to make us procreate. While this is partially true, most likely, it is not entirely true. Certainly for the religious, this would be an abominable thought to consider because it would mean that God made us enjoy sex so we would have sex, which contradicts the idea that sex is an original sin, unless of course God both wants us to seek sex for it’s own sake (lust), and feel guilt over it at the same time.
Loving Sex is a process that can bring two human beings together; closer than in any other way, but if they are unsocialized animals, they have sex only to procreate (unbeknownst to themselves, in part).
When human beings are socialized and civilized, and they have loving sex, or make love, they have sex in the process of loving to please one another as well as themselves; to relieve one another of the burden of the eventual pain of the unrequited desire for physical love ans emotional the closeness that comes with it, and to release one another from loneliness, perversion, and ultimately neurosis.
Sex, beyond being a great stress-reliever and component of mental and physical health, is the greatest form of compassion in a romantic relationship, since sexual tension is the greatest tormentor of mammals besides starvation or pain due to physical injury.
In the case of civilized human beings and other sentient animals, of course longing of “the heart” is as painful as starvation or physical injury, but who can deny that a broken heart doesn’t also involve the loss of physical intimacy from the lover and beloved?
A mature and wholesome, as well as pure, and fully romantic love relationship (meaning among other things that it is about the two people involved and not anyone or any thing else, especially manipulation, deception, transaction, or politics, such as status-seeking for personal or family gain) involves and requires physical love, as the act creates mutually fulfilling intrapersonal and interpersonal joy that should be acquired nowhere else, and which then necessarily deepens the bond of emotional love by creating a physical need and closeness between the partners beyond the platonic-so that they will tend not to neglect or abuse one another, doing otherwise injures themselves…for the other is now an integral part of the one, in true love. And THAT’S the greatest point of love of all, and why physical intimacy is necessary to it.
