Sex, Love, and Videotape
I heard mention of an idea the other day that was espoused by a reader of the Sex & Moxie blog.
"Sex is not love," she writes. "Sex is not something required for attaining love. Sex is a really fun activity, but I think it diminishes the actual acts of love (like taking care of someone when they are sick) to say that sex is somehow connected to love."
I wasn't totally opposed to the idea until the second half of the last sentence. Of course sex and love are connected. They're intrinsically linked, you crazy broad.
Why do you think so many people confuse the two in the first place? Why are people always getting upset after a drunken hook-up because they had the expectation that "We were gonna be together!"? There's a good reason behind this popular conception.1 It's not like you see people running around putting condoms on to prepare for watching NASCAR or something.
It's true enough that as humans, we have the power to exceed our base nature and make decisions on our own--this is basically the reasoning behind morality and it's what makes civilization work. But the thing is, human nature doesn't change (well, it does, but it takes millions of years), even if our behavior does.
And so it is with sex and love. Human beings are such that, as we know, men have the genetic disposition to want to spread their seed as far and wide as they can (Hence, "Men are all cheating assholes.") , and women, since they can't reproduce as often, want to find security and stability in a mate, so she can be sure that her children are raised as best they can (Hence, "Women are all gold-digging bitches.").
What was that line in Sex, Lies, and Videotape? "[M]en learn to love the person that they are attracted to, and . . . women become more and more attracted to the person that they love."
Even if my source is a semi-obscure 1989 pop-culture reference, it seems to make sense, even evolutionarily. If a man sleeps with a woman based purely on attraction, it seems there's some kind of weird cognative dissonance that tells guys that "Hey, this girl's pretty cool. Well, she must be, because I've slept with her like nine times already."2 Suddenly, you're in love. For women, it's the exact opposite. They can meet a man who is stable and good-natured, and grow to become attracted to him through her love for his other characteristics. (How many times have you seen a very attractive woman holding hands with a guy who looks like Prune Face from Dick Tracy? They probably are actually in love with each other, but for very different reasons.)
It makes evolutionary sense for sex and love to be related--if sex were just sex, and there truly was no reason for emotions to be involved, what would be the motivation to stay together to raise offspring?
To briefly address the idea that sex is so dirty as to tarnish the idea of love--this is bullshit. Last time I checked, sex is a pretty elastic in terms of what it means. When it's done right and in the right circumstances, it can be something that brings people together in a way unlike anything else. Of course, it can also be degrading and filthy, and not in a good way at all--but so can marriage, and relationships, and you know, other things that are supposed to be sacred. Like grandmothers.3
1There are usually good reasons behind stereotypes, in general. People don't assume black people are good at sports because they don't make up like 90% of the NBA and the NFL, just as they don't assume Asians are smart because they don't kick everyone's asses at standardized testing.
2Which is not to discount the actual feeling of genuine love--I definitely believe it exists.
3My grandmother, for example, used to go on tour with a traveling sex-fetish circus. Wait a minute, does this fly in the face of my whole theory that sex isn't dirty? I'm not sure.
"Sex is not love," she writes. "Sex is not something required for attaining love. Sex is a really fun activity, but I think it diminishes the actual acts of love (like taking care of someone when they are sick) to say that sex is somehow connected to love."
I wasn't totally opposed to the idea until the second half of the last sentence. Of course sex and love are connected. They're intrinsically linked, you crazy broad.
Why do you think so many people confuse the two in the first place? Why are people always getting upset after a drunken hook-up because they had the expectation that "We were gonna be together!"? There's a good reason behind this popular conception.1 It's not like you see people running around putting condoms on to prepare for watching NASCAR or something.
It's true enough that as humans, we have the power to exceed our base nature and make decisions on our own--this is basically the reasoning behind morality and it's what makes civilization work. But the thing is, human nature doesn't change (well, it does, but it takes millions of years), even if our behavior does.
And so it is with sex and love. Human beings are such that, as we know, men have the genetic disposition to want to spread their seed as far and wide as they can (Hence, "Men are all cheating assholes.") , and women, since they can't reproduce as often, want to find security and stability in a mate, so she can be sure that her children are raised as best they can (Hence, "Women are all gold-digging bitches.").
What was that line in Sex, Lies, and Videotape? "[M]en learn to love the person that they are attracted to, and . . . women become more and more attracted to the person that they love."
Even if my source is a semi-obscure 1989 pop-culture reference, it seems to make sense, even evolutionarily. If a man sleeps with a woman based purely on attraction, it seems there's some kind of weird cognative dissonance that tells guys that "Hey, this girl's pretty cool. Well, she must be, because I've slept with her like nine times already."2 Suddenly, you're in love. For women, it's the exact opposite. They can meet a man who is stable and good-natured, and grow to become attracted to him through her love for his other characteristics. (How many times have you seen a very attractive woman holding hands with a guy who looks like Prune Face from Dick Tracy? They probably are actually in love with each other, but for very different reasons.)
It makes evolutionary sense for sex and love to be related--if sex were just sex, and there truly was no reason for emotions to be involved, what would be the motivation to stay together to raise offspring?
To briefly address the idea that sex is so dirty as to tarnish the idea of love--this is bullshit. Last time I checked, sex is a pretty elastic in terms of what it means. When it's done right and in the right circumstances, it can be something that brings people together in a way unlike anything else. Of course, it can also be degrading and filthy, and not in a good way at all--but so can marriage, and relationships, and you know, other things that are supposed to be sacred. Like grandmothers.3
1There are usually good reasons behind stereotypes, in general. People don't assume black people are good at sports because they don't make up like 90% of the NBA and the NFL, just as they don't assume Asians are smart because they don't kick everyone's asses at standardized testing.
2Which is not to discount the actual feeling of genuine love--I definitely believe it exists.
3My grandmother, for example, used to go on tour with a traveling sex-fetish circus. Wait a minute, does this fly in the face of my whole theory that sex isn't dirty? I'm not sure.
posted by Chris Cusack at 9:56 PM
1 Comments:
she's just talking about agape love, something that most men seem hard-pressed to achieve. unfortunately for her, it seems that she either hasn't had a healthy loving sexually-active relationship, or is some sort of nympho for whom sex no longer requires any kind of emotional investment. or maybe she's a lesbian, they seem to work in mysterious ways...
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