Doing It for Love

Bugs do it. Birds do it. Flowers do it. Marine mammals do it. Humans do it too. We think that our desire for it is “natural”—as primal and non-negotiable an instinct as our desire for food. We want it, always more of it, the quicker and easier the better. We think, too, that we are different from animals: we have control over our desire for sex. We do it for love.

This picture of desire confronts us everywhere. We are bombarded 24/7 by images of the sexually satisfied creatures we are told we should be. Movies, pop songs, television shows, internet sites, and advertisements for everything from fragrances to food sell us on this desire. If we tire of vicarious means and want it straight up, service industries offer it to us without the trappings of relationship.

As a culture we are as obsessed with when, why, and how our bodies should have sex as we are about what, when, why, and how our bodies should eat. When it comes to sex, as is true for food, we can’t stop talking about it, regulating it, studying it, pursuing it, or purchasing it. And sometimes, the food and the sex are nearly interchangeable. The sex is delicious; the food orgasmic, and we want more.

Yet, this apparent abundance, as with the surfeit of food, hides a shadow side: what we are buying is not satisfying. More is not better. Parallel to the obesity epidemic runs a crisis in our long-term partnerships. Among couples who marry with dreams of life long passionate love, nearly half end up filing for divorce. Even so, this ideal lives on, ever stronger, among persons who have legal access to marriage as well as those who don’t.

Images of sexual pleasure so prevalent in our culture prove seductive because fulfillment in actual relationships is difficult to achieve. We don’t know where to begin.

We can’t stop eating, and we can’t stop trying to lose weight. We can’t stop committing to partners, and we can’t stop trying to get out of it once we do. Our waistlines expand; our passion withers. Our ideals of health and of life long love go unrealized.

What are we to do?
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Desires for food and sex are entwined. On the one hand, patterns of dissatisfaction tend to reinforce one another: unhappy in our relationships, we override our sense of enough, eating more or less or differently than we need. Or, unhappy with our bodies, we hold back from a partner, preferring not to open ourselves beyond a certain comfort zone.

On the other hand, however, movement towards well being in one realm can also carry over into the other in ways that can reinforce our emergent health. When we begin to shift our experience in one realm, we can imagine a similar opening up of possibilities for thinking, feeling, and acting. Just as we can learn to appreciate our desire for food as a desire for an experience of being nourished, we can learn to appreciate our desire for sex as a desire to give and receive a life-enabling touch.

Along the way, as in the case with our desire for food, we must unpack a tangle of reality-making myths and call upon the cycle of breaths to help cultivate the sensory awareness that allows us to discern and move with the wisdom in our desire.
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I lean into the cushioned chair. It slides beneath me, rocking back and forth. I settle on a point of comfort, lap loaded with a carton of popcorn. As the lights dim, my head tilts, lifting my eyes to a large white rectangle.

My breath releases. I have been anticipating this moment. I paid for it. I am ready to feel the thrill and ache with the pain; to laugh and shiver, yearn and cry. Still, there are sure to be some surprises. I hope.

Luminous images flip before my eyes. Faces turn to me and with passionate sincerity reveal themselves. I identify with them. I am them. What they sense, desire, and fear, I sense, desire, and fear. Their struggles are mine, their triumphs too.

What do I see? A story in three parts.

Part 1. Two people meet. Desire sparks. They fall in love at once, even if they don’t admit it to themselves or each other.

Part 2. Obstacles intervene. One partner is engaged or married; uptight or indifferent; a member of a rival clan, class, ethnic group, or religion. The two are separated by war, geographical distance, age, or by the ethics governing an unequal power relationship between prostitute and client, student and teacher, patient and therapist, or player and coach. As lovers struggle against the obstacles, their desire for each other grows.

Part 3. One of two outcomes occurs. A. Comedy: Lovers overcome obstacles. They get married and/or have sex. Love lives on. B. Tragedy: Lovers fail to overcome obstacles. One or both of them dies. Love lives on.

There are variants of course. One partner tells the story, or the other. Obstacles pose different kinds of challenges. The story may dominate a film, or play as a subtext. Nevertheless, if I am moved by the movie at all, I emerge having absorbed a message that film after song after TV episode repeats: sex is a, if not the, peak experience of human life, and it is so when it is the consummate expression of love between partners.

Sex plus love equals ecstatic bliss. Such sex is so good that it is worth fighting for against all intervening obstacles. Even marriage.

The lights come on again. I bump down into my chair, an empty box of popcorn in my hands. I walk out of the theater slowly, a glaze in my eye, a rush in my heart, feelings spent. I blink like a bird, madly adjusting to the light.

Again and again we bend ourselves to this arc of passion as it sparks, flames, consumes, and is consummated. Why? What are we learning about our desire for sex? What are we learning about the possibility of life long passionate partnerships? Will it work? Will we get the satisfaction we seek?
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Next week: Sex versus Love