I was scrolling through movies we’ve watched and one’s tagline is, “multiple stories about the oscillating world of couple relationships and how difficult it can be to separate sex from love.” Is it really that difficult?
My whole life people have told me that “it’s difficult to separate sex from love,” or, “it’s hard to set boundaries around people you sleep with,” or “sleeping with a friend is complicated.” When I started identifying as an empath, all those experts agree that “an empath will have difficulty separating emotional and physical connections.” “Be warned!” The world is screaming, about having sex for fun. This doesn’t ring true for me, and I dare say it’s propaganda.
In fact, there is a word for people who have a hard time making a physical connection without an emotional one: demi-sexual. Why would there be a word for this if it were the case for everyone?
I’ve had no problem, perhaps ever in my life, separating sex from love. Sure, great sex with someone, and the quality time spent afterward has endeared me to a person, but, in every one of those situations, I was open to being wooed. When the physical attraction with someone is strong, and we have no other true love occupying our focus, certainly it is natural to want this physical attraction to morph into something more. Sex certainly takes on a different quality when done with someone we love.
And still, it was also easy to have great sex with someone and not desire anything more. There were people I had great sex with and enjoyed it so much precisely because it would not morph into anything more.
But all the warnings out there make it seem like it is impossible to have (good) sex without an emotional bond, like those of us who describe our experience as such must be antisocial, sociopaths, or in a state of denial. I dare say I can have intimate experiences with someone and it does not mean I love them, I’m falling in love with them, or I ever need to see them again. Certainly, we can all agree?
I may meet someone on an afternoon walk, warmly connect over our love of our hometown, and share glance that makes me feel seen and even loved by a person, and then move on.
I might have amazing sex with a person, sex so good it gives me imagery I’ll return to for a long time, but still have no attachment to them specifically or expectations for it ever to happen again.
Some experiences are one and done. Or more physical than emotional. Or more play than serious. That is their purpose. And that’s okay.
It also minimizes the nature of my monumental, one-big-love experience to liken it to the experiences of sex and intimacy I share with others. I don’t love the person I love because I have sex with him, or because we share a few intimate moments. We have shared thousands of intimate moments. Through showing up and embracing me time and time again, through thousands of hours spent in difficulty and elation, he has earned the right to see all of me; I have exposed my soul to him, fully naked of all pretense, and his celebration of every little thing about me gives me a wholeness and sense of completion in life that cannot be compared to the relationships I share with any other person, whether I’ve had sex with them or not. Our big love is not about sex! Sex is just one of the many things we share.
Loving someone we have brief, limited interaction with is not love. At best, it’s infatuation, at worst, it’s projection. What it up with Big Society’s insistence that it is natural to confuse sex and love?
Is it that we live in an emotionally immature, stunted society, that, like a child, confuses basic emotions and terms?
Is it that Society has an interest in us limiting our sexual partners, being choosy on the basis of an emotional connection or the possibility of a (monogamous) future with the person?
That Society wants us to feel shame over pleasure, and make up stories about its meaning?
I just want everyone out there to know that, if maybe you are like me and you have no difficulty with this concept and experience confusion over it’s apparent obviousness in media, among friends, and as a societal narrative: there’s nothing wrong with you. It is certainly possible to separate sex and love, and even to do so without difficulty.
Love,
Honey