Sex

So strongly do we feel the need for sex that we quite often surprise ourselves. Our behaviors betray what we believe are our immediate and long-term interests. We give up our freewill, freedom, and liberty for the promise of regular sex. We bury our other desires for the possibility of a passing moment so closely related to a sneeze that we forget that sex is habit forming, perhaps addictive, that we will slake our thirst for sex, but that soon enough we will again crave it again and all but self-destruct for it.

In fact some do self-destruct, risking literally everything their mind and body has worked for, what their soul creates and their promises arrange for the future, indulging their need for sex above parental admonitions, above spousal respect, above employer regulations, above even the combined opinion of a nation. There is no doubt that we are hard wired for sex. We are the end product in a species for which ubiquitous sex was a selective advantage. Our ancestors with the strongest sexual urges were the most likely to procreate, and we are the the genetic distillation of their genes.

But, sex is not all orgasms. Sex is also a fundamental part of personality. Lest this be misunderstood: personality is developed under the tutelage of sexuality. Personality is formed and it is shaped by sex. Some people are more strongly motivated by sex, but this only means that other parts of their personalities are less well developed. Sexual consciousness is a matter of great interest, since when a pretty lass or handsome lad strolls into our environment, we find ourselves aroused by them very much out of proportion to the preceding thoughts. It is as if our focused consciousness is a submarine cruising a sea of sexual semi-consciousness, for we are ready quickly to indulge and be indulged.

We speak of "making love," as if sex were a building block of the edifice of interpersonal affiliation, or the process of proving our affiliation or desire to affiliate or, conjugate, sometimes to subjugate, to impregnate or be impregnated. Sex is important to interpersonal bonds that we call "loving relationships," especially romantic relationships. Sex is the somatic (body) aspect of such relationships, and is therefore not restricted to penis penetrating vagina, but includes the whole repertoire of touch, embrace, envelopment, scent, pheremone, friction, feedback, feedforward.

In fact, our selfconcept is contained in our selfsexual concept, which is our consciousness and semi-consciousness of our whole body, but especially certain parts that have sexual purpose or sexual association, the erogenous zones of popular discussion and inquiry. Our selfconcept is the Navy of our submarine, the greater entity to which we feel a belonging.

Part of the interest in sex is the impossibility of it, the impossibility of really joining together. Simultaneous orgasm might be as close as we ever get, but there are couples who experience the "merging of their souls" with sequential and multiple orgasm. There is a "release" in sex that serves as evidence that the need was real, that the desire was human, that there will be another time when sex needs release. Sex is cyclic, then, a pattern of human and animal behavior that brings "reassurance" that one's body and one's mind are normal, functioning normally, healthy, vigorous, receptive, and willing to risk vulnerability to establish or maintain relationship.

JB