Sex = Love?

Does sex equal love? Or does love equal sex? It strikes me that custom dictates that both are right, which is not how I see it at all.

 The custom I refer to is marriage. This institute demands sexual fidelity from the partners. The result is divorce in many cases and often, where partners stick together, it results in no sex or even mutual hatred. Marriage comes because the female partner is pregnant or because sex and love are seen as being identical.

I really have a serious issue with this attitude and belief. In the world, most of it believes that monogamy is the only way and so the circus begins. Where polygamy is the norm, it is in most cases the same: it's men who are allowed to have several partners, but not the women. 

If we look at how the world deals with this, it's pathetic. You must stay faithful - especially the woman - or there will be serious consequences. In the Bible and in Sharia, stoning is OK for women who stray, but not men. So back to the appalling sexism that so blights the world.

My take on it is that love is a feeling which lives in each human being and is not dependant on another. We are born with the full range of positive feelings including love, but the world encourages the belief that love is a result of another person beaming it at you. No, love is an endless fountain with the human being and it needs to be expressed. This can easily be observed in the love a parent has for their children and is expressed through their actions towards that child. Even this most simple expression has been beaten out of us in many cases, so that we read about the horrendous ways children get treated every day all over the world. The stories I have heard and read make your hair stand on end: how can adults treat their children or any children in such horrible ways? As we know orphanages are the place from which we hear so many horror stories - especially those run by churches and states. 

So how can we express love? With kindness and consideration. By caring for others or to cite a phrase from the new testament: do unto others as you would have done to yourself. I like to be treated as an equally valuable human being who has been given the gift of life as all others, not as a possession or as somebody's toy or chattel. Wouldn't you?

Back to the topic: for me, the act of sex is an expression of love between to people; it's the moment where we can come closest to unity and is a wonderful act of giving and receiving. Instead it's seen as a right - especially by men - or as an act which entitles the person to ownership of the other person involved. Marriage is about ownership - check out it's history - and as a consequence the act confers ownership and therefore demands fidelity from the partners involved, to each other. Utterly absurd.

It is an act which takes place between two willing partners and takes place at a specific moment in time, which generally lasts only a few minutes. It is something enjoyable, but lasts only for that short space of time - afterwards it's back to the usual daily routines. I view it like a great dessert, which I can thoroughly enjoy, but when I'm full, I stop. And like all desserts, I don't want the same one every day, it stops being special.

But we insist that we eat only this dessert - and in my experience it's not always particularly enjoyable - and have no other. Again, absurd. Why do we link an act which takes place for such a short time to life long fidelity? No wonder it doesn't work and never has.

There is also a hidden assumption that one person can fulfil all the needs of another. Another absurdity. One can speak of luck if the partners have more than 50% of interests and wishes in common. But 100%? No. Each person brings a different background and sets of experience into the equation, and so can fulfil many needs, but never all. There will always be some areas where they have to agree to disagree. Sex, may well and often is one of these areas. Everything else may be perfect but that isn't. Does that mean we should throw out the baby with the bathwater? Again, absurd.

On top of that, the sexual activity may well result in beginning the process of pregnancy. That particular result is not always a wished for result and in which case, decisions have to be made. And not be external parties, such as churches or states. If they insist that an unwanted pregnancy should not be aborted, they should also take the responsibility of taking care of that child. Those who wish to regulate abortion, only wish to prevent it, without also taking the responsibility for the results. Do they? Of course not! Both church and state do nothing whatsoever about the consequences of their interference. This has resulted in so much pain for so many people, both parents and children, but that is ignored. At the end of the day, you cannot regulate sex, the act of love in a moment between two people. It is entirely the responsibility of the two people involved. Of course many men pass the full responsibility on to the mother and absolve themselves from their own part in the pregnancy. That is equally absurd. More importantly, it is not the act of a human being full of love. It's the act of an irresponsible person, not yet a full human being.