Some ideas about love and sex

For me unconditional love (at least at the extreme that I think it ought to exist within a committed domestic partnership) is about a combination (perhaps a paradoxical one) of total acceptance of a person AND a desire to help that person become free from the things that hold them back: to help that person grow and thrive and change and improve - improve even though in the eyes of the beholder in this example that person is already perfect.

It seems to me that one of the BIG things people can do in a marriage (and also as a parent) is learn how to continually (re)discover the proper balance between and integration of these aspects of unconditional love.

True, lasting erotic feelings for the same single individual grow from this process of experiencing and sharing unconditional love - and that process better be self directed too, or it just ain't gonna work out well for anyone concerned.

Sexual arousal can reasonably be a fact of one’s daily life because it can follow naturally from the event of emotionally connecting with people around us in the world. These connections all contain the sparks of unconditional love because unconditional love is something we are each born into, retain a memory of, and have a longing to feel again.

If a man is predominantly heterosexual, when he interacts with a woman in some way that brings to him a feeling of connection with her, then it follows that he may begin to feel an erotic surge toward her. This can feel good and natural and healthy and he needn’t act on it because to do so would be inappropriate much of the time. He can just enjoy it inside himself, or if it does seem appropriate to do so he can attempt a tentative expression of his feelings.

One of the places where some people might reasonably have difficulty is in maintaining a level of this erotic surge in the face of things that might cause distraction from the feeling of connectedness. Unconditional love comes in at this place because unconditional love is like a perpetual motion machine – it keeps on running in the background of a relationship that it is an established part of, even when things happen that would shut down the erotic progression of an interaction in a relationship where unconditional love had not been created.

These “shut down” events happen all the time in the absence of established unconditional love relationships – trying to “pick someone up” who isn’t interested for whatever reason, and being rejected. They also happen all the time even in the presence of unconditional love - stopping oneself from sexually engaging with a child or family member with whom one feels very close.

This is part of what being sexually well-mannered and “moral” are all about – figuring out how to channel one’s erotic surges and sexual desires appropriately and in ways that both individuals and the society as a whole will reward with positive feedback.

Comments anyone?

Sorry if it's a bit cold and analytical.