Sex...

So often there’s so much we expect it to do for us.


More commonly than we might like to admit, we assign it to stress-release, intimacy-affirmation, spousal pacification, egoic gratification, pleasure-production, and other such tasks. We may use it as a super sleeping pill, a rapid-action pick-me-up, an agent of consolation, a haven or hideout, a control tactic, a proof that we’re not that old or cold. We may also employ it as a psychological garburetor, a handy somatic terminal for discharging the energies of various unwanted states, like loneliness or rage or desperation -- thereby turning our sexual partner, if we have one, into little more than an outhouse for such feelings. Mostly, though, we just tend to want sex to make us feel better, and use it accordingly, whether in mundane, dark, or spiritual contexts.

Thus do we get screwed.

Our addiction to being pleasurably stimulated and distracted is perhaps nowhere more obvious than in the sexual arenas we erect, populate, and dramatize.

The abuse of sex, particularly through the expectations with which we commonly burden it, is so pervasive and deeply ingrained as to go largely unnoticed, except in its more lurid, obviously dysfunctional, or perverse extremes. Even more removed from any telling awareness is our aversion to truly exploring and illuminating the whole matter of human sexuality, not clinically, nor in any other kind of isolation (or in vitro corralling), but in the context of our entire being, our totality, our inherent wholeness.

That is, sex cannot be crystallized out from the rest of our experience (as those who are overly focused on the mechanics of sexuality are inclined to do). Rather, it needs to be seen, felt, and lived in vital, open-eyed resonance -- and relationship -- with everything we do and are, so that it is, as much as possible, not just an act of specialized function, nor an act bound to the chore of making us feel better, but rather an unfettered expression of already-present, already-loving, already-unstressed wholeness.

To begin to significantly embody such wholeness requires, among other things, a thorough investigation of the labor to which we have assigned -- or sentenced -- our sexuality. That labor and its underpinnings are eloquently revealed in the stark slang of sex.

Many of the words and phrases denoting human coitus bluntly illustrate our often confused, disrespectful, and exploitive attitude toward our sexuality, and sexuality in general. Consider, for example, the notorious and enormously popular multivalent “f” word, for which there are an incredible number of non-copulatory meanings, a fucking incredible number, all pointedly and colorfully describing what we may actually be up to when we’re busy being sexual or erotically engaged.

Here is a partial list, most of which overlap in meaning with each other: ignorance (“Fucked if I know”); indifference (“I don’t give a fuck”); degradation (“You stupid fuck”); disappointment (“This is really fucked”); rejection (“Get the fuck out of here!”); manipulation (“You’re fucking with my head”); disgust (“Go fuck yourself”); vexation (“What the fuck are you doing?”); exaggeration (“It was so fucking good!”); situational MSG’ing (“What a fucking great meal!”); rage (“Fuck you!” or “Don’t fuck with me!”); and, perhaps most pithily revealing of all, exploitation (“I got fucked”). It is also worth noting that the noun “fucker” is, though usually far from complimentary, sometimes used in an affectionate or playful manner. A fine fucking mess.

Throw the various meanings of “fuck” together, plus the “higher” or more “decent” terms for sexual intercourse -- including the vague “having a relationship” and the unwittingly precise “sleeping together” -- and mix in some insight, and what will emerge, however dishevelled, is a collage made up of (1) the dysfunctional labor to which we’ve sentenced our sexual capacity, and (2) the expectations (like “Make me feel wanted”) with which we’ve saddled and burdened it.

When we mainly assign our sexuality to stress-release, intimacy-affirmation, egoic reassurance, the fueling of romantic delusion, and other such chores -- ever burdening it with the obligation to make us feel better -- we are doing little more than screwing ourselves, dissipating much of the very energy we need for facing and healing our woundedness, the woundedness that, ironically, we seek escape or relief from through the quick-release pleasuring and various sedating options provided by our sexuality. This is not to say that we should never use our sexuality for purposes such as stress-release and egoic comfort -- for there are times when doing so may be entirely appropriate -- but that such usage ultimately needs to be more the exception than the rule.

It is so easy to romanticize sex, making a grail, for example, out of the mutual orgasm. However, when we make coming together a goal, we simply come apart, separating and losing ourselves in our quest for maximally pleasurable sensations. “Sensational” sex is just that, sex that is centered and defined by an abundance of erotically engorged sensation. (The romanticized or glamorized presence of this kind of sensation is very commonly misrepresented as actual intimacy -- for example, we may say, “I was intimate with him or her,” when in actuality we’ve done no more than copulate with that person.)

The urge to merge. But only so far.

To individuate is, in part, to separate from; to thus separate may bring not only more freedom, but also more anxiety; more anxiety means an increased desire to reduce anxiety; and one of the most favored (but not necessarily always most successful) anxiety-reducing practices, particularly for men, is sex.

The attempt to reduce individuation anxiety through sexual merger may be more common than we’d like to think -- fusion with another may, however briefly, provide us with a very comforting sense of non-separation. Even solitary orgasm may seem to dissolve -- or at least take the edge off -- our sense of separateness, if only for a few moments. Sexual activity may also be employed as a means of assuaging death anxiety, as illustrated by the example of a man who, as his leukemia-ridden wife approached death, began compulsively going to pornography films and singles’ bars, masturbating several times each day (often while in bed beside his dying wife).

So the urge often may not be so much to merge, as to submerge and purge, to be both removed from and cathartically relieved of the sensations characteristic of anxiety and dread. But let us not settle for dismissing this with a spiritual slap on the wrist, nor with an overly tolerant okay. Instead, let us spend some quality time in this man’s shoes (and bed), letting ourselves really feel his desperation and hurt, his need for release, contacting and compassionately touching within ourselves the same place of distress-driven craving.

Inviting it onto the dancefloor and into our heart.

Who among us has not felt -- and given in to -- the compulsive side of his or her sexuality? The side that greedily, even ruthlessly, overassociates with whatever most juicily fits its desire, however dark or bizarre? In our thoughts, fantasies, and dreams, there is probably not much that we have not done, or at least considered (or imagined) doing sexually, but whom do we invite into our inner theatre to witness the uncensored dramatization of our “improper” or morally incorrect erotic appetites? It’s usually a very private show; we may even turn away from it, or don blindfolds, letting our minds and hands do the work. (Or we may turn it inside out, finding release in varying degrees of exhibitionism, resurrecting the excitation of being caught in the act, an excitation that is but eroticized amplification of our deep-rooted, long unrequited need to be discovered, to get a reaction, to be seen.)

However erotically raw or hot or succulent our inner sex-theatre may be, it is not necessarily about sex at all. To investigate this doesn’t mean that we have to tear down or condemn the theatre -- the bathwater may be dirty, but the baby is not. If we suppress what’s on stage, righteously legislate it to the outskirts or slums of our psyche, or otherwise disown it, we are in danger of losing touch with its details and feel.

Danger? Yes, because we need up-close, very specific, and finely-nuanced contact with our sexual fantasies, if only because in the details and thematic flow and scripting of those fantasies are the very dynamics that initially catalyzed them.

Therapists typically spend many hours trying to find out what makes their clients act the way they do, attempting to put together a picture that will clearly frame and explain their clients’ behavior. This process can sometimes be speeded considerably by asking, under the right conditions and at the right time, a simple question: What is (and/or was) your favorite masturbation fantasy? Of course, not everyone is prepared or willing to share such information, but when it is disclosed, honestly and openly, it speaks eloquently of that person’s core needs and his or her erotically-harnessed “solution” for dealing with them. The explicitly sexual details are not so important as the setting, context, and dramatis personae.

One’s arousal therein might, for example, be simply a matter of being openly and nonjudgmentally noticed by an undividedly attentive fantasy partner. Yes, one’s excitation or “charge” may manifest sexually in such fantasy, but it is only secondarily sexual, its primary impetus being rooted in a longing to be unconditionally loved and seen. This is further fleshed out and given psychodynamic depth by closely and carefully examining the supporting props in the fantasy -- who is doing the noticing, how is she or he doing that, what the setting is, and so on.

So our recurring erotic fantasies are tales well worth investigating, tales that reveal much about us. What they dramatize is simply the sexualizing -- the excitement -- of our longing to be fulfilled. The intensity of the pleasure or release that they promise is a marker of the intensity of the pain we are trying to bypass. Some masturbation fantasies may be quite complex, but their themes are not; in fact, such complexity might just reflect a need to have many things in order or under control so that the desired outcome can occur, a need that likely has its roots in many things having been out of order or control in one’s early years.

Masturbation fantasies serve to both maximize pleasurable stimulation and to discharge it -- in a sense, we seduce ourselves with erotic tension and its mounting expectations, thereby building enough charge to necessitate and even legitimize some kind of release. (Our primary desire here is not for joy and connection, but for desirelessness; we fill ourselves so as to be emptied, left with nothing but the peace of desiring nothing. A short-lived peace, to be sure, but nevertheless peace.)

We can use such fantasy for stress-release and egoic consolation, making ourselves feel a little better for a little while, or we can (also) use it to more fully know ourselves, sensitizing ourselves to the underlying pain of our self-eroticizing dramas. What exactly are we trying to get away from? To what is our driven self-pleasuring an attempted solution? What were we feeling and doing just before we animated our fantasy? In that fantasy, who possesses the power, and how? Is there any desperation in our fantasy? What do we need in our fantasy besides the overtly sexual? What age do we seem to be in our fantasy? Is there any shame in it, any anger, any hurt, any disgust? In it, are we in private, or are we exposed? What is our position, what body parts are foreground, what body parts are “out of the picture,” what is going on in the more “removed” parts of our anatomy?

And so on -- these and related questions are well worth asking, not so as to reduce our masturbation fantasies to analytical fodder, but so as to deepen our understanding of what we are actually up to when we are in their heated grip. None of this is to say that the erotic is necessarily neurotic. What really matters is what we do with it, and what we allow it to do.

Eroticism, however, is neurotic, insofar as it is obsessive interest in sexual possibility or opportunity. Eroticism makes an idol out of pleasurable excitation, addicting us to varying degrees to whatever maximizes, or once maximized, such charge. This intensifies not only our distress, but also our urge for orgasmic release.

Such release, however, is neither ecstasy nor liberation, but rather only exaggerated relief, a mere discharging of the branchings of distress, a flushing-away of tension (erotic and otherwise), closely akin to the relief felt when an extremely tight pair of shoes is finally removed. Repeatedly putting these shoes back on so as to later experience pleasurable release is close to the essence of eroticism.

Nevertheless, at the heart of eroticism -- and every other strategy to avoid our suffering -- is a longing to be truly free. Unfortunately, this longing usually is given so little energy and attention that it remains in the starting gate, while the steed of eroticism races round and round and round the track, jockeying itself into a position where satiation is inevitable.

Obsession with sexuality is both an escape from suffering and a mark of it. The fact that such obsession, whatever its mechanics, is often invested with -- or propagandized as having -- copious liberating power suggests that it may be a substitute for abandoned spiritual realization. (However, sexuality can be an integral part of spiritual practice, and even a kind of spiritual practice itself, existing beyond the manipulations of spiritual correctness.)

A substitute. But we must be careful not to let this lower or diminish our view of sexuality itself. Eroticism cheapens sexual desire, by reinforcing and exploiting the must in lust, but such desire in of itself does not necessarily signal a departure from spirituality.

It is so easy to view sex as being “down there,” somewhere below our headquarters. Is such hierarchical delusion any more liberating than the libido at which it pokes? When sex is assumed to be “lower,” it may then be brought into the service of spiritual ambition, and burdened with metaphysical or “tantric” expectations. The same old pelvic headlock, now wrapped in spiritual robes.

But instead of trying to manipulate ourselves, via our sexual capacity, into something “higher,”we could trust it, bringing to it not sexpectations, but simply our bared heart and already-present openness, riding its waves, its innate wildness, so freely that we cannot help but become inseparable from its depths, entering sacred territory at once familiar and ever-fresh, lovers dying into the Undying.

A. Andrew Gonzalez ( www.sublimatrix.com )