Chasing Sex, Catching Love

Mastering Mind Games

Accept the likelihood someone you deeply love — who promised to be loyal and spend the rest of their lives with you — might act on their temptations and occasionally have sex with other people over time.

There is no way to psychologically prepare for this reality.

Stop torturing yourself — surrender to your lack of control.

We’re saturated with billions of books, movies, and TV shows endlessly entertaining us with stories of wild sex, debauchery, cheating, lying, hypocrisy, and who ends up with whom.

If someone does us wrong, it may mean they don’t really love us or they simply had a moment of weakness — you’ll never know for absolute certain — stop torturing yourself — surrender to your lack of control.

Does it matter if they still love you or not?

If someone cheats on you, does it matter if they say it was just meaningless sex and they still love you?

We seem to think it does.

“Save the Last Dance For Me,” is a popular song about a man basically “allowing” his girl to “dance” with as many men as she wishes, as long as she saves the last dance for him.

There are numerous examples of people who end up later in life with someone who they previously dated or were even married to at one time.

It makes sense as we age, that the role sex plays in our minds and lives evolves and changes.

As we get older we crave and reminisce about long-lost loves — the one that got away.

Sex is the short game; love might last forever.

Am I saying “love” has a way of coming back around if it’s real?

Yes.

Does that mean we married the wrong person?

No.

Does that mean we should wait around our whole lives because our true love will eventually realize the errors of their ways?

No. That would be foolish.

But, hear me clearly, I am 1000% certain we ALL have a person (or two) for whom we simply fall madly, deeply, profoundly, and hopelessly in love with — a person we can’t stop thinking about even years after they’re gone.

We all have someone who we lose physically, but can’t seem to shake mentally or emotionally.

We chase sex; we catch love

Sometimes sex is the wonderful beginning of a life-long marriage; other times it signifies nothing but a momentary pleasure of the flesh.

The physical attraction and pleasures of the flesh propel our feelings and emotions into a cerebral world of lust, desire, fantasy, and if we’re lucky, realization.

Then, we exploit that sex and passion like a 5-year-old on a Big Wheel.

We want to capture, hold, and keep that mind-blowing excitement and pleasure going for as long as we can.

While couples can certainly spice up their sex lives, there is a honeymoon stage, and relationships and marriages evolve from courting to dating to wild sex to a more comfortable, secure experience.

We know the game — we just can’t stop playing it

We know we’re always going to crave (don’t love this expression but it fits) “fresh meat.”

That is, we’re biological animals who evolved from apes and will always have visceral, perhaps even subconscious, attractions to many people over our lifetimes.

We get so nervous, paranoid, fearful, and anxious about losing our boyfriends, girlfriends, and spouses, yet doesn’t everyone have the occasional temptation to sleep with the pool boy?

We’re human beings for crying out loud.

What if we stopped worrying whether someone who promised to only have sex with us, ends up sleeping with their secretary or a stranger in an airplane bathroom?

What if we simply assume when our spouse is on a business trip, they will have sex with someone else and there’s not a thing we can do about it — other than drive ourselves crazy with worry?

Accepting sex and love are largely separate beasts, is impossible for some because, for them, they are inextricably linked

Sure, love and sex overlap and intersect but they exist mostly on different planets.

Sex is thrilling

If your pleasure in life is to have sex with as many people as possible without committing to anything serious, that’s a viable option for you to make.

If you want to find someone, fall in love, and only have sex with that person for life, that’s an option for you to decide.

Your soulmate, life partner, or spouse, may, or may not be on the same page as you romantically. You may be faithful and they may not be…or vice versa.

You cannot have both — having multiple sex partners is a thrilling lifestyle but it’s not love.

Ultimately, we choose between sex and love— or it chooses for us.

We can fake good sex…

We don’t like to put it this way but people trade sex for money all the time.

When someone says they “married up,” they don’t mean they married the girl (or boy) on the 27th instead of the 25th floor — it means they married someone, at least in part, because they could provide them with a materialistic lifestyle for which they couldn’t ordinarily afford.

We shouldn’t faint or clutch our pearls because people often couple up based on what’s in it for them, materialistically.

Sure, an attraction of some kind is nice, but faking an orgasm here and there is a reasonable price to pay for being ushered into the upper class with all its associated accouterments: BMW’s, Spas, mini-mansions, and yachts.

…but you can’t fake good love

I suppose an actress, perhaps someone of Meryl Streep’s talent, could pretend to love someone convincingly enough, to fake it.

If love is caring for someone, being there when they need you, and remaining devoted regardless of temptation, then someone could easily break down those ingredients and provide them for a price, right?

As of 11:04 am on January 20, 2022, nobody has invented an effective love potion and cupid is cute but he’s a fairy tale.

We know when love is real or not.

We mistake feelings of desire and passion for love

We define those grandiose, manic, explosive sexual desires as love because they feel so overwhelming and powerful, what else could they signify?

And just like we hope any wildly enjoyable activity will last forever, we know that sex, like most things we do repetitively, loses its excitement over time.

So why do we get jealous if sex is not the main ingredient of love?

Why are we afraid we will lose love when someone strays?

Is the thought of someone being physically intimate with someone else just too much to bear?

Do we see sex as the portal into love and therefore if someone we love has sex with someone else, it means they’re going to drop us for them?

Are we just being selfish and should learn to share our spouses sexually with others?

Answers

It doesn’t make you selfish to prefer your wife avoids having sex with the pool boy. It will make you anxious, nervous, paranoid, and fearful if you’re constantly worried about it.

You’ll never be able to control someone else’s decisions as it relates to their libido and which moral principles they follow.

If a sudden sexual opportunity arises and it looks like we can get away with it…many of us will proceed, despite consciously knowing we’re potentially sabotaging and ruining our relationship or marriage.

Yet we forgive.

Or don’t.

And life moves on.

Sex stagnates; love evolves

Sex can only grow so much.

Love can evolve into indescribably powerful emotions, feelings, desires, and pleasures.

You can control who you have sex with, but not who you love.

You find sex, love finds you.

And when love decides to pair you up with someone, you are, to a large extent, at its mercy — Cupid doesn’t fool around.

Summary

My initial goal was to express how different sex is from love, but we already know that.

We know we’re basically intelligent apes with animalistic instincts — particularly when it comes to sex.

Perhaps it’s time to stop playing mind games and torturing ourselves mentally and emotionally over whether our girlfriends, boyfriends, or spouses are going to cheat on us and leave.

They are.

Or they’re not.

If they do, they’ll lie about it.

If they don’t, you’ll have no way of verifying whether they’re telling the truth.

There is no psychological way to prepare ourselves for someone being unfaithful and breaking our hearts. Either surrender, and accept this reality, or live in a constant state of anxiety and fear over something you cannot control.

While we’ll never know how deeply someone loves us, the passing of time has a way of sorting these things out — sex is the short game; love can last forever.

Because sex is typically the portal into love, we’re afraid our mates will fall in love with someone else if they sleep with them.

The thought of someone we love sharing the most intimate of physical contact with someone else is unbearable — but not insurmountable.

I bolded “not insurmountable” because I didn’t always feel that way.

I used to believe if one person cheated, it signified the end of the relationship or marriage.

I do not believe that way anymore.

Does that mean I think love will always find a way despite having sexual indiscretions? Not necessarily.

You may be angry and hurt and feel you could never forgive them, but time has a way of putting things in perspective.

Love is a pernicious, ever-mutating, beast.

We know who we love. Sometimes we get another bite at the apple with the “one that got away.”

Sometimes we indulge ourselves with sweet thoughts and memories of someone we love, knowing we’ll never be with them again “for real.”

In the meanwhile, (and I’m telling this to myself most of all) we need to chill the hell out and enjoy being with “the one we’re with,” even if that’s ourselves.

It’s normal to fantasize about past loves (or strangers) even when you’re devoted to someone else.

Control what you can (your behavior); accept what you cannot (others behavior), enjoy dating, enjoy sex, enjoy love, and, most of all, enjoy your life — you deserve it!

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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