Love and lust are strange bedfellows.
New love feels so good we naturally want it to last forever.
Love and sex are so overwhelmingly joyous and powerful we want them to be eternally linked, but they are most certainly not.
“What about us?
What about all the broken happy ever afters?
What about love? What about trust?
What about us?” Song by Pink
This song by Pink might as well be an anthem for those who just got the breath knocked out of them from someone who swore they’d love them forever but didn’t.
We’re getting our labels and definitions all wrong, and actually brainwashing and gaslighting ourselves to believe a delusion and falsehood about love.
Most believe love and sex are two sides of two same coin, that sex is an expression of love.
They are 100% wrong.
Love and sex are not the same things.
Love and sex initially coexist but not for long
In its early stage, we perceive love as a game or a challenge.
If all the components are there: attraction, compatibility, excitement, wonder, and good sex, we think we’ve won the love game.
We desperately want to believe in the fairytale of forever after.
So, we label it
In a well-intended attempt to preserve the magic of new love, we proclaim it to the world.
Does anything feel better than changing your Facebook or Instagram from “single” to “in a relationship?” It makes you feel like you just won the lottery.
And it gives you the sense you locked it in forever.
It’s no secret when Beyonce suggested men “put a ring on it,” it resonated with so many.
Initially love and sex are confused as the same thing
When we’re sexually attracted to someone and wanna have sex with them, we twist our psyche to define it as a love process because we think it’ll make it last longer and have more meaning than simply a down and dirty romp.
When we’re in that initial explosive love stage we want it to last so badly we often trust our intelligent, rational brain to keep it going.
Fresh love feels so good we’ll do anything to keep it alive.
But no matter how hard we try, love evolves and changes.
Love and sex have a fragile agreement
Love begins like Siamese twins who cannot survive without each other but end up getting surgically separated. Sure, they’re still very close but no longer need each other for everything….or anything.
During the early stages of “love,” we fantasize about the person who is electrifying our life so powerfully. But we don’t know them well enough to care beyond the physical attraction.
As we begin to share thoughts, ideas, and accept each other’s humanity, talking dirty in bed becomes more of a comedy than a turn-on.
And, like anything in life, something that is originally new, fresh, and breathtaking becomes old and familiar.
Love and sex ultimately part ways
Exhibit A: When the caring, loving, devoted, wife caught her husband having kinky, filthy sex with his secretary, he was very remorseful. When she asked him why he didn’t have that kind of sex with her, he gasped and said he could never do those dirty things with her, he loves her way too much.
Loosely defined, love is a deep appreciation, admiration, and desire to be with someone all the time.
Sex, on the other hand, is an animalistic, biological, chemical interaction between two or more people (masturbation notwithstanding).
Sure, sex can be an expression of love and love can emerge from sex, but they are two completely different experiences.
Love is a feeling, an emotion, an experience, a disposition.
Sex is a behavior. It may feel great…or not. It may be with someone who you love…or not. But it is always a physical, biological event. Period.
We know we can have sex with multiple people, but can we love more than one person?
As difficult as it is to say out loud, we know the answer.
Yes. We can love more than one person at a time.
The better question is whether we can devote our time and energy to the person we choose to love the most.
Love stands alone
I could get silly here and suggest you place love in one lane and sex in another. And to spend time with the one you love and have sex with the one you’re with.
But I have a more profound observation.
I’ve been married twice. Once for 7 years and once for 13 years years and both times (prior to divorce), I found the years of shared experience, raising of the children, and building hopes and dreams together, to be extremely enjoyable and meaningful. I define that as our true love stage, despite the fact that sex had long become routine and familiar.
It turns out (to my knowledge) there was no sexual cheating during my marriages but it would be a lie to suggest there wasn’t temptation and the desire to be with others.
Our whole lives we’re fed this jargon and nonsense that if you truly love someone you won’t have any sexual desires for anyone else. That is, pardon me, total bullshit.
Just because we fall in love with someone doesn’t mean we lose our biological humanity.
It is normal to have temptation and desire for someone other than your spouse or lifemate.
It is normal to want to have sex with many different people while at the same time truly loving one person.
Whether you decide to pursue sexual relations with many people or just the one you’re committed to, is a personal choice.
Notice how I say choice. Those who claim they just couldn’t help themselves are full of it.
I am not suggesting we’re just a bunch of horny dogs.
I am suggesting we accept the fact that fairy tales are just that, imaginary stories.
Love is what’s left when everything else wears off.
Love is a devotion to someone despite everything.
Love invites sex in but doesn’t need it to exist.
Love doesn’t need Viagra, and Viagra certainly does not need love.
Love needs only one thing.
Togetherness.
Not because you’re married. Not because society says you should. Not because you put a ring on it. And not because you’re supposed to have mind-blowing sex until you’re 90 years old.
Togetherness because when you’re apart, life is less fulfilling and meaningful.
Togetherness because life is infinitely more enjoyable with someone.
Togetherness because no matter what has happened, or will happen, you need that person in your life.
Why?
Because you love them.
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.
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