Man, I wish I could write like Dawn Eden.
(added): In a Sunday Times piece, she tells us why "Casual sex is a con: women just aren't like men:"
In the 1960s the future Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown famously asked: Can a woman have sex like a man? Yes, she answered because “like a man, [a woman] is a sexual creature”. Her insight launched a million “100 new sex tricks” features in women’s magazines. And then that sex-loving feminist icon Germaine Greer enthused that “groupies are important because they demystify sex; they accept it as physical, and they aren’t possessive about their conquests”
Says Eden,
...In some ways, the touring rock musician was my ideal sexual partner. By bedding them I could enjoy a temporary sort of fairy-tale bond; knowing it was bound to be fleeting as we would both move on meant that I never had to confront my own vulnerability about properly making a connection with someone. I could establish a transient intimacy and never have to deal with the real thing — and the real rejection that might entail.Of course the rejection would come as the latest lover moved on to the next town and the next woman — but somehow, being able to see it coming made me feel more in control. I was choosing, I thought, the lesser pain.
But in all that casual sex, there was one moment I learnt to dread more than any other. I dreaded it not out of fear that the sex would be bad, but out of fear that it would be good. If the sex was good, then, even if I knew in my heart that the relationship wouldn’t work, I would still feel as though the act had bonded me with my sex partner in a deeper way than we had been bonded before. It’s in the nature of sex to awaken deep emotions within us, emotions that are unwelcome when one is trying to keep it light.
On such nights the worst moment was when it was all over. Suddenly I was jarred back to earth. Then I’d lie back and feel bereft. He would still be there, and if I was really lucky, he’d lie down next to me. Yet, I couldn’t help feeling like the spell had been broken. We could nuzzle or giggle or we could fall asleep in each other’s arms but I knew it was play acting and so did he. We weren’t really intimate — it had just been a game. The circus had left town.
Though Ms. Eden is speaking of the one-night stand or the casual hook-up (or whatever it’s called these days), I suggest that non-marital sexual relationships – even long-term ones – are even more damaging, because they drag the whole game out. The focus is still upon sex and “being together” rather than a relationship in which one has pledged to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, until death do us part.
Anyone who’s read Anais Nin (or tried to live her kind of life) knows that, in unfettered abandonment to one’s own sexuality through impulsive dream-chasing, attraction-nabbing, and desire-satiating, one actually disperses one's sexuality. And loses one’s self. One loses it in trying to find it, as well as the fulfilment one was hoping to find. Nin is celebrated as a feminist embodying female self-discovery, sexual self-realization and self-command, but in the end her sexual adventures left her just as disturbed as when she started. And just as empty and emotionally wrecked.
Contrast this to the mutual, ongoing discovery of the full sexuality of another along side of and combined with one’s own, within the rhythms of shared life and discovery in other areas. Within the security of the married-for-life relationship. Here is where deep cause for delight, joy, hope, and earthly fulfilment can be found.
I am fully aware that the state of marriage does not automatically guarantee these things. Selfish attitudes toward sex in any context can lead to real misery. Even within marriage, sexual problems can be incredibly painful, and physical or other problems may hamper the sexual relationship. Spouses can, and do, hide from intimacy with each other even while participating in sexual acts together.
However, problems can be overcome. And the only context in which they have any hope of being overcome, for real, is within the commitment of marriage. Spouses can teach and learn from one another in a lifetime process -- only within marriage is there a long term for hope.
Dawn Eden’s book, The Thrill of the Chaste, was published in December. Read more of Dawn at her blog, The Dawn Patrol.
HT: Sun and Shield
