”Having sex” doesn’t equal ”making love”, stupid!

Sooner or later, I assume most people reach a specific point in their development in which they either are capable to logically understand or even better experience themselves that there is a clear distinction between sex and love; that these two phenomena can be separated. Thus, ”having sex” does not necessarily mean ”making love”, because you can have sex without love with someone you just feel physical attraction to in the moment but the next day can leave behind without any strings attached — just like two radical atoms colliding and then repelling each other. Meanwhile, making love adds something important to a truly loveful relationship in which you deeply care about the union of two beautiful souls; hence the experience becomes something larger between atoms in a molecule, something larger than the sum of 1 + 1.

So where does that leave us in terms of evolution?

From an evolutionary standpoint, I may say that human sexuality is driven by her animalistic procreative instict just like any other low-level animal like e.g. a reptile.¹ After all, we are basically animals. But I also strongly suggest that as humans we also are more than animals, which is a standpoint so strong and obvious that no proof or arguments are needed. And that difference between animal and human penetrates almost everything we do in our (post)modern world; oftentimes so profoundly that we forget that we also are animals.

On the other hand, love between humans usually means a deep connection and attachment, just like a strong bond between two atoms in a stable molecule. And having a bond is to have an attachment to someone over time, an attachment that most people thrive by as long as their respect and concern are fairly mutual in regards to their partner. That being said, what is more beautiful than to fully merge with body, mind and soul in a lovemaking process — with respect and concern rather than sexual impatience and demands! I would even claim that such impatience and demands may be harmful for any intimate relationship over time due to the mental, emotional and/or physical violence it may contain.

Let the wise teacher speak

In a short YouTube clip, the Australian spiritual teacher Barry Long² teaches us the distinction between sex and love. Below the clip, I offer its transcript for those of you who prefer reading over listening. But here is also a summary:

The teacher Barry Long argues that the main obstacle to love between men and women is a misunderstanding of the distinction between love and sex. This confusion particularly affects women, leading them to become distracted from their true selves and the experience of negative emotions.

He contrasts love and sex by characterizing sex as:

• Goal-oriented: focused on achieving orgasm or power.
• Impatient: easily frustrated by interruptions.
• Demanding: seeking excitement and release.

In contrast, love is described as:

• Patient: not dependent on immediate gratification.
• Unconditional: not requiring specific actions or outcomes.
• Constant: not easily disrupted or forgotten.

Essentially, Bary Long suggests that sex is a physical act driven by physical desire (hence low-level reptile attraction), while love is a deeper emotional connection (hence mammals and even more so humans) that transcends the physical.

Transcript

The great impediment to the love between man and woman is that they have not realized they do not know the difference between love and sex. This applies particularly in the case of woman because she is the prize of existence, and if she doesn’t know the difference between love and sex, she gets distracted from what she is. And when she’s not being what she is, she gets moody, emotional, unhappy, unfulfilled.

And love — I’ll speak of love first of all. To know what love is, you have to know what the false is because love is true and sex is false. So the best way to demonstrate love is to demonstrate sex to you now. Sex is violent; that means it’s trying to reach an end, either an orgasm or power over another. It’s always got an end. Sex is impatient. So, the man that a woman’s with, if he is impatient, he has sex in him, for love is not impatient. The love between man and woman physically is not impatient.

Sex can be interrupted in the action of making love. If the phone rings or they’re interrupted by the children, then the sex either is likely to get, uh, frustrated, whereas love would never get frustrated by the sexual act being interrupted because the love is always there, and there’s nothing to be interrupted except the action. And that does not matter because we can always come back again. But sex is impatient.

Sex is also demanding. ’Give me an orgasm! Get me more excited!’ It makes the mind move into… to visualize sexual situations of the past to give the emotions more power to get more excited so that I can disappear into this excitement. That’s sex, not love. Love does not imagine other bodies while I’m making love to this… this body, this woman. Um, sex… sex pursues ardently and then forgets about love. Having pursued so ardently, it can forget about love and go away until the biological urge comes again or the imagination has provoked the desire to come back to the woman instead of loving her, just loving her.

So, whatever sex is, love is the opposite. Love does not get discontented. Love does not get frustrated. Love does not get impatient. Love never has to say, if it’s a man, ’Oh, I’ve got to come! I’ve got to have release!’ Not true. That’s sex. Sex has to have release, not love.

Footnotes

1. I refer to reptiles since they most often don’t care very much about their babies like humans, most mammals and birds do, and even less so who they have been copulating with. With other words, reptiles are animals without attachment. They just procreate because their instincts push them to do it. That is not to say that it is morally wrong or disgusting, only that in a developmental perspective it is a lower-level phenomenon; not for a reptile but for a human. Something that proceeds the subsequent levels of development for the human species, just like e.g. a three year old child eventually will grow into a ten year old, a teenager, an adolescent and an adult, and will become transformed by the process.
2. Barry Long was one of the spiritual teachers who inspired the world famous Eckhart Tolle to enter the spiritual stage.