All posts by admin

love, sex and romance

Styles of Loving Relationship

Styles of Loving Relationship

One of the issues often faced by couples in new or existing relationships is that they fall out of love soon after the passion or “honeymoon period” is over. The stark realities of living a life together are such that sometimes the crucial aspects of a relationship are forgotten – in particular, the sexual compatibility of the man and the woman. 

Of all the subjects discussed here, love is the most difficult to define. To define it would be to make it finite, whereas love is infinite – no matter how much you love or give love, it is still there in you. You love and feel loved and yet can only begin to describe, not define, what love is. At every stage in the life cycle we need to love and to be loved. From the moment of birth a baby begins to learn what love is as it is held and nurtured by its parent(s); the emotional bond between a baby and its parents, the child’s first experience of love, is the foundation for the child’s abilities to give and receive love for the rest of its life. Without this elementary education, the child’s life will lack a crucial ingredient. Indeed, not to receive love in the early years of life can be traumatic, and shape a person’s identity and personality for ever. Such is the Lover wound, the damage manifesting as attachment disorders. Attachment disorders can be addressed later in life with various forms of therapy, although Inner Child work is particularly effective in that recovery of the ability to love and be loved. This features greatly in the therapeutic approach of shadow work, which is explained in this book.

We learn more of love as we develop. Not only do we receive love from our parents and give love to them, but we learn more of what love means from the ways that parents, siblings, more distant family members and other adults interact.

We learn gradually to accept ourselves as people capable of giving love and worthy of receiving it. We learn to love ourselves, and we learn that without being able to love ourselves we are unable to express love properly for others. Love is learned. 

Views of love are almost as numerous as the people who have sought to define it, but St Paul’s description of love is justly famous: “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous, or conceited or proud; love is not ill mannered, or selfish or irritable: love does not keep a record of wrong: love is not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth. Love never gives up. Love is eternal….There are faith, hope and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Sociologist Robert Winch believed that love is the result of two people with complementary needs getting together – the weaknesses of one are balanced by the strengths of the other. Erich Fromm saw love as the way out of the isolation we all feel, while another psychologist, Harry Stack Sullivan, believed that love was caring for another as one cared for oneself.

Sexologists take a fairly original view when they speculate that there are pathways in the brain that are particularly concerned with love; when we understand the circuitry of the brain we will understand more about what makes us love. It seems that whatever love is, it contains elements of an inbuilt urge to express care and nurturing, support and affection. When we love, we express some profound and intrinsic parts of ourselves. But what of the relationship between love and sex?

Can sex be separate from love?

Yes. Although there seems to be a growing tendency toward making true affection a precondition of sexual activity, many people have had pleasurable and non-exploitative sex without being in love. Psychologist Albert Ellis, among others, believed sex without love should be socially acceptable as long as no harm is done to either partner, and that such an attitude would remove the guilt from many sexual relationships. Sex is one of the ways in which love is expressed: sex is the language of intimacy, mutuality and friendship. It is dignified and it embodies commitment to oneself and to one’s partner. It is in this context that sex can be truly fun and playful – within a loving relationship, playfulness in sexual acts does not reduce the dignity of the communication, rather, it is an additional, valuable dimension. When someone has once experienced sex and love together it is the combination he or she will seek forever.

Why do people sometimes talk about romantic love as something different from ordinary love?

The concept of love changes a little from society to society and from age to age; the word ‘love’ is always there, but slightly different meanings attach to it. ‘Romantic love’ was the name given to a modified view of love that came into fashion about 200 years ago. It was intended to convey the highest, purest, most passionate form of love, defying all laws and conventions and superior to all other emotions. 

The ideas contained in romantic love were not new, but they were more dramatic and insistent than what was around at the time. We have a strong legacy of romantic love in our popular view of what we call ‘love,’ but we tend now to mix it with more realistic considerations of making relationships work. 

The Greeks defined two such types of love: philia, friendship or brotherly love, and agape, an idealistic love that is for the welfare of others. (The Greeks described love that included sex as eros.)” Here are some more types of love.

AGE and SEX

There are no age limits on loving or the need to be loved. From the moment of birth to the moment of death, men and women alike need to be loved and can express love. The ways in which love is felt and expressed vary from stage to stage in life but the central need and ability remain. Loving during infancy is different in its expression from love during adolescence. In adulthood, loving relationships have their basis in what was learned during earlier years and the expression will probably change again as adulthood proceeds. 

One of the enduring myths about age is that older people cease to love and at best let their love dwindle to a serene affection. Their capacity for loving is undiminished, as is their need to receive love. The most potent symbol of this love is the act of sexual union, for a woman, the potent symbol of her love for him is the implicit permission she gives her man to love her physically, to enter her body.

RELATIONSHIPS

When people appreciate themselves and recognize their value and worth, it could be said that they love themselves – not in in an immature, narcissistic way, but in a mature, respectful one. When a person has achieved a true sense of him- or herself in this way, he or she has the capacity to enter a relationship and love another person. Love is infinite and will not run out when shared, but to love fully people have to have learned how to love. Part of learning to love is appreciating the worth of other people, and part of appreciating their worth is coming to an understanding of one’s own.  

The sexual acts which are the special language and communication of one kind of love may be expressed in one relationship only, but the loving relationships with the other people are still valid. The situation that presents more difficulty is when someone feels love for more than one person. If you believe in sexual exclusivity in relationships, then you have a fundamental decision to make about how to carry on. No-one can prescribe an answer here, it must come from within. The experience of others – good or bad – is no better guide than their advice.

TOUCHING AND CARESSING

Touching and caressing are enjoyable, fulfilling, sensuous and sexual. From earliest childhood touching is crucial to emotional development and the growth of a healthy self-image. In adulthood it is an important source of fulfilment and communication. Touching, caressing and fondling can be enriching, satisfying acts of sensual communication in themselves. Some people seem to regard them as being appropriate only when intercourse or some other sexual act is to follow, but it is devaluing this form of erotic contact to see it in such a limited context.

Touching and caressing can be enjoyably explored through some kind of massage, in which each partner takes time to touch or stroke parts of the other’s body in a deliberately sensuous and relaxing way. It is not necessary to have learned the proper techniques of massage to make this kind of communication highly satisfying, but it works best when each partner lets the other know what he or she enjoys most.

Some parts of the body are particularly sensitive to touch – the genitals are the most obvious example – but all parts if touched sensitively can bring pleasure. Everyone differs in their responsiveness in different areas and in their responses to variations in the nature of the touch. An erotic massage can be a satisfying act in itself, whether or not it results in orgasm. It is an act that some couples enjoy particularly because it is an opportunity for one to concentrate on giving and the other on receiving, rather than both partners giving and receiving simultaneously, as in intercourse and other acts. It is a very good way both for partners to arouse each other and to prolong a sense of intimacy.

 

masculinity and maleness

Male Power

Sexual Oppression

When people use the term “sexual oppression” , they usually mean the oppression of women by men. And maybe with good reason, for history reveals that such oppression has been at the root of many societies. 

The feminists of the sixties (and later), in fighting against this order of things, saw the penis as the tool by which men oppressed women – the penis being both a symbol of men’s assumed superiority and the physical ” weapon” with which they subjugated women. The debate – or argument – may seem outdated nowadays, but it’s worth recapping, and anyone who’s interested will find it clearly set out in the book A Mind Of Its Own by David M Friedman.

Basically, feminists who railed against sexual oppression thought that the relationship between the vagina and the penis was not a private matter at all – it was actually a political relationship. How? Because intercourse itself was a representation of the dominant-submissive polarity in which the penis (i.e. male power) penetrates, and the vagina (i.e. female passivity) receives what the male chooses to give. Heterosexuality itself was attacked for defining female eroticism in terms of male needs. This raises some fascinating questions about what makes men and women fall in love.

Over time, this anger came to focus upon the penis. Women began to question who was in charge of them – the penis (seeing it as an entity somehow representative of and yet separate from men, a symbol of male power with a life of its own), or themselves.

In this viewpoint, the criticism levelled at women since the days of Freud onwards, that failure to achieve orgasm during vaginal intercourse was a sign of sexual ” immaturity”, becomes transmuted into a symbol of men’s desire to keep women in their place. While a clitoral orgasm, not being dependant on thrusting in the vagina, threatens the superiority of the penis and the basis of male power, and hence it is undesirable. 

What’s more, for those men who really were sexually motivated by lust, power or contempt for women, but little else, the pill represented a humiliation, for it gave women power over contraception and hence power over the penis. These views may seem extreme nowadays, but you have to understand the cultural context of the sixties and seventies, when they no doubt seemed very real to women brought up in a culture where the roles open to women were very much more restricted than they are today.

As time went by, the sense of oppression lessened as feminism (in the broadest sense) became more mainstream. For example, Shere Hite’s ground-breaking report on female sexuality, revealed much about female sexuality that dispelled the illusions of women who believed they were sexually inadequate.

For example, many women were led to believe that they “should” have a vaginal orgasm if a penis was thrusting away in their vagina. And many women have been relieved to discover the fact that over 70% of women don’t reach orgasm through vaginal intercourse alone.

Rape, too, was analyzed in terms of sexual politics. The ability of a man to penetrate a woman’s body against her will was interpreted, by some, as the ultimate test of a man’s superior strength, the triumph of his manhood. “Man’s discovery that his penis could serve as a weapon ranks as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire and the first crude stone axe,” wrote one female commentator of the time.

There are, by the way, many problems and objections with these arguments. To name one, in some Asian cultures rape is practically non-existent. To name another, some scientists have suggested that far from being a political act, rape is a desperate, evolutionarily motivated attempt to reproduce by socially inadequate males who can’t win a partner.

In the context of all these arguments, it was inevitable that scientists would start to research the levels of arousal that men experienced when confronted with various sexual stimuli, then go on to try and establish if there were any relationships between sexual violence and male sexual biology.

For example, if a “normal” man becomes aroused when confronted with images of sexual violence, what does this mean? Does it mean that he has a repressed desire to engage in sexual violence? Does it mean that all men are potential rapists? Clearly, these are important questions. In one controversial study, a psychologist at the UCLA wired up the penises of college men to a device which measured sexual arousal and then asked them to read accounts of consensual sex and non-consensual sex (i.e. rape).

It seemed that the men were equally turned on by the descriptions of consensual and non-consensual sex. Somehow, I have a sense that most men will not be surprised by this finding, and probably not find it particularly shocking. I was once told that one of the most difficult things for a male psychotherapist was finding himself aroused as his clients recounted episodes of sexual violence towards them.

The more vociferous feminists will of course claim that “evidence” like this does indeed prove that all men are potential rapists, but in my view nothing could be further from the truth. It is precisely because we men have such good control over our sexual urges that we are not all potential rapists, and to suggest otherwise is a disservice to relationships between men and women and inherently disrespectful of men.

And in case the point is still not clear to you: such experiments (or anecdotes) do not establish any kind of link between arousal and behavior. In fact they do not even demonstrate what it is that is sexually arousing about such depictions of sex: the sex itself, the sexual violence, the presence of an erect penis, the thought of having sex with one’s partner, and no doubt many other possibilities as well.

The penis, testosterone, and sexual politics

What role does testosterone have in all this? Andrew Sullivan, former editor of the New Republic, once wrote about his experience of taking testosterone shots, the effects of which included, according to him, a propensity for violent confrontation.

As a result of his ” experiment” , Sullivan suggested that while culture and social upbringing had a significant effect on a man’s adult behavior, testosterone was the major influence on aggressiveness, self-confidence, impulsiveness, dominance, risk-taking, physical intimidation and violence, up to and including murder.

This mirrors Germaine Greer’s comments about how she felt after taking testosterone. I think I am right in saying that she said she could now understand how men could commit rape, with such a powerful sexual drive.

The obvious problem with Sullivan’s report of his experiences with testosterone is that while whatever he reports may indeed be true for him, it proves nothing about anyone else, nor does it prove that there is a link between testosterone and aggression. But is it really possible that varying testosterone levels are responsible for the different behaviours – including rape – found in men?

Are high testosterone men without partners more likely to commit rape, for example? There has been no shortage of investigations conducted into these questions, but unfortunately they have produced conflicting answers.

One of the foremost researchers in this field has been Professor James M. Dabbs of Georgia University. He observes that testosterone levels are in fact generally higher in physically imposing, aggressive, highly competitive men, the kind we would think of as ” macho men”. (For a view of what constitutes genuine masculinity, rather than overt “maleness”, read this book on male archetypes and masculinity. And this follow-up, Finding The King Within, expands on the concepts of what makes a man – with reference to the “King Archetype” and how men can embody it more fully.)

But unfortunately, there is no evidence of any kind to link testosterone level and criminal behavior. Nonsense, you may say: what of the rapists and child abusers who ask to be chemically castrated (or are ordered to be so by the courts) and then become meek and mild citizens?

Well, some rapists and child molesters have been shown to have very low levels of testosterone, so there is no clear general link. It begins to look as if testosterone cannot be blamed for the bad behavior of men in the way that it has been in the past.

There are, however, a number of studies which show that men who are living in a social milieu where aggression and violence are commonplace have, on average, higher levels of testosterone than most men.

But as has been pointed out by Professor Robert M. Sapolsky, of Stanford University, if you notice a correlation between levels of aggression and levels of testosterone, it could be that (a) testosterone elevates aggression, or (b) aggression elevates testosterone, or (c) neither causes the other. And while everyone seems to think (a) is true, the surprise is that actually it’s (b) that’s true.

The elevated levels of testosterone found in inner city men, for example, is not the cause of their aggression it is the consequence of the aggressive lives they lead. As Sapolsky observes, “testosterone does not cause aggression, it exaggerates the aggression that’s already there.”

Nonetheless, even though testosterone may not create aggression, it is certainly at the root of masculinity and maleness. Without it, the male foetus develops into a female, both bodily and in brain structure: so clearly there is some sense in which testosterone is at the root of male behavior, in giving the body the potential to become characteristically male, in terms of aggression, risk-taking, and all those other behaviours we see as characteristically male – not to mention that it is responsible for the development of the penis, the organ at the very centre of the expression of male behavior.