In an attempt to break away from old and outdated moralisms concerning sex, marriage, and commitment, many people have found themselves experimenting with an opposing set of beliefs that revolve around such notions as “free love,” “friends with benefits,” “casual sex,” and an “open relationship.” In order to break away from a set of societal expectations that have imprisoned the nature of a relationship, the world has come to embrace a different kind of prison, one that may have freed people from one set of toxic ideas while simultaneously imposing a new set. The result is that love, love-making and sex have been treated with a casualness that downplays their power and the ability they have to be corner stones of a kind of “sacred exploration” in a people’s attempts to understand themselves, explore intimacy, and love fearlessly.

In elaboration I will critique a number of common understandings and ideas that I believe have come to dominate the world of love, sex, and relationships. The goal is to show that, despite the progress in bringing sex into the open and removing shame surrounding it, we have nonetheless devalued those very things by failing to appreciate their power and splendor. It is my contention that the result has left the world just as hungry for real love, love-making, intimacy, passion, and affection, and that the way to maximize such attributes in a successful way will involve a different kind of interpretation concerning what one means in terms of “free love,” commitment, and the art of making-love as opposed to “having sex.” 

It seems like a contradiction to speak of “casual sex.” Sex by its very nature cannot be casual, and the fact that we pretend it is or can be speaks to how alienated we are from the act of participating in it from a place of real connection. This is similar to when people talk about an “ethical war” in order to downplay or hide from the intense truth that comprises the attempt by two or more groups to kill one another over particular issues. 

Sex and the accompanying characteristics of passion, love, affection, and intimacy are quite possibly the most powerful forces in the Universe, forces that consist of a kind of “perpetual descent” where the closer one looks and feels into it, the deeper and more powerful they seem to become. If this is no longer recognized it is because love and sex have become narcissistic, that is, they have become surface level participations that no longer involve the kind of depth and grounding in the body they require. This is a different view from the way it is commonly treated in mainstream culture.

Relationships are often characterized around the inevitability of two people becoming tired and bored with one another when it comes to love and sex; that sex is akin to something like ice cream flavors: one may have a favorite that they prefer on a regular basis but it is impossible not to get sick of it from time to time, where one then needs a “change of scenery” so to speak. I do not think this has to be true when it comes to one’s lover, and that the limits placed on the love-making experience arise from two people being unwilling or incapable of seeing the depths to the other who is one’s partner; a lack of perspective that fails to be grounded in the essences of who two people are. When such grounding occurs I suggest that boredom is impossible because the depths of allure and wonder to each person and to the experience is truly limitless. 

The point is for a person to recognize a certain depth or aspect to personhood in themselves and the other that is more soulful, more existential, primordial, and everlasting. When that happens one taps into and explores something that is without limits. This distinction rests on the ability of a person to recognize something deep and perpetual to life and being, a kind of spiritual jump that others may not be comfortable to make or have not had enough experience to discover, a situation all to understandable given the world’s alienation from it.

Making Love As Opposed To Having Sex

What is being emphasized here is the distinction between making love and having sex. The later is associated with an act, a performance, or a show; it often references something external to one’s self where the verb ‘to have’ as used in the phrase ‘to have sex’ denotes possession, and therefore taking. To have is to possess and to possess means there is the possibility of losing what one has. To have sex means to participate in the act from a distance, ungrounded in one’s body, deeper sensations, and intuitions, where love is on the periphery, somewhere on the outside looking in.

In making love, two people honor and surrender to the divinity they see in their partner, the same divinity within themselves. To do this one must be involved with the intention of shedding those habits and conditionings that prevent a person from surrendering to passion from a place of self-respect. When a person explores who they are, they come to realize there is a distinction between the living person, the person who has to make a living, and the life that the person is, the same life that underlies all things. To make love means to treat love, not as something outside of one’s self but as something that one is, something that flows from being completely accepting of and open to life. In making love there is no fear since one cannot loose what one is. Fear and love become antithetical.

Ask yourself and perhaps consider: is there really a limit to life, beauty, attraction, and love making, since those are what ultimately comprise us? When the person you love is considered in their essence, is there really a set of boundaries to their depths, to the ‘life itself’ that makes them up, the life they are. When I am with the woman I love, is there really an end to her allure and divinity? Are there truly limits to making love? If one thinks so then perhaps it is a failure of sensation and openness. 

A Critique Of “Free Love“

This is all being written against the backdrop of a culture where free love is often associated with loving openly, perhaps with numerous partners and being completely uninhibited in one’s sexual expression and adventurings. I won’t speak here against such things; this is not a call for prudishness or monogamy or against the ways couples make love and sex more exciting through toys, role playing, etc. It is merely a suggestion that many of our toys, fantasies, fetishes, and beliefs are overcompensations for a loss of genuine vitality and a more natural and vibrant relationship to love and intimacy. What’s more, many of one’s behaviors in the bedroom are simply sexual expressions of emotional wounds and trauma.

In may ways the current culture represents a rebellion against hundreds of years of systemic shame and guilt concerning sex, along with practices of marriage that were largely institutionalized or corrupted by illegitimate motives. It is obvious how hundreds of years of practice have resulted in a culture of internalized shame and guilt around natural sexual curiosity and exploration.

For a person who has not become disassociated from their body as a result of trauma, toxic relationships, bad parenting, and other environmental factors, nature provides one with all of the natural vitality and vibrancy one needs. All one has to do is look at the rest of the animal world which does not rely on pornography or toys of any kind and then consider: if we have freed ourselves then why the proliferation of sexual inadequacies and relational dissatisfactions that are rampant across the world of relationships.

The truth is that it is easy to use the concept of free love as a way to avoid the fears and anxieties that come with allowing one’s self to be fully vulnerable and present with someone who may potentially reject or abandon them. I have known many people who have preached about the natural disposition to want to sleep around or who have summed up the issues by saying, “Some people just aren’t the committed type,” but after looking deeper you recognize that what permeates their attitude towards relationship is a fear of intimacy as opposed to a celebration of it. The loose and casual attitude towards sex becomes a cover up for deep-seated fears about connection and surrender to the moment.

The counter narrative is that in their ability to be loose and detached they are expressing a more “loving love” because they are not beholding a person to any level of expectation; the person has granted the other person their freedom while being comfortable enough to be willing to share the thing they love most with other people. On the one hand there is a legitimate point to be made here regarding the role of expectations and the negativity of attachment, but such talk cannot be used to deflect from the reality that the rationalizations are an attempt to give the impression of love while simultaneously avoiding a deepening into it. 

Of course it would be one thing if a kind of casual attitude towards sex actually resulted in greater long-term satisfaction, but this is not what occurs when one talks with most people who have experience with it. A plethora of sexual partners only seems to deepen a desire for something deeper and more substantial. This is not an attempt to shame such people back into submission where all sexual acts are inundated with anxiety and guilt. We can remove shame, guilt, and anxiety, along with questioning the role of marriage as an institution and certain notions of “free love” while still cultivating a willingness to look for and acknowledge what is truly satisfying in the bedroom and what is not. 

Perhaps what free love really means is freeing one’s self from the conditionings that prevent one from recognizing their own and another’s divine essence; to put one’s self in position where they are attuned to their own and another’s essence or divinity; two people committed in the moment to honest communication about the anxieties and fears that may be holding them back from surrendering to the passion for connection that moves through them. When this happens my sense is that there are no limits to the experience of the everlasting we are participating in. 

The Culture of Commitment and Co-dependence

There of course is the common adage that men are afraid of commitment. In many ways I think this is true. Many will say that it is true because men are more predisposed towards polygamy by nature. I do not think that tells the truth of the matter. I will not rule out degrees of biological instinct, but I would say that most men do fear commitment, not because there is necessarily an innate drive against it, but because many, if not most men, are afraid of truly surrendering to the relationship, that is, of truly allowing themselves to be open to exploring the depths of intimacy and love. There is the sense that if he looks too deeply into the eyes of his lover that he will lose himself to some kind of immeasurable abyss or end up being rejected. 

But this is just half of the story. If we want to understand the situation in its entirety then we have to also be willing to critique a culture of co-dependence that permeates it; we have to understand the insecurities that make people desperate to have some level of affection and intimacy even if it means settling for a relationship that is less than adequate or outright abusive. Many women settle for abusive situations or simply less than adequate relationships where the woman knows the man is not doing enough to really love and be present to her. 

What men often fear committing to is what women are often so desperate for that they settle for an abusive or inadequate partner and then rationalize the issues away in order to maintain access to some level of affection. Let me be clear, both men and women are capable of being both avoidant and desperate when it comes to relationships, but the cliché’s that exist regarding the complaints men and women have regarding their partners are cliché’s for a reason.

I understand the desire to want to be sexually expressive after hundreds of years of hypocrisy around the way men are treated for their sexual desires as opposed to women. This is not an attempt to deny women the right to be sexually expressive, but I do think that many women believe they are liberating themselves when they are actually reinforcing a different prison.

People should not underestimate the lengths they will go to feel some semblance of love from a partner who has not actually done much to demonstrate that they really love and appreciate them. It is not that women should not be sexually expressive. It’s that women must learn to be strong enough to be sexually expressive for those individuals who actually deserve to be on the receiving end of it; men who demonstrate a joy obtained from simply being around them, and who are not motivated by a desire for sex that essentially amounts to masturbating inside of them.

Many people want a sense of assurance that they will not be abandoned or rejected. There is a lot of talk concerning how it is foolish to think that one person can fulfill all of one’s needs. This is true, but it’s is also foolish to think that those needs are one’s that can be filled by adding more people to one’s social network. The illusion in both cases is that of believing other people hold the key to one finding peace and happiness; the one thinks that with the right enough partner and a genuine enough commitment, one can find one person who meets all of one’s needs. The other thinks that with a wide enough social or sexual network, one can have a diverse enough amount of personalities and characteristics so as to be there for them in any given scenario.

What one sees here is the desire to rely on other people for a sense of life satisfaction. What the man who is unwilling to commit to out of fear is what a woman might be clinging to in the false belief that she can find ultimate security through another. Fear underlies both situations. One cannot ultimately rely on another person for a sense of wholeness; one finds salvation in their natural wholeness comprised of living vitality and a connection to the “big picture.” From there, a person takes action to honor that connection in another person through an exploration into the essence of attraction that acts through them.

We have to be willing to reinterpret commitment so that we allow for two people to be willing to decide to give their best to the relationship in the most honest and open way they can without holding two people to unreasonable expectations about “forever.” This doesn’t mean that two people cannot spend their lives together and be happy, but it also does not mean that a relationship or a marriage be predicated on it. Real commitment has to be grounded in the present moment as a continuous effort to “show up” every moment of every day to participate in love and the exploration of intimacy.