We may try to keep the power of sex at bay through many clever
maneuvers. Our moralism, for example, helps keep us clean of the mess sex
can make of an otherwise ordered life. Sex education tries to teach us to
avoid disease by placing sex under the light of science. Yet in spite of
all our efforts, sexual compulsion interferes with marriages, draws
people into strange liaisons, and continues to offend propriety,
morality, and religion. Its dynamic is too big to fit into the cages we
make for it.
We are in a difficult position in relation to sex: We believe it's
important to have a healthy sex life, yet we also believe that the
tendency of sex to spread easily into unwanted areas--pornography,
extramarital affairs--is a sign of cultural decadence or moral and
religious breakdown. We want sex to be robust, but not too robust.
Sex asks something of us--that we live more fully and manifest
ourselves more transparently. This demand is so central and powerful that
our resistances to it are also strong--our moralism, indirection,
rationalization, and acting out. It would help if we would stop thinking
of sex as in the slightest way medical or biological. The whole sphere of
sex--emotion, body, fantasy, and relationship--falls within the domain of
the soul.
PORNOGRAPHY
It sometimes happens that one person in a relationship shows an
interest in pornography while the other is offended or at least disturbed
by it. A wife might think that if her husband is turning to pornography
for sexual stimulation, there must be something lacking in her. A husband
might say, "I guess I'm not what my wife is looking for in a man. She's
interested in other men's bodies."
It's difficult to sort out issues surrounding pornography because
in our culture response to pornography often divides into two
extremes--compulsion and moral indignation. This split suggests that for
us pornography is a problem rather than an element integrated into
everyday life. When we respond to anything with compulsion and moralism,
we can assume that we haven't yet found the soul in it.
An interest in pornography clearly shows the desire for some kind
of increase in erotic life and an intensification and broadening of the
sexual imagination. When we find this interest blooming in ourselves or
in someone close to us, rather than move quickly into judgment, we might
ask what it is doing there. Could this sexual interest be serving some
purpose? The pornographic imagination doesn't have to be justified, but
it might ease our minds if we could find a context for it.
SEX AND INTIMACY
Thinking about sex, we sometimes take either the position that it
is entirely physiological or that it is primarily interpersonal. In
either of these viewpoints, the soul of sex can be overlooked. Its soul
is to be found in the imagination through which we experience sex,
whether individually, interpersonally, or even societally. Each of us has
a sexual history, persons who figure prominently for good or ill.
We may also have strong sexual hopes and longings. We might regard
all these images as creations of the soul and be aware that each may
resonate on many levels. The memory of a pleasurable experience may carry
longings about pleasure in life itself, or a painful memory may epitomize
a more general disillusionment and hopelessness about joy, pleasure, and
intimacy. The image of oneself as a lover, as beautiful or capable, may
be wrapped up in these memories. Deeper still may lie fears of exposure
or the old dynamics of family relationships.
The intimacy in sex, while always attached to the body, is never
only physical. Sex always evokes pieces of stories and fragments of
characters, and so the desire and willingness to be sexually transparent
is truly an exposure of the soul. In sex we may discover who we are in
ways otherwise unavailable to us, and at the same time we allow our
partner to see and know that individual. As we unveil our bodies, we also
disclose our persons.
It makes sense that vulnerability requires inhibitions of all
kinds. Part of sexual intimacy is protection of the other's inhibition,
for that reserve is as much an expression of soul as is the apparent
willingness to be exposed. It makes no difference whether the inhibition
seems neurotic: It must be honored if soulful intimacy is to be
maintained. It is not "abnormal" for a person to feel unusually reticent
about physical and emotional exposure. Nor is it abnormal for a person to
enjoy the exhibition of their sexuality.
Sexual intimacy begins with acknowledgment of and respect for the
mystery and madness of the other's sexuality, for it is only in mystery
and madness that soul is revealed. I'm referring to platonic madness, of
course--the soul's natural expression that almost always appears deviant
to normal society. At times we may have to protect ourselves from
another's sexual confusion and acting out, but if we want an intimate
relationship, we will have to create a place for the other's sexual
fantasy.
To find sexual intimacy, we may also have to acknowledge that sex
is often wounded. The soul of sexuality often enters through an opening
made by sexual wounding. We can learn to see that the places of our
sexual punctures and violations are areas of potential intimacy, even
though on the surface they may seem to be precisely the areas of
mistrust. All of us have sexual wounds. It does no good either to wallow
in them or to deny them a place.
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