About Sex, Love, and Friends

About Sex, Love, and Fiends

Love and sex are NOT the same thing; while most of our schools now teach a course in Sex Education, I know of very very few that teach a course in love. I truly believe this to be due to the fact that most teachers have no more concept of true love than do their students. There is no one definition of love, because the word “love” can mean many different things to many different people. Love must be learned. This is one reason “arranged or planned marriages” have over the years proven to be the most successful.

Sex on the other hand, is simply a biological event. Even though there are different kinds of sex, most sexual acts have certain things in common. Sex may or may not include penetration.

I do not know if there has ever been another time in history when the terms love and friend have been used so promiscuously as they are at present. We are told constantly that we must “LOVE” everyone. Leaders of religion and other movements declare that they “love” followers they have never and will never meet. Enthusiasts of personal-growth workshops and encounter group weekends emerge from their experiences announcing that they “love” all people everywhere. Most “Chat Line” messages contain at least one LOL and most other correspondence will be closed with a Love You.

Just as currency, with the never ending demand for a growing economy, and higher wages, becomes inflated, and has less and less purchasing power, so the word “LOVE and FRIEND” through an analogous process of inflation, through being used less and less discriminately, are progressively emptied of meaning.

As evidenced at Christmas time, it is possible to feel benevolence and goodwill toward human beings one does not know or does not know very well. It is NOT possible to feel love. Aristotle made this observation twenty-five hundred years ago, and we still need to remember it. In forgetting it, all we have accomplished is the destruction of the very concept of love.

Love, by it’s very nature, entails a process of discrimination, of learning of reaching out, of selection. Love is our response to what represents our highest values. Love is a response to distinctive characteristics possessed by some beings but not by all. Otherwise what would be the tribute of love? Why would we bother to say that we love someone?

If love between humans does not imply admiration of traits and qualities that the recipient of that love possesses, what meaning or significance would love have and why would anyone consider it desirable?

Really, if your loved ones were to ask why we care for them, consider what their reaction would be if told “Why shouldn’t I love you? All human beings are identical. Therefore, it doesn’t make any difference whom I love. So it might as well be you.” Not very inspiring or uplifting is it? So I find the advocacy of “universal love and friendship” puzzling to say the least--If one takes the words literally.

Not everyone condemns sexual promiscuity (if you watch many TV sit-coms, you might even consider it a good thing., I have never heard of anyone else (other than the producers of this stuff) who hails it as an outstanding virtue. But spiritual promiscuity? Is that an outstanding virtue? Why is the spirit so much less important than the body?

My own impression is that people who talk of “loving” everyone are in fact expressing a wish or a plea that everyone love them. But to take love- above all, love between adults seriously, to treat the concept with respect and distinguish it from generalized benevolence or good will, is to appreciate that it is a unique experience possible between some people but not between all.

I take love, my friends, and my relations, very seriously indeed, for they are what I am. If I list some one as my frien, it is because I truly consider them as being such. If I say I love you; it is because I feel it with all my heart a nothind will, or can, ever change the way I feel. Love takes a lot of work. Love must be nurtured, and allowed to grow. Most modern relationships; which are based on sexual attractio, last only about three years, and do not allow time for true love