Now, this is obvious, of course, but I really do think our culture feeds the idea that the act itself is what brings the pleasure. In my considered view, masturbation is more pleasurable than sex with a woman with whom I am not prepared to also be emotionally intimate. And in my view, many, many men are like that: they masturbating with a partner.
You can’t be fully emotionally present with another person unless you can get to the point where you can relax fully, and be intimate with your own being, your own reality. I would take the affective states I reach in meditation over even the best sex 100 times out of 100. Emotionally detached sex makes me sad. I’ve had quite a bit of it, so I know.
On a related note, I got to thinking about the contrasting roles of the Parasympathetic and Sympathetic nervous systems. The first is what generates sexual arousal, but it’s the second which is involved in orgasms and ejaculation.
It seems to me that in a healthy human the Parasympathetic dominates most of the time, as characterized, among other physiological markers, by a high Heart Rate Variability (you can look it up: the Heartmath website is a good place to start). This means that sex is easy to enter, and arousal is easy.
I think there is a profound difference between the sexes, though, when it comes to this. I think a high activation of the Parasympathetic nervous system is very important, and I think in our world most women, like most men are 1) beset with constant stress; 2) often feeling disconnected emotionally from their men, and quite possibly from their own feelings.
Men like to chase women. Sexual activation for us is pretty easy. But women have to be relaxed and happy. This is of course something only an idiot would feel the need to say, but there it is.
Which makes me wonder about the phenomenal success of “50 Shades of Grey”. The success of that book really does call for an explanation. I have offered several, of course. The whole essence of BDSM is assault and dominance by one party or the other. Being tied up could only activate the Sympathetic nervous system, I would think. Or do they only feel the ability to relax when someone else is in control? That may be getting closer. Does it represent a more or less mechanical operation of the necessary nervous systems?
But it seems to me that however we interpret it, it is very hard to see it as emotionally healthy.
I will add a third point. I was listening on the radio today to “Me and Mrs. Jones”, and wondering about fidelity, and relationships.
My old fashioned view is that marriage is a good thing, and should be for life. For obvious reasons, I don’t think sex should be an end in itself. I think the relationship, the friendship, should be an end in itself, with sex a means of deepening emotional intimacy and sense of connection. Again, anything other than that and you are masturbating with a partner.
But so many people are restless. So many men, in particular, don’t want to feel “trapped”. And I am divorced, so I understand this feeling fully. But would it not be USEFUL if we as a culture started, in large numbers, to adopt patterns of healthy emotionality? Specifically, if more and more people would learn and use effective personal growth platforms like Kum Nye and Holotropic Breathwork and Autogenics?
In my view, all our problems would fall away–rather, we would both not create the problems in the first place, and what troubles remained would be more easily managed with sang froid and even enjoyment.
The Globalists, the bastards, think that humanity has to be pushed into a hole and fed bread and water for it to survive. No, all we need to learn to do is be happy with less, and there are technologies for doing that.
But think what a marvelous tool for health sex is, within a happy, committed relationship. You operate your nervous system from one end to the other.
Few thoughts. Oh yes, of course I need to be somewhere, which is why I’m sitting here typing!!!