(November South Bay Poly Commentary)
That whole idea of sex and love as totally different came up again the other day when a friend of mine said, after hearing an interview about "Sex at Dawn," “So if it’s only *sex* you have with another person, I can live with it. As long as you don’t have any emotional involvement.”
“But the emotional involvement,” I told her, “is what’s important to me.”
And there it is! The Great Divide in orientation (Sexual? Relational? What do we call this “orientation?”) It comes down, perhaps, to what we’re afraid of, or afraid of losing; perhaps to what scares us?
Some people are nervous about sexual relationships and have to treat them with caution. Some people are uncomfortable with emotional involvement and have to tread carefully with it. Some people are comfortable with both, or with neither.
So—I understand a lover becoming emotionally involved with another person; but their having sex with them triggers something uncomfortable for me.
Whereas, for some of my friends, sex is “just sex.” “All you two did was have sex. You were just having your fun.” But emotional involvement can feel very threatening.
They’re *both* important for me. And of course they *are* different. But connected. For me, sex with no emotional connection is pretty pointless. But emotional involvement with no physical relationship (whether actually sexual or not) feels thwarted, stunted.
For me, it’s all connected.
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