It is true that like eating, sex can also be done in various places and with different people. However, the replaceable nature of sex (and romantic love) does not mean that democracy should be applied to it and that it is like linen—the more often changed, the sweeter. On the contrary, people who rapidly replace their romantic and sexual partners may have trouble forming profound loving relationships. Many of them are addicted to destructive sexual relationships and cannot achieve the stability and warmth of healthy, loving bonds. Eating is different; constantly dining out at different restaurants has no moral problems attached to it. Hence, we cannot be as unromantic about sex as we are about eating, although this is not to deny that there are cases in which sexual desire has nothing to do with romantic love. After all, many people think that love and sex can be separated but would prefer to have them combined. Moreover, most people would consider sexual involvement between their partner and a rival a threat to their romantic relationship.
Junk Sex and Healthy Romantic Relationships
Junk sex is like junk food—not bad enough to avoid, but definitely not good enough to make a steady diet of.
THE URBAN DICTIONARY
The very use of the term “junk” implies that both junk food and junk sex are inferior to the “real thing” and are therefore unhealthy. However, are they unhealthy in the same sense? The word “junk” refers to something of poor quality. What is poor quality in junk sex? Should we avoid junk sex, just as we are advised to avoid junk food?
Consider the following common claims about both junk food and junk sex:
a. Junk food and junk sex both have little long-term value for nutrition or for romantic love—they provide instant satisfaction, while time becomes a kind of obstacle that they need to overcome.
b. Junk food is high in fat, sugar, salt, and calories; junk sex is high in superficial, egoistic desires.
c. Many foods and sex activities are considered as either healthy or junk depending on their “ingredients” and on the way in which they are prepared.
d. Consuming or engaging in a limited amount of junk food or junk sex does not usually pose an immediate danger and is generally safe when integrated into a well-balanced diet or relationship.
e. Junk food and junk sex can easily become addictive.
In comparing junk food to junk sex, intimacy can be considered the “nutritional value” of sex, while one’s overall flourishing is analogous to one’s overall health. Intimacy involves a feeling of closeness and belonging, both of which are vital in healthy sex. We see the importance of intimacy in the following confession made by a married woman: “Last night I had sex with my husband, but he did not actually touch me—just penetrated me. I was so sad, I could cry.” Intimate sex does not merely involve penetration; it also entails positive, close feelings between the partners. Without intimacy, junk sex has no romantic value, since it does not promote, and even reduces, the quality of the relationship. In good intimate sex, as with a good meal at a restaurant, the atmosphere is important; in junk food and junk sex, there is hardly any time or need for atmosphere.
Junk sex is all about one’s own satisfaction; healthy sex is also, and often mainly, about the other. The positive experience of junk sex is over the moment that the agent is sexually satisfied. The experience of healthy intimate sex is not over when both people climax, but continues with embracing, talking, and just being together. Some people (more so women) claim that this is the most enjoyable part of intimate sex. As one married woman said after her first extramarital affair, “What I enjoyed the most that evening was the kissing, cuddling, and his emotional presence.”
In contrast to junk food, we speak about healthy food—namely, food that is beneficial to health beyond the value of the normal diet required for human sustenance. Healthy food is an important element in healthy living. Similarly, in contrast to junk sex, we can speak about healthy sex, which fosters the flourishing of romantic relationships.
Living healthily is more than just eating healthily. It is a huge canvas on which many factors make their mark—some even before one’s birth. Our genes and mother’s actions during pregnancy start the list, and upbringing plays its part: happy people are more likely to live longer.13 Also important are outdoor activities, stress levels, social activity, and balanced meals. Some of these factors are within our control, others are not, and yet others fall somewhere in between.
It’s hard to pin down exactly what makes up a healthy life. But longevity and flourishing seem like likely candidates. While longevity is easy to measure, it is more complicated to characterize flourishing. There is no one way to live a healthy life and no blueprint for achieving it. Of course, there are some essential elements without which we suffer or compensate for.
Junk sex is a superficial experience that typically does not contribute to our flourishing but rather reduces it. Furthermore, since junk sex is likely to become addictive, as is the case with junk food, it can have a significantly negative impact on one’s life. Junk sex is usually very brief and can damage one’s ability to engage in more profound romantic relationships, thereby having a negative impact on one’s quality of life and longevity. Profound romantic activities have a lingering positive impact on our life and are basic to our flourishing. Positive sexual functioning plays a unique and fundamental role in human well-being throughout the life course.14
Love is important in forming a valuable marital framework. However, there are various types of loving relationships, and exclusive sexual intensity is not essential for all forms of marital frameworks.
What Makes You Feel Best about Sex?
Charm is a glow within a woman that casts a most becoming light on others.
JOHN MASON BROWN
Sexuality is significant in promoting happiness and satisfaction in enduring romantic relationships. But how can relatively brief and infrequent sexual experiences be so important for enduring romantic relationships? The answer seems to be less connected to the “hard-core” sexual activities, and in particular, orgasms, than to the “soft,” affectionate experiences, like kissing and cuddling, that are associated with them.
Afterglow, After-Sex Affectionate Activities, and Orgasms
My married lover was cut off emotionally the moment he ejaculated. The speed by which he left me emotionally and physically was incredible. He actually left the bed to drink something and did not return to the bed.
A DIVORCED WOMAN
No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.
BETTY FRIEDAN
Sexual afterglow is the good feeling that lingers after pleasurable sexual experiences—a kind of intense shining that is both attractive and infectious. Research suggests that it is sexual afterglow more than orgasm that determines how people feel about their sexual partner. Although sexual afterglow is less intense than orgasm, it plays a greater role in enduring romantic satisfaction. Spouses who have experienced stronger afterglow report higher levels of marital satisfaction both at baseline and over time compared to spouses who have not. It appears, then, that sexual afterglow is a mechanism through which sex promotes pair bonding.15
Studies indicate that romantic partners view the time after intercourse as important for bonding and intimacy. Indeed, frequent physical affection, such as kissing, cuddling, and hugging, have been found to increase the duration and the quality of the relationship. The value of these behaviors is particularly high after sex, since they confirm that the relationship bond is deeper than the superficial, brief physical act. After-sex affectionate activities prolong the duration of sexuality, thereby enabling it to have a greater impact on the relationship. It seems that after-sex affectionate activities are crucial to sexual afterglow, and that they play a more important role in sexual and relationship satisfaction than foreplay or the duration of intercourse. Along these lines, it has been found that, within cohabiting marriages and romantic relationships, increased kissing significantly decreases total cholesterol and perceived stress, and signific
antly increases relationship satisfaction.16
Applying the intensity-profundity distinction to the sexual realm, we may say that orgasm is the most obvious example of sexual intensity; it is a momentary peak of sexual desire. Sexual afterglow and after-sex affectionate activities help to deepen the romantic bond. Indeed, in a study of newlywed couples, sexual afterglow remains for about forty-eight hours after sex, and those with stronger afterglow had higher overall marital satisfaction. No wonder that it is the afterglow, rather than the number of orgasms, that best correlates to the length and quality of the relationship.17
The French famously refer to orgasm as “la petite mort,” or “the little death.” Once orgasm is reached, it is, in a sense, the end of the experience preceding it, and hence, it is a little death. Along these lines, it has been claimed that “all animals are sad after sex.” These ideas reflect the momentary nature of orgasm. However, once after-sex affectionate activities are added, and then supplemented by promoting romantic activities, the momentary peak can initiate a process that enhances enduring love.
When It Rains, It Pours
While having an affair I was sexually aroused and began to notice other men noticing me. I paid more attention to my appearance, wore more attractive clothing, and began enjoying this attention. Even my husband was more attracted to me. When it rains, it pours.
A MARRIED WOMAN
We have seen that sexual afterglow promotes enduring, high-quality romantic relationships. However, afterglow also attracts other people to the individual’s radiant sexual arousal. Thus, one study found that the merest interaction with a member of the opposite sex can bring a glow to a woman’s face. Even nonsexual social interactions with men caused a noticeable rise in the temperature of a woman’s face, without them even noticing it.18
The pleasant sexual afterglow involves the wish to have more sex; this attitude in turn attracts other people to this person. Sexual glow is a kind of spell emitted by the individual that hits other people, who are attracted to the individual much as insects and butterflies are attracted to light.
Sexual glowing experiences seem to make sexually rich people even richer. Those who enjoy sex are more likely to enjoy it more, thereby enhancing their current romantic relationship. However, since sexual glowing attracts people beside one’s partner, it might well ruin low-quality relationships.
Eleanor Roosevelt once quipped that “a woman is like a tea bag—you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.” The phenomenon of sexual glow indicates that Eleanor was not entirely correct. You can feel the love of women (or men for that matter) not merely when they are in intense, hot romantic experiences, but also—and perhaps more so—before and after being in such hot experiences.
Sexual interactions are important in enduring romantic love because they involve more than the momentary peak of an orgasm. Even more important for such love are the affectionate activities associated with orgasm that last longer and express more genuinely the partner’s loving heart. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, we can say that orgasm is not the end of love. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning of love.
Sexuality and Friendship in Cyberspace
My excitement when physically touching my lover is higher than that of online excitement, though I have an orgasm quite often while having cybersex.
A DIVORCED WOMAN
Cyberspace is a kind of huge, dynamic, electronic bedroom loaded with imaginative interactions. This novel environment has a significant impact on offline romantic activities, as it offers increased opportunities, greater self-disclosure, decreased vulnerability, lesser commitment, an increase in boundary violations, and reduced exclusivity. Cyberspace provides technical tools that facilitate the opportunity to conduct several romantic (and sexual) relationships at the same time. Although cyberlove and cybersex are likely to become more popular, they cannot replace offline relationships. Nonetheless, they can complement them.
Like the physical romantic environment, cyberspace is multifaceted. Here, I will focus on online romantic and sexual relationships—cyberlove and cybersex.
The Interactive Nature
I like restraint, if it doesn’t go too far.
MAE WEST
Cyberlove is a romantic relationship consisting mainly of computer-mediated communication. Despite the fact that the partner is physically remote and might be anonymous, love can be experienced as fully and as intensely as in an offline relationship. In a broad sense, cybersex (or in slang, “cybering”) refers to all types of sexually related activities offered in cyberspace, including mobile applications. When people are involved in cybersex, they cannot actually kiss each other, but the kiss they might send is emotionally vivid, and its emotional impact can resemble that of an actual kiss.
The active personal role in cyberspace makes this environment more exciting and seductive than that of sexual fantasies, erotic novels, or X-rated movies; hence the massive temptation to engage in such sexual activities. The imaginary personal interaction is very seductive. Since the line separating passive observation from full interaction is crossed in cybersex, it becomes easier to blur the line separating imagination from reality. The presence of interactive characteristics in the imaginary realm of an online relationship is a revolution in personal relationships, as it enables people to reap many of the benefits associated with offline relationships without investing significant resources.19
The interactive revolution in online romantic and sexual relationships has promoted both greater social interaction and more solitary activities. In comparison to standard fantasies, online relationships involve greater social interaction with other people. However, in comparison to offline relationships, many romantic activities are performed while someone is sitting alone in front of a computer or a smartphone. Take, for example, cybersex. Compared with offline masturbation, cybersex (like phone sex) is a much more social interaction, as it is done while communicating with another person. While in offline masturbation, orgasm comes courtesy of the person’s own hands and mind, in cybersex orgasm comes courtesy of another person’s mind (and one’s own hands). Cybersex narrows the gap between masturbation and offline sex, as it involves the active contribution of another person. However, compared with offline sexual relationships, cybersex is less social and can reduce the need for actual social interactions. Moreover, the virtual nature of cyberspace often fails to satisfy real needs. As a married woman wrote to her online lover, “I want a lover who actually touches me.”
Greater Flexibility and Reduced Exclusivity
The paradox in my situation is that I’m cheating on my spouse with an online lover, whom I am cheating on with a real-time lover, who both have to compete emotionally with another online lover!
A MARRIED WOMAN
Human communities need boundaries: living with others necessitates limiting our desires. However, globalization, in which cyberspace is a central arena of action, is essentially an act of crossing, fracturing, and breaking boundaries. Once people get used to violating boundaries in virtual space, normative boundaries in real space are likely to be treated with greater flexibility too, which in turn can weaken the safeguards against further violation. The flexible nature of boundaries in cyberspace is not necessarily immoral. On the contrary, adhering to strict boundaries in our romantic life can be immoral, as it does not take into account the unique, specific, personal, and circumstantial aspects of the lover. In this regard, Stephen Toulmin argues that “we do need to recognize that a morality based entirely on general rules and principles is tyrannical and disproportionate, and that only those who make equitable allowances for subtle individual differences have a proper feeling for the deeper demands of ethics.”20
Of course, greater flexibility has its own costs. Take, for example, cybersex, where romantic and sexual boundaries are much more flexible than in offline circumstances. This flexibility has not reduced the number of offline violations of boundaries b
ut rather increased it. With the expanded use of the internet and particularly mobile applications, romantic and sexual cheating has increased. Moreover, even if the sexual cheating is limited to the online arena, partners can feel betrayed and traumatized.21
Romantic, and especially sexual, exclusivity has long been regarded as the hallmark of stable relationships. The current social trend leans toward reducing exclusivity in relationships, and this trend is being reinforced by behavior in cyberspace, where romantic boundaries are highly flexible. Reducing romantic exclusivity conflicts with partiality, which is one of the basic emotional characteristics and enables us to focus our resources. This reduction also goes against the heart of ideal love—namely, the perception that the beloved is the one and only person suitable for the lover’s profound love. Such a reduction in exclusivity, however, enhances the need for change and novelty, both of which generate emotions.
The Arc of Love Page 25