Mental Health - THE PURPOSES OF SEX

THE PURPOSES OF SEX

You notice that we use the plural, "purposes," rather-than the singular. From the biological standpoint, the purpose of sexual intercourse is simple enough: reproduction. Of late, there has been some tendency to pass over this aspect of the sexual act, perhaps because it was once considered the only real purpose of intercourse. Although much has been written about men and women who want children because they think they should have them, or to prove they can have them, or for any of a number of neurotic reasons, most people who live worth living want to pass on the gift of life, to create a new lift' with the beloved partner. But sexual intercourse is much more. 

It is even more than an expression of love in the most intimate manner; more than giving and receiving pleasure. As one discerning physician has written "Because we use words to distinguish sex from love, we found that in human experience no such sharp division exists. Individuals we have integrity, a word that comes from the Latin, whole or entire. We are whole; we are one. And as whole human beings our experiencing of love ultimately must become one experience.  And when a man and woman in love meet in the sexual embrace, each, like Antaeus, hopes to arise stronger than before, to go his individual way. ..

In day-to-day living, the man who is diminished by a world that forces him to compromise or accept defeat finds total acceptance in the arms of the woman who loves him. And the woman who feels diminished by niggardly chores and obligations (and may still regard herself as the subordinate sex) receives heartfelt homage from the man who loves and desires her. With sex and with love the man restores her integrity and she restores his. And both have been nourished by sexual pleasure, which they seek as roots seek water-because without it their marriage will wither and die. "As a physician, not a poet, as a man who speaks with some knowledge of flesh and blood reality, I know that when the act of sex is truly an act of love it unites two committed human beings, obliterating their painful awareness of being alone and lonely. And the pleasure of the embrace, together with the certainty that tomorrow they will embrace again, gives them new strength to stand alone.