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.
