I take issue with the idea of “making love” being used as a euphemism for sex. I think that it not only does love an injustice, but it distorts and confuses both sex and love by making them synonymous, which they most certainly are not. No doubt, there is a lot of sex that has absolutely nothing to do with love, as we all know perfectly well.
Sex is not a simple thing. It is often used for purposes other than love and procreation, whether it be hate, lust, revenge, ego-boosting, and so many others. It is irresponsible and ignorant to use the concepts of love and sex interchangeably. And to approach it from the other direction, why is “making love” so brazenly limited to sex? I think that doing so distorts and thus limits our understanding of both sex and love. I think, further, that this mixing up of sex and love is a profound problem with people’s psychology, ideologies, and interpersonal relations, and well illustrates the danger inherent in using language and concepts unmindfully and recklessly.
I think that referring to sex as “making love” cheapens and depreciates love. Sex may be done lovingly, but sex is not love; it is neither synonymous, nor symbiotic, with love. Love is much more than—and not dependent upon—sex. Sex is an animal, instinctual urge, it is a pleasure delivery system. It makes sense that people would mix up sex with love in the same way that many people mix up pleasure with happiness.
The subtleties of life are not often paid proper attention by those who ignorantly and cavalierly mistake words for what they ostensibly represent. Simple misidentification can lead to many problems, especially when words are improperly used interchangeably, for the concepts they represent are more often than not quite misunderstood, and the differences between them subtle beyond most people’s patience to try to understand. Pleasure, for example, especially carnal, or “sensual,” is the satisfaction of desire, or even lust. There is no doubt that sex can be done with love—just like many things can be done with love—and this is often the most pleasurable and fulfilling sex, both physically and emotionally; but it is a mistake to assume, as so many people do, that sex is a postulate of love; that the closest, deepest, most loving relationship two non-blood related people can have must be, as least partially, a sexual one.
Everyone would agree that there are different kinds, or levels, or degrees, of love. There is the love between family, between friends, etc., but in this society, the deepest love, the most important, or significant, love is that love which is also sexual. By lauding, and at the same time mystifying, sex, and then attaching it to that certain kind of romantic love, people’s concepts, and thus beliefs and behavior, become confused. It screws up value structures.
It is simply a fact that love is not necessary for sex, and sex is not necessary for love. Most people would readily agree with the former (for who can deny that sex could happen between two blindfolded people who never met and never spoke a word to one another?) and take issue with the latter. But such people mistake desire for love. Love is not desire. This habit of mistaking desire for love, motivation for will, is a profound and far-reaching problem in this society, and speaks volumes to the way people live their lives and how they think of themselves and others.
Desiring someone is not synonymous with loving them. It is not the same thing. It can be understood as a matter of direction. When we desire someone, we want that person to provide something for us, we need them to fulfill that desire within us, we want something from them in order for that desire to be fulfilled. So the direction of that emotion is from them to us. Love is the opposite direction, from us to them. There is no expectation of anything from them. This is the difference between love and desire. If you did not want something from them, if you did not, as we actually say, “want them,” then it would not be desire.
Aside from a sadomasochist, or someone with some sort of obvious psychological or emotion problem, who can honestly pursue sex without desire? Such an idea seems absurd. But the key to understanding lies where desire is unnecessary for love. Desire breeds attachment and clinging; only love that is not dependent upon desire, including sexual desire, can be truly called love. We can feel lust, attraction, interest for a person, etc., but call it what it is, not what it is not. Again, sex and love are so confused and attached in people’s conditioning that such an idea will be rigorously resisted and attacked. But it is precisely because it is so unquestioned that it should be questioned, and popular opinion is not the nature of truth.
Sex can be wonderful (I am not coming at this by way of the ascetic or dilettante who criticizes or belittles something I have not experienced or dislike). It is programmed into our very biology to be wonderful, for it is the sensual pleasure to beat all others. Sex can be “transcendental,” it can have all sorts of meaning imposed upon and applied to it; but sex is what it is—a bodily function; it is people who assign it meaning.
Thus, sex between two people who love (not simply desire) and care about each other can be very “meaningful” to them; but sex is not “meaningful;” it, itself, is a function. It can be, and is often, used to express love or desire; but no matter what anyone may haughtily or (wish to) romantically claim, sex is a pleasure– (and, sometimes, baby–) providing function. It is wrong to make sex something it is not, and the same with love; for in making sex more than it is, love is made less than, and distorted from, what it is.
It is simply wrong, ignorant, and condescending, to think that a non-sexual relationship must be somehow “less” than a sexual one; that the love in the relationship is somehow limited. Again, our unexamined assumptions and conditioning cause us to resist and dismiss such suggestions, but that does not make it any less true. To limit the idea of “making love” to sex is to distort and limit both our understanding and doing (not simply expressing, perhaps?) real love.
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From my personal notes, 12/22/99
