One way to express deep love and intimacy is through sexual behavior, but sexual behavior itself is not necessarily an expression of love or intimacy. How do we make the decision to have sex? There are many levels of relationships that can lead to sex. Casual sex and “hooking up” can happen between people who barely know each other, generated by excitement, novelty, and pure physical pleasure.
Love and Sex
Sex can be an expression of affection and intimacy without considering it an expression of passionate love; sex can also be engaged in purely for procreation; or sex can be an extension of a loving relationship, an expression of love. Problems can develop when one partner has one view of the developing sexual relationship, and the other partner takes a different perspective.
Because the decision to engage in sexual contact involves the feelings and desires of two people, examining your own motivations as well as your partner’s is important. When making the decision to initiate a sexual relationship with another person, consider the following:
1. Clarify your values. At some point, each of us needs to make value decisions regarding intimacy, sex, and love. How do you feel about casual sexual contact? What role does love play in your sexual decisions? How will you reconcile these values with those you have learned from your family, friends, and religion?
2. Be honest with yourself—which is often more difficult than being honest with others. Entering a relationship with another person takes close self-examination. What do you really want out of this encounter? Out of this person? Are you hoping the sexual contact will lead to something deeper, or are you in it simply for the sex? What will you do if you (or your partner) gets pregnant? If you find that you (or your partner) have a sexually transmitted infection? Will you feel better or worse about yourself tomorrow? Are you in this because you want to be, or because you feel some kind of pressure to be sexual—from yourself or from your partner? Could you say “no” comfortably? Are you ready for a sexual relationship with this person?
3. Be honest with your partner. Another person’s feelings and needs are always at issue in any relationship, and part of our responsibility as caring human beings is not to hurt or exploit others. Why is your partner interested in sex with you? Do his or her expectations differ from yours? Will she or he be hurt if your relationship does not develop further? Have you discussed your feelings? Does your partner really want to do this, or is she or he afraid of losing your love or friendship?
The decision to engage in a sexual relationship may or may not be related to feelings of love. Casual sex has become much more common and accepted than it was 35 or 40 years ago, when young people (especially women) were strongly advised to save their “greatest asset,” their virginity, for marriage. One can enter a sexual relationship too casually, without a close examination of how both partners will feel afterward. Sex can be used as a substitute for intimacy or love. Overall the importance of love as an essential condition for sexual relations has diminished. Yet casual sex has become more physically risky with the spread of sexually transmitted infections (we will discuss this more in Chapter 15).
When we begin to feel attracted to someone, we begin to act intimate; we gaze longer at each other, lean on each other, and touch more (Hatfield, 1988). People meeting each other for the first time tend to reveal their levels of attraction by their body language. Perper (1985) observed strangers approaching each other in bars. The first stage he called the initial contact and conversation (which, by the way, Perper found to be commonly initiated by the female). If the couple is mutually attracted, they will begin to turn their bodies more and more toward each other, until they are facing one another. The first tentative touches begin, a hand briefly on a hand or a forearm, for example, and increase in duration and intimacy as the evening progresses (again, also often initiated by the female). Finally, the couple shows “full body synchronization”; their facial expressions, posture, and even breathing begin to mirror their partner’s. As we discussed in Chapter 6, women smile, gaze, lean forward, and touch more often than men in conversation. Women also “flirt” with their nonverbal cues (such as hair-flipping and head- nodding) in order to encourage men to reveal more about themselves, which would in turn allow the women to formulate an impression of the men (W. E. Martin, 2001).
Sexual desire has been found to be related to “relational maintenance”; that is, the higher the sexual desire for the partner, the less likely the couple has thoughts about ending the relationship or being unfaithful (Regan et al., 2000). There are some gen-
der differences in attitudes toward sexual intimacy in heterosexual relationships. In one study, men said they would have intercourse with someone they had known for only 3 hours, with two different people within a 6-hour period, and with someone they didn’t love or have a good relationship with (Knox et al., 2001). Women, on the other hand, considered a number of variables before making the decision to have sex with a partner. They thought about whether their partner might love them and how interested he seemed in continuing the relationship (Knox et al., 2001). We have to keep in mind that these responses are more socially acceptable for each gender to report, so we don’t actually know what their behavior in a given situation might be.
Question: How can I tell the difference between being in love and just deeply liking someone?
Unfortunately, no one has come up with a foolproof way of making that distinction. Being "in love" can feel a lot like being "in deep like." One would hope we deeply like those whom we love; and, in fact, we probably love those we deeply like. The element that may be missing from those we deeply like is sexual passion; but sometimes we don’t realize that we are not in love with them until after we develop a sexual relationship. The discovery can be painful to both parties, which is why it is advisable to be very careful before initiating a sexual relationship with a friend.