One belongs to the body, the other to the heart. One is (for those who split it) sinful, the other allowed. One is related to the project and parenting, the other to the now and pleasure. One is intra-couple, the other extra-couple. One bores, the other exalts and ignites the senses. One can survive without the other, and the other without the one.
These, and many others, are the false myths associated with the difference between sex and love.
They all embody an atavistic and inexplicable need to separate sentiment from sexuality, as if the first were violated or diminished by the second, and the second weakened or made banal and dull by the first.
In the collective imagination, eroticism and love seem to be quarrelsome sisters: impossible roommates in the same relationship.
Loving a partner with whom you decide to combine body, heart, senses and life project, does not mean wanting him less, especially with the passage of time, but trying to make two apparently antithetical elements coexist: love and sex.
Derubricating the audacious and transgressive element of sexuality from affectivity, or lowering its volume, does not lead to a wise choice in favor of the relationship, but to a renunciation choice, sometimes a healthy bearer of mournful instances.
Eros represents the life instinct as well as the long life elixir of relationships.
Attempting to separate sex from love in a surgical and Manichean way is an unhealthy act, among other things absolutely impossible, it is, instead, mental conjectures of a defensive type to stem and weaken the strength of love and the intensity of sexuality on fire and heated by feeling.
“There is no sex without love” Venditti sang giving emotions to millions of generations; but there is also no love without sex, if we really have to try in an acrobatic and circus way to separate these two aspects that are definitely inseparable from each other.
Is there a memory of love? Can the heart remember what the mind has lost?
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Love without sex, in sexology, it can present itself in various ways: white couples and decreased sexual desire, more precisely called hypoactive sexual desire.
In the first case, we are dealing with white couples: a woman suffering from vaginismus, therefore an adult virgin, and a man with erectile deficit or other sexual dysfunctions.
Relation candidate to an inevitable crisis and the impossibility of becoming parents.
In the second case, we are dealing with a couple suffering from silence of the senses or afflicted by an early retirement of sexual desire; it is always a couple in crisis. Two partners who have already begun a silent and dangerous separative process, which will probably lead them into other, more exciting and desiring arms, or to the office of a divorce lawyer.
The age difference in love and the fear of loving each other
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Asymmetrical relationships: one partner loves, the other has sex
Giving up love in favor of sex seems to have become the common denominator of many relationships, especially today.
Sometimes the pact is clear and silent, other times it is ambivalent even if verbalized: no love, only sex. Partners become a pair of sheets, with no after and no future, they inhabit the here and now. Other times, one loves – or would like to – and the other doesn’t.
When one partner loves and the other doesn’t, one is inside the bond, the body and heart of the other, and the other is elsewhere. One of the two invests in the bond, fertilizing heart and body in synergy, and the other for various reasons, disinterest or fear of involvement, aims only at the body, without love-sentimental trappings. One loves, the other has sex, proud and happy to split the two areas.
The sexual act itself, without heart, without waiting and without feeling, becomes the satisfaction of a momentary impulse and is lived mainly with this objective. When the protagonists of sexuality seek the desire for intimacy and exchange, instead, they are making love, regardless of what after.
“After 23 years I found out I didn’t know my husband.” The Jada and Will Smith case, between ideality and reality in the couple
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No sex, we’re in love
Sometimes, for reasons as mysterious as they are redundant, (long-lived) love kills sexuality. A couple is born, grows up and seems to be necessarily a candidate to cross the storms of the couple crisis.
The spark is released that becomes attraction. In the most fortunate or courageous cases it becomes a relationship. There follows the desire to discover the other, to drag him between the folds of the mind and the sheets. Desire becomes body, and the body becomes feeling.
Thanks to the achievements of modernity, however, we have embraced the art of compromise that has separated the heart from the body, giving rise to a pandemic of multiple sexual dysfunctions and fertilizing the fear of truly loving. Integrating affectivity and sexuality, regardless of the duration of the relationship, could be a strategy to achieve a less dysfunctional sexuality and stem the fear of happiness.
It happens more and more frequently that out of boredom or disinterest and lack of care of the bond, some couples get lost: they stop talking and listening to each other, looking at each other and kissing, and of course, making love or having sex.
Sexuality becomes routine, boredom, discountedness and discontent. It loses its playful dimension, of exchange and nourishment for the love bond. Halfway point full of risks and posthumous problems.
Boredom, habit and haste become the protagonists of the reduction, until the total extinction of the sexual life of a long-lived couple.
Keeping the sacred fire of passion alive protects against the risk of betrayal, boredom and abandonment. Hence, sexuality nurtures love and love keeps sexuality alive. Love and sex are fused and confused, and one is indispensable to the other.
Sex, intimacy and love: the psychosexologist’s advice to face the life of a couple in quarantine
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More love, more sex. More sex, more love
Combining love and sexuality, especially over time, seems to have become an arduous and tiring undertaking.
The spark ignites with the stranger, with summer love, with the lover, but with the official partner he finds it hard to keep himself present and turns dangerously due to his deflection or even extinction.
In the territory of couple stability, no one knows why, the sacred fire of passion is slowly placed on the sacrificial altar. Sacrifice that sooner or later will compromise even the most solid and long-lasting of bonds.
No marriage or cohabitation can be considered the tomb of sex and love, if the dimension of care and eros remain present during all phases of a couple’s life.
The dialogue between the bodies, with the hinge of feeling, gives the possibility to explore emotional landscapes never seen before.
Sexuality, which is very different from sex, is sex and love. It is senses and fantasy. It is now and after. It is transgression and belonging.
* Valeria Randone is a psychologist, specialist in clinical sexology, in Catania and Rome (www.valeriarandone.it) and author of book “Ex maybe ex”
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Read all the articles of the section “LOVE IS NOT JUST LOVE” (click here)
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