What is Sex without Intimacy OR Intimacy without Sex??
We no longer feel the social pressure to confine sex to committed relationships. In fact, we're free to explore our sexuality with just about anyone we like. Sex is now an accepted recreational activity. What we often don't realize, however, is that even casual, recreational sex still involves intimacy. We may have overcome our fear and shame about sex, but many of us still have issues regarding intimacy. If we experience more intimacy than we can handle, we will feel threatened; our safety checklist will be triggered. No matter how "safe" we make sex, sex may not be safe to us.
When we experience an orgasm, we reveal ourselves more completely and more honestly than at any other time. We let our egos die for a moment, and we have the chance to experience a true connection with another person. Then the ego comes back into the picture, and we're hit with the fear of separation, and all of our old patterns. If we don't have enough trust or enough safety, we will feel threatened, guilty, and generally unsafe. No matter how much society's beliefs about sex have evolved in our lifetime, our core conditioning tells us that there's no such thing as no-strings sex. We still equate sex with love, and love with commitment. And we equate love and commitment with vulnerability, responsibility, and the fear that our needs will not be met.
Sex is very easy to come by in today's society. What most of us crave, however, is not sex, but intimacy. The challenge is that the only model most of us have for expressing or experiencing intimacy is sex. Intimacy requires trust, and trust takes time. It's very difficult to experience true intimacy through casual sex.
The level of intimacy we experience through sex can be threatening to many of us, particularly if the sex occurs early in the relationship. Safety is essential in the early stages of a relationship--even the smallest safety violation can mark the end of a budding romance. As we get to know our partners over time, we create a foundation of trust and familiarity. We can keep minor safety violations in perspective. This is not the case when we have truly casual sex with someone.
When we become sexual with a person we've just met, even the smallest safety violation will be enough to stop our getting to know each other. One of the challenges is that it's not usually appropriate or possible to have a Relationship Definition Talk with a person we've known less than six hours. There is no real relationship to discuss. While we both may have wanted to pursue a romantic relationship before we had sex, we often find we're less interested the next morning, because we feel unsafe.
We experienced too much intimacy too quickly, and we need to create some distance, some space, and to put up some walls so that we can recover. These walls, however, block the emotional and spiritual connections we experienced that made us want to get to know each other in the first place. Since we don't really know our partner, we wonder if there was ever a genuine connection between us. We often end up with the awkward "morning after" where one of us promises to call the other, and neither of us believes the phone will actually ring.
But sex and intimacy are still connected. The more intimate we become with someone, the more important it will be that we are able to express that intimacy through sex. Our objective in our romantic relationships is to feel loved. Ultimately, love involves a balance of sex and intimacy. But for many of us, the choice seems to be either having intimacy without sex, or sex without intimacy. We've all but forgotten how to combine the two.
