“So what did you tell your parents about you and me?” he asked, buttoning the top button of his crisp, white shirt, his hair still damp from the shower.
“I told them you were my boyfriend,” I replied from where I lounged on his bed, waiting for him to finish dressing so we could go meet my parents for breakfast.
“Really?”
“Well, ‘friend with benefits’ just isn’t something you say to my mother.”
“Good enough,” he shrugged and tucked in the shirt.
It’s been 3 1/2 years, and we’re still good friends with occasional benefits. The on-again, off-again nature of our relationship is ruled by geographic proximity rather than romantic drama.
“Don’t you want something more?” a girlfriend (without benefits) asked me. “If you put your foot down, do you think he’d step up to the plate?”
“Who says I want to step up to the plate?” I asked her.
Just because I’m sleeping with someone doesn’t mean I want to marry them. It doesn’t even mean I think marriage is in the offing. It just means I like them, and I like sex, and sex with them is a happy alignment of goals.
“But what if he meets someone else?” she pressed.
“Then I’ll be happy for him. I want my friends to be happy.”
All my life, I have puzzled about the importance people place on sex. The appeal of a long-term, committed relationship is easy to understand. I know many wonderful people who share beautiful relationships and marriages with each other, some monogamous and some not. But any one of them will agree: Sex is a perk, not why they took the job.
We confuse lust with love and intimacy with commitment. The romantic ideal of being “in love” with someone is held up as the life goal to which we all should aspire. We believe our “true love” is the person who will fulfill us and make us blissfully happy. Well, what were we before?
It’s an unrealistic expectation, and every time we tie it together with sex, we only set ourselves up for heartbreak – that person will never be able to live up to the fantasy we’ve created in our head, and sex will never change that fact, though it might obscure it for a little while (or a long while, if we’re lucky).
Recognizing we all go into our relationships with unrealistic expectations, knowing we’re going to discover all sorts of unforeseen details about both our partner and ourselves and being able to deal with those things openly and honestly is what builds strong foundations. Sometimes, we even have to recognize we are going to get our heart broken, but it’s not the end of the world. It might not even be the end of the relationship.
Sex is just one more thing we can’t afford to deceive ourselves about.
Let’s face the facts – sex is biology’s way of perpetuating the species, and marriage is society’s way of taking care of the children that result. Thanks to modern chemistry, one no longer goes hand-in-hand with the other, therefore many of the social constructs surrounding sex no longer apply.
Many of those constructs are myths about the link between sex and romantic love. We’ve been fed them since birth, or even before if you know your Shakespeare. But these social expectations are just the bogeyman our parents told us would come carry us off if we were bad. They’re the lump of coal in our stocking or the shiny new bicycle Santa Claus will bring us if we’re good.
Since the 1930s, that lump of coal, aka an unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease, has become less and less frequent thanks to the advent of effective contraceptives.
We mastered our biology, but we still cling to the unrealistic and outmoded social ideals. And the stigma attached to sexual relations is quickly disappearing, but the myths about sex and love remain.
Some people have religious reasons for abstaining from sex before marriage, which are eminently respectable. However, most of these social norms are now embodied in media and pop culture, not in church.
In just a few weeks, the second installment of the epic teen romance, the modern version of Romeo and Juliet complete with Capulet vampires and werewolf Montagues, will be out, instilling in us yet again the ridiculous belief that another person is the one and only thing that can affect our lasting happiness. And while our young heroes may win the battle with their hormones, I guarantee the sexual tension will be there, once again selling the myth of the complete package.
Hundreds of dreamy tweens and teens (and thirty-somethings) will become absolutely convinced that the attraction they feel for that cute boy or girl in math class is an Edward and Bella-worthy love. And many of them may act on it, convinced that physical passion is synonymous with eternal love. Many hearts will be broken and unwise decisions regretted because we, as a society, refuse to take a realist stance toward sex.
Sex is intimate and enjoyable and an activity with inherent risks that need to be accounted for, but it isn’t love, and it certainly isn’t “happily ever after.” Healthy views of sex recognize it for what it is and what it is not.
“Well, do you love him?” my girlfriend asked.
“Yes, I love him.” It’s a simple question with a simple answer, but it’s not why I’m sleeping with him. Nor does it mean I want to marry him.
In the end, because I can separate love and sex, I find I can love much more generously and still choose to be picky about the latter. We don’t need to append unrealistic expectations to sex or love and, as a result, can find happier, open and more honest relationships which may (or may not) last a lifetime.
Monica Sanford is a graduate student in Architecture and Community and Regional Planning. Reach her at monicasanford@dailynebraskan.com.
2-4% * Oral contraceptives
9% * Diaphragm and cervical cap
13% * Male condom
15% * Periodic abstinence
22% * Withdrawal
26% * Spermicides
28% Some of those numbers are low but consider this. If you were going to fly on an airliner and it had a 2-4% chance of crashing would you still want to fly on it?Only condoms will protect you from sexually transmitted diseases and they have a 15% failure rate. And unwanted pregnancies are also on the rise. One would be wisest to have sex only with someone you love and only after marriage. This level of commitment reduces the possibility of disease or unwanted pregnancy