Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Sexuality and Love

Sexuality is the term related to the physical expression of sex in relationship.  It's not 'love' perse but definitely an aspect of the umbrella term love.

CS Lewis talked of 4 loves , sibling love, friend love, love of parents and eros or sexual love.
The truly single distinguishing feature of marital relationship is sexuality.  I have relationships with many in life but only have one or a few of the totality as 'lovers'.

Sexual Medicine is a division of psychiatry and medicine which addresses sexual difficulties. The DSMV has an extensive list of sexual dysfunctions such as 'hypo arousal' and 'premature ejaculation. In this world sexuality is considered in the context of the pillars of science: determinism, materialisms and empiricism.

Love is more often scene as a matter for the 'arts' , something more 'poetic' when indeed there's long been a 'science of love' in the relationship studies of psychiatry and psychology.  There the term 'love' is exchanged for such things as 'bonding behavior', 'mating behaviour', 'object relations'.  There's all matter of scientific study of 'love' but it's not called 'love'.  Sex in contrast is definitely a matter of study with scientific journals being devoted to the top of sexuality and sexual behaviour.

Sex is about both procreation and recreation.  The 'pleasure' of sex is considered by scientists of a particular school to be the 'reward mechanism" for reproduction.  The two are definitely not linked solely in this matter so sex is not solely for procreation.  Homosexual sex seen in many species of nature is clearly not related to procreation in the traditional way of thinking.  Neither is masturbation which is so pleasurable that actual 'taboos' are found against it in many religions and cross culturally.

 

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