Conversations and topics come is waves. They are in some respects, as regular as the tide which makes for writing about them after the fact all the more entertaining. And it thus that I found two successive days of discussion over the sobering and conflict-laden topic of sex, love, and marr... edit ... commitments. I don't want to use the 'M' word. Not yet, loaded with too much insinuation.
I digress. Back to the point...
Prior to be called back to work for an emergency on Thursday evening, as the storm clouds cleared into a beautiful, sun-kissed autumn evening, I found myself seated at Greenberry's drinking tea and chatting with two very different (and yet similar individuals). One was a woman in her mid fifties and the other was a scruffy, unshaven man in his later fifties. Their differences are striking. The woman is undoubtedly charming in her manner and a comfortable to converse with. She is a social creature in the truest sense of the word. The man on the other hand, in complicated. He is in many regards the opposite of the woman. An admitted aficionado of women, he is visually as gorgeous as scarred earth in Death Valley. However, in a very charlatan way he is charming with women and well off. There in lies his key; he never holds back and can make conversation with all of them. As dirty as he may be, in its own ironic way he is an honest man- he acts as most men do and is unabashed by it. No apologies. No need for them.
Indeed, for him women are like trophies. It should come as no surprise that he is not married and can only wish he had children. But that is the price you pay for living life as a player rather than on observer. You get caught up in the game. The woman on the other hand has a family and a secure relationship. A mind blowing opposite to the man. So it caught me off guard when our conversation turned to sex, love, and commitments. Given the descriptions of the two above, you'd think that they would be as similar as oranges and hair pieces. I could not be further from validity if I tried. Both quietly looked back on their lives and began to speak, taking turns like wrestlers in a tag-team match. Both recalled how when they were my age, there was no expectation for sex and that many people waited till engagement or marriage for sex. At the very least there was assumption that only a serious relationship would garner the old "bump and grind". I found this particularly strange coming from that man, who as I stated, is pretty open on his conquests. To them, one fell in love with the other person generally long before one slept with the person.
My second conversation took place today with a very good friend of mine who I will refer to as Sing Sing. She is my age (which dear readers, is mid twenties...fair enough?) and voiced the following opinion: Sing Sing found it ironic that we usually have sex with someone long before we ever tell them we love them. I suppose you could say that if one were to compare that with the values of our parents' generation it would be akin to putting the horse before the carriage. I did not ask Sing Sing what it was that she found ironic about it, but I can surmise that it has something to do with committing and connecting. We either do not value the act of love making as we used to or we hold love to a very high esteem. I doubt it is the latter.
Our parents generation were certainly not as liberated as we are. That much is true. They were at the forefront of the changes that we see today in us, but they did not have the luxury of experiencing our freedoms. They grew up with a far different formula for romance. For their generation, and the ones proceeding theirs, love (and thus the declaration of love) was the product of being around someone, affection, and communication. It was simple but then again the times were much simpler and more conservative. A couple was expected to stay together and I believe that forced both the man and the woman to cultivate love long before sex.
We, on the other hand, have significantly more criteria in our equation. In fact, I would submit that our formula looks something like this:
love = sex(physical attraction + personality) + (commitment value/pain in the ass rating) + communicability + affection + (X1, X2, X3...)
NOTE: X is comprised of any other random variables in today's relationships.
And that my readers is damn complicated. But think about it for a second. We live in a multidimensional world. We are highly networked into so many little nooks and crannies. Because of that, factors we consider before we even say "I love you" play a much more salient role. It would seem strange if we did not filter love though our kaleidoscopic views. In some ways we have been given a gift that our parents never had. We have millions of tools at our disposal to effectively value the content of love.
In the same token, we are cursed. Much like Merton's theory of anomie, where alienation leads to deviancy, our over-saturation of metrics (and dare I say distractions) pulls us away from love and into love deviancy. Sex, in and of itself is not bad. I think we are justified in including sex in our criteria before saying those magic words to someone (and without doubt before heading into marriage). My point is that while sex was considered a taboo subject in the days of yore, it is an integral part of a relationship. What the man and the woman at Greenberry's could not understand is why we engage in it so freely without feeling committed and that is understandable. For them sex was a validation of love. For us love is validated impart through sex. We simply have expanded the framework of what is love.
So in closing, let me correct our title: First comes sex, then comes love, then comes some flavor of commitment (be it marriage, partnership, etc). It is our generation's interpretation of establishing something substantive with another individual. It may not be understood and is highly complex but it is ours to us and give to the next generation to further expand.
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