[Eldanuumea]

I wanted to start this topic both to claify my own ideas about human sexuality and also to invite others to comment on its importance in their lives.
I commented in a Playroom thread that I would as soon put a gun to my head as discover I could never again have sex.....and I've been thinking about that statement.
Sexuality has far more to it than the physical expression with a lover. Many individuals do not have sex, because they choose a celibate lifestyle, or because they are physically unable to have sex. There are people who don't have sex because of other reasons, for example, living with a spouse who is uninterested or unable to have sex. They choose fidelity over unfaithfulness.

I suppose it seems to some like sex is all I ever think about.....and lately that may be truer than not. But that is because I am going through personal changes. It seeems like I spent the first half of my life avoiding sexuality, fearing it, thinking it sinful, and now my psyche is refusing to allow me to deny and sublimate any longer. I have had to deal with the fact that I am a sexual being and that tere is nothing wrong with that.

I would love to hear from others about how important they think sexuality is. Is physical expression vital for total mental and physical health? How does your ppersonal spirituality affect your views/practices?

[Ouroboros]

I think that unless there is a chemical attraction between two people, then their relationship is unlikely to last. Sex and the physical expression of love isn't everything, but it's bloody important in my opinion.

My personal spiritual beliefs don't restrict me from having sex with whatever people, vegetables, furniture, minerals, machinery etc. that I might want to :D

[Stranger]

Well,
I think that sexuality is the root of our being, the strongest driving instinct we have.

I think the development of patriarchal religions that have condemned this aspect of our nature has severely retarded our development over the centuries.

In my own personal experience, the fire and passion of sexual expression has been a major force and inspiration in my life, and in the lives of people I have been able to observe.

I make no effort in this discussion to qualify sexual experience, putting it into categories, defining parameters under which it is acceptable or not and the like.

Something that has forever baffled me is the obsessive concern many people have for what happens in someone else's bedroom; their preferences, partners, etc. They aren't even there.

I have never given a thought to someone else's sex life. The only thing I care about is what's going on behind MY closed doors. How people can become so preoccupied with something they never participate in, never even see, is beyond me.

Ever since I became a rutting, pubscent, obnoxious teenager, sex has been the most wonderful, most fulfilling, most ecstatic force in my life.

And when I'm in a wheelchair, tooling down the hall at the nursing home, I'm going to have my cane close at hand, flipping up the nurses' skirts as I toddle by.

[Holbrook]

Sexuality:

Sex, making love.

It is wonderful, magic, funny and one of the most special gift one human being can give to another. It can be a pure selfless act of giving to another person that is so beautiful it stays in your heart as long as you live.

But It can be a cold, brutal, empty thing. It can be about just the body's needs. It can be twisted, used and abused to satisfy the so called "needs" and "wants" of the individual, when in reality it is just self gratification.

Sex given without any bond is a stale as two week old bread. Every relationship I have ever had, there has been a connection more than the flesh. The warmth of the heart has fired the touch. For the touch alone is not for me...

Even in my writing, there has to be more than just the "flesh" What lies behind is important, in fact to me more so than the bump and grind. In fact the bump and grind gets boring without the laughter and the love. And what others do is none of my business, as long as they realise that their actions can and do affect others in their lives emotionally.

[Stranger]

Hol,
Strangely enough, I agree with you, to some degree.
You add love to sex and it's like throwing a can of gasoline on a fire.

[Ouroboros]

Dunno, I think sexual activity outside of a serious emotional relationship is not necessarily an empty thing. It's fun! Sometimes that's enough...

[Stranger]

I agree with that.
I didn't mean to imply that the two were dependant on one another.
Only that the addition of love is like going from a prop Cessna to an F-16.

[Ouroboros]

True, true...

[Dominus]

I have yet to fly a plane myself.

[Eldanuumea]

Best wait till you have your pilot's license!

Seriously, one of the best things I ever did was to wait for my husband.