What Is Sex For?

[angel2write]

Why do we even have sex?

What is sex for? (Other than babies... I've got that part figured out. :rolleyes:)

I'm not being sarcastic. I'd really like to know.

 

[angel2write]

I've been thinking about this yesterday and today.

It's an area I think a lot of people on here are looking for healing in. (Including me.) But I realized yesterday that I don't really have any idea what I'm aiming for. No idea of a goal.

I know some bad things sex can be for:

Sex is to keep your boyfriend/lover/husband from abandoning you.
Sex is a way of manipulating someone into "loving" you.
It can be a punishment. Or a way of making someone suffer.
A way to express anger with someone or dominance over them.
It is something to be endured. (Getting upset making this list.... hands shaking :sick: :confused:)
It can be a way to numb out pain.
Or to disassociate. Escape from problems.
A way to act out abuse. To re-enact abuse scenarios and try to take control of them.

But when I try to make a list of good things it's for... I'm coming up kind of blank.

For babies.
Intimacy? People say that a lot, but I'm not sure what they mean.

I can't believe I'm this ignorant about something I've been doing most of my life. :notworthy:

 

[heidi]

I think regardless of how you understand meaning in life. As a species we are here to spread our seeds. I think that we can't just accept this like more primitive animals. So we have to analyze, compartmentalize and be fooled by nature itself.

But I've always felt that intimate sex without feeling doesn't feel right. I don't think it's anything to do with anything high and mighty. It's probably a device of evolution that allows people to come together and stay together for the sake of their offspring.

I also sometimes wonder what romantic love is and why we crave it. I think it's still something to do with being under natures spell as much as we'd like to romanticize it. I can go my whole life without sex, but it's difficult to not crave romantic love. Is that just a female thing? Are men like that?

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[angel2write]

I also sometimes wonder what romantic love is and why we crave it... I can go my whole life without sex, but it's difficult to not crave romantic love. Is that just a female thing? Are men like that?

Romantic love... you know. I'm not sure about that either.

Would romantic love be wanting someone to thing you're special, think you're beautiful, want to spend time with you... that kind of thing? I would think men would want that, too. To have a woman think they are special, handsome, worthy...

My husband says he thinks those things about me. And that it makes him want to go to bed with me. I don't see it. I have trouble connecting feelings like those to sex. They don't seem to have much to do with each other to me. What does sex have to do with love? I can do love, or I can do sex. I can't really see how they mix.

 

[heidi]

Oh, yeah, I can relate to that. I think if you've been shamed in the past or if you've had a bad experience it's hard to view certain aspects as loving even if your relationship is loving.

Also I think it's with the new couples that love and sex meet. Like you like someone and want to be close to them and then it's electric when you are. I think in long term relationships you might feel a bond but you don't necessarily want to have sex directly out of love. I think usually in a long term relationship you do it to be satisfied. Which can end up being a bonding experience in the end. I know. It's gross.

Oh and I forgot. I guess there is that whole thing about being in a long term relationship and wanting to make your partner happy. I think mature healthy men want to make their women happy too and not just be selfish about it.

Actually, I have no idea. That's the extent of my knowledge.

 

[SpokaneSunshine]

I like sex, so this may not be the viewpoint you're looking for, but other than reproduction, there can be many positive things about sex. In the right context, sex feels good, and having sex releases hormones or chemicals or something (can't recall) that make us feel more bonded to our partner.

It can be really difficult to separate good sex from bad sex when you've been victimized by someone who used sex as a tool to achieve the results you mentioned above (control, punishment, etc.).

 

[Meadowsweet]

I'm in a position where I might not feel able to have a sexual relationship again.So its a really good question to consider.

I think in my ideal world, I'd like someone to share my thoughts, feelings and dreams with. I'd like to have a bond with someone who knows and understands the person I am on the inside. Its that closeness, honesty and (in time) trust that would be in my ideal relationship.

And I think to me, healthy sex would be the physical expression of that closeness, openess and trust.

 

[Nicolette]

sex releases hormones or chemicals or something

I think you mean endorphins?

From Wikipedia:

Endorphins ("endogenous morphine") are endogenous opioid peptides that function as neurotransmitters.[1] They are produced by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus in vertebrates during exercise,[2] excitement, pain, consumption of spicy food, love and orgasm,[3][4] and they resemble the opiates in their abilities to produce analgesia and a feeling of well-being.

But when I try to make a list of good things it's for... I'm coming up kind of blank.

This might help Angel http://stress.about.com/od/generaltechniques/a/sexandstress.htm

 

[Anna]

Why do we even have sex?

What is sex for? (Other than babies... I've got that part figured out. :rolleyes:)

I'm not being sarcastic. I'd really like to know.

Making babies as you said :) Nature is cruel. When you have sex you release endorphins and oxytocin. This can make sex addictive. It also makes people fall in love or bond. Oxytocin is also released when mothers breastfeed their young. Sex evolved to speed up evolution. Before then it was just mothers creating daughters (like amoeba for example). Males evolved to speed up evolution by bringing different dna together. Males are modified females. In utero all fetuses are female until week 11 when the sex is determined and the male develops. This is why men have nipples. They are also genetically more unstable as they only have one x chromosome.

 

[Helliepig]

Sex can be beautiful, tender, intimate - it can be one of the rare places you forget all this shit and just be.

I guess it can also be a powerful trigger, a scary place to be real, a battleground for games and rejection, an easy way to get hurt.

I guess it varies - with the person and where you are with your healing.

I would like to go there again, in the NOT too distant future!! - but I'm scared - the last time I had sex it was from deep within my PTSD defences and not as the real me, shut off and oblivious to my triggers and desperately being someone I wasn't.

Now the real me is out here - along with a few damaged parts that endured sex abuse - and she/they don't really know how it will be.

 

[anni]

I wish there were more options than 'like', since it's tough to do 'like' for some things, you know? Like where Angel said she could do love or she could do sex but not both because the whole thing is baffling, basically. I wanted to 'like' that for how intriguing and honest it is, didn't want to 'like' what sounded like someone's pain if that makes any sense. Alot of these posts are the same way so please excuse.

It's an awesome question. I never ever thought of it before. I guess the reasons in a relationship might be different as time goes on? When I first met my husband it would have been because boy I thought he was a fabulous work of Mother Nature and the chick in me took one look and said um- whoa. I think it may still be that simple, actually and not so much, as Angel said, inclusive of the whole love thing. I love him a ton, yes. He's also very appealing to me personally and that is what works on my chick brain. If I did not love him would I still want to sleep with him? I don't know, probably would want to and could not these days BUT, it still feels kind of seperate, I agree.

 

[Helliepig]

When I first met my husband it would have been because boy I thought he was a fabulous work of Mother Nature and the chick in me took one look and said um- whoa.

I quoted that because it made me laugh - and because i'm scared I won't feel like that again about someone, because i am scared powerful attraction has something "fatal" and "familiar" in it and somehow hooks you up with the people who are not good for you. I would so like that not to be true...