In a healthy lifestyle, sex is not an obsession. Still, sex is perhaps the most intense pleasure that adults can experience. And if not done properly, it can lead to agony, or even death. Psychologically, there is no joy like romantic love, nor is there any pain quite as deep as lost love. Surely a good sexual relationship is a necessary component in a fulfilled life. And of course sex is the instrument of reproduction, which is how we got here, and which is life-altering for us when we conceive children of our own. Something this important must be explicitly addressed in any reasonably complete belief system. Besides, there are aspects of sexual pleasure that are fundamentally different from other forms of pleasure (i.e., sex isn't just simple stimulus reduction, as described in previous sections), so such issues require special treatment here.

 

Most religions encourage people to be modest in their pursuit of sexual pleasure. Some religions are downright repressive. For example, Christian and Buddhist monks take a vow of celibacy, and breaking that vow results in expulsion from the order. Expectations for the rest of the people are not as strict, but similar. Roman Catholics are taught that sex is only for making babies, and shouldn't be done just for the pleasure of it. So for them, contraception is a sin, because if they're not trying to make a baby, they shouldn't be having sex at all. Most Catholics think that this is asking too much, and they use the "rhythm method" to have sex (for the pleasure) without explicitly using anything to prevent pregnancy (except a calendar).

 

Curiously, the Pope maintains standards that are as strict as possible, without losing too many followers, but the Church doesn't fight political battles against contraception or abortion. It takes up other political issues, begging the question of why it won't support anti-abortion crusades or fight the distribution of condoms to the general public. The obvious answer is that the Pope doesn't want everybody to make a baby every time they have sex, including Anglicans, Protestants, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. So the Catholic sexual code isn't religious, and following it doesn't get one closer to God. The Bible never said anything about not using contraception (which was practiced even in ancient times, when the scriptures were written) — this is just something that the Pope made up in the interest of populating the world with more Catholics.

 

We believe that it is better to win converts with righteous principles. Faced with repressive mandates, some people accept frustrated existences, and never come to know God the way they could have, while others have turned away from spirituality altogether, only to find empty and meaningless lives in the pursuit of pleasure that always seems to elude them. Either way, they took a wrong turn off of the road to heaven on Earth, and we'd rather use a better map.

 

In a scientifically based belief system, we need to start with biology, and we should recognize the goodness in that which is healthy. Obviously, the biological purpose of sex is to make babies, and the sex drive exists to that end. The first implication is that we already have more babies than we need. In ancient times, the global population was relatively stable. People had large families, but the infant mortality rate was high, and it all balanced out. Such is no longer the case — advances in modern medicine and nutrition have dramatically increased the number of children reaching maturity, and the population has swelled to the point that we are now consuming the Earth's resources faster than it can replenish them. It's just a matter of time before this will bring great hardship to humankind, when the resources run out. So we should have fewer children, and/or cut back on the comsumption per capita. If mothers had no more than 3 children, it would stabilize the world's population, since not all women have children, and not all children go on to have children of their own. Mothers having no more than 2 children would reduce the world's population. Many cultures will find such limits to be objectionable. Since the issue is natural resources, one strategy would be to allow women to have as many children as they want, but to heavily tax them for the children beyond the second one, and to use the money to subsidize sustainable environmental practices. Countries not willing to levy and collect such taxes would forfeit foreign aid when the inevitable environmental catastrophe hits, since they caused their own problem.

 

Continuing along the lines of responsible baby-making, society should encourage people to have children within the context of stable, long term relationships. Raising children is difficult, and the kids will fare much better if a two-person team is taking care of them, as opposed to a single parent. Western society makes little effort to support marriages, and this is not good. Some cultures delegate child rearing to the extended family, such as grandparents. Other cultures have communal child care, in which all of the children are raised together by the elders, leaving the parents free to produce economic value (when not producing babies to keep the elders busy). These are excellent strategies, since the people raising the children are older and wiser. It's unfortunate that in western society, mobility has reduced the strength of the community bonds, making this less practical. Also, people in affluent cultures tend to have babies at an older age, and the grandparents might be too old to keep up with young children. So more of the responsibilities fall directly on the parents, even while they are in their professional primes, and without any prior experience in child rearing. This makes it all that much more important that society support the marriages of parents, for the sake of the children.

 

Then, we need to consider the implications of people living long, healthy lives, with lots of spare time, and only needing to make a maximum of 3 babies. That means that all of the other times that they have sex, it's just for the pleasure. And there is no utility in feeling guilty for this — it isn't our fault that we still have all of the biological urges that enabled the survival of the species through ancient times, even though we now live healthier and longer lives, and thus are capable of producing more babies than the Earth's resources can sustain. We just need to learn how to go through the motions for the pleasure of it, and in a healthy way.

 

But even when done just for the pleasure, the sex drive doesn't know that it is no longer serving the purpose of making babies — it is still triggered by indications that healthy children will result from the union. For example, we are aroused by fine physical specimens, especially if we consider them to be mentally robust as well, and that they will be considerate of the needs of others — they'll make good family members. This is the single biggest factor, and if it is overlooked, all other factors put together will not yield a fulfilling relationship. God never meant for bad people to reproduce, and if we are unhappy with our partners, or with ourselves, the mechanisms shut down. The only way to have a decent sex life is to be a good person, considerate of the needs of others, and striving to build a better community. When we get that sense of approval for the good things that we have done, we then feel free to enjoy ourselves.

 

Paradoxically, we also find taking risks to be arousing, even though it isn't the healthiest thing to do. There is little consensus on why this is, but the most sensible explanation is that risk-taking stirs up the gene pool. If it were not for this mechanism, we would all breed as close to home as possible, preferring the safety and security of familiar surroundings and like minds, which (all other factors being the same) would be the safest thing to do. But breeding close to home increases the chance of genetic disorders, and natural selection prefers cross-breeding. So somewhere in our distant past, a mutation occurred, in which a direct neural connection between fear and erotic sensations was established. People who inherited this trait were then more sexually adventurous, and their stock came to dominate the population. We now get a tingle from the fear of heights, or of getting caught, or from trading germs with people other than our soul mates — just because there was a genetic incentive to take a chance mating outside of our cliques.

 

Yet some of these behaviors are dangerous, and the fear factor is better invoked with scary thoughts than with hazardous actions. In healthy relationships, people who understand this can share such thoughts, about things that they wouldn't — and shouldn't — actually do, enjoying all of the benefits simply from thinking/talking about risky behaviors, and paying none of the prices. They merely have to remember that this is a biological mechanism, and such thoughts are not an indication of dissatisfaction with one's partner. They just add a little bit of icing to the cake, and there is nothing wrong with that, as long as nobody's feelings get hurt. And the urge to take a chance is no reason to engage in unsanitary practices, such as exchanging any sort of bodily fluids with anyone other than a long-term partner. Going through the motions, with just a few simple precautions, is just as thrilling, and such is God's way.

 

Another paradox is that sexual release is triggered by physical sensations, and in ecstasy, the distinction between pleasure and pain gets blurry. This is because of the way the human brain interprets incoming sensations — the difference between pleasure and pain is a matter of degree, but the assessment is absolute. In other words, it's a winner-take-all conclusion as to whether to interpret the sensations as pleasurable or painful. Thus in ecstasy we experience pure pleasure, but a moment later, we realize that we just got a rug burn, and it hurts. Did we not realize that we were hurting ourselves? Actually, we felt the sensations, but they got interpreted as pleasure, and we only recognized them as pain once the pleasure went away. Realizing this, some people have decided to use pain to enhance the pleasure that they experience during sex, sometimes coupled with the fear factor. We consider this to be senseless. At the very least, people engaging in such activities need to be extremely careful. If somebody is experiencing 51% pleasure and 49% pain, it gets interpreted as 100% pleasure, but the delicate balance between pleasure and pain can shift rapidly, and thus go from 100% pleasure to 100% pain, in which case somebody is getting hurt, and that's really bad.

 

The other way to go, which is much safer, is not to increase the amount of stimulation, but rather, to increase the sensitivity, which typically involves reducing the stimulation, sometimes down to next to nothing. In this, we have found that increasing sensitivity is actually better described as decreasing the desensitizing agents. People are naturally sensitive, but the world is harsh, and we learn to put up our guard against the things that can hurt us. Thus we numb ourselves so that we can't feel pain. But of course that also means that we can't feel pleasure either. To feel anything at all, we have to drop our guards. To facilitate this, a partner has to remove the harsh conditions that justify the numbness. Once we open up to physical sensations, the gentlest of touches can take us to the top. Since this approach is far more consistent with a loving, caring relationship, we consider this to be God's way, while overstimulation is Satan's way (especially if not done very carefully).

 

Finally, there is a psychological paradox wherein both love and hate are necessary components in a healthy relationship. It is certainly true that love and hate are mutually defining concepts, and we appreciate the things that we like more intensely when we also know what we don't like. But there is more to it than that. In order to manage the distance between two people, they have to not only feel an attraction — they also have to identify a repulsion that they can use to increase the distance when appropriate. When both of these forces are understood by both partners, the relationship is under control, and they can relax and enjoy themselves.

 

That's a lot of paradoxes — no wonder there is so much confusion, and so many frustrated people. But with patience, and a lot of attention to the most important factor (i.e., that we have to be decent people in order to be fulfilled), we can all be fully satisfied on a regular basis. And this is quite necessary, if we are not to be an unpleasant burden on those around us.

 

Elaborations

 

Summary

• Good sex is biological, and moral — nobody gets hurt.
• A lot of sensitivity, and a little bit of adventure, is good.
• A lot of adventure, and no sensitivity, is really bad.
• Both love and hate are necessary in a healthy relationship.