The phenomenology of sexuality

A great deal has been written on Christian marriage, and I think a great deal of it has missed the point, because it tends to begin by the assumption that the home is a sort of monastery, and then tries to adapt an essentially Religious view to the realities of the lay situation. What I want to try to do is consider love and marriage, not as a way of being holy "though involved with sex," but as they are in themselves, and then try to see how a layman can, by adopting God's viewpoint, transform this state into what it truly is.

It is interesting to note, first of all, that sex is a rather ingenious device on the part of God to use one of man's most powerful means of self-gratification as a vehicle to draw his attention away from himself. It need not have been this way; reproduction need not have required sex, still less caring for another person. Some lower forms of life reproduce without sex; and it is not inconceivable that higher forms could have evolved so that they do the same, or have a kind of impersonal sex like the plants. In fact, one would be inclined to think that autoreproduction would have a greater survival-value than the necessity of an organism's finding another of the same species but opposite in sex in the same vicinity. This is one of the pieces of evidence that to me tips the balance in favor of evolution's not being really an accident.

In fact, as we consider the various phases of the lay life, I will be pointing out that the world seems to be so constructed that it contains a number of very strong tendencies in the direction of self-forgetfulness, even in what seems to be most selfish. Every aspect of life, it seems, if you push it hard enough, is really only consistent with itself if its selfless dimension is paramount. This, of course, is what you would expect if God really creates the universe out of love.

But be that as it may, the fact is that human sexual attraction carries with it the tendency for the lover to become interested in someone else, and to lose to some extent his interest in himself; and thus it is quite possible to be significantly Christian without giving up sexuality.

If we look at "falling in love," which is the beginning of the phase of life we are interested in, it seems to me that the experience has three distinct aspects to it, as a psychological phenomenon: first, a physical-emotional aspect; secondly, an aesthetic experience based on the emotions involved; and thirdly, something that can only be called a mystical dimension--though it is a familiar sort of mysticism, one that is apt to go unnoticed, or, when noticed, to be inflated into something much greater than it is in its rather prosaic, though unintelligible, reality.

Interestingly enough, the physical aspect of being or falling in love is abstract, even though at first sight it seems most concrete. It has, however, as its object "the other sex," and is pretty much the same no matter who it attaches itself to, just so this person be what is considered "attractive." It is this aspect of being in love that is promiscuous, just because this aspect of it is abstract; and it is those who regard human love as nothing more than biological (however much more it may seem to be) who see nothing against sharing one's sexual life with as many persons as one is attracted towards.

But these people are wrong, because there is something about the sexual drive that concretizes this urge and humanizes it; it fixes it on some person who may or may not be very attractive physically; and it is here that the aesthetic and mystical side of sexual love become evident. One begins to seek out persons to marry with a different attitude from the physical attraction: one tries to find the kind of person he would like to live with.

But even here, the search is for an abstraction: a certain type of person. The odd thing is that it is very common to find someone who more or less fits the category, and suddenly to discover that the physical attraction follows this intellectual investigation as to who could be one's partner, to find that somehow this single person is the "right" one, the one that makes the other possible choices irrelevant, the one that unites the mind and the body rather than dividing them.

Up to this point, the person who has passed through puberty has been split apart from himself, torn away from what reason would have him do. When he meets the one reason says is the "right kind of person" and then falls in love, he begins to think that wholeness is possible.

It is this union of the intellectual and emotional that is the aesthetic side of the experience of love, because fundamentally an aesthetic experience (the experience of being confronted with beauty--as opposed to attractiveness) is a meaning grasped through emotions. It is a real meaning, not simply the emotions themselves, because one understands a relationship, but it is a meaning that is grasped through the relation of emotions, and not the relation of sights or sounds. Thus, it is a different kind of meaning from ordinary meaning.

For most people, since the emotions connected with sex are extremely powerful, and yet are related to all kinds of different experiences, the experience of being in love is the most significant of all aesthetic experiences. It is this that generates the desire to write poems and play music, and makes all the silly (and the not silly) love poetry make sense, where the truth of the universe seems to be summed up in the beloved, and "we know why the summer sky is blue," and all the rest of it.

And oddly, this turmoil brings peace, because the emotions of love, despite their violence, make sense finally. You understand what it is all about; you and she were meant for each other.

But beneath this understanding, there is a non-understanding. Why is it that this person out of all the world should be the one? And this mystery is compounded by the discovery that not only is she the only one for me, but for some incomprehensible reason I have become the only one for her. It can't be coincidence; she could have fallen in love with many more attractive people than I am; but there is nothing about me that would single me out. Why?

The more a person focuses on the individual aspect of the other and oneself, the fewer reasons one finds, the fewer relations one discovers that make sense out of this--which itself makes sense out of so much. An intellectual attention paid to the indivdual as unique and as unrelated to other things is what the mystical experience essentially is. It is intellectual, and so it is not an emotional experience, nor is it a perception of some sort; but it seems to be a kind of knowing. But it is a knowing which is not understanding, because understanding knows relationships, and in this experience, one simply focuses the intellect on the individual without finding any relationship to understand. Thus, it is a knowing-unknowing, a mystery. It is like looking into absolute darkness, as down in a cave when they turn off the lights. The black expanse you see is seeing--but seeing nothing. Here, the experience is one of knowing--but knowing nothing. Those who are in love will know what I am referring to, as one aspect of their love: it is their knowledge of the "specialness" of the beloved, and the "specialness" of the love itself, even though they are aware that sexual love is one of the most common experiences of mankind.

In the beginning, however, the mystical aspect of love is not very strong, and is ordinarily overwhelmed by the physical and aesthetic aspects, precisely because the lover thinks he understands his beloved. He has put her into a category; and as acquaintance advances, his theory of her is ordinarily strengthened, because his emotions tend to make him pay attention only to those aspects of his beloved which would lead to his marrying her, and directs his attention away from what does not suit his preconceived notion of the proper person to marry. But since understanding is just the awareness of relations among images or objects, and since the aspects of the beloved that are unfavorable are only dimly if at all perceived, then the beloved is understood as being practically perfect.

Love, therefore, in its initial stages is blind because it sees too little and understands too much.

This blinding by the emotions may, of course, be more or less severe; but its tendency is to carry the person away to some extent and make him want to commit himself to the beloved, because the more he sees her, the more impossible it becomes for him to conceive of a better choice for a partner. Coupled with this is the realization that this ideal (because idealized) being regards one in the same way, and one's resolve is strengthened, one begins to have more confidence in himself just because the one he respects so highly has a high opinion of him--and yet at the same time there is a hesitation toward commitment based on the fear, not so much of making a mistake oneself, but that the beloved is being deceived by not paying proper attention to one's shortcomings, and may be tying herself down to someone very different from what she imagines.

Note that this aspect of the sexual attraction tends to make the lover more interested in the beloved than his own gratification; and in this way what is emotionally selfish cheats itself, as it were, and produces an abstract concept of the ideal being for whom it is worth while to sacrifice one's whole life. One feels very humble, because he feels he does not deserve the love and high opinion that the beloved has for him, though he rejoices in it; and at the same time, he tries to make himself "worthy" of her good opinion and live up to her (hitherto mistaken) idea of him. Remember, this works on both sides; but our pronouns have only one sex, and so we have to pick one or the other when discussing this.

Eventually, the committing decision is made; and then after the initial bliss of the honeymoon, the situation changes. The mutual commitment eases the tensions of courtship, and the gratification of physical desire lessens the degree of the emotions felt between sexual contacts. Marriage brings peace, the sense of wholeness, and relaxation. The lover feels at ease with the beloved, as he did not before marriage, and the less noble aspects of his character begin to show themselves once again as he relaxes his attempts at impossible sanctity. It is possible to live a perfect life, but only for a short time; and the difficulty is compounded when you feel comfortable. Thus, both partners revert, to some extent, to being themselves.

But then, as the beloved shows herself to be less than perfect, and as the lover's emotions exert less control over his perceptions, then the lover realizes (usually with a shock) that he didn't marry the person he thought he was marrying.

Still, he thinks he understands what the beloved "really is," or at least the possibilities of the "real true self" that reveals itself now as bare possibilities and not the actualized reality he thought existed. Now the impulse of the lover is to "help" his beloved achieve these possibilities, and become once again the ideal being he married.

This is unselfishness; the lover at least thinks he is doing this "for her sake," not for anything he gets out of it. But it is actually a disguised form of self-centeredness. What the lover thinks is the "true reality" of the beloved is his abstract ideal of what she "ought" to be. That is, his idea of what she "really is" is a goal he has constructed for himself of what she can develop into; and so he is really imposing his goal on her, and trying to make her over into his notion of what she is.

But the essence of a human being, within the limits imposed by one's genes and past choices, is to be self-determining; which, as I have said so often, means that there is no objective goal for the person, no objective "true reality"; that the goal is what the person himself chooses to be the goal; there is no meaning to what the person "ought" to be except what the person chooses.

Thus, this attempt by the lover (and remember, this is occurring on both sides at once, because each is both lover and beloved) is actually a contradiction of the true essence of the beloved. This "understanding" is an imposition of a false notion on the reality, and a taking away of the other's freedom, making the beloved a slave of the lover's notion of what is "good for" her.

Now of course, since the beloved is the lover of the lover, she does try to go along with these attempts to make her over; but there is bound to be resentment connected with it, because it is a denial of her self-determining reality, and further, the more a person tries to live up to the other's notion, the more the other finds new faults that "need to be corrected" before the ideal is reached; and the task becomes an impossible one. Not to mention the fact that this perfectionist is not so perfect himself, and if he would only get rid of this or that little defect "which really makes no difference but it bothers me so much," then even if he is exacting, life could be much easier.

At this stage, then, each person sees himself as being imposed upon by the other's unrealistic demands that he be a saint, and at the same time is unaware that he is making the same kinds of demands (usually not in the same way; the verbal criticizer is countered by the partner's not complaining, but showing disapproval in silent ways).

Then each partner finds that nothing pleases the other. Things that he used to do which the fiancee took great pleasure in, he finds that she doesn't really like, and now sometimes even resents. He thought he understood her, at least that he knew what she liked; now he doesn't even know that.

He still loves her, but he finds it more and more difficult to express this love in a way that will make the beloved happy; and so he passes from knowing all about her to discovering that he knows nothing about her--and at the same time being convinced that she knows nothing whatever about what he really is, or she wouldn't be making these unreasonable demands and misinterpreting what he does with the best of intentions.

This is a normal stage of love. As it develops, the couple seems to be growing farther and farther apart, and it becomes more and more apparent to them that they are really incompatible. This is the point at which divorce is contemplated, and is one of the reasons why it should not be allowed; because it is the point at which true love can begin.

Usually there are children by this time, and they are young, which is lucky, because they evidently need both parents and would be torn in two by a separation. So some form of accommodation is needed simply in order to survive. Either one or both of the partners (they don't arrive, unfortunately, at this stage together) then decide that, instead of trying to adapt the other person to the abstract ideal formed of her, they will adapt their own life to the actual, imperfect, perhaps perverse, reality that confronts them.

And this, which seems to be a purely practical decision forced on a person by the circumstances, is actually the first step in that long road to true sexual love, which is the subordination of oneself to another's actual reality and a letting of the other person have her own goals, making her actual goals one's own. Letting her be herself, in other words, rather than "helping" her be her "true self." The second seems like love and is actually covert selfishness (and is sometimes what the Christian books on marriage say that married love ought to be), and the second seems like despair and is what married love is really all about.

That is, married love is not changing the beloved into a "better person"; it is changing oneself into a different person to adapt oneself to life with the beloved.

This seems, as it works itself out, to be a case of "parallel lives," without the "togetherness" that goes with "true intimacy"--and it can be that. But this letting of the other person go does not mean a loss of interest in her; it simply means a letting the other person be herself, and caring about her because she is, not because she is this or that. You don't love the beloved for her "qualities," still less her "good qualities," but she is--whatever she is--and you are, and the two of you are together.