but as a matter of fact, I was talking about getting laid, which, experience has told me, is no cure for depression or anything else, except maybe fiscal responsibility.
I remember lying awake in bed, staring into the darkness, with my then-significant other beside me. She was asleep, or maybe pretending to sleep like I was.
It had been a not-so-great evening, culminating in not-so-great sex, and I was backtracking in my mind to figure out where it had gone awry. I finally decided the turning point was the moment she opened her front door to me. Everything had been fine when I was standing alone on the porch.
It doesn't matter when this was, or who the significant other was. It happened more than once. In fact, it was the norm.
I realize this is different for other people, but for me, sex is usually two long strung-out trains of emotional baggage, intellectual baggage, social baggage, financial baggage and consumerist baggage joined at the genitals. There's nothing fun or even pleasant about it.
And one day, I had to look at myself and say, "Y'know, you're not actually having any fun. You're mostly having sex out of a sense of obligation. Not even obligation to your SO. It's the obligation to peer pressure and marketing expectations."
And I hear too many other people complain about sex and tell dark sardonic jokes about it to think it's really as popular as the media lead us to believe.
Master Gotama, as you know, was a prince before he became an ascetic and later the Buddha. He was very wealthy, lived in a palace and could have any woman he wanted. He married and had children. And he walked away from it. You'll hear some Buddhists talk about 'tantric sex' and 'elite teachings for the initiates,' but here's the deal: the man himself had it, could get all he wanted -- and he walked away from it.
4 comments:
To quote a wise man:
"When the fuckin' starts, the insanity starts."
If you like dealing with insanity, fuckin' takes you there in a hurry.
Monks may have the right idea about it all...
Yes, sex is over-rated.
My perspective is that sex when you don't feel like sex and no sex at all are both perversions of healthy living.
sex when you don't really feel like sex can certainly depress one because it creates a kind of cognitive dissonance.
Same for celibacy. Our sex drives are natural -- as natural as hunger and thirst. Not having sex when you really feel like sex for some aesthetic reason or for religious reasons is the same cognitive dissonance that leads to emotional uproar.
there is a better choice: have sex reasonably and seasonably. Have sex because it fits what your body needs and wants. Have sex because it expresses an emotion otherwise inexpressable with your partner.
It's not just marketing that perverts sex in our culture. We also have unrealistic expectations about sex (and especially love) that come from movies and books and television. We also have unrealistic fears about sex that come from religion and the media.
There is a truth and wisdom about sex that is within yourself. It is yours and yours alone. Finding it is a task of life that we do well or badly.
In the absence of solving that problem, our emotions will come out "sideways" and unhappiness will follow inevitably.
blogblah!!!
Yeah, sex, having fun and loving someone would be bad for you...
Stay very far away from it all & obsess about your own poop.
Yep, that's the life for you.
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