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I don’t wish to keep linking to my favorite non believer’s blog nor to my least favorite pseudo-Christian manospherian blogger, but I am rather fascinated by the fact that they are such far extremes of each other, opposite reflections, and yet both stuck on the precise same wrong page.

They are both wrong, wrong, I tell you, but oddly in agreement with each other. So the idea is that sexual chemistry is simply a physical thing based on hormones, pheromones, this chemical soup that creates attraction, a concept sometimes backed up with the presentation of elaborate evo/psych theories. The concept suggests that we are just powerless victims of our own biology, in the manosphere, hypergamy, in the non believer’s quarter, pure chemistry we have no control over. Love is an elusive and unrelated thing, as is spirituality. Invisible and often imaginary. Sex only exists in the carnal realm as an entity unto itself.

What they both seem to completely disregard is the biggest sex organ of all, our own brains. As much as we like to deceive ourselves, we are not these mindless beings ruled by nothing but biology and chemistry. Long before we even act or feel we have laid down the behavior, desire, and attraction within our own brains. We rationalize, justify, and rehearse everything we do, sometimes without even being aware of it. We create our own chemistry, produce our own pheromones, invent our own desires.

I cannot possibly know precisely what desire is like for men, so there may well be some differences there. Just the same, we share the same species and contrary to all the jokes we like to tell, I’m going to say that a huge part of sexuality actually goes on in men’s brains, too. The brain actually leads, the body follows. I’ll make an exception there for the teen age years when hormones seem to attack without anyone’s permission and the clutch in the brain can appear to completely disengage.

What has got my knickers in a knot today is this idea that there is a two or 3 year sexual honeymoon phase and then it is all over and you are stuck with another person for life. Condemned to a loveless, sexually flat marriage. This is used as an excuse for everything, from “serial monogamy” to the need for people to have extra marital affairs, to the alleged wisdom of living together rather than getting married, so you have a chance to make sure your sexual chemistry is going to remain intact. As soon as your so-called sexual chemistry expires you can hit the road and begin again with another person.

This is complete and utter nonsense. If you have just spent 3 years engaged in this wonderful sexual honeymoon, it does not just expire like a carton of rotten cottage cheese. Something in your brain has changed, something in your attitudes and perceptions has laid down different pathways, you have changed focus, altered your priorities. Sex, like anything else is an investment requiring your attention. We actually control the vertical and the horizontal.

No, we are not just born that way anymore than a pedophile is born with an unnatural desire for children. I don’t mean to tick anyone off, but people are somewhat androgynous outside of our brain chemistry. We create our own attractions, we begin laying down these patterns somewhere in early adolescence. Sex is a powerful thing, those are firmly imbedded patterns, like the craving for food. We have layers built upon layers of thoughts and experiences over years, closely entwined with the reward centers of our brains. Where our thoughts go, our body follows. We have to constantly reaffirm these attraction cues, too, invest in them so to speak, or else they quietly fade away.

People often don’t like to hear this. We claim to want control over our own bodies and our own sexuality, but when push comes to shove, we would really prefer not to confront that truth. It’s much more comfortable to simply declare ourselves to be powerless victims of our own chemistry. With the truth comes responsibility, accountability and often shame. Shame is a toxic little thing and often causes us to flee rather than to genuinely embrace the nature of our own selves. We like to try to encase shame with pride, wall off the infection, so to speak.

The thing is, we control the nature of our own attraction and there is genuine power there! I am all about empowerment and freedom. It’s actually kind of sad to read words from people who perceive themselves as victims of their own sexuality. We than proceed to make decisions, to walk that path we feel is being paved before us, as if we have no choice.

I am speaking in the context of marriage here. It has become a huge argument against the concept of marriage, this idea that marriage is going to be the end of our sex lives. This idea completely permeates every aspect of our culture, from the men’s rights advocates, to the feminists, from the non believers to the Christians. Our TV’s and popular culture are rife with it. At the moment we’re having spring break in some areas, this kind of celebration of youth and sexual liberation outside the “bounds” of marriage. Even our marital language implies marriage is a life of being bound, stuck, trapped, oppressed, balls and chains. Doomed to have thrown in the towel, relinquished our sexuality, sold out.

It’s totally bass akwards and it all begins with our brains, our attitudes, our perceptions, our belief systems. Sex does not simply exist in the carnal realm, it is entwined with the emotional, the spiritual, the psychological, the romantic. It is yet another aspect of ourselves that we truly create. Once we recognize that we are in fact driving the car, we gain control and are less likely to wreck the darn thing.

I realize that marriage is challenging to say the least, that it involves another person you cannot possibly control, that there are often huge issues involved in this dance, but just the same, we create our own realities, we create our own sexuality and we control the nature of our own desire.

Women especially need to get a grip on this, because in the midst of all this so-called sexual liberation and female empowerment, all I observe is complete chaos and massive confusion. Young girls are now having sex with people they don’t even like for reasons they can’t even fathom, outside of marriage, and calling it “sexual empowerment,” but within marriage it is becoming all about exercising your power by saying no and declaring I don’t “feel” like it. What we “feel” however can be a rather fickle thing, based on the things we first tell ourselves in our brains. This idea that what we “feel,” rules us, then takes us down this path of owing and being owned, of obligation and duty, of oppression and exploitation. It is like nasty little rabbit hole of confusion. Now we have people outside of marriage, people who don’t even really believe in marriage, pointing fingers at others and shrieking on about marital rape as if it is now this great crisis “we” must address. Whoa. I don’t even know what to say to those who are on the outside of marriage looking in and declaring rather self righteously that wives are doing womanly wrong and incapable of even owning their own sexuality and consent. Frankly, that scares the crap out of me.

Anyway, genuine sexual empowerment requires one to examine these belief systems, to explore the mind-body connection, to perceive sexuality outside of the carnal, and to address one’s own personal issues around concepts like shame and victimization, predators and prey, oppression and power. To advocate for the elimination of marriage because one experiences discomfort over these issues is myopic to say the least.