Love
We use the same word for man-woman, mother-child, child-parent, and other interpersonal relations — rightly, because they are a continuous spectrum. In talking about sexual relations, it seems right to apply it to any relationship in which there is mutual tenderness, respect, and consideration — from a total interdependence where the death of one partner maims the other for years, to an agreeable night together. The intergrades are all love, all worthy, all part of human experience.
Some meet the needs of one person, some of another — or of the same person at different times. That's really the big problem of sexual ethics, and it's basically a problem of self-understanding, and of communication. You can't assume that your "conditions of love" are applicable to, or accepted by, any other party; you can't assume that these won't be changed quite unpredictably in both of you by the experience of loving; you can't necessarily know your own mind.
If you are going to love, these are risks you have to take, and don't depend simply on whether or not you have sex together — though that is such a potentially overwhelming experience that tradition is right in pinpointing it. Sometimes two people know each other very well, or think they have worked things out through discussion, and they may be right. But even so, if it's dignifiable by the name of love, it's potentially an open-ended experience. Tradition has tried to cut the casualties by laying down all kinds of schedules of morality, but these never work 100 percent in practice. Nor are they of much use in classifying the merits of different kinds of relationships.
If sexual love can be — and it is — the supreme human experience, it must be also a bit hazardous. It can give us our best and our worst moments. In this respect it's like mountain climbing — over-timid people miss the whole experience; reasonably balanced and hardy people accept the risks for the rewards, but realize that there's a difference between this and being foolhardy. Love, moreover, involves someone else's neck besides your own. At least you can make as sure as may be that you don't exploit or injure someone - you don't take a novice climbing and abandon them halfway up when things get difficult. Getting them to sign a consent form before they start isn't an answer either. There was a great deal to be said for the Victorian idea of not being a cad ("person devoid of finer or gentlemanly feelings"). A cad can be of either sex.
When this book was first written, the world was in the middle of the most radical rethinking of sexuality ever - and the subsequent rethinking of love. The prediction then was that sex and love could be divorced, and no-strings sex is certainly now more common. But most of us still require a connection before we can do any more than simply perform; love may not be all you need, but it's an essential for any except the most basic satisfaction. Equally, when the going gets rough in relationships, good, pleasurable sex can bring you through. When you make love, you do exactly that.
Excerpted with permission from The Joy of Sex: The Ultimate Revised Edition, by Alex Comfort (Crown Publishing Group, 2009).
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