“Lindsay” is beneath me, our bodies covered in sweat after an extended round of aerobic sex. Her legs are spread as she receives me. My body strains as I approach climax. But before I come, she lets out a shriek, then she cries out:
“Fuck me like you love me! Fuck me like you love me!”
But I couldn’t love her.
Sex and love mean different things for me. I think I have a “Madonna/whore complex.”
Growing up I learned that sex was dirty and should be saved for someone I love. I’ve always been romantically attracted to “good girls.” As Deborah Tollman states, “Good girls are not sexual.” The last young lady I dated was smart, funny and resolutely chaste. I found her physically attractive. I became quite fond of her. Yet I struggled to become sexually attracted to her. Sex for me has become detached from emotional commitment. The “whore” arouses me.
Perhaps the the idea that love and sexual fulfillment fit neatly together is fallacious. Theodore Reik says, “I believe that love and sex are different in origin and nature.” Objectification is inherent in sex. Immanuel Kant posited, “For the natural use that one sex makes of the other’s sexual organs is enjoyment, for which one gives oneself up to the other. In this act a human being makes himself into a thing.” According to Kant, “[S]exuality is not an inclination which one human being has for another as such, but is an inclination for the sex of another. . . . [O]nly her sex is the object of his desires.” When I find myself aroused by a woman’s breasts, buttocks or legs, I’m not attracted to her as a person but as a bundle of sexual stimuli. Philosopher Alan Soble hints at the darkness of sexuality: “The sexual act itself is peculiar, with its uncontrollable arousal, involuntary jerkings, and its yearning to master and consume the other’s body.” Sex, with its intense passions, eviscerates reason and volition, reducing us to subhuman mammals. Kant wrote:
[When] a man wishes to satisfy his desire, and a woman hers, they stimulate each other’s desire; their inclinations meet, but their object is not human nature but sex…. They make of humanity an instrument for the satisfaction of their lusts and inclinations, and dishonour it by placing it on a level with animal nature.
The sheer bestial nature of the sexual act suggests that sex and love aren’t intrinsically linked. Sex can be reduced to a biological instinct designed only to release physical tension. “Most animals do not experience anything like intimacy as they mate,” writes Robert Solomon. Upon reflection, it seems quite odd that the aggressive manner of penetrative sex should signify tenderly affection. Philosopher Russell Vannoy writes, “Indeed, just how does a penis that is vigorously thrusting up and down in a vagina express anything at all, with the possible exception of dominance…?” In his book States of Desire, Edmund White argues, “S&M sex may merely be a more frank expression of the dynamics underlying all sex.” A vigorous session of sex, for me, holds no romantic connotations, unless one thinks hair-pulling and ass-slapping romantic. It satisfies my animalistic passions. In stripping sex of its romantic veneer, we see sex as it really is. “The sexual sophisticate advocates sex without love,” writes Alexander Lowen. That’s why I despise the phrase “making love.” “Fuck,” in its vulgar and obscene way, more truthfully captures the essence of sex.
Moreover, the fact that I am aroused by total strangers, including women I encounter only digitally, would appear to validate the argument that delinks the sexual instinct from committed love. Robert Solomon writes:
The fact that excitement is essential to sexuality explains how it is that many people find danger highly sexual… It allows us to understand one of the most apparent anomalies of our sexual behaviour, the fact that our most satisfying sexual encounters are often with strangers, where there are strong elements of tension, fear, insecurity, guilt, and anticipation. Conversely, sex may be least satisfying with those whom we love and know well and whose habits and reactions are extremely well known to us.
Sex severed from romantic affection may just be hotter. Vannoy’s conclusion is that “on the whole, sex with a humanistic nonlover is far preferable to sex with an erotic lover.”
I have difficulty establishing close relationships with people; I distance myself from others. This certainly colors my perspective. A session with an escort or casual sex with an acquaintance makes few demands on me, allowing me to satisfy my sexual cravings while investing little emotion or affection. Coupling sex and love would summon all those insecurities my lust keeps at bay.
“Where such men love they have no desire, and where they desire they cannot love.”
Sigmund Freud
Lutheran Guilt 
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