Is it love or is it sex?

This is a question that in one form or another has continued to bounce around in my brain for weeks. I figured the gnomeinmyhead was about tired of ducking the subject and that maybe it was time to write about it.

What makes up human relationships? When is sex just sex? What makes friendship different than your primary relationship? Is sex needed for love and vice versa? You see, I’ve never been one for casual intimate contact (interesting oxymoron that statement was). Once I found my mate, I even felt uncomfortable going to a male doctor. Odd isn’t it?

Do I intend on answering any of these questions? Probably not, mostly because I don’t believe there are any tried and true answers across the board. But what I do want to explore is the dynamic of intimacy in my primary relationship. I have the delight and the challenge of having married a man who is my best friend. The delightful part is that I know that my best friend will always be only a few feet away and won’t ever move across the country. He’s a permanent fixture in my life till one of us passes to the next level where I firmly believe we’ll find one another again (now there’s another blog entry if I ever read one). The challenge? The challenge comes when things may not be working so very well between us for whatever reason, heaven knows there isn’t a relationship that doesn’t occasionally hit a rocky place after all. But it’s not like I can talk to my best friend about my best friend.

Now here’s where the quandary comes for me. I’ve seen couples who fight like there’s no tomorrow, have absolutely nothing in common what so ever stay together because the sex is incredible. I find myself wondering what would happen with these people should one of them not be able to ahem…perform so to speak. And how incredible can the sex actually be if 1) you have to tell everyone how incredible it is and 2) there’s no intimacy in the relationship outside of sex. Britney Spears gushing about sex comes to mind here.

I know deeply committed lesbian couples who are intimate, loving, caring couples. I’ve known of hetero relationships with the same degree of comradery, delight in the other partner, and love. Obviously, physical relations differ. Can you have a solid primary relationship without feeling the need to constantly use sex as the primary bonding agent? I have to answer that in the very sound affirmative. I live in one everyday. We snuggle, we cuddle, we bond over the craziest things and we can’t for one second imagine being with anyone else.

I look around and wonder if occasionally sex is mistaken for love. Great sex is not love. Honest. I think that’s something we learn as we mature. Remember that first kiss? The first time for you? How you were just sure that you would never ever feel the same again. And how now from the perspective of a more mature outlook you realize it was mostly about hormones?

A long, durable, well forged, bonded relationship takes constant vigilant maintenance. Part of that maintenance is sexual, sure, but by far in my opinion the thing that brings two people together for the long haul is actually the intimacy forged through home court advantage (See December 2004 for an explanation of that one).

Have a blessed day.