On Modern Intimacy
It is a well-documented phenomenological experience that man can, through a variety of mechanisms, transport himself to a state of higher spiritual insight, euphoria, or bliss, with no change in his physical environment. Ascetic practices such as fasting, hallucinogenic drugs, endurance sports, or an artist painting in flow state, are all conducive to this end. Indeed, ultrarunning legend Scott Jurek wrote in Eat & Run, “I'm convinced that a lot of people run ultramarathons for the same reason they take mood-altering drugs…the longer and farther I ran, the more I realized that what I was often chasing was a state of mind - a place where worries that seemed monumental melted away, where the beauty and timelessness of the universe, of the present moment, came into sharp focus” (181). Conceivably, an urge to transcend oneself – if not channeled into a creative or physical outlet – could manifest into substance abuse, eating disorders, and so forth. After all, endorphins released during running dull pain reception, mimicking the effects of opioids and alcohol. During artistic output, dopaminergic activity surges in the brain; the same occurs while shopping, satisfying a food craving, or doing cocaine (albeit on an exaggerated scale). As a runner advances in training, the runner’s high commences at a continually greater distance; likewise, an individual battling addiction eventually requires a higher dose to achieve euphoria. Love is an especially potent means of accessing bliss. Falling in love floods the brain with dopamine and cortisol, while reducing levels of serotonin, yielding a euphoric yet anxious feeling. Overtime, neurochemicals return to baseline, resulting in a less manic form of attachment (Marazziti et al., 2021). Some instances of infidelity may be motivated in part by a pursuit of this initial high. Regardless, this neurochemical cascade is biologically advantageous, increasing odds of monogamy and pregnancy. Its effects are compounded during sexual activity, with the release of neurohormones oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin has a greater hold over women, as it is also released during childbirth and nursing. Conversely, vasopressin has a greater impact on men, inciting a sense of protectiveness. Of course, human experience cannot be distilled to a hormonal cascade. Love and sexuality is the most well-trod territory of song artists, painters, and poets. In I Sing the Body Electric, Walt Whitman writes:
Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest /
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul (98-99).
Even in non-secular realms, sexuality is often intertwined with spirituality. Women are frequently seen as possessing an ethereal sensuality, a spiritual closeness to God that renders men, in some traditions, reverent or subservient. In Judaism, the Shekhinah – a feminine noun – refers to the indwelling presence of God. She is also the feminine aspect of God, embodying compassion, nurturance, and sensuality. In Jewish Meditation, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan writes: “From the way a man treats his wife, one can know how he relates to the Shekhinah” (155). Among a husband’s sacred obligations is the mitzvah of Onah: he must meet his wife’s sexual needs not for procreation, but for her physical and emotional well-being. Thus, it is reasonable to argue that sex can be a metaphysical experience, with drug-like biological incentives and an intense spiritual component, akin to modalities of transcendence discussed at the outset. However, modalities with a net-positive – such as endurance sports and ascetic self-discipline in school, for instance – only engage the self. The self alone decides the nature of its involvement. An individual endurance running due to exercise bulimia, is very different from the running fanatic who seeks freedom and joy. The latter may reach inner clarity on the run, while the former may be denigrating their body as an object to abuse.
Conversely, sex involves two parties, and its meaning is contingent on a mutual understanding of its significance. Unlike activities concerning only the self, its sacred aspect is destroyed if one partner is not as emotionally invested. While one partner may perceive the experience as an intimate physical and spiritual bonding, another may regard it as a gratifying extracurricular. Women in particular are prone to interpret physical intimacy as an admission of emotional sentiment, or falsely presume a partner’s desire for their heart as commensurate with their sexual desire. I should caution that I am not claiming women are more often demisexual; demisexuality is a sexual orientation wherein individuals only experience sexual attraction after forming an emotional bond. Rather, I suggest due to a complex interplay of biological factors, women are more likely to form emotional bonds after intimacy.
One may argue that the meaning an individual derives from a sexual encounter is legitimate, even if not interpreted in equal light by their partner. However, no matter how convincing one’s conscious experience may be, if only one partner’s soul was vulnerable, it is as if they left an offering on the doorstep of an abandoned house; no one is home to appreciate their gift – though they leave with a warmth, mistakenly thinking someone will. Without offering something inward, some essential self, there’s no vessel to receive another’s.
The practical steps one could take to prevent an asymmetry of meaning are not fool-proof. The length of a relationship is not necessarily indicative of its depth; even hollow sexual exchanges occur in marriage. Nor does withholding sex – for marriage or otherwise – inevitably generate the type of connection one hopes for when it eventually happens.
It should be noted that, with the exception of intentional manipulation, emotional asymmetries during sex are not malicious. An individual may yearn to feel with the same depth as their partner, but emotional intimacy cannot be forced. Perhaps there is more work to be done in the relationship, or perhaps it is simply a poor fit. However, it is all too common for one party to exploit the naivety, sensitivity, or chemical attachment of the other for continued access to their body.
It would be ignorant to suggest that the ultimate goal of sexual activity, for most people, is the expression of love. Today, many individuals have a designated person with whom they interact minimally outside of sex. They are willingly and enthusiastically involved for the sake of physical pleasure alone. However, bonding neurochemicals render it nearly impossible for this seemingly straightforward dynamic to remain symmetrical. Further, I propose that our society’s gravitation towards a carefree, unemotional sexuality is fundamentally disingenuous.
Neurochemical release is indifferent as to the nature of a relationship. Even in casual encounters, oxytocin, vasopressin, and dopamine still saturate the body. Two types of dissonance may result: an instinctive sense of trust and closeness incongruent with one’s lack of emotional feeling toward their partner, or a genuine emotional attachment inconsistent with the type of interaction. Since the chemical effects of sex apply in all cases, its euphoric and drug-like aspects may still be experienced under casual conditions. It is in large part what may motivate two people to consecrate an informal relationship under one of the common pseudonyms - ‘situationship’ or ‘friends with benefits'. Individuals may dismiss these relations as entirely voluntary forms of fun or exploration, or blame their recurrence on a partner’s sexual prowess, unknowingly under great neurohormonal influence. Arguably, hook-up culture’s hedonism is far from shallow. It is addicted to the neurohormonal rush that aids total vulnerability, and under different circumstances, can facilitate a spiritual connection through physical pleasure. It hides its own unfulfillment from even itself, obfuscating its emptiness through light-hearted songs and cultural references. At its worst, it repackages its spiritual desolation as liberation or feminism.
Hook-up culture attempts to mimic the bliss sex can provide, while declaring its superficiality outright to shield against its inevitable failure. It performs hypnosis on itself, subverting the conception of bodily autonomy to justify selling itself to the lowest bidder. Conversely, many modern streams of feminism argue hook-up culture is a reclamation of female power from misogynistic one-sided purity standards. Ironically, the benefactors of this culture are largely male; it is only women risking pregnancy or accepting the detrimental, possibly permanent effects of oral contraceptives, and only women who have a higher sensitivity to oxytocin, increasing their risk of forming unreciprocated bonds. Destigmatizing female sexuality has become conflated with erasing anything unique about the female perspective, expecting women to adopt patterns rooted in male-centered psychology – traits that do not serve men either, but reflect a distorted ideal of masculinity. Neoliberal feminism falsely attributes intentional avoidance of casual sex to internalized oppression of female sexuality, implying a woman is only meaningfully engaged with her sexuality when doing so in the presence of a man. It cannot conceive that a woman might abstain not for a man, but for herself – out of reverence for her own body, intuition, or spiritual clarity. In this way, neoliberal feminists resolve the tension between the sexes by embracing the male gaze, and selling a lie – that it was ours all along.
The most insidious device of misogyny is the notion women belong to either hookup or purity culture – a binary rarely imposed on men. One risks distorting natural desire as a divinely imposed discipline-test, usually denying women experience such desire, and shaming the very body which is supposed to be divine. The other encourages us to indulge our urges with a kind of nihilistic indifference, and mock those who treat intimacy with caution, convinced it's simply religious paranoia in a godless world. This binary results when we reduce the body to a material, literal entity, a machine with sensation as output. How one relates to the machine, whether ashamed or carefree, still misunderstands it. If a loving God made our body, none of its features or capacities could ever be taboo. In that event, our body is the only physical gift we can be sure God made specifically for us. If we approach ourselves, and allow others to approach us, without loving-kindness and genuine care, it is in many ways a spiritual abandonment of our own divine home. It is quite another thing to protect the body, not because its needs are sinful, but because the kind of care it deserves is frankly not something most of us are equipped to give another. Most of us don’t recognize our own body as sacred, and until we do, we cannot meet another person with the loving-kindness both parties deserve.
Perhaps the entire conception of the body as a receptacle to withhold or surrender is an offense to the depths it contains. Perhaps modes of transcendence requiring only our self are also worthy of the same lament and passion romantic relationships are awarded in art and music. There is intimacy in solitude – running while the world sleeps, writing a poem by the water you are still shivering from, rubbing soap into one’s skin in the shower – an eroticism, even, accessible if we are sensitive enough to recognize it. The sacrality of aloneness has nothing to do with a lack of ‘contamination’ by others or the external world. Rather, it is because we validate ourselves, the depth of our unseen experience, without any physical or visual proof in which another shares or acknowledges. Our only witness is God.
References
Jurek, S., & Friedman, S. (2012). Eat & run: My unlikely journey to ultramarathon greatness. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Kaplan, A. (1985). Jewish meditation: A practical guide. Schocken Books.
Marazziti, D., Palermo, S., & Mucci, F. (2021). The Science of Love: State of the Art. Advances in experimental medicine and biology, 1331, 249–254. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74046-7_16
Whitman, W. (2003). Leaves of grass (J. Miller, Ed.). Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1855)
