This is a very easy essay to write. There is no relationship between love and sex. Zilch.
There will be those of you who cry out, ‘haven’t you heard of Eros?’
Eros has to do with an all-consuming appetite to sexually possess another. It has to do with beauty, longing, hunger. It’s visceral, powerful. Eros has to do with self and what the self passionately needs.
But it has nothing to do with another real human being, with a real interior life. In fact, interior lives actually interfere with Eros. Imagine what a passion-killer it would be to confess to one’s partner during a romantic Valentine’s supper how miserable you were at work, how you had lost your faith in God and were finding life meaningless, if you feared death or were desperately grieving your grandmother. Eros would be severely dented.
My mother taught me about Eros. Eros is about play, repartee, flirting, teasing, dancing, mystery, one step forward, one step back. One does it in the same vein as a good game of tig. Hiding in one place only is less fun than forever changing places, calling out, ‘Cooee, where are you? Come and get me!’ only to disappear behind the curtain of another room entirely. ‘Men so love to chase,’ she would tell me, ‘so never let yourself be caught! Even in marriage, go on playing the game.’
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