What's in the box of Smarties

You will find what's in the box of Smarties within the text below.
Again this writing is incomplete to some degree although the message below is complete - it forms one chapter of a book that I am writing, and even this chapter is incomplete.
I thought I would share it and having posted it, like my last blog, I feel obliged and compelled to finish the chapter.
I wrote this about a year ago - I'm sure there will be other opinions which I will be interested to hear.
Here's the title of this chapter in my book.

LOVE, SEX & MARRIAGE

Well now there’s a topic for discussion if ever there was one. I wonder how many people have browsed the contents page, spotted the heading of this chapter and immediately turned to this page to start reading.

I have found it interesting, curious if you like, that in many of the books that I have read covering the topic of “Life” there has seldom been a discussion on Love, and almost never on Sex.

Also interesting, and at times amusing to me, is the way in which many of my friends will avoid using the word Love. As a greeting at the end of an e-mail or after a farewell peck on the cheek and an adieu they will never say: “with love” or “I love you” or “lots of love” etc. Surely it is not the done thing, if one is a married person, to be saying “I love you” to a friend of the opposite sex, or sending them your love. I suppose it might be considered okay for girls to be saying it to their close friends, but guys, blokes, no ways, unheard of for them to have given the triple grip disconnect and connect hand shake, then bump their right shoulders and then say I love you – are you kidding me?!

Then off course there are the other two phrases that make use of the word love – “falling in love” or “being in love” and “making love.” If ever there was a word that has caused a misnomer to exist it is the word love in these two phrases.

In this chapter I will be revealing the misnomer, clarifying the misconception of these two phrases and putting to bed the fear of using the word love. At the same time I will put these three into a broader picture and show how and where they fit in to the topic of this book.

Where to start: they are all connected and certainly in the old school way of thinking they probably arrive in our lives, or used to, in the order of love (love of a baby for its mother), then falling in love, then making love. In today’s society though, this order may be a bit messed up and likewise the minds of people trying to understand love and their relationships.

I’m sure that some people will say that the word love is used too often, at least by today’s generation: I love chocolate, I love this piece of music, I love going to the movies etc. Maybe you’re right and maybe this also adds to the confusion of understanding what love is really all about. In this book and for the purposes of providing my explanation I will be ignoring the types of enjoyment that people associate to certain things, as given in the previous examples, by using the word love to describe how much they enjoy something. In these cases they could just as well be using the word adore or 7 other possibilities that Microsoft offers in its Thesaurus. In this book I will be relating my discussion to people and relationships. I know that this leaves the earth, the environment and animals sitting on the fence in the middle, but these will fall naturally onto the correct side of the fence once you understand.

I am going to start with Love, but then I suppose that means that I should be offering you my definition of what love really is. I will and it is my definition but it is not unique. I have read the core aspect of this definition in at least one of the books that I have read so I don’t claim to be the originator of this definition, merely a co-subscriber to its appropriateness, but I have provided a more detailed version.

When you feel compassion for someone (or something, i.e. the fence sitting category) and you feel the desire to be considerate and caring, and to help that person, and that this help that you would like to offer this person is the most important thing in the world to you, at that moment; more important than anything that you need or desire for yourself – that is a feeling of love.

What is quite important in the above definition, and I will return to describing its full importance later in this chapter, is the three qualification words that I used “at that moment.”

Now I know that there are some people who having read this will say; well I have just “fallen in love” with Paul/Mary and that is exactly how I feel about them, and so surely falling in love and this definition of love is the same thing. Not really – let me explain. We need to make a distinction here around the reasons behind your feeling of love and how the definition applies, which leads me to discuss the concept of “falling in love,” which will naturally lead to a discussion on having sex with a person.

We all know what the feeling is like to have fallen in love with someone (please excuse the generalisation but I sincerely hope that everyone has had this experience). We need to be near that person, to talk to them, to communicate with them, to be in their presence, what are they doing, how soon can I be with him/her, if you’re in a group you just have to be touching, how soon can we hold each other, when next, how often, phone again, talk for hours, why haven’t they called, where is she/he ……… The person with whom you have “fallen in love” consumes all your thoughts and every single second of your day. You think of nothing else, they can do no wrong, they are perfect, they are the most beautiful, kind, caring, wonderful person in the world. As Scott Peck has described in his book The Road Less Travelled, the state that you are in is a situation where you have lowered every single personal and individual barrier and allowed that person to come in. The overriding feeling and desire during this period is one of physical closeness, which naturally leads to the desire to have sex with that person. Again this is somewhat of a generalisation since there will also be many instances where this doesn’t necessarily lead to sex, with very young people for instance or with people who for religious reasons would not do so.

The situation that I have described above would be better described as having “fallen in physical attraction” with someone rather than love. The feelings of euphoria that you have and the lowering of your barriers means that you are blind to any inconsistencies, defects, warts, rough areas, and many character traits that you normally dislike that your partner has. It is only when the euphoria wears off that you start to see your partner as they really are; your barriers are raised again, you return to your individualism and you start reasserting what is important to you in life as an individual. And suddenly you see all the things about your partner that you don’t like and that need to change. And only too often doesn’t this lead to break up and divorce.

Why does this happen? Because you have not “fallen in love” with that person, you have fallen into physical attraction and when the initial euphoria dies away, and the desire for constant physical closeness abates, you find that there is very little or possibly even nothing that you like about your partners character and personal traits and approach to life.

Let’s move this on to the next level of having sex with your partner and a long term relationship, a marriage over many, many years. The situation is that you “fall in love,” the sex is great, you get married – “we are in love and we are so compatible.” A few years go by, the euphoria dies away, the sex becomes less, you have children the sex gets even less, you get older it gets less, the children leave school go to varsity and leave home, you’ve gotten older, you’re both no longer as physically attractive as you were as newly weds, the sex has become even less and you’re getting older still. Now what? Here we are faced with the fact that you no longer really want to have sex with each other because there is little to no physical attraction anymore, or you have reached the age where it isn’t physically possible anymore. For the moment let’s ignore the statement “I don’t love my partner anymore” because possibly you never have!!

There are two points that I will make from this scenario that I have painted above: One – you have reached the stage in your life where you are sitting at home with no children anymore and the sex has gone out the window. At what age does this situation occur; let’s say that you were married at the age of 25 (if this is incorrect for you then it is quite easy to do the sums for yourself based upon the model that I’m describing), started having children 3 years later and had two children 3 years apart. The children start school at 5, go to school for 12 years, finish high school and do whatever they do but still live with you for another 4 years after they’ve left school. This means that when they do leave home you should be roughly 52 years old.

Now the scenario planners of this world (like Wolfgang Grulke) have said, at a conference that I attended in the 1990’s sometime, that et ceteris paribus (had to throw in a bit of Latin, shows how educated and intelligent I am, there’s more coming, it means – all else being equal e.g. if the no 9 bus doesn’t get you, or a dread disease, and if you’re healthy and don’t smoke etc.) the teenagers of the 1990’s will live until the age of 125!!

You and your partner sit there facing each other; you’re 52, which means that the earlier scenario that I painted where the sex is no longer physically possible certainly shouldn’t apply. You’re not even half way in your life yet. Your looking at this person opposite you and you’re faced with the concept of living at least another 52 years with that person – there had better have been some other reasons why you loved that person other than the sex!!!!

So the first point that I’m making is that “falling in love” with someone is really all about physical attraction, or ultimately sex if we’re considering the marriage situation or long term relationships/partnerships; it is not Love.

The second point is to understand is that if you have “fallen in love” with someone and married them and you have never considered the deeper being within each other and it’s all been about the physical attraction and the sex – you could be in big trouble when you consider that you have to spend another half century or more together. We can expand this point and the model that I have described through the years until we do eventually arrive at the point where the sex in a relationship or marriage or partnership is no longer physically possible – what then? Does this mean that these two people no longer love each other? No off course not provided that there are other reasons for these two to love each other, reasons other than the physical attraction and sex. Let’s be honest; when we reach our 60’s and 70’s are we really still physically attractive to each other? If the answer is no then does this mean that we can no longer love our partner? Clearly not, which therefore shows that love between two people is not about the physical attraction and the sex.

Let me now also dispel with the concept of “making love” to a person. Much of the reasoning that I have applied above relates here as well. What we are talking about here is the act of intercourse. But we have many different names for this act: here are some of them, some obviously crude, one particularly amusing one that I’ve never forgotten, shown to me by a friend at Castle Corner, Newlands cricket ground in Cape Town, who had extracted a list of definitions from some book of humour, I’m sure you’ll recognise it – intercourse, making love, having sex, banging, humping, schtoomping, flying the chopper into the oilrig, doing it, having at it, turking, shagging, going all the way … etc.

I’m quite certain that the connotation that is applied to the “making love” name for this act is that this is where you are doing it with your partner with whom you have a relationship and with whom you are in love. But let’s face it there are also times within the term of your relationship that another name for it is more suitable or applies, and even times when it might even be a chore but you do it anyway. And then let’s say that you do it with someone else as well, or have an affair, or move to a new relationship etc. etc. can you really always say that what you are doing is making love? There is no doubt that there are times when you will have intercourse with your partner because you love him/her, but is the act itself love?

Let me summarise with an analogy that I have prepared to describe sex and how it fits into relationships. Sex is like a box of smarties. Inside the box is a whole heap of these little, delicious sweets of many different colours. Each time you eat one of these sweets it tastes fantastic; this is like having sex, it is fantastic. But like the little sweet it doesn’t last a very long time; it is finished quite quickly. So you may eat another one if you like. You may choose a different colour – the different colours relate to either having sex with the same partner in a different position, room, circumstance etc. or to some people it could mean having sex with a different partner each time. When you have finished eating the smartie it is over, gone, and now you have to get on with living the daily life that you lead. Just as you cannot sit all day every day eating smarties neither can you have sex all day every day, at some stage you have to return to living your daily life. And then eventually at a certain point in your life the box of smarties is empty, there are no more, the sex in your life has come to an end. But you will continue living for many, many years, together with your partner. The box of smarties, sex, sits within the timeline of your life and your relationships as a very wonderful and enjoyable source of pleasure to tap into. But placed in the perspective of all the years that you live compared to the relatively few years that the box contains a supply of smarties, plus the brief periods of time that the act of sex endures compared to the hours in a day – would it not be fair to say that far too much importance is placed upon sex in the relationship, especially since in itself sex is not Love??!!

What is love, how do we know that we are feeling it, should I feel different types or levels of love for different people, how am I meant to deal with these feelings when I have them if they are for other people outside of my relationship? These, and many more, are some of the questions that have probably popped into your mind either whilst reading the passages above or at some or other time in your life. I will provide a few answers or pointers to help you deal with this;............ to be continued.