"Sex without love”, Woody Allen said, “is a
meaningless experience; but as meaningless experiences go
it’s a pretty good one.” University is an excellent
place to test this theory out. After a few years sampling the
delights of encounter sex, most people will agree that love
deepens sexual experience, but, as they have also sadly
discovered, it can just as easily deaden it. At our age, lust
invariably precedes love; so those fresh experiences with a new
someone (who turns into an old someone) can be mind-blowing. A couple of years down the line they’re likely to be less
so. The sex deteriorates precisely because you love them: you
love them enough to spend oodles of time together, to spend
Sunday mornings reading the paper – or, if you’re a
particularly boring couple – shopping for furniture at MFI.
And it’s this love that kills lust. Everyone knows that sexual experience is as much in the brain
as any other part of the body. It’s the meaning you place on
the sexual act that heightens the pleasure of it. That’s why
public sex, unfaithful sex and first-time sex can be the most
exciting kind of nookie. We tell ourselves it’s dangerous,
forbidden, new, and we want it all the more. The same equation
applies to whoever you’re having this sex with. The guy or
gal you’ve been sleeping next to for the past couple of
years is the same one who used to be untouched, uncharted
territory: the one you secretly watched at parties. A couple of years later and the touching has subdued to a dull
tingle. Conventional wisdom says that time nullifies lust –
the longer you’re with someone the less often you get the
urge to shag them senseless against the kitchen table. But
it’s not time, it’s your mind. Time allows you to fall
in love, falling in love allows you to feel comfortable, and
comfort soon equals boredom. But when this happens fear not – you don’t need to
resort to sex toys, threesomes or S&M (unless that’s
your thing) – you only have to rethink your attitude to your
lover. Forget that he farts in bed, remember how he sexy he
looked the first time you spied him across a smoke-filled bar.
Suddenly your hormones will be in overdrive and you’ll throw
him on the floor and do things together that’ll make Cosner
and Sarandon look like amateurs. Remember, it’s not who you’re doing, it’s how
you’re doing it. A friend of mine said the most erotic
experience she’d had was when a man ran his finger down her
spine. The man was Jack Nicholson and the place Harvey Nichols,
where she worked as a sales assistant. Now, I know he’s
supposed to be sexy but I doubt that Jack Nicholson’s
fingers are different from those of any mortal man. The
spinetingling was only more intense because of the significance
attached to the tingler. So if you need to spice up your
sex-life, you don’t need to bed Jack Nicholson, you only
have to pretend that your boyfriend is Jack Nicholson.ARCHIVE: 3rd week TT 2004
No love loss
