Señorita Mafiana

I've been having some new thoughts on sex and love lately. We don't suddenly find sex uninteresting, just like we don't suddenly discover that love has become calculating. Sex can be just a physical collision between two bodies, but it's the emotions, shame, and inexplicable desires and feelings that make it so vivid and exciting. When I was younger, I thought sex was just about sex, and I saw desire, shame, and those unspoken desires and lust as things to be overcome. In fact, it's these messy and complicated things that make sex a unique experience between two people – knowing your own desires and fears, seeing your partner's responses and desires, and still choosing to give in to your desires. However, as we gain more experience, this choice becomes increasingly difficult, and the threshold becomes higher, because we're all afraid of getting hurt. The same is true for love. When we're young, our pure and simple liking for someone is because we can't see ourselves and our partner clearly, but now we see the motivations, values, and exchanges. Our liking is still the same, but it's changed from 'I don't know why' to 'I know what I want, I know what you want, and I'm willing to make this transaction to make our relationship work'. Similarly, the threshold for making this choice is very high. We've become more mature and less likely to get swept away by a romantic night. We start to think, weigh our options, and consider each other's feelings and needs. We start to grow, become enlightened, and understand ourselves and our partners better. But this doesn't mean we'll lose the passion for love and sex. In fact, it's this maturity and enlightenment that allows us to better understand and appreciate the complexity and diversity of love and sex. We start to see our own desires and fears clearly, we start to see our partner's responses and desires clearly, we start to dare to give in to our desires, and we start to dare to make our relationship work.