Love and sex
Sunday, October 26th, 2008
Robert Heinlein, in his novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, gives perhaps the best definition of love yet penned: ‘Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own’. But, while a regard for the happiness of the other is an essential to love, making it the whole basis for one’s life at the expense of one’s personal identity diminishes the relationship. In the long run, love relationships are like all other partnerships. To be successful, they require both partners to derive something from the partnership. This requires sensitivity to the partner’s feelings—in sex, as in other things. It needs consideration, in small things as in large: trivial romantic gestures can do much to sustain a marriage; unreasonable demands or unreasoning anger can destroy it in an instant.