Be Conscious

The more clearly you recognize and understand the ways your biology and culture influence you, the better chance you have of making real choices in your sex life.

You're the product of evolution

All of us are animals, with powerful and complex biological programming that goes back millions of years and that strongly influences our sexual behavior today. 

Mating is our single most important activity

Nothing is more crucial to our reproductive heritage than the proper selection of a mate (this applies regardless of gender preference).  As animals, sex is by far our most important single activity, and as a result, we're obsessive about it (but you knew that). 

Sex can also be negatively obsessive — guilt and embarrassment are powerful sexual feelings too.  Unfortunately, for many people they end up being the strongest ones.  Although the feelings themselves are biological in origin, not societal, our society does tend to reinforce their destructive, negative quality.

We are in large measure a "monogamous" species

Men and women of all sexual orientations generally exhibit a strong instinct to form a long-term primary pair-bond.  A perceived threat to such a bond usually elicits overwhelming feelings of jealousy in both genders. 

On the other hand, pair-bond intimacy can be so intense as to feel frightening and constrictive, particularly in a culture such as ours that fetishizes it.

But "monogamy" doesn’t mean what you think

"Monogamy" in the animal world generally lasts only as long as the offspring of the mating cycle are young and vulnerable (in humans, this seems to work out to about four and a half years).  Thereafter, the bond has to be renewed through the next mating cycle if it is to continue, so it's seldom a lifelong commitment. 

Furthermore, in all monogamous human cultures and most monogamous animal species, it's normal for both genders to have sex with secondary partners in addition to their primary partner.  Even though this behavior is punishable by death in some human cultures, it still occurs regularly. Secondary relationships have often been observed to be strong, intimate and lasting without threatening the primary bond. 

What does that mean for you? Is love nothing more than a passing fancy? Is marriage doomed to failure? Are you bound to be "cheated" on? Is it okay for you to cheat? None of the above. It just means you can better understand the forces at work in your love life — armed with that knowledge and with courage and integrity, there's no reason you can't have what you want!

Hostility to sex is rooted in our past

Repressive attitudes towards sex often seems to be associated with militaristic patriarchies.  Aggressive alienated men long absent at war feel a strong need to control sex so they can hope to know who fathered their children — this ties in to one of our powerful biological imperatives.  A woman, by contrast, always knows who the mother of her children is, regardless of who may have fathered them. 

It can be argued convincingly that sex is generally more open, well-regulated and happy in cultures where women control it, since as long as they retain the power to choose their partners, women have nothing to gain from sexual repression. 

This helps to explain why the culture most of us grew up in is afraid of sex and hostile to our divine animal enjoyment of it:  Western civilization owes so much of its value system to warlike, male-dominated tribes such as the Jews, Athenians, Romans, Arabs, the Teutonic Knights, the Marines... 

Biology and culture combine to create a trap

Many people today feel deeply dissatisfied with their sex lives, but despair of achieving better. 

Men often feel they cannot have as diverse, casual, frequent, or raunchy sex as they would like — and feel powerless to change that. 

Women often feel they cannot control their sex lives enough to get their needs understood and met safely — and feel powerless to change that. 

Both genders tend to feel a sense of personal failure and inadequacy in the face of these frustrations. We often blame ourselves, sometimes unconsciously. 

You can escape

It’s important to understand where your reactions come from, but you are no more helpless to work with your programming than you are to work with the traumas of childhood.  Yes, it’s work, but if you’re willing to do that work, you really do get to choose a sex life that is deeply and fully satisfying in the ways that you want. 

...just don't think freedom changes everything

When you escape from a conventional repressive life into a sex-positive sub-culture, it's common to think at first that all constraints have disappeared.  This is just not true — in fact, many important things don't change at all.

Just because you could have lots of anonymous sex doesn't mean you'd actually want to.  Yes of course everyone likes to get laid, but don’t be blinded to the fact that what you want is a soul mate — you want love, you want lovers you really get along with.  In the end, it's really about friendship on one level or another, mixed with sex — and friendship isn't always easy.