Cobrahelp: Closeness: The Spiritual side of sex

Besides the obvious physical pleasure of sex, the chemical-biological benefits it gives and the emotional needs it fulfils there is also a spiritual side to it. I am sure we can have a year long conference on the subject and I guess there would not be two sexologists who agree with one another on what the spiritual side of sex is. For me the immanent spiritual side of sex is best explained with the term closeness.
I would like to discuss every bit of the paragraph above because these four sentences contain a truth that is not easily understood.
Not many people will deny that sex is physically pleasurable and those who do have not experienced sex as it is supposed to be experienced. Examples of people who deny the physical pleasure of sex is rape victims, molested children and others who haven’t met a loving partner yet. But for most people (especially men) sex is pleasurable on a basic physical level. It is also chemically-biologically beneficial; we know that sex helps in coping stress because it gives your serotonin (to name but one) a boost. Sex functions as an antidepressant, exercise, tranquilizer and energy booster all in one. That is only 20% what makes it great. The boost on a chemical level, the sensation on a physical level and the beneficial properties on a biological level makes it the best medicine ever. In his wisdom the Creator knew exactly what he did when he planned the sexual aspect of our bodies.
The body part of the fact that sex is good for you is easy to explain and straightforward to understand; you can prove it scientifically and you can verify it empirically. But how do you explain and prove that sex promotes spiritual wellbeing?
To answer the question you will have to understand what spirituality is and that is not very easy to put in plain words.
From the beginning of time man speculated about his origin, existence and purpose. We can laugh about the things man thought and the answers he arrived at, but we can never laugh at the questions because they still remain the same. Where do I come from, why do I exist and what is the purpose of my existence; those are the basic questions in man’s search for meaning.

Traditionally these questions were answered by the spectrum of world religions. Every religion has its own answers to certain questions and all religions share the same answer to other questions. In our time the idea of spirituality without religion became quite popular. This teaching does not answer the questions about our existence by referring to a transcendent (out of this world) Supreme Being or God but by referring to other immanent (in this world) purposes. You might dedicate your life working towards green peace, feminism, equality or against bigotry, homophobias or racism without connecting this purpose to some transcendent being. In this case you connect your purpose to an immanent cause and you serve your spirituality without being religious.

Whether you are taking your spirituality serious with or without religion is immaterial for our discussion; we are interested in the spiritual benefit of sex. Whether you believe that God commands us to love one another or whether you believe it is beneficial for our existence to love one another is not important; we are interested in the relation between loving one another and sex. Is it possible to have sex without love? You know it is. Is it good for your spirit? Now that is the question. What ever your answer on this question might be; we know out of experience that sex plays a vital part in our spirituality. We can not prove it and we can not verify it, but somehow people in a loving sexual relationship is healthier and lives longer on average than those who screw around. On a physical, chemical or biological level there is no difference between sex with a stranger and sex with a loving partner and yet those in a loving relationship are healthier and lives longer. The only plausible answer is that it lies on a spiritual level. It has something to do with closeness; a closeness that you can not have with a prostitute or a stranger.
Dogs, cats and birds can screw around without any consequences; they also do not ask where they come from, why they exist or where they are going. For some reason man ask these peculiar questions and for some reason it is beneficial for him to make love rather than to fuck. It is not part of my job to give you a philosophical answer on why this is; as a sexologist I can only tell you that it is true.

This week's Cobrabite
By Dr. Andrew Blade