Ysex?

My therapist gave me a copy of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and in the very first level, right next to air, and water was sex. It was an update of Maslow’s list of needs, but I was a little shocked to see it in the first group of basic human needs.

I remember the parental “tongue lashing” I got as a child. “You’re mixing up your wants with your needs. You don’t need that, you just want it, and we have no money to buy you everything you want, so just shut your pie hole.”

We can survive without our basic human needs, but the length of survival time we can survive may be dramatic. It is said, on average, a human being can survive 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food. How long can you survive without sex? Some might claim forever, that it is possible to survive a life time without sex. Of course this is true if your definition of sex is sexual intercourse. There are huge numbers of people who live substantial lives and then die never having had sexual intercourse. But if your definition of SEX includes sexual thoughts, wet dreams, or masturbation and you will have a far more difficult time measuring how long a human survives without sex.

The urge to have sex is so powerful that it can drain psychic energy away from other necessary goals. Therefore, every culture has to invest great efforts in rechanneling and restraining it, and many complex social institutions exist only in order to regulate this urge. The saying that "love makes the world go round" is a polite reference to the fact that most of our deeds are impelled, either directly or indirectly, by sexual needs.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Until recently I hadn’t actually thought much about why a human being would want sex. I assumed the reasons were obvious.

Sex is emotion in motion.
Mae West

Humans are hardwired to have sex. Coitus is evolution’s way of ensuring the survival of our species. One of the ways to ensure that the species will have sex is to make it pleasurable. Having sex often ends with feelings of contentment and relaxation, feelings sometimes referred to as an “after-glow.” My barely thought through conclusion was that humans have sex to reproduce, to experience pleasure, and to relieve sexual tension.

I now believe that the urges for sex are far more complex.

Sex is hardly ever just about sex.
Shirley MacLaine

I am sure I have not exhausted the possibilities, but here is my list as of now:

1. sex is our means to reproduce
2. to experience pleasure
3. to enjoy emotional closeness
4. because a partner wants it (pity sex)
5. to please a partner (gift sex)
6. to make a conquest,
7. to relieve sexual tension
8. to feel valued by a partner,
9. to express value for (and to) a partner,
10. to nurturing one’s partner
11. to feel a sense of personal power
12. to sense and enjoy the power of your partner (think of Bill Clinton John Edwards, Tiger Woods, or rock band’s Groupies)
13. it can be a reward for partner (celebratory sex?)
14. sex can, of course, it can be used to punish or retaliation (as when someone has sex to “get even with” an unfaithful spouse)
15. sex can turn a casual relationship into an intensified relationships, or increase the level of commitment within the relationship
16. it can be used to turn a short-term relationship into a long-term relationship
17. sex can be used as a sort of ‘‘mate guarding’’ (this is my man, or my woman)
18. it can be used to deter a partner from straying
19. sex can be a commodity, exchanging sex for money as in “prostitution,” but this would also apply to things like the Hollywood’s infamous “casting couch,” or people use sex to gain a promotion, as with people who “sleep their way to the top”
20. what should have been first on the list, is that sex is a facet of love (remember the act of coitus is sometimes called “making love.”

I can’t accept that sexual intercourse is equal to our need for air, but there are psychological factors in play that make our need for sex an actual need and not merely a want.

I came across and interesting BBC report on a young man in the UK living with Muscular Dystrophy who decided to hire a prostitute in order to “lose his virginity.” Doctors believe that it is unlikely Nick Wallis, who is 22 years old, will live past his thirties. Once the public learned of this story, it became a catalyst for discussion, and, at times, heated debate. What is or is not acceptable for disabled human beings? If you happen to be disabled does that automatically mean you can never experience sexual intercourse?

Mr. Wallis was under the care of hospice. The hospice staff consulted with an attorney, clergy, and health care professionals to consider their patient’s intentions. A decision was to locate a sex worker and to facilitate a sexual encounter. While this decision was controversial, it does indicate that the professionals involved concluded that sexual intercourse is a legitimate human need.

Sex without love is a meaningless
experience, but as far as meaningless
experiences go

its pretty damn good.

Woody Allen

Obviously there are people so disabled that it is unlikely they are going to find a partner, be in love, and have a sexual relationship that grows naturally from that relationship. The decision to facilitate a sexual act between a disabled young man and a sex worker indicates that the act of having sex, even apart from a pair bonding relationship, is still a need that ought to be allowed, facilitated and perhaps even encouraged.

The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.
Brendan Behan

In another BBC article, there was a story about an adult young man with Down ’s syndrome wanted to have sex and that young man’s mother was seeking some way to safely accommodate her son’s desire. The mother stated that that disabled people have a right to have the same human experiences that not-disabled humans routinely enjoy.

My conclusion is that sex is not like air, but it is not like a yearning for chocolate either. There are powerful and profound psychological factors driving our desire to have sex, to think about sex, to pleasure others, to pleasure ourselves.

Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to reverence life until we know how to understand sex.
Henry Ellis