Can We Expand Our Definitions of Sexual and Romantic Love?

The structures we have now feel dangerously limiting

Have you ever noticed, when you’ve been single for a while, how sometimes you’ll have night after night of dreams in which you meet someone new? You wake up so happy those first few nights and then… A few days in, these beautiful dreams that are so different from the solitary life you lead make your heart ache. It’s bittersweet to the point of pain.

Lately, several friends have confided in me that this has been happening to them. Winter in a pandemic when you’re single is rough. There are a lot of cold-ass nights in cold-ass beds awaiting us.

I get it. I sympathize. I have struggled with this sorrow more times than I can count.

Luckily, I’ve been training myself for this very scenario. I’ve been increasingly aware of how our society teaches us — women, in particular — to assume that having a partner is the only way we can feel truly happy and complete. It’s the only way to satisfy loneliness. And once we have it, everything will be…well, perfect.

I haven’t believed in the fairy tale for a long time. Not because I’ve been disappointed by men, but because my past relationships actually helped me see the flaws in this kind of thinking.

There are a million issues I have with this — from the emotional dependency it creates to the way it diminishes the beauty of being a solitary individual.

But this way of thinking also forces us to package love and sexual satisfaction into very specific boxes — boxes that keep many of us from experiencing these things that everyone should be able to enjoy.

So what else, I have often asked myself, is out there?

What does it mean to you to have a happy relationship or a healthy sex life? I know many people have widely varying definitions, but when you look at most people’s lifestyles and take in the cultural messages about this subject, you would think that being in love and having great sex can only be accomplished in physical, monogamous relationships.

For that very reason, I used to dread getting crushes on people. How many times do we fall for someone who is actually available for that kind of relationship? Sure, in the movies, it happens pretty much every time. But in real life, my experience has taught me that falling for someone might only work out about 10% of the time. They’re married. Or you’re married. Or they’re not ready to date. Or they live far away. Or maybe you don’t even know them that well, but you feel a mutual attraction.

Crushes often felt so painful to me. I loved the surge of energy I’d get from them when the object of my crush interacted with me in any way, sure. But the rest of the time, it felt torturous. Wanting something I couldn’t have or maybe could have but not for a while sucked.

But after my last serious relationship ended, I began experimenting with opening my mind to new iterations of romantic and sexual relationships.

For instance, I fell for my partner at work very soon into our working relationship. He was significantly older and married, so I knew that was a no-go. But I could also tell that he felt the same way.

We never talked about it — we both felt like we knew each other so well from the very beginning and understood how we each thought and what our ethical lines were. Neither of us would ever have crossed any lines and we both knew that and so we got to spend four years together enjoying a deeply romantic relationship without ever being romantic.

At another time in my life, I would have been angry about this — I would have felt that it was yet another crush on someone I couldn’t have and boo hoo and whine-whine.

But in my forties, I saw it differently. I was grateful. I had a man in my life who loved me. Someone who would drop almost anything to help me, all the while expertly respecting his wife’s boundaries and my own. Everyone at work called him my “husband” as a joke, but it was true — in some ways, he was a husband to me.

We’re very close, to this day, and he has brought so much love into my life. And we didn’t have to be in a typical relationship to experience that love.

I’m constantly challenging myself to think of new ways to push against these ridiculous rules we have formed around sex and romance. What else can I alter? Add? Stretch into?

I ask myself this because I believe that love and sex are big. Bigger than we can comprehend. In other words — there are ways we can have relationships without having to be in the same room, or giving one another traditional, monogamous promises (not that there is anything wrong with those).

Fantasies can be a beautiful way to explore our sexuality with another person — without them having to be involved. I think we perceive fantasies as just a sloppy, unsatisfying indulgence when what we’re supposed to do is pursue the “reality.”

But fantasies are a powerful sexual experience that we often undervalue. Fantasies allow us to explore our own sexuality, to enjoy the idea of being with a certain someone, and to heighten our experience of sexual pleasure. I feel we shortchange sexual fantasies as a viable practice of expressing ourselves in sexual and romantic ways. Yes, it is our imagination, but it becomes a part of our physical experience.

I’ll also take that one step further and mention that I like to play with energy. When I like someone, I like to imagine them when I’m in bed, knowing they are in bed at that very moment, both of our souls open and receptive in that liminal time between wakefulness and sleep.

I send them blessings — I imagine them experiencing comfort and warmth and joy in that moment. I send them my hope that they will sleep deeply and soundly, waking refreshed and happy in the morning. I imagine a stream of love flowing from my body and into theirs. And I pour sexual/creative energy into them, with the intention that it will increase their own sexual/creative energy, enlivening everything they touch, filling them with life and desire and excitement. And to be clear, all of this is done without strings — it is an exercise in giving, not in manipulating.

Sometimes, if I really like them, I will imagine myself by their side, my soul invisible to them in the dark night, just like Eros visiting his beloved wife, and I’ll whisper something into their ear — something I hope will make them feel loved or confident or happy. And maybe I’ll imagine touching their face, kissing their cheek, if it feels welcome. (Yes, that matters to me in this exercise because this is not just a fantasy, but my desire to actually interact, on a spiritual, emotional, and mental level with another person — to me, consent matters here. And if the person is married, I’ll save the imagined contact for my fantasies, out of respect for this person’s relationship.)

Can this not be a legitimate expression of love and sexuality? Do we have to relegate all of that to a traditional relationship?

I feel there’s a need now to stop attaching so much weight to physical expressions of sexuality and love. We are infinite beings, after all — why are we always so determined to limit ourselves, to fit ourselves into the narrowest of definitions?

Yes, sex is one of the greatest experiences of human life. But it isn’t the be-all and end-all trip to nirvana that we so often insist it is. It can be awful, things can go awry, it isn’t rapture every damn time.

To pretend that nothing else is as good as sex is such a disservice to all the beautiful and pleasurable ways in which human beings can connect.

We can, I am certain, experience feelings of love and sexual satisfaction even when we’re single (and living through a pandemic). We can, I absolutely know, have love affairs in which two lovers maybe never touch or even confess their feelings.

Because love — and sex — are bigger than what we’ve been made to believe. They are infinite ways to explore these connections if we are determined enough to break free from that box.

© Yael Wolfe 2020

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