I personally love it when people talk about pinguins and seahorses as examples of monogamy in nature, makes me laugh. Cause if we are using animals as examples of what our sexual behavior should be, how about starting with the ones evolutionarily closest to us? I believe it’s been a couple of hundreds of millions of years since we separated from pinguins! Meanwhile who are our closest relatives today on earth and how do they behave sexually? Let’s see, we have the bonobos monkeys, who literally socialize constantly through sex, and their behavior includes group sex when food is found -then feeding as a group. The group sex before feeding is believed to be an evolutionary trait meant to enhance sharing. Our other closest cousin species are the chimpanzees, who live in communities, however it is common for the female in heat to outsource to other communities after having had the men of her own, to increase her genetic pooling by copulating with the males of ‘the next town over’. These are our closest relatives on earth, just saying.

Just as powerful as our sexual nature, has been the historical societal urge to deny it. From calling the mother of Jesus -get this- “Virgin Mary” (talk about an invasion of privacy), to the holy grail of intimacy almost always ending on the format of monogamous marriage. As sexual minorities we have often felt the sting of judgment as soon as we discovered our sexual orientation. The legacies of homophobia and misogyny might have left some of our parts heavily burdened around the issue of sex, not to mention the sequelae left by the arrival of AIDS at the peak of the sexual liberation movement. It’s safe to say our parts have picked up a ton of mixed messages in relation to sex.

The amount of parts within us and those around us that will become activated around the topic of sex is huge. Sex is both a powerful force within us, and at the same time something that has often been deemed inappropriate, dirty, dangerous and superficial by the world around us. In this dyad of urge and constraint our sexual selves have learned to express their needs more or less effectively.

Sex is another arena where I believe the line between virtue and burden is a personal balance to find. I don’t believe it’s about rule-making: monogamy versus polygamy, condom versus raw, explorative versus conservative; it’s about from where in our system are we engaging in sex. Are the parts that engage in sex thirsting to connect in this dimension, or is there a little one there who took on the burden of not being enough that’s running this behavior as overcompensation? Am I lusting so that I can enjoy the gift of my body in an open way? Or am I using the dopamine from sex to quiet down a critic, distract from feeling numb or prove a point to parts of me that are still scared of sex?

If these burdened parts of us are the ones commanding the sex, they need to be discovered, understood and loved. After that, sexual exploration can hopefully flow through virtue, and not compulsion.

I don’t believe we were made of this matter and flesh to deny our animal nature. We are to celebrate it. But when the intention of sex is deep down wanting to drown the pain we are consciously or unconsciously feeling, there is a hurt here that needs our attention. Then we can enjoy sex from a place of beautiful want, and less from a place of starved must.