Virtually every airport bathroom now has signs about sex trafficking and an 800 number to report any such abuses. This led me to question myself about sexual exploitation in my own life.  I recently helped an (ex) girlfriend write her first book. In exchange I got promises of her helping me with mine (just the promises on that count), and some mostly mediocre sex.  With my ex-wife, I might have gotten my passport, which she took from me, back from her, if I only agreed to unstated demands, I met all the stated ones she texted me.  One of the unstated demands might have been to just have sex with her a few more times.

In my life there have been so many things I have done, and others I have seen done where sex is used as a currency to get what is needed.  One woman I know uses sex as the currency for getting room, board and living expenses in the guise of what David Deida would term a stage 1 relationship. In fact, that is the entire underpinning of a stage 1 relationship: one partner, stereotypically but not always the male, works and brings home money. In exchange the other partner takes care of the home and is mostly sexually available when the other partner desires such availability. 

Just typing this makes this seem disgustingly unromantic. Neither party truly benefits. It is very unclear if conditional love is true love. The same way the ultra rich are often nervous if they are being appreciated as a person or simply as a wallet, stage 1 relationships bring up that same lack of confidence in love vs. simply an expedient business relationship.

Arranged marriage, still practiced in parts of the world, was all about the business relationship first and foremost, and if the parties actually liked and grew to love each other, that was icing on the cake.

I met a woman in the Philippines whose British-Indian lover is exactly that. A successful Brahmin man, married off in his early twenties to a woman five years his senior. A beautiful alliance of two high-caste Indian families with high achiever children.  They have a 7 year old daughter, and are now in their middle years, he in his early forties, and she in her late forties. Not surprisingly, everything other than their daughter is on a path of divergence. He travels to the Philippines every six weeks to meet his lover and receive the physical lovingness his arranged marriage wife won’t, and quite likely, can’t give him.

Yet his Filipina lover is treating this man as a stage 1 relationship. While he provides security, he is not available enough to her, as a married man with 8 annual visits to her, for her to really commit to being in love and monogamous with him. He swore her his undying love and bought her a nice SUV to seal the deal. She’s there for him when he’s around, and for multiple daily codependent phone calls, but ultimately she is emotionally disengaged.  So far, the cost of the need for the feeling of the availability of sex has cost this man a brand new Mitsubishi SUV that he bought his lover with the proceeds from an inheritance which he kept secret from his wife.

There are hundreds of examples of this basic theme. Sex creates powerful emotions of validation, of acceptance, of belonging and being desired, needed and wanted. When we are having sex with another, we are the most important person in the room for the person we are having sex with. That is part of getting the attention most of our parents could never give us.

I personally believe that sex is far more than just about genital sensation. The real draw of sex is that attention, acceptance, validation. She just allowed me into her body, that is the ultimate validation!  Forget the genital sensations, we all know how to stimulate ourselves just right. If another manages to do that for us just the perfect way we do for ourselves, that’s often just a happy accident. The parts we all miss about masturbation have less to do with genital sensation and more to do with those crucial feelings of “I am accepted”, “I am enough”, “I am finally being paid attention to”, with those feelings delightfully amplified by the delicious sensations in our nether regions.

The question is how much are we willing to give up for those feelings?  How much are we willing to pretend a temporary gift to us of attention, acceptance and receptivity/penetration means in terms of real love when it may or may not actually mean that? 

Being clear eyed and truly honest with ourselves around those dynamics is one of the hardest things imaginable. If you’ve ever sat in the back of divorce court listening to the three hearings before yours, it’s the same exact themes that come up over and over again. Depending on the country, dominant culture, and legislative climate (which can sometimes be very different (and possibly less fair) than the dominant culture), there is a significant sense of entitlement and expectation of the distribution of the fruit of a lifetime of hard work in exchange for a few nights of passion.  May those nights really have been worth it!  May you be really clear on what you are looking for, on what you are getting, and on what you are willing to give up, and what your partner is expecting to receive in exchange.

To truly live your truth, may you be willing to risk rejection in the stating of your truth, and the willingness to hear your partner’s truth before getting too far down the road of (easily misinterpreted) passion.