I am not a male or female animal. I am a man or a woman

Commentary

Unlike male and female animals, man and woman do not relate to each other according to the world of species but communicate and unite in the universe of persons, that is, in the gift and embrace of love. It is not a mere reproduction of the animal species with its burrows. It is the power to engender new people, children and the power to form a family home, warm and tender, where the loving bonds of kinship are lived.

Given freedom and intelligence are properties of the personal being – humans – unlike the vegetable and animal species, it is also very typical of human thinking to make mistakes, to ignore and to err; and no less typical of its freedom to choose trivial games and fleeting pleasure to live sexuality of low personal level void of serious commitments. Some ideological powers and economic interests use it as a numbing drug for people, an escape valve for tensions, a lucrative business that exploits many human beings in order to distract them from authentic solutions to real problems.

Of course, to err is human, but to persist in error, as Cicero said, is stupid. There is something worse than the stubbornness of the fool: the malice of those who turn human sexuality into a business, a drug, alienation for some, and exploitation for others. Experience shows, century after century, that living impersonal, recreational, uncompromising, and instinctive and compulsive sexuality emotionally produces wounds, disappointments, boredom and sadness, and, in the end, loneliness as well as existential emptiness. You pay a high price for playing with fire. You get charred.

To avoid misunderstandings in the erotic dimension of conjugal love, spouses should aim to educate their desires and emotions. Why and to what end? Because pleasure is a subjective sensual experience and, if we make it the only and foremost goal, there is a high risk for the couple that each one will seek himself and use the other as an instrument of pleasure. If I may give an example, it is as if we were to conceive nutrition as an action whose only or primary purpose was the pleasure of eating and drinking. Like the Romans, we would end up vomiting to continue eating, not eating to feed ourselves. Therefore, it is a shared experience, one also witnessed in clinical practice, that the reduction of conjugal intimacy to a simple physical activity and within this narrow circle, the individualistic obsession for pleasure, not only weakness and sickens pleasure itself, but also produces boredom, sadness, and distance between people, because the unilateral or reciprocal instrumentalization causes mistrust, insecurity and inner dissatisfaction in the couple.

Education of sexual impulses and desires is not equivalent to their repression. Let us return to the previous example of nutrition; repression would mean conceiving “good” food as “good” because it has no flavor or even tastes horrible in the mouth. In short, excellent gastronomy, which is an art with a lot of love and expertise, is not a well of gluttony and inadequate nutrition. Repressions lead to these absurdities.

Our condition of human beings demands the education of our sexuality in the truth and goodness of authentic love. It is the experience of cultivating harmony between sex and love to avoid their dissociation and contradiction. This harmony is the key for sexual attraction and love to grow and to do so together in a couple’s intimate life. Pleasure, which is encompassing because it contains the sensuality of the body and the sensibility of the soul, is always a consequence of a loving, whole, and sincere gift and embrace between those who are intimately united. Furthermore, in order to bear the fruits of true love, said self-giving and embracing must cultivate and educate the values that make it possible, the values that make us overcome selfishness, violence, and manipulation of others. For example, the gentleness, respect, tenderness, and sense of opportunity that brings forth temperance, patience, and prudence, or the generosity that frees us from miserable pettiness, or the consensus and concord that avoids unilateral dominant impositions. And so many other virtues that form the guts of good and true love.

The education of impulses, passions, and desires of sexuality do not harm the spontaneity of love; instead, on the contrary, they give it truth, goodness, and personal depth. Moreover, it makes intimate sexual relationships a source of trust and intimate companionship, instead of fears, insecurities, complexes, manipulations, pretenses, lack of communication, sadness, and loneliness.