Creating a Space for Sexual Intimacy

It becomes a fruitless effort, to search for potential one-night stands, dates for the purpose of sex.  It feels cheap, hollow, and depressing. It eats up time, erodes the soul, destroys hope, and perpetuates sorrow.

As I sit here this morning after a very restful sleep last night, I recognize the difference in the state of my own mind and spirit between fulfilling short term desires, and building a hopeful future.

For the short-term desires, to-do lists include surfing Craigs List, Yahoo Chat Rooms, with no goals in building friendships.  It is a selfish pursuit of sexual gratification, an addiction gone awry.

For hopeful future building, to-do lists include finding a date for sake of building a friendship, writing emails to existing friends, reading the newspaper to catch up on current events, doing chores around the house to create hospitality and warmth, planning parties, going to holiday gatherings, sharing true joy and love.

These latter tasks create a sense of peace, which may coexist with my longing for emotional and physical intimacy.  These hopeful tasks of love and fellowship I hope can fulfill that emptiness, even in the absence of sexual gratification.

Despite my virginity, I can feel and believe now that sexual intimacy properly finds its place within a trustful relationship, during which sex can be an expression of love, an extension of love to a more intimate experience of trust, pleasure, and care-giving.  To be fruitful, sexual relations ideally should be reserved as a way to express love, not as a way to simply gratify your own sexual needs.  It must be mutual, giving, and loving, in order for the sexual act to mean something, and fulfill that deep human need for love.