Penny Wrenn, in a recent Glamour magazine article, however, admits that “sex is the big deal you think it’s not.” She cites Dorothy Robinson, co-author of Dating Makes You Want to Die, who explains that “sex is the heaviest thing that everyone does their best to make light of,” and warns that the heaviness can catch up with you as soon as the morning after your sexual encounter. Besides the possibility of irreversible physical consequences like sexually transmitted diseases and a child, there are also life-changing psychological and emotional trauma that usually accompany the oxymoron “casual sex.”Nina Atwood, a Dallas-based therapist and author of Temptations of the Single Girl “find[s] it ironic that people would rather have sex than discuss the ramifications of it.” Contrary to what many date movies suggest, most of us girls don’t end up like Drew Barrymore’s character in Music and Lyrics, who falls in love with her leading man Hugh Grant’s character, after having sex with him as someone she hardly knew. Atwood warns: “[h]aving sex too soon is the biggest mistake I see women making…We always tout the exception: A woman sleeps with a guy on the first date, and they wind up married and it’s all great. But for every one of those fairy tales, I’ve heard 150 stories from women who’ve started down that road and didn’t end up in the loving relationship that they wanted.”
Dick Purnell, author of Becoming a Friend and Lover and Free to Love Again: Coming to Terms with Sexual Regret, wrote a helpful article to explain this phenomenon. He calls it the “morning-after syndrome” in which we wake up only to find that the intimacy we expected is not really there. The sexual excitement is no longer enough to satisfy us, so we find that what we wanted in the first place was never fulfilled. What we have are two broken people feeding their own insecurities by preying on the other. True intimacy is not something that can be obtained instantly and only physically. “[S]ex may only be a temporary relief for a superficial desire.” Purnell points out, “There is a much deeper need that is still unmet.”
This “deeper need” is fulfilled only when sharing mankind’s most invigorating experience with the one person to whom you are attracted to in every aspect of your being: yes, physically, but also emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, as well. Most people think that sex loses all its fun within a commitment. The same person, the same face, the same body, the same lips, the same everything…doesn’t it get boring after a while? They look at the mating rituals of animals and conclude that it is our biological imperative to disseminate our DNA as widely as possible. Most animals, they argue, do not mate for life, so neither should we. What these people fail to mention, however, is that animals mate out of pure instinct and procreational purposes, yet human sexuality is infinitely more complex: it is brain-oriented. We actively choose a mate; we never pursue a person simply for the fact that they are a member of the opposite sex.
Laura Berman, Ph.D, author of Real Sex For Real Women, reveals a little known fact: “Research shows that the number one component of women’s sexual satisfaction is not orgasm; it’s connection to the person you’re with.” There's a loneliness that pervades those who flee from one partner to the next, a sense that they are missing out on something profound and real. They remain unfulfilled, unaware (or in denial) that the best kind of sex is experienced within long term, mutually exclusive relationships. We fully enjoy the intimacy we create with another person—whose character we love as much as their body—when we bond within a safe haven of sexual pleasure and freedom. The deeper the bond between partners, the better the sex will be.
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