I have a hunger for intimacy. I see sex, the carnal act of love-making, genital stimulation, orgasms, as a declaration, an expression of intimacy, the two becoming one.

I won’t comment on what I can’t relate to, specifically same sex attraction. But the hunger for sexual fulfillment unsatisfied is intimacy denied. Without love-making, husbands and wives are merely going through the motions. I must also state that sex without mutually felt desire is also a travesty of love. I had a marriage where the mutuality of desire ended. I had descended into a carnality that even I felt repelled by. And so sexual love died, before the legal marriage ultimately ended. It was a time of regret tinged with horror, as I reflect on it, nearly 24 years after that marriage ended.

So here I exist in a sexless marriage again, longing for union and intimacy, sustained only by a love on another level. It is a love, profound in its depth, yet ultimately unsatisfying. It is a mute marriage, bereft of the cries of pleasure and ecstasy. Taking one’s lover to ecstasy is a great gift of marriage. Hiding our passions is the great betrayal of our lover. We speak of “letting go” when we surrender to orgasm. I doubt that “letting go” is what sustains us. Rather it is the “drawing in”, through all the sweaty passions that nurture us.