Putting the spirituality back into sexuality
Why post-modern sex is so often unsatisfying
Every now and then the algorithms get it right and I find a gem on social media. This happened yesterday with the following quote on facebook by Tanja Diamond:
“No one told me the truth about sex before I had a lot of sex...
Not the kind of truth that slides into schoolbooks or locker room talk or gets whispered at sleepovers under half-drunk breath. I had to live it. I had to wake up in someone’s bed with my soul scraped thin and my body pretending it didn’t just memorize a stranger’s breath like a love story. I had to learn that the body is an altar, and not everyone deserves to kneel at it.
They say sex is just physical. But I’ve felt the aftershocks of a single night echo through my nervous system for months. I’ve stayed too long with men who weren’t good for me...not because I didn’t know better, but because my cells already believed we were one thing. Because oxytocin doesn’t understand red flags. Because dopamine will make a prison feel like paradise. Because orgasm isn’t just a climax, it’s a binding contract written in chemistry and signed in vulnerability.
I’ve watched people confuse intensity for intimacy. I’ve done it. Skin to skin before heart to heart. Bed before truth... and we think we’re modern for that, we call it freedom...but what if it’s just a different kind of enslavement?
One where we give away pieces of our sovereignty in exchange for a moment of connection we didn’t earn.
What they don’t tell you is this: sex rewires you. It maps your memory, it softens your instincts, it makes you stay when every part of your logic is screaming “run.” And even if you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, even if you say you’re detached, your body still remembers. There is no such thing as casual when your nervous system is that involved.
And we don’t need to shame the wild. I’m not here to be shaming choices. I believe in sacred chaos. In lust that tastes like lightning. But let’s stop pretending that we can fuck like animals and not feel like ghosts when it’s over.
Because sex, real sex in your soul felt sex, isn’t just about climax. It’s about collapse. It’s about letting someone inside your orbit so deeply that your whole inner world tilts. And that? That should be earned. That should be sacred.
So no, sex was never just a handshake. It’s a soul exchange. And if we remembered that, maybe we’d stop giving our bodies to people who haven’t even earned our eye contact.”
It was perfect timing for me as I have been thinking a lot about how we humans go about mating in this post modern world. Too often people seem to be having sex with people they don't love or respect and sometimes don't even like. It's the attractive high status man who lies to women to get sex, then kicks them out of bed - smash and then dash. It's the women who use their sexuality to manipulate men or commodify it for OnlyFans/sex work. Our modern Yang-encoded (left brained & reductive) approach says sex is just a physical act and ignores the subjective aspects. Sex should leave us feeling inspired and full of life, not leaving “The soul scraped thin”, used or “feeling like a ghost”. As Tanja points out, the subjective side of sex is still there even when we ignore it or push past it, even if sex is casual and just for fun. If we really value ourselves, we will care about how it makes us feel internally.
How did we get so far off track? Our whole post-modern culture has worked so hard to separate us from the strictures of our traditional religious past that is has swept aside our actual experience and glorified a more yang-encoded clinical view of sex. A view of sex where it is divided into 4 phases (arousal, plateau, orgasm and resolution – thanks Master and Johnson), and the only way we can measure it without lab equipment is to count orgasms. It's a kind of ignorance masquerading as sophistication.
I certainly have been influenced by these post-modern perspectives, and I wonder what my internal experience of life would be like now if I only had sex with people where there was mutual love and respect – a meeting of the souls. I've noticed in particular that I absorb my partner's attitude and perspective about me, so if she is using me or looks down at me in some way, I absorb that.
For the few pick-up artists I have known, it appears to me they had their hearts broken by women early in their life, and vowed revenge. I suspect there are women who mirror this as well using their sexuality for vengeance. Vengeance may feel good for a time, but having experienced the magic and beauty of a deep erotic connection, I can say without doubt that vengeance pales next to that and is not a path that can lead to a fulfilling life. No one who truly loves themselves would choose exploitative sex, and yet exploitation has become rampant in modern dating; no wonder so many women and men are checking out.
We all seem to understand the saying “You are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with “. If just hanging out with someone could have such a profound impact on our lives, wouldn't the people we share one of life's most intimate acts with have an even more profound impact?
When we have sex with someone, a part of them stays with us forever, even if it was a one night stand. To be someone who has “learned that the body is an altar, and not everyone deserves to kneel at it.” means to protect the sacred being inside us. Who we have sex with matters. How our partners feel about us matters. Maybe don't choose to be with the hot person who looks down on the opposite sex, because you will absorb that downward view of yourself. We need better filters. Don't just swipe right for hotness, swipe right for connection – for someone who can dance with your soul.
Maybe it's time to put the spirituality back into sexuality. By Spirituality, I don't mean religion and it's strictures, but more the mystical sense of immersion in a raw, unfiltered, and direct experience of what is, and that can include lust, which I believe is nothing more than the stimulation of mythological constructs within us when experiencing another's body and presence. To see one's partner as an expression of the divine (nature/beauty/truth), and expect the same in return. When we choose who to open up with sexually, we are choosing who to be changed by, so choose wisely. I see this as a re-wilding. A reclamation of our true nature in all it's levels. A deep erotic connection with another expands our consciousness. We deserve nothing less.