Peter A. Bertocci, from The Human Venture in Sex, Love, and Marriage

When a person decides that he is going to get all he can out of sex as sex, he is driven into an almost endless progression: he must find a new fancy, a new variety of sexual experience, real or imaginary, for he soon tires of the last mode of sexual exploration. Having made sex an end in itself, as a miser makes money an end in itself, or as a glutton makes food an end in itself, there is nothing

more to do but seek some mote thrilling or novel sexual experience. Many sexual perverts are products of this chase for new forms of pleasure. They teach us that sexual expression for its own sake brings diminishing returns. I am not, of course, trying to say that every incontinent person becomes a sex pervert, but he invites trouble for himself and others when he tries to find in sex what sex as such cannot give him. Sex experience for its own sake, and certainly when the other person is simply Aused,@ hardens the arteries of tender feeling. Though sexual perversion is by no means a necessary result, the loss of tenderness and sympathy, let alone self-confidence, is a tremendous price to pay for sex pleasure.

On the other hand, sex is an increasing source of personal enrichment when dedicated to objecfives other than mere self-satisfaction. The fact of human experience seems to be that persons enjoy deeper, more lasting, and more profound satisfaction when the normal experience of sex lust is not primarily an end in itself but a symbolic expression of other values. This, after all, is true not only about sex but about other desires also. We enjoy eating at a banquet in honor of a friend more than eating in solitude. Before elaborating this theme, several remarks must be made about a counter-theme that has pervaded, sometimes quite subtly, touch thinking about the functioning of sex in human life.

There is a tendency to think of sex in human experience as a continuation of the sex function in animals. Man=s life, including sex, is more complicated but not essentially different from that of the higher animals. The prevalence of this view has sometimes led us to suppose that sex education is hardly necessary since at the right time the biological organism will react effectively and appropriately as it does among animals. Thinking of man as a complicated animal, we falsely reasoned that his sex behavior is as mechanical and automatic with him as it is with animals. Indeed, some of us added, to expect him to control himself sexually is like expecting an animal in heat to reject sexual advances. The best we can do, according to this view, is to realize that man is a higher animal and teach him enough of the physiology of sex to avoid disease.

This line of reasoning neglects the human significance of sex. Sex in the human is so interwo

yen with his total psychological being that, once allowance is made for some physiological similarities, the contrasts are more illuminating than the likenesses. To compare the sounds an animal makes with the poetry of word symbols gives some notion of the range of differences possible. The biological transaction of sexual intercourse in animals has at its best nowhere near the possible meaning that a similar biological transaction can have in human experience. Sex education has failed to make enough of the function of sex as human experience. In consequence we have talked as if the biology of sex measures its importance as a human function.

Consequently the argument against intercourse has emphasized the physical effects of sexual promiscuity, the danger of sexual diseases and of pregnancy. These must not be minimized, but they have played such a large part in the so-called Acase for chastity@ that both young and old have wondered, with justification, what possible case can be made against promiscuity once knowledge of the methods of disease prevention and contraceptives has been increased and disseminated. The concern of the military during World War 11 did not go beyond educating young men and women for physical efficiency. The general impression was left that sin is not in sexual intercourse but in the infection that may result from carelessness. We seemed to be bankrupt of really adequate reasons why human beings should abstain from promiscuity when they are confident that impregnation or venereal diseases can be prevented.

The situation will not be greatly changed until we become more fully aware of the conditions in human experience under which sexual intercourse makes its deepest contributions. Here we are clearly in the area of the interpretation of the value of sex as part of the meaning of life. If we cannot interpret the higher values of sex as clearly as we have explained physiological, and even psychological, details, we shall go on Aexpressing@ sex and Aavoiding frustration@ when we might be finding, through sex experience, a creative human joy.

The assumption at this stage of the argument is that love, marriage, and the home are among the

supreme values of human existence; that the human beings who cannot enjoy the blessings that love, marriage, and the home bestow are relatively poverty-stricken. We shall try to show that the experience of sex may bless or endanger love, that it may bless or be a constant source of friction in marriage, that it may be a solid foundation for cooperative family life or a source of frustrating disharmony.

As already suggested, there is a Alove progression@ in human life. This progression is affected by the sexual progression, but it has its own laws. The love progression protects the satisfactions of sex, but sex, unless mastered, will endanger the progression of love and enslave the person. The individual in love invests his energies and abilities in joyous concern for the security and growth of another. He finds fulfillment of his own life in consecration to the needs and development of his beloved. As his love grows, his self-discipline increases with a view to insuring the happiness of his sweetheart. He rethinks and replans the goals of his life so that she may find opportunity and realization within them. ATo love a person productively implies to care, to feel responsible for his life, not only for his physical existence, but for the growth and development of all his human powers.@ (1)

Loving, therefore, is a kind of growing. Love inspires one to live with at least one other person in mind. The circle of self-enjoyment grows into an ellipse in which the two poles are included. But, as Plato long ago reminded us. love is a suffering yearning for what one does not possess completely. The individual must refocus his mind and body=, re-form his ideas and dreams, so that the good he wants for himself and for his sweetheart may be realized. Love means growth; it means work; it means moral progress. Thus love, inclusive of sex, needs marriage to protect and nourish its values. And marriage, to be a most fruitful and inclusive experience which protects and nourishes the values of both love and sex, must be put to work in building a family and a society~ This is the inner progression of love.

It is evident that there will be many obstacles on the way to realizing personality and character built around love. The deception in the progression of love is just the opposite of that in the sex-

ual progression. For now the individual will be tempted to stop short of more complete fulfillment. It will be easy to think that a sexual experience enjoyed by two persons will remain an adequate source of joy, that the pleasure of sex and love without marriage will endure, that marriage without commitment to objectives greater than the union of two married lovers will maintain a challenging equilibrium. For there is no doubt that sex lust usually brings pleasure sufficiently gratifying to seem entirely satisfactory, especially to those who do not know the quality of sex love. So also with this next step in the progression of love: sex love without marriage can bring so much satisfaction, at least for a time, that two persons may be tempted to forego the more complete satisfaction of married love. Then there are some who, having reached a high level of married love, may be tempted to forfeit the more creative experience that children and a home can bring.

Let the sexual act be the expression of the conscious desire and decision to become parents, and that act reaches its zenith in human feeling, inspiration, and fulfillment. It is almost foolish to try to make this experience clear to those who have not known it. Words that receive their content from other levels of sex experience are quite inadequate for this. Let two persons extend their love for each other into the tender and responsible decision to have and care for children, and they will find the meaning of the sexual experience immeasurably enriched.

Sex, love, marriage, family, and social responsibility are human ventures all along the line. The question is: Which venture brings completeness, invites to growth in character and personality, enables the individual to feel that he has accepted the role that his abilities allow in the achievement of a dependable social order? It is our thesis that love, including sex love, is the more radiant and satisfying when it becomes a means of communicating one=s concern for the wider range of values that purposeful living together makes possible. Sex without love, love without marriage, and marriage without creative commitments to children (or the equivalent) are in constant danger of vanishing away. Persons disregard the laws of growth and development in human nature only to find that they have forfeited their heritage. I

Love, at its best, is the supreme victory over parasitism and egoism. It is a unique fruition of human experience, so unique and so different from

anything in the physical and biological world, that it stands as the richest product of human effort. It is not, however, a fruit which just comes with maturation. It will be no greater than the person in love; it will reflect and challenge the intelligence. emotion, and discipline dedicated to its development.

A human being without love exists on a subhuman level. He may try to avoid responsibilities and cares while enjoying lesser satisfactions. But his nature is such that, once he has known what it means to be in love, Life without love is a clanging cymbal. For to love is to change the directions of life; it is to center one=s own satisfaction in the creative growth of another. It binds two persons into a unique relation in which they live for and with each other. It makes the difference between existing and living. Note how the lover says to his beloved that he had been only existing without her, and he never wants to go back to that!

Loving is a kind of wager with existence; it is a new level of existence that calls for the reorganization of one=s being around a more inclusive objectiveCthe life of the partner. It is no great wonder that to the person to whom love is new, life becomes Aout of this world.@ It is a new adventure that involves new responsibilities. To find that another really cares without having to, that one=s life is important and a source of enrichment to another, is reason enough for the intoxicating superlatives that fill the diaries of lovers. AI can=t believe it. I thought nobody would ever find me important to happiness. I wonder if I can really make her happy. She deserves so much! I must never let her down, never give her one bad moment! Oh, it=s so wonderful to be with her! Everything about her, from that delicate wave in her hair to the way she walks, makes me feel so proud and so humble.@ And so it goes on.

Love begins in that early attraction, develops as each finds more encouragement for his own values, more challenge in another=s interests and needs and objectives. There are many things to

do, to plan, to talk about and dream about, and they are much more interesting because two persons can enjoy them and find themselves interlocked by them. There is a surge of emotional energyC sometimes quiet, sometimes turbulent, always demandingCconstantly seeking a new way, a more intimate and complete means of expressing itself. One cannot go on feeling this way day after day, can one? It seems more than one can bearCmore than both lovers can bearCto be so c~lose to each other spiritually, without expressing their unity physically. They hold hands tightly, they kiss meaningfully, they embrace almost as one, and feel a closer, a more symbolic psychological and spiritual unity. AHow can it be wrong for two human beings who admire and respect each other as we do, who are committed to each other as we are, to follow what every pulse of mind and body urges?@

What two persons in love have not found themselves pondering this question? It is easy for one not in this situation to minimize its power until he is brought face to face with it as was the day that Judith and Harry came to see me. Both juniors in college, interested in sports, debating, AY@ work, and social questions, they had been going together for about a year. These were not just two wild-eyed Akids@ whose hands unconsciously and naturally found each other. They looked tense and tired; they had come to the end of their emotional and philosophical rope. Had they been irresponsible young people, they would not have been there with the question Harry was ready to pose.

AWhy shouldn=t we express our love for each other, and stop bottling up our feelings? We don=t want to live without each other, but we can=t be married for at least two years. We=ve been told that sexual intercourse is not justified, and we both know that our parents would be bitterly disappointed if they knew that these thoughts even entered our heads. But here we are, feeling like society=s scapegoats. This demand of our parents and of society is going to break up, if we let it, one of the most beautiful experiences in our lives. We want each other; we want to stop fighting each other=s feelings. We know about contraceptives. and we know where we can get adequate medical advice in these matters. If a baby should come, we would make the adjustment and we=d love it. I can

always quit school and get ajob if it comes to that. We care for each other so much that we can take any eventuality in our stride, but we know we can=t go on this way; we=ll go stale! Maybe we=re rationalizing, but isn=t society rationalizing? Suppose there is a risk. Can you give a real reason for postponing the full expression of our love?@

Here, then, are two young people who stand at a peak of experience. For them life now means a certain quality of togetherness that heightens the value of their existence. If they live by the impetus of their dominant psychobiological impulses alone, they will go into an experience that in itself will transcend past peaks. It does no good to minimize that fact for, after all, it will be for them (two years earlier) the same symbol of spiritual unity that it would be after marriage. What can be said, indeed, that will meet them on their own grounds and be rationally satisfying?

The attitude of Judith and Harry weakens the criticism that appeals to the fear of pregnancy, to society=s demand that children should be supported, and to other possible social consequences of premarital intercourse. If there is a case that will stand against sexual intercourse at their level of experience, it must spring from considerations as deep as is this spiritual demand for the fruition of sex love, and not merely sex lust. This is the challenge in Harry=s and Judith=s question. Our generation must give an answer to it. Let us make their case even stronger and assume that foolproof contraceptives are available. What makes it wrong for human beings to enjoy sexual intercourse when they love each other? Why intimate that love expressed in sexual intercourse without marriage is

endangered while love expressed in sexual intercourse in marriage is not endangered?

It seems to me that no reasonable answer is possible without an understanding of the function of human marriage in psychological and ethical terms. Too many Judiths and Harrys, as well as their elders, conceive of marriage as an institution that justifies sexual intercourse and protects the children born thereby. For many young people the reason for sexual abstinence, especially if two per-

sons love each other, would vanish if perfect contraception were assured. Let us turn our attention first to the broader and deeper roots of monogamous marriage. Once we reflect upon these, we can better appraise the place of sexual intercourse in life.²

Monogamous marriage is a testimony to the reasonable faith that two human beings can improve the quality of their lives to a degree not otherwise possible. Every person develops aims for his life. He may not be conscious of his aims or values, but for him they make life worth-while. Frequently he wants more than he is able to realize through his abilities in the situations confronting him. It is not easy to have dreams and then become aware of one=s inability to work them out because of obstacles in oneself and in the environment. It is easy to lose faith in oneself, and in life itself, especially when growing up means a sharper awareness of good and evil, of hypocrisy in unexpected places, of human failures in kindness and forgiveness. Doubt about the value of ideals allows the maturing person to be less censorious of his own weakness. And yet he would like to believe that life holds promise, that he is not alone in the struggle for meaning. For him to find another engaged in the same. struggle is to find a partner whose efforts throw light on his own. The sympathy and encouragement of the other dissolve the loneliness of spirit that roots in the fear that one=s ideals may perhaps be mere dreams.

Can it be, indeed, that the inspiration and revival human beings find in falling in love springs from the realization that life will not have to be a kind of soliloquy at the deeper value centers in experience? To find another who is stirred by the same visions, who does not talk what is Aultimate nonsense@ all the time, whose beliefs challengingly express one=s ideals, and whose life is at least a partial incarnation of what we consider worth-whileC-this is to find one=s life befriended and one=s values at home right here and now in this person who walks, talks, smiles, and reflects them. There are, no doubt, problems with which each soul may simply have to walk alone or with God. But even at these moments to feel that another would, if possible, share that problem, is to feel more at home and confident in life. Others may help and feel close to one in many ways, but this sweetheart is willing to live through to the end.

If this suggests to some reader that the experience of being in love is analogous to vital religious experience, the comparison is aptly drawn. As we see it, the faith that there is Another who cares, cares in a degree and manner that no human being can adequately understand, is psychologically continuous with the yearning that one=s deepest values find at least another sponsor in the world. Whether the belief in such a Personal Source of Values be true or untrue, for those who sincerely believe that God cares about their growth, there usually comes that peace in mind, that motivation of purpose, which keeps life steadfast in the pursuit of greater good. Many who do not find this dimension of spiritual incentive do discover in their love for another, and in another=s love for them, a similar anchoring of their ideals and zest for their development.³

To state these things is to feel a certain audacity in the human venture in monogamy. For one suddenly realizes how preposterous seems the draft being made upon a human relation. Yet none of us can deny the existence of this yearning not to walk alone with one=s values, to respect and serve the values of another, to find solace and inspiration in the course of one=s weariness, a companion for one=s joys, and a partner in one=s crucial ideals. Nor can we deny that the person in love, when his love is more than lust, feels something akin to this poor description. When he marries he dedicates these feelings publicly and openly, vowing that he will continue to work with his beloved for the things that matter most as they understand them.

Unmarried persons are free from the awesome problem of creatively unifying two lives. They do not face the challenge of harmonizing complicated sets of value themesCthe challenge of days, weeks, months, and years of responsibilities and opportunities, of dishes and dusting, of mending and buying, of earning and giving, of sickness and health, of meeting people and making friends, of working with and for others. Nor do they experience an incessant challenge to their resources of good humor and intelligence, of courage and good will, of patience and flexibility. The economy of effort that marriage makes possible at one point calls for a maximum of effort at many others, for one shares the other=s concerns along with one=s

own. Even these brief suggestions should indicate that, while marriage takes root in vital yearnings, it also sets up as many problems as it promises to solve. Many of these problems, and others as complex, a human being has to face even without the comradeship of another. But the only thing worse than unhappy singleness is unhappy marriage. For now all burdens are complicated and the failure is more devastating. We are never surprised at the seemingly high rate of divorce, undesirable as it is for all concerned. Monogamous marriage is a high calling, fraught with real values and real dangers. The coming of children increases the sense of significance, the problems, the opportunities for mutual growth, and the burden of possible failure.

Are the values worth the risk? For those who would judge life by a balance sheet of pleasure and pain, the answer might be doubtful. The young lover, of course, has no doubt of the worth-while-ness of the venture. He is no longer happy in his singleness, and he feels that existence has little to offer unless he and his dear one are united. But romantic illusions aside, and accepting the assumption that children might be reared in a better atmosphere than a family, is the marriage relation between two persons in itself desirable?

The answer may be briefly suggested by the questions: Is there any other relation between human beings (apart from parent and child) that calls for more kindness, sincerity, sensitivity to growth, courage, and patience, and that can yield so much peace of mind, zest for life, opportunity for sharing, intimacy of human feeling, and gracious generosity? Can any other human relation produce and develop such virtues and values in two persons? We shall need to say much more about the demands that a creative marriage makes upon two persons (Chapter Four). At this point we may affirm that the person who deliberately by-passes marriage is risking the loss of a supreme purpose and an inspiring joy. Within marriage there grows that love which is the goal of all other lo~=es between human beings, the responsible sharing of the human adventure in purposeful living. Nor must we overlook the adventure in maturing of spirit that the rearing of children makes possible! Were not great values and great losses at stake, there would be little point in trying to answer the

difficult question: Why should not two persons in sex love with each other, and who intend to marry, have sexual intercourse?

Notes

1. Fromm,. Eric. Man for Himself. (New York: Farrar & Rinehart 1947).

2. The conception of marriage that will be suggested here might be related to the many conceptions of the function of marriage explored by the anthropologist and sociologist. But our concern is to suggest an ethical norm for marriage that takes into adequate account, we hope, the forces present in the social matrix of Western civilization. While forms of mamage other than the monogamous may serve important social functions in their particular social context, they hardly provide the conditions in which some of the finest values of life are protected. Rather than assert that other forms of marriage are just as good as monogamy, we would hold that monogamy best satisfies the needs of human beings, and that the sooner other soC cieties can develop to the stage where monogamy is possible, the better it will be for all mankind. We cannot here do more than suggest the background of a conviction on a vety involved problem, but those for whom we are writing are at least socially committed to monogamous marriage.

3. We have long wondered why many psychologists have not allowed such experiences of the lover to tell them something about human nature in its own terms before they decide to reduce it to a complicated form of infantile or childhood experience. Certainly the spiritual trauma, the struggle for security in ones values, is as significant as, and more observable than, the birth trauma.