Love and Sexuality

I don't know about you but in today's Filipino society sex, albeit getting some publicity, is still taboo in the higher echelons of civilized society. It doesn't mean of course that it doesn't happen, under the table so to speak. FHM sales have prospered over the years and the new arrival of Playboy Philippines was warmly welcomed by many hormonally-charged compatriots. I'm not one to buy my own copy of FHM, but getting my hands on one for the occassional read is not something im adversed to as well. But i'm coming to learn that this very blase reaction to the sexual act is the very reason why we are a lonely society. 

When it comes to sex we treat ourselves as objects and urges that must be satiated. That tingling sensation in the nether regions has to be satisfied, by myself or by someone, or there'll be hell to pay. With Cosmopolitan on the newstands, women today are taught to glorify in the power of their bodies. I say it's about time. However to treat our bodies as objects of desire, as things to be sought after because of the pleasure to be found in them. Well, that's where i set my foot down. 

I've always just thought of my body as a vessel. The only thing that mattered to me about it is the mobility that it afforded to me. What was more important, well in my opinion, is the character the body housed inside. A person may have the perfect 36-24-36 body that I'm craving for but if she were just as shallow, then she'd remain a shell for me. Case in point this new scandal about Tracy Borres rampaging the Filipino networks these days. 

So when it comes to sexuality, relationships for that matter, I have trust issues. It means so much to give of myself not because I'm selfish. But because giving myself means opening my persona, my character, and my being to the possibility of getting hurt. I know it is inevitable. Many things have already been written about the demands of love, or any relationship. And I am not one to add to them. What I share is the fear. I am scared of rejection. I am scared of getting hurt. I am scared of being alone. Perhaps all these just as much as the next person but nonetheless it is a phobia I have. 

A few days ago M. and I had a fight. A fight that was cosmical that it shook, in my opinion, the very foundation of our relationship. There are many things in this world I can endure, but to be told, even for an instant, that the love felt for me is changing is a very traumatic thing. It brings back, in full force, all these kinds of fear. It feels so eminent, that any moment I would expect rejection, pain, panic come knocking on my door to claim me. When I got that text, I paused for a second as if the world stood still and watched as my heart raced on to eternity...as if running away to hide. I told M. as much, when we patched things up. I told him how much it hurt me, and there was a nagging sensation inside that told me that things would never be the same. 

I couldn't trust him. I couldn't believe him. Whenever I heard him say "I love you", I'd answer back in my head, "Yeah I know you do, just not in the same way". How do you build a lasting relationship on this kinds of emotions? How do you go on into the future when in the past there are skeletons too big to hide? I went to school last monday still looking for answers. I did not want to continue in a relationship where I felt threatened in a daily basis.

And as God is the providential all giver, He answered me in his own special way. 

For our Theo151 class we were required to read Chapter 5 of Radcliffe's book. Of course being the procrastinator that I am, I delayed doing so and read it during my Ec141 class. What I read was the exact answers I had been searching for. And the words so pleasantly and wonderfully versed were what lit up my day and allowed me to say with such fervor, "I am no longer afraid".

Allow me to quote...

I do not know the solution but the best starting point for understanding our sexuality is the Last Supper. When Jesus hands over his body to the disciples he is vulnerable. He is in their hands for them to do as they wish. One has already sold him, another will deny him, and most of the rest will run away. The gift of his body discloses that sexuality is insperable from vulnerability. It embodies a tenderness which means that one may well get hurt. It is a self-gift that may be met with rebuff and mockery, and in which one may feel oneself to be used. The Last Supper shows us with extreme realism the perils of giving ourselves to anyone. It is not a romantic tryst in a candelit trattoria. A Christian sexual ethics invites us to embrace that vulnerability, to take the risks involved in self exposure and intimate contact...

Listen to C.S. Lewis.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you wawnt to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heat to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in the casket-- safe, dark, motionless, airless-- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all dangers and perturbations is hell.

Mark Patrick Henderman OSB wrote ' Love is the only impetus that is sufficiently overwhelming to force us to leave the comfortable shelter of our well armed individuality, shed the impregnable shell of self sufficiency and crawl out nakedly into the danger zone beyond, the melting pot where individuality is purified into personhood'.