Pat and I have been doing a lot of reading lately...a way to escape reality I guess. We've read a lot of books by Jodi Picoult, Nicholas Sparks and one by Belva Plain. I would have to say that so far my favorite has been Nicholas Sparks. We both like the NC settings of his novels and he is a master story-teller.
I suppose these novels are to reflect the culture in some way. In all of these books it is common for the characters to have hormonal sex. By that I mean, they have an attraction, hop in bed and have passionate sex. The books don't describe this in detail but the theme is the same. Later the characters go about getting to know each other and see if they are compatible...after many times in bed.
This reminds me of another book I read several years ago--Bonding, by Dr Donald Joy. In his book he takes a theory of animal bonding for those species that bond with one mate for life and extrapolates it into a theory of bonding for human beings. I like the book. In fact, it's one of the ones I have kept on my shelf after discarding many others.
In our world today, the norm is to try on the relationship, meaning living together. I may be old-fashioned but there is still something that sticks in my heart about the need to decide that you are committed to someone before you leap into bed. Part of Joy's premise is that if you have the ultimate bonding experience, sex, without the rest of the issues being worked out...the rest of the issues never get worked out. You never bond. You never share values, dreams and other parts of your heart. The physical aspect of sex takes over. It is literally physically and chemically more exciting to have sex than to talk to each other about life.
Bonding takes time. It takes time to share activities together, decide what you like to do, talk about what is deepest in your heart and put together a relationship that won't end when the sex begins to wane. If you are sexually active and responding to the hormones every time you get around that attractive person, you have time for sex but not time to bond. And the bonding is what lasts 40 to 50 to 60 years into a relationship.
I'm not doing Joy's book justice. I'll have to write about it more in depth some other time.
Now that Pat and I are older (and I'll be frank) we aren't hopping into bed every night, every afternoon, every morning...you get the picture. We are bonded on many more things. One of the more unusual ones we are enjoying together now is reading books. I've always enjoyed that but Pat hasn't. Now it is more common for us to go to bed and read together. We're trading books, talking about what we read and enjoying a few passionate moments along the way.
If our relationship was just founded on physical sex we would be drifting apart like many couples do as women go through menopause and men look for their second childhood in cars, sports, etc. One of the things Pat and I still enjoy doing is traveling where we have hours to talk uninterrupted, sharing our thoughts and continuing to bond with each other into our twilight years.
Look for it soon. I'll write about what it really takes to bond with someone so that its not just about passionate, hormonal sex but about values and shared activities that will last for a life time.
