How To Think More About Sex (School of Life)

Being able to enter into sexual relations with confidence and joy became as common an expectation for the modern era as feeling trepidation and guilt had been for previous ages.

The signs of others’ satisfaction in our existence declines, and their enthusiasm begins to be linked to our performance. It is what we do rather than what we are that is now of interest to them.

A large portion of who we are as adults, from our sexual fantasies to our parted legs, becomes impossible to share with almost anyone we know.

To most ears, such an admission would sound rude (perhaps even cruel), animalistic and vulgar.

the more strongly we will be reminded of the intimacy of our early familial bonds – and hence the less free we will instinctively feel to express our sexual desires with him or her.

all of these needs inspiring our relentless and passionately idealistic quest for someone to kiss and sleep with.

something that everyone should have as often as possible in order to relieve the stresses of modern life.

The satisfaction of our needs may force us to ask for things that are, from a distance, open to being judged both ridiculous and contemptible so that we may prefer, in the end, not to entrust them to someone on whom we must rely for so much else in the course of our ordinary, upstanding life.

Great sex, like happiness more generally, may be the precious and sublime exception.

What is now unfolding between our couple in the bedroom is therefore an act of mutual reconciliation between two secret sexual selves, emerging at last from sinful solitude.