Category: Erotic Love

Attached Love, Awe, Bad Ideas, Education, Erotic Love, Human Nature, Ideas, Knowledge, Learning, Love, Mature Love, New Love, Parental Love, Romantic Love, Science

Do the Sciences Rob Love of Beauty and Mystery?

Paul Sunstone

“It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery … It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.” — Carl Sagan

SUMMARY: I reject the notion that the sciences rob love of beauty and mystery.

(About a 4 minute read)

Love is probably the best thing most of us will ever experience in life.  This fact is made even more astonishing when you consider that life also includes blogging, and yet love amazingly edges out blogging even in the minds of otherwise sensible people when it comes to the best things in life.

But what is love?

There seem upon examination to be so many kinds of love that it would be perfectly understandable if the question, “what is love”, made us all go off into a corner, suck our thumbs, and whimper.  At least, I think it would be perfectly understandable.  But then, going off into a corner, sucking my thumb, and whimpering is what I do with about a quarter of my day, especially after reading the news headlines.

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Advice, Erotic Love, Human Nature, Life, Living, Love, Lovers, Quality of Life, Relationships, Sex, Sexuality

How to be a Great Lover

Paul Sunstone

“Sex: In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact.”  ― Marlene Dietrich

SUMMARY:  The importance of being a considerate lover.

(About a 5 minute read)

Oral sex was still controversial in my rural Midwestern town when I was growing up.  Near as I can recall now, about a third of my classmates thought it was obviously unacceptable, about a third thought fellatio was alright, but cunnilingus was not, and a third accepted both forms.   Almost no one considered it obligatory.

I was in the third that wholly accepted it, and that paid off after I made my way to university and became truly sexually active.  It certainly got me a lot of compliments.  Looking back now, I can see how about the only reason the compliments were glowing was because so many people refused to perform it on women.

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Abuse, Adolescent Sexuality, Advice, Courtship, Erotic Love, Ethics, Human Nature, Life, Living, Love, Lovers, Mature Love, Morals, New Love, Relationships, Romantic Love, Sex, Sexuality

How Young is Too Young to Love?

Paul Sunstone

SUMMARY:  I discuss two separate questions.  First, how old must someone be to feel love? Second, how mature should someone be to handle love?  I address the first question — which is a factual question — through science.  I address the second question — which is a matter of opinion or judgement — through five measures or standards for maturity.

(About a 12 minute read)

After I had reached puberty, a number of adults — including my mother and some of my teachers — cautioned me and others my age that we were “too young to love”.  No explanation was ever given for why we were too young for romantic love.  It was just so.  Lucky for me, I bought into the idea.

I say I was lucky because during high school I became deeply infatuated with a girl in my class.  Had I not bought into the notion I was too young to love, I might have fancied myself in love with her — which would not only have been factually untrue, but I can only image the trouble it would have caused me at the time to think I was in love with her.

Yet, the question of whether I was too young to love is ambiguous.  It can be interpreted in at least two ways.  First, was I too young to feel love (had I actually felt it)?  Second, was I too young to cope with love?

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Agape, Erotic Love, Goals, Human Nature, Life, Love, Mature Love, Meaning, New Love, Parental Love, Philos, Purpose, Religion, Romantic Love, Self, Self Identity, Self Image, Self Interest, Self-Integration, Self-Knowledge, Sexuality, Society, Spirituality, Transformative Experience, Unconditional Love

How Love Transforms Us

Paul Sunstone

(About a 7 minute read)

One of the curious facts of human nature is that, if we are not rather frequently reborn through-out our lives, we suffer, and suffer greatly, for not having been reborn.  Equally curious is the fact the truth of that is not more widely recognized and understood.

Nearly everyone it seems has at least heard it is important to be true to oneself, or that a purposeful and meaningful life is a life worth living.  But the fact that life must involve a series of rebirths — that is largely missing from our general awareness of spiritual truths.

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Adolescent Sexuality, Drug Abuse, Erotic Love, Horniness, Human Nature, Infatuation, Intelligence, Life, People, Relationships, Sex, Sexuality, Sexualization

The Janet I knew, and the Real Janet

Paul Sunstone

(About an 8 minute read)

As nearly every adult knows, adolescence — whatever else it is — is a time of confusion and heartache.  I think our memories of the heartache can stick with us for life.  At 61, they are still almost vivid to me.

The confusion is another matter though.  It is quite easy enough to recall being confused, but it can be just as difficult to recall precisely how we were confused.  Perhaps that’s because our current clarity has simply crowded out our years of confusion.

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Abuse, Adolescent Sexuality, Attached Love, Courtship, Emotional Dependency, Erotic Love, Human Nature, Infatuation, Life, Love, Lovers, Marriage, Mature Love, New Love, Sex, Sexuality

Women’s Sexuality and Moral Judgementalism

Paul Sunstone

(About a 4 minute read)

Perhaps significantly more than men’s sexuality, women’s sexuality is typically surrounded and wrapped in moral judgements.  Judgements that seem to me to mostly confuse the issue of exactly what is women’s sexuality?

Science can be of too little help here.  Many or most of the scientists themselves might be getting closer and closer to a firm understanding of women, but there is enough controversy in the field that a layman might find it quite difficult which theory — or even which facts — to trust.

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Erotic Love, Love, Lovers, Mature Love, New Love, Relationships, Romantic Love, Unconditional Love

Can We Make Ourselves Love Someone?

Paul Sunstone

(About a 4 minute read)

How often have you heard someone suggest that they can make themselves love someone?

I hear it offered as advice, or said out of determination to make some relationship or marriage work.  It is my impression women are a bit more inclined to accept the notion than men.  But I also think women are more inclined to take responsibility for a relationship than men.

Yet, as often as I hear it said, I more often see it assumed.  Someone — again, usually a woman — struggles to turn around her heart in order to turn around a relationship.

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