It doesn’t take rocket science to get to love. However, it does take more understanding than Hollywood, the music industry, or most of what parents teach. The majority of us are confused about what love is, causing much misery. We long for love and don’t find it. We settle for less, are unhappy, and our culture supports our misconceptions. The majority of love songs and movies are about Eros. Listen to the lyrics, watch the films. They call up teen-age images of life full of sex and romance. Eros brings to mind the image of cupid hovering overhead, pulling his bow back and zinging the arrow of “love” right at the heart of the usually unsuspecting. It hits the target, we feel smitten. All reason leaves. We feel we are floating.
In the most positive sense, Eros opens us to new possibilities; our partner brings out our best, most creative traits. As an evolutionary process our minds and spirits expand, because together we can be more than we are alone. (1)

Romance makes us want to get closer to the object of our good feelings. Since there is nothing physically closer than sex--we engage in it. Sex can be the bridge between Eros and love. When sex is added, we have uranium-power for our transformation, and we are on our way to love. Sex is exciting, energetic, expansive, and it helps create more Eros--especially for women. Studies show that the more sex women have, the closer they feel to their partners. They want to stay with them or move in, get married, and have babies. This urge is even greater when women have orgasms, say sex researchers. (1) The female biology creates this strong urge to couple for the survival of the species.

Sex connected with love is the one of the best ways human beings have to experience the bliss of the union for which we long. Sex alone is not love, nor is it sexuality. Sexuality has to do with who we are, our very nature--allowing us to feel our most animate. Western peoples have split sex and love, the heart and the pelvis, one from the other. Unified sex is powerful and pleasurable; however, our culture supports images of sex cut off from love. To be truly sexual, we must find our creative spark, our spontaneity, our passion for life itself. If we are cut off from our sexual flow, we must work to unblock those wonderful forces within our bodies.

With time, Eros tends to die out. Our shadow side, our personal demons, surface. Just as our partner brings out our best, s/he predictably brings out our worst. Fear, anger, psychic pain, and sadness are some of the emotional issues we probably stuffed down as kids. These issues now need to come up and out to transform to love. (3) In the best sense, we pick our partners so we can bring to consciousness and move through these stuck places (4). Sadly, one or the other partner usually then feels they must leave the relationship to find that initial excitement again... and again.

We come to expect never-ending romance in relationship. We are not taught how to find and create love. We end up with hurting hearts, or end up in dead-end mediocre partnerships. It takes work and commitment to get to love. Just when most people are leaving a new relationship, the chance to find true love is at hand.

Getting to love needs a three-stage rocket. It takes Eros and sex to blast us out of Earth’s gravitational pull and into the realm of true love. Reaching and sustaining orbit takes revealing, to ourselves and our partners, our shadow--our shameful demons. We must be genuinely honest and find our deepest truth. Along this path, we will have profound life lessons that we share with our partner. Together we can solve life’s problems and experiences life’s joys. This is what moves sex and romance into the realm of true love. Eros and sex can and should remain part of partnered love. What makes our partners sexually exciting to us, and us to them, is the constant discovery of new things about ourselves and the other. One never knows all about the partner, because we are all constantly discovering, evolving, and learning. Love is an adventure of revelations. Partnership and marriage are one of life’s most spiritual paths.

To stay in Love’s orbit, we must practice unconditional positive regard for our partner; loving them even when they reveal their dark side to us, as we hope they will love us through revealing ours. Ideally, we will stay in orbit by keeping the spark of Eros alive, enjoying the excitement and pleasure of sex, and embracing the practice of love as growth potential at its most thrilling.

References:
1. Union, Eva Pierrakos
2. Hot Monogamy, Patricia Love
3. Core Energetics, John C Pierrakos MD
4. Getting the Love You Want, by Harville Hendrix, PhD
Also suggested: Pleasure; and Love, Sex & Your Heart, by Alexander Lowen, MD

Pamela L Chubbuck PhD , a therapist with 34 years experience in assisting people to integrate their body/emotions/minds/spirits, is passionate about life. A senior faculty member with the International Core Energetics Institute, Pam also has a private practice in the Atlanta area. See www.core-energetics-south.com

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