D. Loving Beyond Sex:
When Unique Sexual Bonding Replaces Imprinted
Sex-Scripts.
Even tho we discover ourselves imprinted with
powerful sex-scripts,
perhaps we can transcend that deep part of our selves.
To what degree this is possible can only be known
from the actual experiences of people who have (perhaps accidentally)
found themselves living and loving beyond their imprinted fantasies.
Thus, as sex-script theory itself depends on individual testimony,
so the hypothesis of sexual relationships beyond sex-scripts
awaits the testimony of people who believe it has happened in their
lives.
As sexologists gather accounts of sex-scripts in operation,
they might discover a few people who have transcended their imprinting.
The following admittedly-idealistic vision of
sexual sharing
is offered not as an authoritative criterion or standard for good sex.
Rather it imagines loving beyond the influence of imprinted sexual
fantasies.
If particular relationships enable us to
transcend our sex-scripts,
our sexual sharing will become less ordinary, routine, &
stereotyped.
Sex becomes more an expression of who we are as persons.
It can express inwardness, depth, singularity, openness, wonder
—instead of the imprinted responses that used to drive our sex-lives.
(Sometimes sex-scripts actually create alienation rather than intimacy.)
As we transcend our sexual imprinting, sex becomes more personal.
We might even experience special moments of I-Thou encounter in sex
—in which two whole, complete persons discover each other.
Chapter
IX
TRANSCENDING OUR
SEX-SCRIPTS
by JAMES
PARK
123
What new meanings emerge in this special
sexual sharing
will depend, of course, on who we are as persons
and on what has been happening in our loving relationship:
What have we been doing together before this
sexual sharing?
How do we feel about each other? Have we shared deep personal
concerns?
Has one of us supported the other thru a difficult personal trauma?
Are we especially happy about a new dimension in our relationship?
Perhaps we have disclosed ourselves to each other in new ways
and we are feeling especially close and loving.
Maybe we have shared deeply and felt understood and appreciated.
Have we overcome alienation? Are we delighted to be reunited?
We might even have surmounted a traumatic crisis in our relationship:
Have difficult problems been confronted and resolved?
Perhaps we have been working on a shared Authentic project-of-being.
The difficulties of that comprehensive task resonate in our minds
as well as the creative solutions we have invented.
If our core projects-of-being have learned to sing in harmony,
our bodies can also harmonize in a spiritual-sexual celebration.
What makes sex this time a celebration of our
loving relationship
rather than our sex-scripts playing out their imprinted stories
is the content of our minds while we are having sex.
Are we experiencing each other in our uniqueness and singularity?
Or are we re-living a familiar sexual experience?
Are we appreciating ourselves and each other as whole persons?
Or are we allowing our sexual fantasies to possess us?
Are we attuned to each other’s self-inventing cores of being?
Or are we merely indulging our pre-existing sexual fantasies?
Are we fully present to each other?
When we—two self-directing, self-creating
persons—
come together in our wholeness and Authentic independence,
not compromising or covering over our individualities,
when we come together in complete openness
and deep appreciation of our respective Authentic projects-of-being,
we might create a high moment of meaningful sexual celebration.
Such sexual bonding with this particular person
can overpower whatever sex-scripts were imprinted in either of us.
Such I-Thou moments of sexual celebration
might be rare.
We cannot consciously plan such moments or intentionally create them;
they flow unpredictably from special times in our relationships.
But we can build loving relationships in which I-Thou sex happens
—and then welcome such transcendent moments when they come.
124 IMPRINTED SEXUAL
FANTASIES: A NEW KEY FOR
SEXOLOGY by JAMES PARK
However, on ordinary occasions, sex will have
other meanings.
If we are not already deeply attuned to ourselves and each other,
we cannot try to conjure up visions of our Authentic projects-of-being.
That would be ludicrous when our attention is really focused
on the delicious sensual experience beginning to take place between us.
Even when sex does not celebrate a unique
relationship of whole persons,
it can still be an enriching experience.
Perhaps for the moment we have left aside our purposes in life
and have become totally absorbed in our intense sexual encounter.
When this takes place within a committed loving relationship,
we are not dehumanizing each other into mere sex-objects.
And we can even play with our imprinted sexual fantasies.
And some of us might experience orgasms that
are so intense
that awareness of everything else is blanked out.
But these can still be occasions of unique sexual bonding
rather than indulging our pre-existing sexual fantasies
—if the encounter is the meeting of two persons, not two scripts.
Sex can be a coming together of everything we appreciate
in this loving relationship in a body-mind-spirit explosion.
If so, perhaps only in a later moment of reflection
can we fully appreciate each other as two whole, complex persons.
We form a sexual bond neither could have expected beforehand.
In reviewing our sex-lives, we might note
special moments
when we transcended our imprinted sexual fantasies
and experienced a special sexual bond with a specific other person.
Perhaps our best sexual sharing happened in deep loving relationships,
where our specific love spoke more loudly than our sex-scripts.
Happy, personal, humanizing, even spiritual sex occurred
when we were fully open and fully appreciated.
When we experience each other as whole,
self-directing persons
—feeling especially warm, close, human, & loving—
we can transcend our sexual imprinting (whatever it was)
and celebrate unique relationships thru sexual sharing.
If we hope to transcend our imprinted sexual
fantasies,
we might find ourselves saying “no” more often.
If at a particular time, sex would merely express our sex-scripts,
we might do better to spend that time enriching the relationship
rather than having yet another episode of the familiar bedroom scene.
Once we have begun to notice the difference between
indulging our sex-scripts and celebrating a unique relationship,
we can consciously decide to pursue the higher possibilities of sex.
Chapter
IX
TRANSCENDING OUR
SEX-SCRIPTS
by JAMES
PARK
125
Routine patterns of sexual intercourse
are more likely to be expressions of our pre-existing sex-scripts
than moments in which we are fully present to each other.
So we should guard against developing patterns in our sex-lives.
We can decide to be together only when we both freely choose it.
It is more meaningful to sleep together or to have sex
because it celebrates the renewal of our loving relationship
than because we have only one place to sleep!
The three pages quoted above come from Imprinted
Sexual
Fantasies: A New Key for Sexology by James Park.
The complete table of contents will appear if you click the title above.
The page numbers appear at the bottom of each printed page.
Several words have bold face in the printed version.
These additional features do not appear in this Internet version.