Love Is The Answer, But Sex Raises Some Interesting Questions.

You go down to the pick up station

Craving warmth and beauty

You settle for less than fascination

A few drinks later you're not so choosy

When the closing lights strip off the shadows

On this strange new flesh you've found

Clutching the night to you like a fig leaf

You hurry

To the blackness

And the blankets

To lay down an impression

And your loneliness

-Down To You, Joni Mitchell

In the vein of Carrie Bradshaw I present a love & sex question. I hope you don't mind.
"Is it wrong to sleep with someone you don't love? Someone you care for, but don't 'like like that' as the kids say?"
I wonder about this as I think about all the cruel, hurtful things we do to one another, out of our own selfish desires. I'm not talking about getting my feelings hurt because of misplaced affections, I'm talking about the moral toll my actions take, not only on myself but on another. Granted, sex between two consenting adults who are not in relationships with others isn't genocide, terrorism, theft or anything like it. But I also think that the little things in life count too. Just as opening the door for a mother with a stroller is a small kindness, there are small hurts too. Is this situtation one of them? Can you be a good person and still allow yourself to indulge in selfish desires? Because sex for sex's sake alone is a selfish desire--wanting to be desired for your physical attraction, using someone else's attraction to you to make yourself feel better, that's selfishness. Is this just a small example of the world's obsession with instant gratification, living only for one's self, and tossing aside anything that acts as a barrier to stop us from what we feel like doing?

Perhaps it is because I have been re-reading Jane Austen, and thinking about how different the acceptable social behaviors of those times are, compared to today's. It almost feels like fiction from another planet, not from a culture that existed 200 years ago and influenced our own. Today it is perfectly acceptable, indeed even expected, for people to sleep together who are not married, have no intentions of marrying, or barely even know each other. Jane Austen's heroines are so very proper and concerned with moralistic behavior, caring for others and concerned with what is good, proper and kind. In comparison my own behavior, which I consider pretty good normaly, seems out of sync with what is good and kind.
How can sleeping with someone that you care about, but not love be good or kind? It isn't. Sex is, I was always taught, something that expresses love and increases the intimacy of two people who want to be closer. The fact that it is fun is just an added benefit. When I had sex for the first time I wanted it to be with someone I cared about, and did love, even if I wasn't planning on loving him forever. I was fortunate enough to have that, and I felt no guilt. I didn't feel guilty that I had 'pre-marital sex', as I thought I might. I felt fine. I wondered what the big deal was.

And now that I have a little more time and experience I see that even if it isn't the deadly sin I was led to believe, engaging in sex without those commitments (be it marriage or other ties that bind) does let other problems slip in. I'm not even talking about the obvious ones, pregnancy scares, STD concerns, etc. I'm talking about the ways that sleeping with another person can make you vulnerable, something that is never comfortable unless that saftey net of love is there to stop your fall. Sex opens up possibilities I hadn't considered before. The possibility that I could get hurt, get dumped, get rejected, get lonely and do something unwise in order to feel less lonely, get drunk and it gets easier.

I have no answers to this moral situation. I agree with that Woody Allen quote above, Love is the Answer, and while I'm waiting for it Sex does raise interesting questions. I don't want to give up these selfish impulses, but I also want to be a person who cares for others. I want to be free to love who I want, like the intellectual bohemian I pretend to be, but is that just an illusion? Do we call it 'free love' because we don't want to own up to the posibilities that love is not free, that sex is not as easily forgotten as we seem to think?