The purpose of a committed relationship, of which marriage is but one example, is not to take care of each other, to reinforce the parent-child complexes, but to grow through and with each other.

Relationship is meant to be dialectical soulful encounters that temper and enlarge. One of the bridges between the sexes, to be sure, is sex. But men and women, too often feeling deficient in discourse, place too much emphasis on intercourse.

Whatever sex is, and it is at least a profound mystery, it is easily misused.

The primary psychological purpose of sex for some men who spend their lives in the cold, cruel world, and whose relationship with their own anima is frigid, is to reconnect with a warm place.

Sex is a form of emotional reassurance, a narcotic to still the pain of the bruised soul. If life batters them, then sex, like drugs or work, may numb the wound. The sexual act offers a momentary transcendence.

Orgasm can be an ecstatic experience; for the moment one may feel outside the iron confines of ordinary consciousness. It is the closest many men ever come to a religious experience. Thus the act of sex may mask a desperate search for acceptance, underneath which lurks the mother complex.

This is ultimately a destructive game. Sex as loving, sex as conversing, sex as dialectic, all presuppose an equal partner. Sex as redemption distorts the relationship.

~James Hollis

Healing the Souls of Men:
The Power of the Feminine is Immense in the Psychic Economy of Men.
The Wounding and Healing of Men
Art: Unknown