Sex Without Love Analysis

Sexual drives are the basis of human behaviour because the goal of most humans is to find a sexual partner for comfort and reproduction. When the narrator visits his lover’s grave, he reminisces about the times with his lover and is overwhelmed by grief. The narrator longs to be loved as he says, “Then I saw it was getting dark, and a strange, mad wish, the wish of a despairing lover, seized me” (Maupassant 151). The loss of his lover penetrates his mental anguish as it is human nature to desire to be loved. Thus, he is greatly affected by the loss of his sexual partner, as sexual drives often dictate behaviour.

Since the dawn of man, sex has played a crucial role in society. Before they learned to read or write humans were engaging in sex and without it none of us would be here. In today’s society, sex has grown to become much more complicated. If I were to ask a group of people on the street what they believed sex was? I bet they would have a hard time answering. The question puzzling society today is how do we define sex? Can we define sex? These are questions raised in Tracy Steele’s article “Doing it: The Social Construction of S-E-X”. This article is about the current questions and issues that have been raised about sex within today’s society. In this paper I will summarize the key points of the article, while sharing my own thoughts and

Ever since the beginning of time, love has played an enormous role among humans. Everyone feels a need to love and to be loved. Some attempt to fill this yearning with activities and possessions that will not satisfy – with activities in which they should not participate and possessions they should not own. In Andrew Marvell’s poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” the speaker encounters an emotion some would call love but fits better under the designation of lust for a woman. In contrast, the speaker of Robert Herrick’s poem, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” urges virgins to marry, to make a lasting commitment in which love plays a

Sex has been reduced to a common action with no social bindings and it is not a gesture of showing love for someone else as people think of it today. When will today’s society be consumed with only the physical aspect of sex? With all of the premarital sex and the age of becoming sexually active decreasing every generation, it leaves a question to be answered; where did the value of love and responsibility of partnership go? Monogamy, in “Brave New World“, is unheard of and taboo to everyone except those who see how powerful love is. The connection that unites people is reduced to a competition to see how many times people have it rather than which the person is. In the book, John knows the importance of love and even resists the temptation to have sex with Lenina. John is among a few people who have not been reduced to mating animals but rather humans that still feel a need for love and companionship.

One of the norms Kincaid questions is virginity, whether sex is actually meaningful, that it could be enjoyable without the feeling of love. As a nineteen-year-old girl, Lucy is new to what a sexual relationship could have

In a social setting where the presence of God is absent, love simply cannot exist. It is a common-truth that human beings require love; in a society where love cannot and does not exist, the void where that “love” would have existed becomes filled with deluded misconceptions of what love truly is. In Marie-Claire Blais’ Mad Shadows, Blais clearly illustrates what happens genuine love cannot exist and is replaced by misinterpretations, with the use of well developed character relationships. In many of the relationships (romantic and otherwise) displayed

Throughout life many of us have our own views on what we believe is right, it is more or less based on the way we were raised and our morals and beliefs. Once we hit puberty and start learning about sex, many of us get curious and begin to experiment in sexual activity. We are influenced by many things in media like movies, shows and songs, almost forcing us to believe that sex is the greatest thing in the entire world. Abstinence is a moral that is almost completely abolished in this modern age. People who do practice abstinence are most likely judged and taken as sexually impotent or prude. This topic brings controversy to many people and religious beliefs because many

Human sexuality is a common phrase for all, and anything, pertaining to the feelings and behaviors of sex for the human race. Sexuality has been a topic that has been discussed and studied for as far back as 1000 years B.C. and is still being studied today. As the discussion of sexuality has progressed through history, theories have been created based on research and experiments that scholars have implemented, based on their own perceptions of human behavior. Out of the many theories that pose to explain sexual behavior, Sexuality Now explained ten that are seemed to be the most overlapped, and built off of theories. Of these theories, two that were discussed in the text were the behavioral and sociological theory. These two theories cover some of the basic ideas of what could possibly influence a person’s sexuality.

'Sex Without Love,' by Sharon Olds passionately described the author's disgust for casual sex in which she vividly animates the immorality of lustful sex through the variety of her language. The sarcasm used in this selection can easily be misunderstood and quite confusing if the words and lines are not analyzed with specific construction. Olds' clever use of imagery and frequent uses of similes, to make the reader imagine actual events, makes this poem come to life. For example, Olds describes making love as 'Beautiful as dancers.' (Line #2) in this line, she questions how one can do such a beautiful act with a person whom one is not in love with. Olds also describes sex as 'gliding over each other

Sex without love is unity and solitude happening simultaneously. At the beginning of the poem, sex is compared to dancers and ice-skaters gliding over each other, but in the end, it’s like a lone runner. Emotions are not shared, and Olds states that “they do not mistake the lover for their own pleasures” (line 19) revealing how selfish the act is and commitment becomes a jargon to the lovers since they are only interested in themselves. “Sex without love is an empty experience, but as experiences go, it’s one of the best.” (Woody Allen).

Sex Without Love has a theme of how a person can not understand how someone can have sexual relationships without being in love. In this poem Olds is puzzled to how and why a person can share such passion and intimacy with another when there is no love or special bond that holds the two together. Although there is no kind of emotional connection she is not empathetic of the loveless physical connection that is shared between the two beings as they engage in sexual contact. Olds is appalled with casual sex and believes that people misinterpret "I love you" to simply just "loving sex". She feels if there is no love shared that the sex is only a selfish act between two.

In contrast to keeping love preserved, Olds' compares people who have sex without love as beautiful ice skaters (Line 3). This line has a much deeper meaning because as the first line states, "How do they

Sharon Olds in "True Love" wonders about a true meaning of love in her uniquely written poem about a married couple. She hints that true love is about belonging to one another. That belonging or self-possession is reflected via ties of marriage. She further says that children, which are a product of marriage, only tighten marital bonds even more. The speaker starts her poem by describing two people having sex and looking at each other in a “complete friendship”. However, as much as the poem at first seems to have a positive meaning, the message appears to be quite opposite. In fact, “after making love, we look at each other in complete friendship" (2-3) sounds odd if used when describing the love between friends with benefits or a married couple. Friends with benefits contribute to unhealthy relationships that they are in, which is built on lust and only physical desire. Her poem, perhaps is an ironic portrayal of true love. A true love, if it even exists, is very difficult to preserve and can take a different turn especially within the marriage.

Another form of distraction given to the population of the World State In Brave New World is the use of the body as a “network common good, a public property” (Diken 154). In this controlled society the citizens are conditioned to partake in sexual encounters with anyone of their liking, because “everyone belongs to everyone else.” The World State conditions people to treat sex as an activity that is “commodified and divorced from love, family, and genuine relationships” (Gruenwald 28). For the people of the World State sex is just an activity performed to receive bodily pleasure and there is to be no emotional connection tied to it. The human concept of connecting the activity of sex with love would threaten the motto of the World State:

Sharon Olds’ poem “Sex Without Love” wonders at the ability for two people to have sex and not involve emotions or pretenses of love. The poem argues that it is better to have sex without love under the premise that love is a false savior for people, and everyone is all alone anyhow. In other words, the claim is that personal interactions do not serve a purpose other than being a distraction, and they will inevitably end. However, the notion that attachment and love are false hopes for people and each person is all alone does not account for the inevitability of human interactions and the underlying importance of relationships. While the poem does not give its definition of being alone, complete isolation is virtually impossible and leads