I don't have the answers yet, but I have learned enough to be dangerous, and ask better questions..

So, Misterghoulie's responses got me thinking. He's young, and even he knows sex without love sucks.

Now, there are actually two archetypal modes of sex. Well, really three. The first is Heran, which is sex between and a man and a woman inside of marriage, where presumably the relationship is already quite deep and powerful, and these two are exploring and developing themselves and each other within a committed relationship, and are strengthening their bond further in the sexual arena.

Well, hopefully, anyway. I'd be more open to marriage if it works like that.

Then there is Aphroditic sex, which is not necessarily married sex, but is sex with love, in context of relationship. There are lots of demands here, and lots of games and romance leading up to it. The idea is to fully enjoy each other within a relationship. This can be a love affair, or inside of marriage.

Interestingly in myth, both Hera, the Greek goddes of marriage, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love, visited sacred ocean spots annually to renew their virginity. Of course, they were goddesses, who can do this sort of thing, but the idea expressed by such a myth is that love, and sex, should always feel fresh, exciting, and new.

Last there is Dionysian sex, which is that kind of sex that occurs most often when two people (or more) have reached a state of drunken wildness, erupt into heated sex of the moment, free of any strings, and comes without responsibility. It is animalish, between near strangers, or near friends (depending on the circumstance), and is more instinctual and gutteral than the previous two.

Now, any of us reading this that made it through college have certainly had a Dionysian experience, or two. Or three. Or three hundred. And sometimes, there is this almost overwhelming force that insists upon uninhibited sex between two individuals who really aren't otherwise engaged with one another. But it is the kind of sex you have when you are most certainly out of control, though you may have quite willingly walked into the arena in the first place.

Just for the record, Heran, Aphroditic, and Dionysian sex all occur without love from time to time, but this is not their intended form.

And I agree with Misterghoulie that commitment is often not present, and I am not sure it needs to be present. This would not be my argument. That argument mixes up love, sex, romance, and passion again, this time throwing in commitment as part of the mix.

I am keeping that separate, though certainly, there is commitment involved in deciding one wants to have sex with love. The commitment is to the idea, and to the partner.

But for me, something has happened where I am unwilling to entertain partners for whom I do not have strong emotional ties, and this is quite new. It's also come after a prolonged period of celibacy so that I could focus and complete other important life tasks, like grad school. But the experience has had its rewards, in the area of vision and understanding. I am beginning to see why Hindu aescetics believe that abstinence promotes powers of discrimination. It certainly makes one more  unwilling to mingle energies sexually, because you learn that this creates commitment and emotional investment inappropriately.

It also leads to an interesting conundrum because men have a hard time investing themselves emotionally in relationship without sex, and women (at least this one) has a hard time getting sexual without investing emotionally in relationship. The Dionysian thing is different - that's just about sex. There is no investment on either side, except lust. This is why women want commitment after sleeping with men, where men are just barely starting to open up emotionally, and can't see commitment as part of the picture at all.

So the three sexual archetypes, and the separation of love, romance, passion, sex, and now commitment - these are my theories on the subjects....

....but at the end of the day I wonder if this is all just hormone soup, and if real love is that which exists between parent and child, or between truly good friends? Is everything else just "structure" we put in place to contain or explain the forces of nature?

I admit my research is far from complete....