All My Children

An uncomfortable problem for you as an idealistic young person, especially in the early teens, is the sharp contrast between the physical side of sex and the romantic, tender, spiritual side. By the time you are in your late teens or early twenties, these two aspects will tend to fuse together (sooner in one individual, later in another), giving strength and meaning to each other. But at first they are so opposite that they seem to battle against each other.

The physical aspects of sex are crude and insistent, especially in the teen years. They will not leave you alone for long. They suggest to your imagination physical intimacies which are exciting or shocking. They prod you constantly to go where there might be members of the opposite sex—to look and to be seen. They make you try to attract attention before you know what you are doing. They push you into situations—whether you’re pretending to be helpful or just fooling around—in which there is an excuse to touch a person of the opposite sex who appeals to you.

If you are a boy and are alone with an attractive girl, there may be an insistent preoccupation with the thought of making advances of some kind. (When I say making advances, this may mean as little as trying to hold hands.) In your first year or so of dating there may be very limited enjoyment of the relationship because you are so preoccupied with the question of whether the girl considers you timid for being so slow or whether she thinks you are obnoxious for being so fresh. And are you only going to try to hold her hand or are you going to put your arm around her, or to kiss her, or to be even more aggressively bold? If you are a girl there is the corresponding preoccupation about whether to invite an advance—by a subtle remark, by a look, by letting your hand touch the boy’s arm or your knee touch his. All of this may have little to do with affection. It’s partly your glands, applying their pressure. It’s also the impulse to master a new ability. Human beings—from birth onwards—feel the challenge to master any new skill which confronts them, whether it’s the physical skill of walking, the mental skill of reading, or the social and emotional skill of dating.

In the first few years of dating, the compulsion to make advances is a rather cold-blooded and promiscuous thing in most cases. By cold-blooded I mean that often there’s little affection or respect for the other person. By promiscuous I mean that the teenager may have the impulse to make at least slight advances to almost everyone of the opposite sex who appeals to him at all, if the opportunity arises and if he has the courage to try. He may be quite in love with one person and yet be making advances to others.

Falling seriously in love is a different process. It sometimes comes on gradually, with the dawning realisation that a person you’ve known for a long time now means something very special. More often it starts with a pang of excitement on first meeting, followed by an increasing sense of infatuation. By infatuation I mean you feel swept along, dizzily, happily, in an all-absorbing involvement, much too turbulent to analyse, to control or to resist. It can peter out or it can continue to grow. It peters out when further acquaintance reveals to the couple that there is no real basis for attraction, no common interest. It strengthens into true love when time shows that the two have more and more to share, that they want to give to each other more than to take, that each person supports and complements the other in a way which enhances his joy in life and his effectiveness.

When two people are gradually falling more deeply in love, their physical desire for each other keeps increasing too. In the case of most couples, the girl’s desire is less insistent. Also, a girl who has depth to her character would like to be sure at each step that her love and her boy-friend’s love seem to be permanent before she yields further intimacy of body and spirit. So she characteristically is the one to impose restraint. And the boy, because his love is tender and respectful, accepts the limits she imposes. So physical intimacy follows and is controlled by love.

The sequence is different when physical attraction and experimentation take the lead from the start. Two young people are attracted to each other; what kind of attraction is not yet clear. It soon turns out that there is not a tender, generous responsiveness between them, a hope that this might be the ultimate love. But there may still be a strong attraction, based on some combination of appearance, seductiveness of personality, glandular pressure and the impulse to experiment with sex and to master the art of it. In affairs such as these, the excitement of each stage of intimacy creates an increased desire for a further stage, with no other feelings strong enough to impose restraint. Thissequence may lead to intercourse after a few months, sooner if either of them has had previous experience, or to other intimacies that young people sometimes refer to as ‘everything but’.

What happens in the end to these predominantly physical affairs? They may proceed excitingly for a while, particularly among couples who do not have high aspirations for themselves; but such relationships rarely last for very long, because they fail to satisfy the human longing for a truly loving union. And young people who are sensitive and who have ideals tend to become at least mildly disgusted with themselves and with their partners when they are using each other’s bodies mainly for physical gratification.

When I contrast the relationship in which increasing love takes the lead and keeps physical intimacy subordinated to it, and the relationship in which physical desire and experimentation are the chief motives, I’m oversimplifying, of course, by taking examples from both ends of the scale. There are thousands of kinds and combinations of human relationships. I don’t mean that the idealistic young person (the person I also describe as having aspirations or high standards) always keeps away from the predominantly physical affair. The drive that comes from the glands and from the compulsion to experiment and master is just as intense in the idealist as in anyone else. But if he does have dates that are predominantly for physical gratification and experience, he will probably come to them when he is older than average and he will be more cautious during them.

My purpose in contrasting two types of involvement is not to moralise or to advise. Each individual has to work out his own philosophy and behaviour depending on his ideals and what he learns from experience. I want to explain certain aspects of human nature and how they vary in individuals brought up in different ways, so that you can better understand your own situation and learn how to be most comfortable during this turbulent period.

I’m focusing more on the situation of the idealist because he is the one who has more inner conflicts and is more anxious for explanations.

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