It certainly has the possibility of distracting from my marriage, and sometimes it has. But I am learning to rein in the excessiveness of obsession and focus on what is making me stronger and richer as a person. I have had to change levels in certain friendships, but I haven’t abandoned many completely. If the magic is there, I want to nourish it. If it is a real connection, I don’t want to lose it.

I think it is possible to remain aware of other places where magic is happening in my life. Sometimes I think that each connection builds on the last one. So to have two or three magical friendships makes me more alert to the magic in my life because as I see reminders of them, I see new things as well. The wonder multiplies rather than divides. Is it possible to have too much passion, to long for too much wonder in life?

I believe that the more passionate and loving and magical my own life is, the more I have to bring into my marriage. Like you said earlier, I am able to transfer the thrill into my family and my marriage.

I don’t know what to think of the obsession aspect of the magic, though. It really can be sweet and rich. But can’t it also pull you away from recognizing, because of your preoccupation with the person in whom you’re seeing your anima or animus, the other kinds of magic that are happening in your other relationships, including the one you might be in with your partner or spouse? Long-term partnership, even with a soulmate, seems to diminish the magical feelings of connection that are part of the early stages of love. Getting to experience this magic again, in a variety of ways, seems wonderful and healthy to me, and is part of this whole “seeing it in someone” experience, I think. But I’m unclear on when this “seeing it” and getting caught up in its magic, is actually harming of the long-term partnership one might be wanting to nourish and maintain. What has been your experience with this? How have your magical relationships affected your marriage relationship?

I love the addition of the word “sensual” to the conversation, and how you’ve described so much of life as sensual. Maybe much of what we’ve been describing as sexual would be more accurately described as sensual - without the need for the word sexual at all.

Christy, I love your definition of sexual energy, too. These things have all been interconnected for me, too.

I think one of the main issues with the word “sexuality” is found in the first three letters: sex. That’s where most people stop. There is a repulsion and repression and fear that is often attached to any discussion related to that word that halts many a conversation or stream of thought because we often go to that place where people are naked and “doing it.” It’s tough to move beyond those three letters and the skewed ways in which so many of us are socialized - or not socialized - with regard to sex and sexuality. Even the word “sensuality” brings up steamy images of adultery and other forms of illicit sex. My mind goes back to an earlier part of this discussion in which we acknowledged the lack of freedom we often feel to discuss the parts of ourselves that are not easily defined or controlled. It is difficult indeed to define these things, but let’s keep trying.

I am playing with a few questions related to this word “sexuality” and adding “sensuality” to the mix. What is the body - with its eyes, ears, nose, mouth, fingers, and billions of nerve cells responding to billions of forms of stimuli daily - if it is not sexual and sensual? What is the energy and desire that moves us to reach out to others, to be touched (as friends or as lovers), to be noticed and appreciated if it is not sexual and sensual? It does not mean that every person I touch as we talk or every person who touches me has the sex act in his or her mind. I think many of our life exchanges and interactions are sexual and sensual nonetheless.

Christy’s comment reminds me of my upbringing. As a young teenager, I asked my mother about sex. I was told to open the BIble to a verse about “fornication” and was asked if I “had a problem with that.” Not a forum for open conversation or inquiry. Mercy!

I think I’m particularly aware of this since I’ve been doing so much hard personal work the past couple of years around my history of years of sexual abuse. That, combined with a pretty fundy religious upbringing, effectively shut down my sexuality, but it wasn’t like that just affected my romantic relationships - or lack thereof. As that part of me has come back to life, it has radically tranformed my spirituality, my friendships, and my creativity. It’s all interconnected and goes back to healing this deep, wounded part of me that just wants to avoid being seen at all costs…

So I think I would define sexuality as part of this “willingness to be seen and take up space” energy.

Julianne, a more clear way of defining sexuality in this conversation really seems in order. Thanks for raising the issue. Defined one way, I could say, like you, sexuality is a small part of me, related mainly to a) having or wanting sex with my husband, b) having my sexual desire awaken when watching others’ expressions of physical connection (in movies, plays, public spaces, etc.), or c) noticing that I’m sexually attracted to someone, whether this be my husband or not. Altogether, these don’t comprise even close to a majority of my waking thought life or feeling life.

Defined a different way - and I think some of the other comments, like Christy’s and Gail’s, get at this - I think sexuality can be much deeper and broader than “having to do with sexual desire”. This is where words feel gangly and inadequate to get at what I mean. There’s a kind of force, it seems to me, that is stronger in some people than others, which is like sexual tension, but not completely defined by that (if you’ve ever had a crush on someone, you know what I mean by sexual tension), and that doesn’t necessarily get directed at people, but can just be something they walk around with. It’s a force that, in my mind at least, relates with creativity, like Christy mentioned, and with passion, with the noticeable capacity for abandonment. It relates with enjoyment of being seen, whether this be physically, intellectually, or spiritually.

Defined this way, I’d say sexuality is part of a big percentage of human experience–maybe an enormous percentage of it. Sometimes the big percentage of experience that it gets related to is actually attempts at trying to repress and control it, because it scares a lot of us to death. Anything that pulls for abandonment - to feelings, to sexual passion, to creative energy, to being fully seen in whatever physical or spiritual or intellectual way - is VERY scary if control is what we need (or feel we need). Or if shame is messing at all with our insides. Expending energy to control or repress our sexual force is still expending sexual energy, though.

All this being said, I wonder whether the initial comment in this post about life force having many flavors is still true, then, if sexuality is defined this broadly.

How would you (or anyone else) define sexuality? Would you have a different word for what I’ve just described?

Gail, I will have to get back to your comments soon! I wish life had a pause button when I’m wanting to converse longer!