The Intimacy of Love Making in the Human

What is the difference between animal and human mating?

There is nothing intrinsically different in the physical act of mating in most animals from which we share a genetic ancestry.

What is different in the human is the emotional connection and the intimacy that potentially accompanies human mating.

When humans engage in intimate sexual relationships, unlike other animals, there is an emotional bonding that can occur. Some anthropologists suggest humans invented face-to-face mating as a way to increase intimacy. Mating while looking into the eyes of another, seeing expressions of pleasure, and vicariously experiencing the joy of our partner often brings a deep sense of love and unity. This is the reason humans have come to call mating, making love.

While there obviously still exists a more primitive form of mating in our species, (pairing with those for whome we do not care of love; or engaging in sex for the momentary stimulation of pleasure), there is certainly a possibility for sexual intimacy to be an exquisite experience uniting a couple in ways unlike anything else. This sexual experience is unique in all the known universe and something to cherish and honor.

What we find however is that for some couples, sex becomes a duty for women; a requirement for men. The depth of feeling and emotion becomes diminished as the primitive need for sex overcomes what is possible.

Remembering the unity and beauty that is possible through sexual union, and reflecting on the possibilities of the experience can bring a vibrant and powerful form of intimacy into a loving relationship.