AN INNOCENT PASSIONOne aspect of the Family values our older generations treasured is rarely mentioned today: our passion and its innocence. If you are young, reading this might help you better understand your grandparents, and perhaps yourself. With marriage, the passions of male aggressiveness and girlish coquettishness were transformed. They shifted from courtship to protecting, building and enjoying the rewards of a healthy family. One of our greatest rewards seems least understood today, the reward of physical love. Physical awareness, sensual stimulation, two humans uniting as one, these are healthy and natural. In no way do they require ugly or disgusting acts. Their mutual fulfillment was the source of marital strength, of the natural progression to parenthood, of the motivation to be loving and supportive parents, and to become self-reliant and independent citizens. By fulfilling our natural needs as human beings, it once helped make the family the backbone of our disappearing Melting-Pot society and its many stunning accomplishments. What is more comforting, what is more rewarding, than lying in the arms of the one you love and whose love you have won? The mutual physical realization of thatlove? The strength of knowing that, even though you may fall short of your goals, you try to deserve that love every day? The answers are personal and dependon the individual. They always have. For the Melting Pot society there was rarely anything more comforting or motivating than physical love between man and wife, and it usually began and ended with the simple stroke of one's fingers. The aware, sensitive, arousing, protracted, drawn-out, fulfilling, calming, protective, loving manual caress. Most of the time the passions of biological relief, or of physical union, took place along the way. Sometimes both, sometimes neither, but what did happen almost always was spiritual gratification and satisfaction, a profound shared experience of union. We didn't call this shared experience "having sex." We called it "making love." Bert Kortegaard |
