College Sex - Philosophy for Everyone: Philosophers With Benefits (12 page)

The distance is hard. We miss each other. We want to be together, in every sense of want. But there are a few upsides to being apart, too. Since we see each other about 4–5 days total a month, things don’t go stale as easily. Since we don’t see each other as often, it makes those times that we do see each other much more special and significant. Also, since we are in love and enjoy each other’s company, the entire time is not spent having sex, and we actually get to do other things. Of course, since we’re deeply in love, the separations and rough spots are manageable. If we weren’t so in love with each other, maybe not.

Thank God for Skype, that’s all I can say. The visual communication is key. My fiancée tells me that my voice is hard to read when we talk on the phone. She needs to see my body language and facial expression to really see what I’m saying.… I survive sometimes by putting it out of my mind. But it’s a real test of strength and will. Being apart makes you appreciate the other person more when you get together. That’s the up side. But mostly it’s hard because the two of you change over time, which is easy when you change together, side by side. It’s not easy when you get together after a separation and things are different. If we didn’t understand that, and plan for it, we’d be in trouble.

Sound familiar? Notice the surprising pros alongside the cons here, but also the common theme of strain, requiring strength. Notice the appreci- able role of technology as well – “all you need is love” … and the ability to videochat on your laptop.

Reconnecting and Misconnecting

These typical tales of struggle recall my own college-day love-commutes back in the day: traveling between Hofstra in Long Island and Syracuse upstate to see my girlfriend; next from Rutgers in New Jersey to Cedar Crest College in Pennsylvania; then between Brown in Rhode Island and New School in Manhattan – one weekend at her apartment, one weekend at mine – then finally from Harvard to “the city” for almost two decades. Even as a professor, there were the long train rides between Hartford, Washington, and Boston, then upstate NewYork and South Bend, Indiana

– great strains of relationships played out in Chicago train stations.

Too much growing, while separate, led to growing apart. New love partners brought similar commutes, each visit anticipated long before- hand with a mixture of hope and worry, and often a vague sense of fore- boding. The return trip held a raft of small satisfactions and disappointments, a sense that the visit swept by so quickly, requiring anticipation of the next reunion to fill the coming void. “Next time” dominated the conversation on leaving, at the bus stop, or when pulling away in my car – if New York City’s finest hadn’t towed it away.

You might expect the loss of a normal sex life to be the most discussed sacrifice in such relationships. That’s how distance relationships are billed, but loss of an emotional connection was of primary concern to me and also to my college interviewees. Late night phone calls could not quench a longing to be close and to feel direct connection with partners. Stretching these calls generated too many words, words that lost mean- ing; we’d say anything to maintain connection. A careless wordiness sometimes spawned misunderstandings and conflicts that our bleeding hearts never intended. In person, the problem could easily have been resolved: we could have shut up and sat happily in silence together, touching, kissing, or just holding hands. But geography wasn’t this kind. Occasionally, the call from afar arrived at the wrong time; the caller had to be rushed off the phone. “What does that mean?” the caller won- dered. “Is she with someone else?” “Am I not important enough to stop everything for?” “Am I becoming an intrusion – calling too much, seem- ing clingy and pathetic?” Or “Is she simply drifting away, into newer and

more interesting things and circles?”

The rare in-person visits were occasionally jolted by conflict. Perhaps conflict arose at the beginning of a visit, requiring what was left of our time to get beyond the issue. Final resolution was followed by an immediate

goodbye. When such a rough patch marred the end of the visit, there was no time to smooth it out. The parting was not “such sweet sorrow,” but a sour note that lingered.

When we laid eyes on each other, after a separation, we expected an instant restoration of connection – the in-person version of close bonds tied over the phone while apart. We soon realized, instead, that we’d gotten closer while apart – closer at a distance. Our in-person contact was clumsy and awkward by comparison, making the actual relationship seem the more artificial one. A feeling of alienation permeated – a hor- rible feeling of “separation together.” Again, we wondered, “What does this mean?” but feared to express it, compounding our anxiety. Or we did express it, and the process of “talking things out” was rewarded by prompt and wrenching separation at a travel terminal. A looming sense of disconnection haunted the ride home. “We fell apart.” “It’s over.” What could be more encouraging than waiting weeks for a visit, then fighting? What could revitalize us more, facing weeks of study ahead, than a grieving trip home? Such were the tales of woe recounted in interviews.

Keeping at Arm’s Length

Many commuting visits go well, of course. There is a smooth reentry, complete immersion in the moment, with no underlining worry over loss to come. The eventual parting is filled with a “see ya soon” type of opti- mism, and the interim is marked by stepping back a bit and realizing just how valuable the relationship is. Distance relationships suit the rigors of college life in key ways. We find ourselves concentrating more on studies when apart, and concentrating more on our relationship when together

– “quality time” both ways.We can afford to slack-off on our work during weekends together due to concentrated work done apart.

Contrast the up-close relationship in which there is constant pressure to study while we’re “just hanging” together. This causes anxiety and impatience. We distract each while studying together, so work never seems to get done. Then there are too-much-togetherness problems. What’s left to say when we’ve just seen each other a half-hour ago? Conversations become ridiculous, superficial. “It’s as if we have nothing worthwhile to say to each other anymore.”Too few “spaces in our togeth- erness” can also cause sex to get old as well. In such contexts, distance

imposed by geography can be a saving grace. Commuting to renew love and intimacy can become the special delight of the month.

But there is a catch. The problems of togetherness, while delicate to raise, can be addressed by up-close couples. They are akin to other problems these couples work out – balancing time with friends, family, and one’s lover on campus. The couple will likely grow during such resolution processes, making both partners feel stronger and more mature. The same cannot be said for problems of distance. Some are simply unbridgeable, or too cost prohibitive. Associated personal issues are too delicate to address at a distance, requiring unaffordable time in person.

Then there are special problems of sex at a distance, severe enough to outweigh distance assets all put together. While sexual intensity is often boosted by separation and delayed gratification, having to perform on a schedule can be a nightmare. It increases performance anxiety, which diminishes the quality of sex and sexual experience. Weekends together may not catch distance couples in the mood. Or one partner might be over-sexed while the other is anti-sexed. This means hurtful arguments, a sense of being intruded upon sexually, or being rebuffed in one’s advances and made to feel foolish. Not being around each other enough diminishes our ability to pick up cues of being out of sync.

Failing to click sexually can devastate a long-awaited reunion. What was to be the prime testament to our love falls flat.Where does that leave our love? Sex is the most concrete fruition of the distance relation, mak- ing our relation concrete only on rare weekends. When it fails, our rela- tion itself fails in the most tangible way. How else can it feel to couples? How can abstract sentiments like “these things happen, let’s forget it” grip us as powerfully as “look at what happened?”

But can we really assume that this one sexual con likely outweighs the positives of distance relationships? Reams of supporting testimony sup- ply the answer from “people of all ages.” “The heartbreak of sexual tim- ing” is the reported bane of young couples trying to get pregnant or having difficulty doing so. Needing to make love constantly during ovula- tion periods yields well-known complaints. Consider, also, men taking Viagra and the need for aging couples to make love before its effects wear off. Most couples of all ages routinely wait too long while “in the mood,” and then lose it when finally going to bed. For at least one partner, the sleepiness of the other bodes a cold shower. Time constraints place out- of-sync college lovers in the ranks of couples for whom the thrill is gone, or of women raised in prudish traditions, feeling obliged to go through

the motions of sex. “I don’t enjoy it at all (anymore),” a wife confides to a friend, “but we can’t simply never make love and stay together, can we?” So which perspective on distance sex seems more plausible – “separa- tion fitting the rigors of college life,” as posed above, or “distance relation as a recipe for emotional and sexual doom?” If we were creating a design for such stressful roller-coaster rides of emotions, or a prescription for

breaking up, wouldn’t distance relation serve us well?

Aristotelian Trauma

One-third of the way through my annual ethics course, we complete Aristotle’s account of
philia
– love and friendship.
2
For him, love is a potential virtue – not a feeling or a passive state one falls into, but a team of abilities. As an interpersonal virtue, love does an artful dance-a-deux in which both partners are called to perform at the top of their game.

I pose an unusual implication of
philia
to students – that when we’re not
doing
love together, as an ongoing practice, we’re not actually in a loving relationship. To be in love is to make love, to do and dance love together, not just to feel love or feel ready to resume the dance. Love can be felt alone, but not
done
alone. Making love is the only form of love for Aristotle, from infatuation and passionate lovemaking through tender companionship in old age. Thus, being far apart for long periods is not just a strain on love, it is a destroyer (a murderer) of it. And this is so whether or not the love resurrects on the next visit.

As a result, distance relationships don’t really exist because distance love doesn’t actually exist, any more than distance coitus does. (One does not play soccer at a distance, nor musicians an orchestral piece.) As jolt- ing as this news may seem, as much as we’d like to dismiss it as mere semantics, we’re dimly aware of its insight in the darkest moments apart. “Where is he?” Where are we?” Alone in our rooms we look for our “us” in tangible terms, but in vain.

Those of us who saw
Dan in Real Life
heard Aristotle’s view recalled,
Amor no es un sentimento … es un abilidad
(love isn’t a feeling, it’s an abil- ity). The boyfriend of Dan’s daughter may have “thought this up,” as he claimed, but it originated quite a few centuries before. A commuting encounter in the film marked the relevant scene. Dan’s daughter’s boy- friend crashed a family reunion-weekend at the shore, arriving unexpect- edly by bus, and was sent packing by a disapproving dad. Dan’s apt

reward for this intervention? The title his daughter screamed: “Murderer of love.” (“Murderer of sex” was implied.) And “murderer” doesn’t mean merely “delayer” or “suspender” of love, does it?

Students jump on my Aristotelian inference from
philia
with rare gusto, claiming to find it preposterous. “While apart love surely persists,” they protest, “merely in latent form.” How else could it magically resurface the second we see each other again?” I counter: “Powerful feelings are latent in love indeed, and can be rekindled into flame, but the flame is emotional self-expression in each partner. Whether the love
relationship
resurrects depends on how couples interact from then on. Either way, loving interaction was not going on in the interim. Continuing to feel in love inside does not make love so in reality.” Doesn’t college commuting experience bear this out when a particular visit shocks us with the sense that we’re over? And doesn’t that sense in fact pan out? We go on to visit, and return no longer in love.

Talking Sexy

In the vacuum of relational space, caused by distance, can we find a more central and relational role for phone conversations to play, or for texting and email? Perhaps they are not simply a way to feel less apart. Perhaps they are not merely a lifeline for the relationship. Instead, consider them the relationship itself. They are its integrated components, its means of interactive expression from a distance. Even close up, our love must voy- age across a psychological bridge extended in psychological space, from one partner to the other. Our minds and feelings do not touch directly, but are conveyed in words or body language.When we hold each other in full embrace, we are trying to convey our full selves to each other in a way linking particular body parts cannot. That is what makes such embrace so emotionally consuming.

When full physical embrace cannot reach across the miles, these new electronic media cross the psychological bridge for us, allowing us to make love in ways that past lower-tech “embraces” could not. Previously, media were like parts touching – a handwritten letter symbolized thoughts, a phone call provided sound and voice. But now, in addition to “non-stop” talk (via phone, text, and email), we have real-time visual images via videocam. A lover can almost reach out and touch, as some do, moving their hands over our moving images, a step up from kissing

spindled photographs. (Could Aristotle ever have imagined?) All hail the future of hologram (and holodeck?) technology, the “doctors of love” for a truly new millennium.

If communication media are the primary forms of distance relation- ships and embrace, Aristotle’s previous prescriptions would have us put great effort and practice into perfecting their fine arts – the arts of tex- ting, email, and videochat. Think of how carelessly we use these media, even when sexting. We may “say” arousing things, but only as if we were saying them in person, simulating in-person talk. Do we consider how e-talking and video talking (with body language) speak their own romance languages? (What font do you use for e-love letters? What colors or com- bination of colors?) One can simulate the classic love letters of old online – elegant cursive on sepia-tinted parchment. But is “going old school” the best this technology can achieve? Classroom “power-point” simulates blackboards, with jazzy motion added? Is that a fine educa- tional art of computer graphics?