Sex won’t fix what is wrong with your head or your
heart.
Epiphanies come from the
unlikeliest places sometimes. This one came to me through a movie - nothing artsy or classic, but rather from the movie “City Slickers” – and no,
it’s not the “just one thing” thing.
In the movie, Patricia
Wetting, who plays Billy Crystal’s wife, is talking about a friend of theirs
who is having an affair, and she says, “I’m not happy here,” (pointing to her
head), “or here” (pointing to her heart), “So I’ll just be happy here,”
(pointing to her pelvis). I remember momentarily slipping into a parallel
universe as I reflected on my own brief, albeit intense period of sexual
promiscuity and low-self-esteem. And in that moment, one thing became perfectly
clear; the worst decisions of my life were all made when my self-esteem was at
its lowest.
Unfortunately, some of those
bad decisions involved looking for someone else to make me feel better about
myself, i.e., they want to have sex with me so I must be better than I think I
am (or better than someone else thinks I am). And sometimes the sex was so
great I mistook it for love. But when the sexual attraction leveled off - and
it always does - I was right back where I started – but with the added guilt. Too many mistakes later, I
finally learned that although other people can stroke your ego, the only
reliable way to avoid the pitfalls of low-self-esteem is by becoming a lovable
person – lovable to yourself.
So, the lesson I’m hoping to convey is that although sex may make you feel better about yourself for a while, unless your heart and your head also feel good, it won’t fix anything, and the damage could last a lifetime. So, become the person you can love, and chances are others will love you too, and if they don’t, then that is their problem, not yours.
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