Sexual intercourse can be an act of love, tenderness and caring; but it can involve other personal qualities as well and when certain of these come to the fore the character of the act changes dramatically.
Thus it is that sexual intercourse may be primarily an act of
domination and submission, or of exploitation, or of conquest, or a more-or-less desperate search for acceptance and affirmation. At times these less desirable qualities are overt. At other times there is a pretence of love and caring although the reality is less attractive and perhaps contains no personal quality at all. The partner may be desired not as this unique individual but as fulfilling a function that might as easily be served by many others. Nevertheless, there are several aspects of sexual intercourse that give it a special ability to embody love, tenderness and caring. It can constitute the gift of pleasure and a common experience of intense pleasure. It can embody preoccupation with and longing for another. It can be a self-revealing presence to each other. It can break down barriers between partners and be a way in which physical intimacy is also personal intimacy. It can make partners so aware of the other as subjects that the two experience themselves as in some sense constituting one whole; the partner is experienced as affirming the self and complementing an otherwise incomplete self. Involved in this relationship, and making it especially apt as an embodiment of love, is an aesthetic appreciation - a perception of beauty. One element is simply that the same form that makes the body beautiful also makes it sexually attractive. It goes beyond this, however, to a perception of the beauty of personal traits existing in physical form, traits such as kindness, grace or playfulness. Sexual intercourse can be the gift of self to another, and embody in a particular way a belonging to the other. This notion of belonging merits consideration. On the one hand, if belonging in sexual intercourse is interpreted as involving ownership and is separated from mutual respect, it becomes destructive.
Yet a strong sense of self-giving and a
corresponding sense of belonging apparently are natural aspects of sex, and this should make one cautious about concluding that jealousy has no proper role in it.
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