“Francine has announced that she doesn’t want any more visits to her apartment - the neighbours are talking about the men who come and go. She would be very happy to meet me in a hotel… [but] this is unaffordable, so the news appears to put an end to my sexual life.1”
Logan Mountstuart has kept a personal journal throughout his lifetime and notes in passing the conclusion of his sexual activity. It’s been a constant theme in his writing but now as an old man he resigns himself that it, along with his life, is all but over. And that’s partly the point of the novel.
I recently read William Boyd’s book Any Human Heart (quoted above) and couldn’t help notice the central role that sex played in the central character’s life - that it presumably plays in so many of our lives. He was happy only when his sex life was regular and varied and thus Boyd depicts middle class liberal life, in the 20th Century free from the restraints of religion and many of its historic social taboos.
And yet, like so many of the other characters in the book, the last few years of Logan Mountstuart’s life are lonely ones. He dies alone and is only discovered by a kindly neighbour sometime later:
“LMS was eighty-five years old when he died. He was discovered towards the end of the day when Jean-Robert, realising that something was amis discovered LMS dead, face down on the grass beside a corner of the barn where there was a large clump of thistles. He noticed that LMS’s cat was not far away, curled up on a stone, watching everything intently.”
It’s a sad ending and yet it’s also one that reads much like a commentary depicting the impact of the sexual revolution. In our stories and by our cultural rulings we’re raised to believe that satisfying and honouring our libido’s needs (not wants - needs) is central to our happiness and central to our identity. This may be fine except that, it’s not true.
In a study undertaken by Carnegie University in the US, psychologists tested whether increased sexual frequency showed any improvement on levels of personal happiness. They recruited two groups of couples, tested their happiness levels and then commissioned half of the couples to carry on as they had been and the other half to double the amount of sexual intercourse they were having. Following the study they reported that there is ‘no causal relationship running from sexual frequency to happiness2.’
More sex, doesn’t lead to greater happiness.
Here we come upon a truth that all of us instinctively know to be true, but few of our social institutions are prepared to encourage. Our wants, whether hormonal our instinctual, make for terrible leaders in life. They may be effective deputies, but put them in charge of many of our decisions and we’ll end up squandering rather than fulfilling life’s opportunity.
The historian Carl Truman, writes about the failure of the sexual revolution:
“we have yet to see the full effect of the free-floating sexual life of no commitments on that other current health problem: loneliness. I’d wager it will intensify, not mitigate, the problem of late-life isolation and despair.3”
Free-floating, atomistic ‘no strings’ sex, that treats coitus as yet more recreational activity among many available to us, leads (inevitably) to seclusion and isolation. Like a pinball bouncing off the bumpers, while life’s good and we’re kept busy bouncing from partner to partner we appear successful (just look at that high score!), but eventually gravity wins, every time. You see, our biology must be subject to something else - it cannot be trusted to drive wherever it wants to. Whether you call it meaning, or purpose or simply talk about your ‘values’ they must be given license to determine how we steer and suppress our instincts and appetites.
Psychiatrist Jon Bowlby demonstrated using baby chimpanzees that there is a deeper need in the world that craves, not the satiation of our appetites, but our concern for connection. Given a choice between bare metal feeding tubes, that dispensed milk, and a cushion-soft one that was dry (and so didn’t dispense any milk), the chimps would often prefer the one that more accurately imitated the softness of its mother. Intimacy and affection matters more than nutrition, it’s a more basic need.
Consider also, alongside this, what biologists refer to as the strange case of ‘human monogamy’4. Human beings are the only primates, it seems, in which monogamy is not only normal but also produces many benefits, ranging from improved social stability and increased levels of individual happiness.5
It seems that whilst my genes are purely selfish, wanting sex in order to secure my organism's future, my soul wants love. Subjugating my hormones reaction to, say, the image of a woman’s body, to my deeper soul level need for love leads to more lasting happiness. And herein lies the solution to Logan Mountstuart’s ennui. Maturity involves making peace and enjoying a healthy partnership between our body and our soul. The goal isn’t to become more ‘spiritual’ (to prefer the needs of the spirit above the needs of the needs of the body say) but to become more human. Maturity doesn’t mean denying your appetites, instead it means enlisting them in a cause greater than they could attain by themselves.
For a while now we’ve been convinced that examining material reality and increasing our knowledge about the physical world will lead to personal fulfilment. We've believed that by examining what is we can accurately pass edcist about what ought to be as well. In our crusade to free the animal from social control we’ve torn down fences erected by our unscientific ancestors and have acted as though we know better than they. But maybe they (our unscientific elders), for all their lack of scientific knowledge, possessed more wisdom than we do.
If listening to the libido leads to loneliness, celebrating the equality of our body/soul unity led us to create covenants and communities which ultimately enabled deeper, and longer lasting connection.
- Any Human Heart, William Boyd
- https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/docs/loewenstein/IncreasedSexualFrequency.pdf
- https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/02/stds-in-the-usa
- Testosterone, Carole Hooven
- Ibid.