SEX AND HEALTH: GOOD OR BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH?
There is some hard evidence that sex promotes health but it has to be admitted that some people seem to manage perfectly well and live healthy and happy lives without it. Possibly they find satisfaction in displacing, or sublimating as it is called, their sexual energies into other activities. Others are unable to do this and become miserable without a regular sex life.
Most definitions of good health include a reference to the need for a loving relationship and sexual expression. A good image of oneself as being sexually desirable and a confidence in the ability to function efficiently with the opposite sex is an important component of the morale of most people.
Another way of looking at the matter is to realise that depression and severe illness diminish sex drive and excessive anxiety reduces its value.
Sex, of course, can also be associated with ill health through guilt, STDs, ‘complications of pregnancy and childbirth, and so on. It can do harm through disturbed individuals committing sex-related crimes such as rape, child molestation, jealous assaults, or sex-murder. This sort of trouble arising from sex has helped to give sex a bad reputation in our culture.
To be more positive and to give us all something to aim for, it is not possible to do better than to look at the World Health Organisation’s observations on sexual health. They say it has three elements: a capacity to enjoy and control sexual and reproductive behaviour in accordance with a social and personal ethic; freedom from fear, shame, guilt, fake beliefs and other psychological factors inhibiting sexual response and impairing sexual relationships; and freedom from organic disorders, diseases and deficiencies that interfere with sexual and reproductive functioning. They conclude that the purpose of sexual health care has to do with the enhancement of life and personal relationships – not merely with counselling and the treatment of infertility and STDs.
The WHO have also pointed to the contradiction between having to plan contraception rationally and the desire to experience sexuality spontaneously. How right they are!
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