Something Other Than Sexual Pleasure By Dr. Mustafa Mahmoud

Love is a rare and magical hue of union...

What cheap sexual books tell us, that love is merely two people successfully reaching the peak of sexual gratification, is incorrect. Sexual gratification can be achieved in the easiest ways, without love, without thought, and without much effort. Sometimes, it happens by chance, in fleeting relationships that leave no trace in the mind or the imagination. It can even happen in the presence of hatred.

At best, such gratification leads to a state of lethargy, mental numbness, and sluggishness.

This type of satisfaction can be provided by any woman, one as much as another. It doesn't require a specific woman, because it's a silent connection in the dark, often driven by physical heat and the slickness of bodies, more than love ever could.

When a man desires this gratification, he typically longs for the act itself, not for a particular woman. He seeks the circumstances that allow it to happen: privacy, intoxication if he's an addict, alcohol if he's a drunkard, or food if he's a glutton. After that, any woman with the necessary physical traits will suffice, as long as he's in the right state of fitness.

The less intelligent or aware the two people are, the longer the pleasure tends to last. The more a man can forget that there’s a woman sharing his bed, the better he performs. There's no rush, no tension, and not even a sense of feeling.

Is this love?

Absolutely not.

Despite everything said about sex and its importance in modern psychological theories, and despite everything Freud and others say, there's no doubt that love is something distinct from sex.

I don't say this because I'm romantic. I say it because I'm scientific and take a scientific view of humanity. I see that humans are incredibly complex beings who cannot be reduced to just bodies, physical functions, guts, and instincts.

Anyone who views humans in such a limited way is not truly scientific. In fact, they kill the essence of humanity with this perspective, reducing it to a mere carcass, a lifeless body, and thus, cannot reach an honest judgment.

Love is driven by intelligence, refined sensitivity, burning passion, transparent insight, pure nature, and a glowing soul. Its pleasures cannot be fulfilled in an environment of drugs, stupidity, and mental dullness.

Love is not kindled by heat or sparked by the slickness of sweat. No woman can replace another in love, because love is not about the connection between masculinity and femininity, but between a specific man and a specific woman.

Love cannot be fully satisfied because it is not a plan or a trap leading to a fleeting physical encounter. Instead, it's an ongoing transcendence of reality and its limitations, a search for a deep connection and unity in essence—an impossible union. The two will inevitably remain two, never becoming one. This is why love is destined to be filled with longing, yearning, burning desire, and hunger without satisfaction.

Sexual satisfaction does not ignite love because love is the giver that grants the pleasure of sex. Love makes this pleasure simple, achievable with the touch of two hands or the meeting of two gazes, while sex, on its own, remains an empty pleasure incapable of producing love.

True love cannot be extinguished by deprivation, nor killed by separation. No attempt to escape it will succeed, because the other person remains ever-present in the heart.

Did I not say it’s a strange hue of union? Like the elements in nature combine to form compounds that cannot be separated back into their components without fire or electricity.

Like sugar dissolves in water and cannot be separated without heat and evaporation. Even the crystals that remain still contain water inside, like "rock candy."

Sometimes, the union is as deep and strong as the components of an atom. When enough force is applied to break them apart, it results in an explosion—just like an atomic bomb.

Likewise, love is such a deeply rooted union that separating it results in a series of painful explosions that may last until death. It may even result in a complete transformation of personality, just as radium, after releasing radiation, turns into lead.

What kind of union is this?

It is certainly not a union of the body, nor a mutual attraction of two souls, nor the compatibility of two temperaments, nor the understanding of two minds, nor the discovery of a dream knight, nor the natural harmony between two natures.

Love may encompass all of this, but it also contains something more—something more essential.

It holds a unity deeper than all these clear, understandable unions—a fundamental unity, like destiny, necessity, and fate, that binds two people beyond all limits of the possible and the real, despite the barriers of time and space.

It’s a unity that cannot be undone by separation or severed by estrangement. It often feels like an ancient historical unity, as if each soul has its own ancient history before it was born. Both feel that they've known each other for a long time, that they are not strangers.

Each one recognizes the other as if they are recognizing an old, intimate person.

It is a mysterious unity for which science has yet to find a name.

And there is no harm in borrowing the old term, "spiritual unity"—a term just as mysterious. But what can we do? We have no other word than "spirit" to describe what we feel and do not understand within ourselves.

Even if materialistic thinkers do not acknowledge this word, it does not solve their dilemma. We will still ask them to name what we feel but do not know inside us, and there will always be something beyond our sensory perceptions, something real, not imaginary, that requires explanation.

This is why, at the end of all thought, love, like art, religion, and freedom, stands at the doors of metaphysics. These are all different manifestations of what lies beyond our sensory perceptions.

And we are not talking about the love of street corners, bars, or late-night parties. Nor are we talking about teenage love or love at the end of a cabaret show. We're not talking about the love of "bold eyes" or Casanova. Some of these types of love are illnesses, some are curiosity, some are vanity, and some are fleeting sexual desires.

But the love we speak of is the rare kind that grows in few relationships, lives on, defies forgetfulness, and bestows nobility and grandeur on its characters. This love becomes stories told with respect and emotion.

This type of love is as rare in our time as water-rich cactus in barren deserts. But it exists, nonetheless, and thank God for that.

I remember reading a funny story in Austria where a young man stuck his head between the bars of a garden fence to kiss his lover. When he finished the kiss, he tried to pull his head out, but he couldn't. The rescue police had to be called.

In the love stories of this atomic age, a young man often sticks his head into the cage of love but always finds a way to pull it out whenever he wishes, without the need for police assistance. He may even stick his head in and out several times in different cages.

But in the love we’re talking about, where love is destiny, necessity, and fate, the lover cannot pull his head out of the cage of love unless he cuts it off.

In conclusion, we ask: Is there anyone who truly wants to love?

From the book On Love and Life

By Dr. Mustafa Mahmoud