How Many Ways Are There of Making Sex Unfriendly?

The most popular and least obvious way
is through marraige and parenthood
-there the enmity between sex and friendship hides
in plain sight, through people making property
of each other. This has gone on since the earliest
of times. If the thirst for sex wins then the marraige
dies from within. But if the friendship wins the sex
declines, or slopes off to find mutuality elsewhere.

There is masturbation, with its elements of covert
self love and fantasy, both of which have a limited virtue,
within consent. Masturbation often involves pornography,
where after the image is created the active investment
is totally one-sided, and one handed, too. No brain required.
From experience I found such commitment is exhausting.

Next there is prostitution, sex exchanged for money-
something I have never experienced, where the contract
lasts the length of the act and whoever comes out of it
best is conditional on who has the most of themselves
to disown afterwards. But with the best of it the pretence
at the time is almost magic and nearly a temporary consubstantiation
in a very different kind of church. From ancient of times
onwards many a war has been accompanied
by banks of prostitutes within the base camp.
Where there were no women to serve and wait
behind the front line, there is always rape of the enemy's women
as revenge.This is war brought home from the front
that leaves marks on all sides that last forever.

Perhaps we have to be worn weary by war
to call a halt on our divisions, and instead combine
in the lighter more consensual side of sensuality-a cuddle.