Free Sexuality and Partnership
Free sexuality is part of a free life where we openly express and follow our sexual wishes without lies, deceit or humiliation. Partnership doesn’t contradict, but complements sexual freedom. In a community of trust with strong ethical foundations, our deep longing for intimacy and partnership becomes compatible with the natural desire for free sexuality.
“Truth in love is the basis for every lasting love relationship.”
SABINE LICHTENFELS
Concept
“Free sexuality” for us means liberating our sexual desires and longings in love, so they can flow as naturally and freely as water does in nature. As we create Water Retention Landscapes to allow for healthy water cycles, we create safe containers within the community to truthfully express our desires in line with our ethical guidelines. “Free sexuality” is a sexual culture based on truth, solidarity and mutual perception, free of fear, lying and deceit. It isn’t a choice of lifestyle that determines whether we live monogamously, polyamorously or in celibacy, but an ethical principle. As long as we live in hypocrisy and deceit in our sexuality, latent mistrust and anger threatens the unity of our communities. Sexuality is “free” whenever we follow our truth. By truth, we don’t refer to any external behavioral or moral rules, but rather a state of authenticity and open communication, about which Wilhelm Reich said, “Truth is full, immediate contact between the Living that perceives and Life that is perceived.”
Partnership isn’t excluded in practicing free sexuality, quite the opposite. Lasting partnerships, based on mutual support and solidarity, are sustainable when we’re no longer forced to conceal who we’re attracted to and can acknowledge each other’s sexual nature. Many couples declare eternal faithfulness because of the high voltage of sexual energy they initially experience with each other. In reality though, a lasting partnership can’t be based on sexuality alone and so can’t be protected through sexual exclusivity either. Lasting partnership arises when people share a common path and task in life, when they’ve “seen” each other and are determined to support one another unconditionally.
Partnership is a great gift but it isn’t a prerequisite for living a happy and fulfilled life, as our dominant culture and the likes of Hollywood suggest. In a culture of free sexuality, there isn’t just one ideal image of love, there are many possibilities of fulfillment. We mustn’t repeat stereotypes, but recognize our true longing and follow it.
Truthfully expressing our sexual desire allows us to find freedom and mutual responsibility, and most importantly, trust. The container for free sexuality develops organically from an intact community life. Free sexuality is an offer and must never be imposed on anyone. It emerges on its own if we’re courageous enough to allow it.
Insight
- Social and ethical guidelines established within a community of trust are essential so that free sexuality can fulfill its healing role. The basis of free sexuality is trust.
- Truth opens up a gate in the human being’s system when we no longer need to keep our sexual wishes secret from each other – truth in sexuality, truth in love, truth in partnership, truth instead of secrets, lies and bad conscience. Truth gives Eros wings.
- Our fear of being separated from our partner if they have a new encounter is only apparent if we make them choose one over the other, related to our collective trauma from years of the drama of separation. To solve the conflict, we need to create a social order where we can overcome the fear of loss.
- Sexuality flows freely when we realize we’re allowed. We’re liberated when we can follow our deepest longings, breaking out of societal taboos and judgments. A community of trust is necessary for this.
- Free sexuality isn’t promiscuity or pornography – such ideas usually come from the imaginations of people that don’t have the possibility to fulfill their sexual wishes with dignity and solidarity. The misuse perpetrated through rape, pornography and indiscriminate sexuality is the shadow of a society that doesn’t allow people to express their sexual energies openly.
- Jealousy doesn’t belong to love. There is unfortunately no pill for jealousy, but the more trust grows among the people, the less space there is for separation anxiety and jealousy. This is a basic experience in a functioning community.