If you do it right, breathing is sex. The air penetrates you, you envelop it, and then release. Feeling deep connection to nature is sex. Art is sex.
Sex isn’t restricted to physical intimacy and we shut down so much possibility (and create codependency) when we limit it to that.
Intimacy, friendship, relationships with others act as mirrors and models. You may feel an amazing connection with someone and think they’re the source of the magic, when really they’re helping you practice accessing that feeling yourself. Helping create a set-point for what that feels like.
The spiritual practice is to break codependency in all its forms—with friends, lovers, substances, media, you name it—and to remember that you’re not separate.
This might feel too abstract to be practical when you’re acutely feeling horny & lonely, but it is a practice that gets better with time. Focusing on lack puts the blinders on to the possibilities. (Also, much of the time when you think you’re horny, you’re actually lonely, otherwise masturbation would take care of it.)
Breathe deep and remember your place in the vast web of life. Feel in your heart the thread that connects us all. Breathe in and receive the love around you, breathe it out and pay it forward.
I’m not saying you should live like a monk, either—but when you remember and practice this principle, your relationships stop reflecting the feeling that you’re separate, and they start reflecting your wholeness instead.
Side note: What I’m essentially talking about is fucking the universe. There’s definitely a gendered difference here. Last year I asked this question in a course I was in, if there’s such a thing as pussy wisdom, is there such a thing as dick wisdom? The answer seems obvious to me now, that of course there is, but because of millennia of patriarchy and the particular way that made masculinity = disassociation, dick wisdom gets hella distorted.
So for various reasons “fucking the universe” seems to be easier for femmes, so just a heads up if you’re masc there will probably be more of a learning curve. I think the “no fap” movement touches on this a bit from the masc side. (Would be open to hearing different perspectives on this too!)