ABSTRACT
A reward of maturity is the opportunity to reach for, and arrive at, our highest sexual possibilities. This is the most intense mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual level to which we can aspire sexually with a partner. Although it may not be built into our reproductive code to take sex to the most intensely erotic level possible, the potential is there just the same. Individual limits to reaching our most intense sexuality depends on a number of competencies: the ability to maintain friendship with your life-partner; the skills to mend relationship problems as they occur; the ability to recognize, deal with, and accept what cannot be resolved; the maturity to calm yourself and tolerate your partner’s anxieties; the integrity to resist pressure to conform with what does not fit you, yet move mentally and emotionally toward your partner instead of distancing; observe contradiction and conflict with good will; and remain independent in a committed lifelong relationship. Reaching for sexual depth requires us to acknowledge ourselves and our partners as whole and growing, not as defectives needing to change.
