Sublimate your Sex Drive, Don't Suffocate It
One of the few times Freud agreed with his Victorian culture was when he taught the usefulness of sublimating the sex drive before marriage. The word sublimate comes from the exact root word sublime. It means lifting something over the threshold to get out and be free. The urge to be creative in love (eros to the Greeks) can be set loose on a much larger and broader scale if not confined to sex.
In chemistry, sublimation means evaporating a solid or liquid to release it from its impurities, allowing it to settle back into a newly purified and actual state. A beautiful picture of how sexual urges are temporarily channeled into other outlets until they express in a purer and less diluted "sublime" form within a substantial marriage covenant.
Even in the physical dimension, sexual energy is released by various forms of exercise, including working, jogging, sports, and body-building. (Remember, Satan has a membership at the fitness center, too, to infect you with the lust of the eyes!) You can channel Sexual energy away from achieving orgasm by pursuing loving, creative, productive, humanitarian, religious, self‑improving, intimate, exciting, and affirming outlets. Use your imagination!
Just as a beam of light revealed by a prism to contain many different colors, the sex drive is a complex impulse, and the urge for intercourse is only part of it. Most sexual energy derives from satisfying other needs that hitchhike on the sexual desire — our needs to release tension, to feel more attractive, to express love, to feel self‑esteem, to get a spiritual high, to feel powerful and free, to get energized and excited, to feel close and intimate, to share affection, to feel younger, to be charmed, to make someone else happy, and to shut out the world for a while, to name a few. If we find other ways to take care of these needs, the bark and bite of the sex drive will start wagging its tail like a little puppy. Compare The sex drive to a dog that needs fencing for protection but must also be tamed, fed, loved, and trained to prevent biting its master.
A simple way to remember some of these ideas are: Imagine yourself caught in a "love cage," and you want out. There is the trap door of sexual fantasy and behavior which takes you down into further craving and dependency. But there are six escape hatches in the ceiling of this trap. They can take you up and out into freedom, which remembers by the phrase "Love CAGES." Each door opens to set free a higher drive that has been caged up and needs an outlet. You do best in each situation to take the ways that offer the most fulfilling and immediate enjoyment:
Love — show you care for your beloved in ways that meet some of the needs mentioned in the fourth paragraph above. If you are still tempted, you can turn from your lover entirely and express by yourself or with other people those exact needs, summarized and remembered this way:
C — Creativity — express yourself in music, dance, art, writing, etc.
A — Affection—with family, friends, hugs, sweet nothings, and "I-love-you's."
G — Giving — do something nice for others to give them joy.
E — Energize through Exercise — competitive play can help here too.
S — Spirituality — go into nature for a relaxing escape, or practice your religious faith.
Just as the brain is "higher" than the genitals, as human endeavors are higher than animal instinct, as a higher calling from God inspires people on earth, and as activities that affect many people over a long time require one to rise above the here and now to understand, so loving and creative urges can be lifted up and out of their sexual boundaries to find a much higher and broader expression.
