I once confided in a male friend how a certain lady abandoned me in the lurch after spending the weekend with me. My friend asked, "Did you make any sexual advance towards her?" I said no, but I was romantic. He laughed and went into an unsolicited lecture:
"So you are still like this! Sex brings about a bond. She would not have turned cold towards you if you had warmly engaged her in a sexual union. If you had seen her nakedness and explored everything, she would have nothing to hide from you. That girl left you because you are not man enough!"
Many guys are sitting on this table, but unfortunately, it is a three-legged table. I was embarrassed in that statement, "You are not man enough!" Many guys have done weird things just to prove that their "man enough" resides inbetween the legs. My friend's assertion might seem logical, but let us approach it from different perspectives. If the bond is just in the physical act of the genital meetings, how intimate are commercial sex workers with their patronizers? How intimate are victims of rape and the rapists? How intimate are couple who would have sex on same bed and face different sides to sleep and wake up the next day with grudging greetings? What could be an attracting factor in sex could also be a repelling factor, when other factors aren't in place. A girl can hate you as soon as you have had sex with her, just as a girl could also be more committed to you after sex. The bond is not absolutely in the sex, but in the surrounding factors.
Let me explain further. In the context of true love defined towards lifetime commitment, there is passion, intimacy and commitment. These three components fundamentally give significance to love. In commitment, there is the expectation that the love will be perpetual. Intimacy is closeness deeper than in casual friendship. Then in passion, there is infatuation and this is where sex may come in, not as the nucleus of the relationship, but a necessary ingredient when those other components of love are made manifest. I do not want to say that it is only within the context of marriage that sex can bring about bonding because I do not have the facts, but I am certain that in marriage most often, there is a constant interplay among these components alongside the grace of divine seal and the experience of Consummation.
Having sex with a lady or a guy principally because you want to get closer to the person and you don't want the person to leave you is simply an abortion of the ultimate purpose. The sex might be the ground for an unpredictable hatred and a mysterious repulsion!
I would later discover that my girl left me because she had felt a deep sense of true love from me and that I was gradually luring her into a commitment which she didn't like for two reasons: she didn't want to marry a healthcare worker even though she wanted to be a nurse too and secondly, she didn't want to marry a guy who is fair in complexion.
My guy didn't believe this when I told him why the lady withdrew from me in a timid manner, but we learnt:
Sex is directly proportional to intimacy so long as other components of love remain constant!