Love is deeply bound up with our humanity. It is also available in various shapes and sizes. There is the sustained, erotic and sexualized love that we can have for a partner; the transitory romantic love that idealizes its object; the love that is part of friendship; the parental and filial love that may exist between mother or father and child; the love of a sister or brother; love of the family dog; love of neighbours, of mankind, of the planet, of all living things and so on. Some of these loves have their own specialized terminology of philia, agape, eros and caritas, a terminology that has been passed on to us from antiquity.

Of these different kinds of love, it is love of the sustained, erotic and sexualized sort that will be my primary focus, the love that we may have for a particular individual with whom we want to share our life and our bed. At the best of times, this love can be a source of pleasure, joy and a lightness of spirit. When it fails, ends or is unrequited it can be a source of deep unhappiness. Often it brings a mixture of pleasure, longing and loss into our lives and those who have experienced it will readily understand what I mean by saying that it can involve the whole of our being. I shall refer to it as “sexualized intimate love” and occasionally, for simplicity, as “sexualized love”.