These games differ from the usual games that lovers play in that they are designed to be therapeutic. The usual games that lovers play are compulsive. They are enactments of rituals that bring about a temporary gratification, but not the deeper joy of mature, tender merger with another being. Promiscuous individuals will have multiple lovers and sometimes daily sexual experiences—but their sexuality will have a numb, addictive quality to it, with weak or nonexistent orgasms, and it will never quite satisfy. Sadomasochistic people will repeat the same perverse rituals of domination and degradation again and again, deriving “highs” from it but never really achieving the liberation they seek. Narcissistic people will not be able to come out of themselves enough to really be with another person, so their sexuality will be a repeating pattern of sexual exploitation. Fetishists will act out rituals in which sexual energy is displaced onto an object (such as a shoe or a glove) or a part of a woman’s anatomy (the forearms or breasts or feet), and the act will become alienated and devoid of its primary meaning.
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