L O V E

What is the origin of love? The Greek philosopher Plato answers this question in his Symposium. Plato has Aristophanes tell the following tale: In the beginning , there were three sexes: man, woman, and an androgynous man/woman. Each of the sex was round, like a sphere, with a face and two arms and legs on either side. They would walk forward or backward, or tumble and roll on the ground. these three played and frolicked in the fields. But then they foolishly challenged the power of Zeus.For that, he punished them by splitting them in half so there were two of each. He also separated them so that they could never find their other half. What had been the double man( now two men), said Aristophanes, is the origin of gay male relationship; what had been the double woman( now two women) is the origin of lesbian relationships; what had been the man/woman, now split into a man and a woman, is the origin of heterosexual relationship. Plato said this of the man: "They who are a section of male who follow the male, and while they are young, being slice of the original man, they hang about men and embrace them, and they are themselves the best of boys and youth, because they have the mostly manly nature,"

Aristophanes described the suffering of the three sexes after they each split into two and separated. They felt as if their souls had been torn apart. Consequently, each spent all of its time searching for its other half, hoping to reunite. Each of the male halves was looking for his soul mate, and until he found it, he spent his days in sadness. Aristophanes said, "the Pursuit of the other half of one's self is called love".

From the book of "The Joy Of Gay Sex" by
Dr. Charles Silverstein and Felice Picano