Man to Man

On the whole, he hated sex, it was such a limitation. It was sex that
turned a man into a broken half of a couple, the woman into the other
broken half. And he wanted to be single in himself, the woman single in
herself. He wanted sex to revert to the level of the other appetites,
to be regarded as a functional process, not as a fulfilment. He
believed in sex marriage. But beyond this, he wanted a further
conjunction, where man had being and woman had being, two pure beings,
each constituting the freedom of the other, balancing each other like
two poles of one force, like two angels, or two demons.

He wanted so much to be free, not under the compulsion of any need for
unification, or tortured by unsatisfied desire. Desire and aspiration
should find their object without all this torture, as now, in a world
of plenty of water, simple thirst is inconsiderable, satisfied almost
unconsciously. And he wanted to be with Ursula as free as with himself,
single and clear and cool, yet balanced, polarised with her. The
merging, the clutching, the mingling of love was become madly abhorrent
to him.

But it seemed to him, woman was always so horrible and clutching, she
had such a lust for possession, a greed of self-importance in love. She
wanted to have, to own, to control, to be dominant. Everything must be
referred back to her, to Woman, the Great Mother of everything, out of
whom proceeded everything and to whom everything must finally be
rendered up.