Well, I guess that's very true - you pretty just need someone else who is seeking to fulfill that physical or physiological urge/desire; opposed to finding that special someone whom you would have certain feelings for and having these feelings reciprocated, it would be easier to just fulfill that urge. After all, you can pay someone to have sex with you, (or it might even be free if both parties are consensual), but you certainly cannot pay someone to love you. Though of course technically one can argue that money can buy anything, including love, but I'll choose to believe that true love cannot be bought. You might be able to buy a person's company, buy a person's attention and display of affection, buy a person's time of entertaining you and chatting with you on the phone, but that doesn't mean that you would have bought the person's very heart. It goes beyond the superficial.

That said, love and sex need not be two mutually exclusive concepts. Yes, you can give sex to someone without loving the person (think red-light-districts), and you can give love without giving sex (think pre-marriage relationships). Yet, more often than not, with love comes sex. And somehow I could never fully explain that notion, especially when there are those rarer cases of 'with sex comes love'. At least, not until another of my friend introduced me to another concept which effectively threw in another variable into the whole love-sex equation - intimacy.

With that, things start to make more sense. Why do couples make out when they are not planning to have kids? Well, physical pleasure aside, there's always that larger and more intense feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. That knowledge that the two individuals are engaged in an act so private and intimate that it's exclusive. It's a sensation so intangible that we can only label it as intimacy. That sense of closeness, familiarity, warmth and belonging. It's the time when you show your vulnerability to the other party, and such sheer exposure is reciprocated.

And so, now I start to see the triangular relationship of love-sex-intimacy. It's not that I have always seen things as clear-cut either love or sex, it's just that now I can pin it down to this particular word.

Indeed, intimacy is THE essential in any relationship. Love is what keeps it going, but it's generally under-rated and understated. You don't go around telling your friends that you love them, but you act it out. Of course, not by kissing them every other day, but by showing that sense of closeness, that sort of intimacy that exists between you two. Be it a simple hug, or a touch on the face, or simply anything at all to display that human touch to an otherwise very intangible thing called relationship. It may also be a simple appreciative gesture like a word of thanks, a phrase of compliment, or a sentence of elaborate praise that is so over-the-tops it hints more of sarcasm - it's something which tells the person that he is appreciated, loved, recognised and not taken for granted.

And yes, we all thrive on those simple gestures which shout love, affection and appreciation. Sometimes because that's the evidence of the other party's love for you, something that affirms the reciprocation of whatever you are giving the person.