Sexual connection

The short definition inherits its content from the entry on connection, which is what makes it precise rather than thin. A connection is a balanced interaction, and an anima conduit constructed with balanced interactions, so a sexual connection is a sexual interaction that settles rather than leaving one party owing the other. That is the exosocial power of sex operating, creating strong euphoric and empathic bonds and eventually a shared animus. The term exists in order to be distinguished from the other two, since sexualized sublation is interactions of humiliation or sublation promoted as sex to disguise their nature, and sexualized violence is violent interactions promoted as sex for the same reason. Marsh's claim is that these are fundamentally different interactions that happen to share an appearance, and that identifying which is occurring matters more than anything else about the act. Balance is the test rather than consent, which is a narrower criterion and a different one, since an interaction can be agreed to and still run one way. The framework's account of what a shared animus involves is worth holding alongside this, since a particularly bonded pair holds a single pooled animus, and infidelity is embezzlement from that pool. So a sexual connection in this sense is not merely a good experience but the construction of something jointly held, which is why its damage registers as depletion rather than as disappointment.

Contemporary sexual ethics is built largely on consent, with affirmative consent standards now widespread in law and education, and the critical literature asks whether consent is sufficient where power is unequal. Attachment research studies bonding, and sex therapy distinguishes connected from disconnected sexual experience in language close to Marsh's. Her framework does not reject consent but treats it as insufficient, since her test asks what the interaction did rather than whether it was agreed to, and the two can come apart in both directions.