But does that happen?
Right from the moment of birth, society labels you as either male and female. And of course, it expects you to start behaving accordingly. Society simply does not allow boys to express their feminine side, or girls to express their masculine side.
This is such a damaging thing! Right from a very young age, one half of our being is repressed!
Till the age of seven, till social conditioning has taken deep root inside, the child is not conscious of being male or female. That's why a very young child has a sense of completeness. He is centered, he is secure. By around seven, the child comes under society's control. He begins to repress that part of himself which is not approved by society. We don't realize it, but this time is traumatic for the child! He suddenly feels uprooted, cut off from one half of his being.
So he begins, unconsciously, the search for the lost half, the suppressed half. He starts looking to the outside world for a substitute for his own lost half. The male child starts searching for a female presence, and the female child for a male presence.
This is where sex starts. This is the root cause of sex. In the period from 7 to 14 years, the child's closest caregivers are the parents. From them, the child collects images about how the ideal woman (or ideal man) should be. The suppressed half of his own personality is replaced with his mother's image.
Did you understand this concept clearly?
That's why every boy's first heroine is his mother, and every girl's first hero is her father. This is the unwritten law! This deep-rooted search is what lies behind the so-called Oedipus and Ophelia complexes of Freudian psychology. If a child has the physical nearness of the parents at this stage, he will grow into a confident, secure, complete individual. This is especially noticeable in the behaviour of children from broken homes, where the child has been deprived of the mother's or father's presence due to death or divorce. A majority of these children carry a sense of incompleteness well into their adulthood.
Because the imprint of the parents is the first, and the deepest. Even long after you are an adult, no matter how many differences you have with your mother or father, you can never remove their imprint from your being!
At fourteen, the child attains physical maturity. Naturally, social laws don't allow them to have the same intimacy as earlier with the parent of the opposite sex. So the child is removed from the mother or father. Again, he or she is uprooted!
At 14, the search begins again.
I think these days the age is coming down? Due to the influence of media! These days children are exposed to TV and internet from a very young age, that's why they grow up faster. That's not a healthy sign.
Anyway, at about 14 years, the search begins in the outside world. The child now begins to collect images from outsiders and media. The media is perfectly aware of this. That's why you'll see that all advertisements, especially those aimed at teenagers, always has sexual undertones – an attractive woman or man will be modeling the product – even if the product has nothing to do with them. Almost all motorbike ads show women – and how many women ride motorbikes?! Whatever the product, you'll find a smiling woman recommending it. And when you go to the market, you promptly pick up that product – forgetting that the woman doesn't come with it! This is the media's way of cashing in on your suppressed desires.
The more society tries to suppress your needs, the more they grow. Because society aims at suppressing the symptoms without getting down to the root cause. Just like a tree grows and flourishes when you just chop the branches and leave the root as it is!
During these years we collect ideas from movies, TV, etc. and build up an image of the perfect woman or man. From each person we collect the best nose, the best eyes, the best personality, and create our own 'ideal person'.
This stage lasts around 7 years, till the person is 20 or 21. By then the identification with media wears off – but the ideas are already deep-rooted in our minds. Then a fresh search begins – to find that perfect person in our real life. This is where expectations start.
For the next 7 years, this search continues. Person after person we try out, and get disappointed.
A few intelligent people figure out after a while that dreams cannot become reality. That's why they are called dreams! But most of the people still keep searching.