November 6, 2019:
Codependent pattern with Romantic core. Sex as merger, dissolution of ego, two become one. With a Victorian gloss: sex as non-recreational: not trivial, more than pure fun and pleasure. Perhaps that's a Catholic gloss.
Where the origin is obvious. Loneliness with a distant mother who failed to involve herself, or chose not to. Where her inwardness grew into her child's lifelong trigger.