Close relationships, particularly sexual ones, are forbidden by the Party because they create divided loyalties. In the Party's world, the citizen must have absolute and undivided faith and trust in Big Brother and the Party alone. As O'Brien explains to Winston (Part III, ch. 3),
We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends .... Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother.
With all competing loyalties abolished, the citizen will be able to become exactly what the Party wishes him to be at any moment.
Forbidding sexual relationships and any real intimacy also has the effect of frustrating Party members due to the blocking of a natural drive, and building up a store of violent emotion that can be directed by the Party into other channels. As Julia's intuition tells her, "sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and hero-worship" (Part II, ch. 3) Thus, sexual intimacy is seen by the Party as robbing it of energy that it should by rights be able to utilize, a type of political rebellion.
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