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The paper starts from a discussion of the psychoanalytic idea of infantile sexuality, seen from the perspective of attachment theory (AT). AT sees human sexuality and security-seeking as separate behavioural systems. However, there is a pleasurable aspect to the infant's relationship to the secure base, which the author characterizes as ‘hedonic intersubjectivity’. He critiques traditional psychoanalysis for its failure to demarcate clearly between problematic and non-problematic sexuality, and suggests that securely attached couples elicit one another's ‘erotic imaginations’ in ways that cement their relationship. He shows that different attachment styles may pattern sexuality in different ways. For ambivalent individuals, sex can be a hook to establish attachment; avoidant people may have difficulty in either bringing emotions into play in sex, or keeping violence at bay. In mild cases of disorganized attachment sex may be used as a way of activating dissociated feelings, often via the other's sexuality. In severe borderline states, with disorganized attachment, sexual pleasure is almost always compromised, and degradation and exploitation provide the means of supplying a degree of security. The paper ends by contrasting psychoanalytic and attachment readings of a poem about conjugal sexuality.