Sexual lifestyles?

[Monolith]

Maybe for some of the flock!

A more appropriate word would be 'community'.

[Lulletje Rozewater]

A more appropriate word would be 'community'.

Or the Dutch style L.A.T.

[Svarog]

But, it's just sex? I am not being all that serious about it.

[Piparskeggr]

If I may?

One could suppose that I am a serial monogamist; having had one heterosexual pairing at a time.

However, I was a virgin (as was my [now] wife) until we bonded during college.

I had a few girlfriends before Anita, but she is the only person with whom I have ever been physically intimate.

When a nicely put together woman of my acquaintance" put the moves on me," awhile ago, I demurred.

My rejoinder is (then and always) that while I love all women, I am in love with, and make love to, only one.

The example I have from my family is that one finds a "soul-mate," and that is the ONE to whom you bond - to the exclusion of any other.

I think it works, and I do not believe I have lost anything thereby...

[The Khagan]

Monogamy works for some people, and for some others it doesn't. Simple as that.

Of course, there are gray areas in between and such, as is with all things usually.

Monogamy? Eh, I value the ideal of monogamy, but it's hard to not be so embittered and cynical about actually finding someone I could actually see myself with forever. I tire easily, when things get too predictable, I get wary. And vice versa on the girls end. I'm sure there were a few that tired of me easily

Not to mention my ridiculously high standards for em. Not superficially, that is, I'm really stringent and picky about personality, intellect, moral ground etc etc. At 19 it's pretty hard to find what you want, or for that matter KNOW what you want in the first place. But, it seems that the confusion continues from what I hear.

Who knows, we'll see. This ripe old age of 19 isn't exactly what one would call a wise age in this matter. For now, I'm happy with fooling around with a couple girls here and there. But, I fall very well short of a libertine or of even borderline promiscuity.

[Loki]

There are lots of special people around who would make ideal partners as a monogamous couple. Actually meeting that special person is not so easy ... but one has a lifetime to find him/her.

Has anyone mentioned love in this thread yet? I believe in love. I believe if you truly love someone you would not want to be with anyone else ...

[Murphy]

Yeah, I guess I could be considered a heretic in that aspect.

Yes. You're just lucky you're not an ethnically Jewish, former Muslim who recently converted to Catholicism living in Madrid, because you would be so fucked otherwise .

Do note that I'm not talking about promiscuity here, but about long lasting relationships that eventually lead to marriage.

It doesn't matter. Sex outside of marriage is a mortal sin. Whether it's with one person or one thousand.

[Piparskeggr]

-snip-
Has anyone mentioned love in this thread yet? I believe in love. I believe if you truly love someone you would not want to be with anyone else ...

I'll bite. but there isn't a short answer

I first saw Anita just after lunch on 29 August 1977. We were both students at the military college in Vermont, USA.

I was a junior, the regimental medical sergeant...part of the cadet corps. Anita was a freshman, also in the corps.

It was the first day of "Rook Week," where the freshmen would receive the basics of military training to start them off before the rest of the student body arrived for classes.

As med sgt, I ran sick call at the infirmary, but was not to be directly involved with the freshmen or their training; wasn't even supposed to talk to them outside of official duties until they completed training, sometime in November.

My clerk and I were watching the "Rooks" march single file up the hill from the dining hall to their barracks area. The training cadre lining the path, yelling (of course) [it's really funny, then and now, to hear a 5' 2" sophomore corporal call a 6' freshman "Young Man!"], pulling rooks out of line and quizzing them on cadet lore, correcting uniform infractions and the like...typical break 'em down and build 'em up military training.

Well, John and I were scoping out the new female cadets, typical 20 year old comments flying between us on their obvious physical charms, or lack thereof.

Then Anita comes marching up the hill, expression like she had just bit the finger off some cadet corporal or sergeant and was waiting for someone else to pull her out of line so she could spit it in his (or her) face.

I turned to John, speechless for a moment..."John, that's the one I'm going to marry," as my finger followed her path.

She came to sick call for the first time later in the week and we struck up an acquaintance. She dated a couple of other guys before me, but I was willing to accept that, as she was happy. I offered friendship, which was accepted.

Finally, she said yes to me, oh, what a life changing moment. I still feel a tightness in my chest when I relive the memory.

Love, that's IS the key for me. I was smitten for Anita and continue to be.

I don't step outside the boundary of our relationship because I've never loved anyone like I do her.

The only times in my life I've ever been truly frightened are when I thought her life might be in danger (several cancer scares and one really bad infection from an abscessed ovarian cyst), not even the time when I was being shot at.

I can imagine life without her, but not willingly, and it has always been her choice. I love her enough to let her go, if that is what it would take to make her happy.

Luckily, I've been doing a good job of being what she needs since 2 February 1978. Our friends were surprised that we had not married during the summer before returning for the next school year.

[Lutiferre]

(I quote Loki's post, but this post is directed just as much to others, including the above poster)

I believe if you truly love someone you would not want to be with anyone else ...

Though why does love have to have "truth value"? To judge peoples loves as false love, true love, etc. Isn't love just a passion, and like all passions, can be betrayed by some other passion if it has sufficient strength? Nothing has infinite strength, and so can always be surpassed eventually by something external to it. The same is true with love - any love which is human, and not static.

Making love and sex exclusively bound together or even "ideally identical" in the first place seems a narrowing-down both of love and sexuality; and perhaps a confusion between them, no doubt made easier by the intensity of sexual experiences but still not justified by it; because there can be a love relationship which co-exists without sexual exclusivity.

And "love's" perpetuation or exclusivity may also not come out of the strength or "truth" of the love, but from the weakness and cowardice of the individual, which leads him to seek the security and (potentially) despicable comfort of "one safe relationship" to cling onto.

I know there are people who love each other, but do not live in a strict, or even at all monogamous relationship together.

Perhaps translating "love" into an exclusive, constant and maybe even permanent relationship, is a misunderstanding. A misunderstanding of love as a passion; turning a passion into some destiny and substantiality which it never was supposed to hold in the first place.

Whereas other factors and passions, like power and indeed possession itself, seem more capable of and appropriate as a sentiment with which to take another person into possession, because that is also what monogamous love does. Or at least tries to, even though monogamous "love" might hide the underlying power exchange involved behind the romantic veil of warm feelings. A veil which, if taken too seriously, might lead to unrealistic expections which then break the relatonship - as often happens, considering modern divorce rates and serial monogamy tendencies.

[anonymaus]

Though why does love have to have "truth value"?

Not to give your verbosity short shrift, but: love is our emotional reaction to the values and virtue we perceive in our self and in others. Sex can be an inimitable way of sharing the mutually incommunicable things two (or more--I suppose) people feel for each other, but it isn't restricted to that by any means.