Haven for the Human Amoeba

HI folx..! I have been publicly posting a message to various listmasters, and finally someone directed me to this club and gave me a cool website (<a href=http://djay.web.wesleyan.edu/Theory/asexuality.htm target=new>http://djay.web.wesleyan.edu/Theory/asexuality.htm</a>).

I am not completely convinced this is where I belong, in that I'm concerned that other asexuals do not have the emotional/passionate experience that I unfortunately tend to have in dating, but maybe there are all kinds!

I will post it here.

Dear Listmaster:

I am hoping you can help me in my search.

I don't think that this particular group is right for me, but maybe you can steer me in the right direction.

I am a 30 year old single female practising psychiatrist; I describe myself as "hetero-emotional" (a word I have coined for myself) but a-sexual. No history of sexual abuse, no history of imposed religion or morals, never spontaneously have had a sex-related fantasy: not about men, women, anyone or anything, without it having been a therapist-assigned 'task'. For me, fantasy has always reached its euphoric end-point with kissing. In my early 20's I had even 'experimented' with physical intimacy, in the context of two separate loving relationships, the only result being confusion at why people find this so 'pleasurable'.

I would not mind my 'indifference' to sexuality if it were not for my desire for emotional intimacy. In recent years I have received professional opinions that maybe I actually do not have libidinal desires, but just the desires for emotional intimacy. This of course leaves me to search for men, or anyone, with the same trait, which I have been doing since I was 16. I figure that the only way to find others like me is to talk about this aspect of me and to reach out, like I'm doing now.

This is just one stop in my search on the internet for forums, BBS's, or whatever, for hetero, homo, or bi-emotional people, since 1992 when was on usenet thru UNIX.

I appreciate your time and help in this matter!

Samantha

I just finished the article and believe the males and females can be friends. Just friends, nothing more. My best friend is a bisexual guy. He is facinating to talk to about life and sexuality and society and things like this. This friendship works so well because we are not going through the dances of love and sex, just life. This is a great article, thank you for posting it.

Well, I've done some thinking on relations and asexuals.

I don't understand why asexuals haven't looked out for each other till now. I see a lot of reasons why it would be good for asexuals to have a kind of community like homo's - lesbians do.

I agree that friendship can be very close and give the warmth and caring people need. But I also see that my opinion on this is in evolution. As long as most of my friends were unmarried, single, without children, ..., in other words, relatively "available", friendship worked out fine. But most non-asexuals settle down, and then? As an asexual, I don't feel like settling down like some of my friends. But some of these friends become less "available". I wonder whether it's true that friendship will continue to be enough. I find it important to have also some friends who do not have a lover, who do not have kids, who have a bit a lifestyle like me. But I realise that, since they are sexual, they will find a lover ... and then again, the asexual stays behind.

I sometimes think about the (im)possibility to have a "primary relationship" with someone, which isn't grounded on romance, being in love or sex, but purely on friendship. Would that be possible? Is friendship a good ground and enough ground to build a "primary relationship" on? I do think that, if this is possible, then it must be with another asexual.

What do you think of this? Is such a relationship possible? And if not, how do you see yourselves in a world where everyone else tries to have an exclusive relationship? Do you see it possible to stay behind? And what in 10, 20, 30, 40, ... years?

Just a lot of questions.

I didn't want to reply to just one message at a time:

Search - First of all, WELCOME DR. SAMANTHA!! Yes, I believe that your search is over. Several of us here have expressed a desire to have "emotional intimacy" without the "physical intimacy". We've all arrived here for different reasons and we each have our own definitions for "asexuality", but we do have a common thread. I read all (609) messages that have been posted in this club and deduced that none of us want to have "sexual intercourse" (please see message #590). So basically, WELCOME!

Article - You're welcome, Csbealed! It was encouraging to me when I read it so I wanted to share it with the Club.

Relations - Bostongirl, you brought up a very interesting point. Right now, I'm almost 30 and most of my friends are married, getting married, or desperately searching and settling for ANYBODY! I'm somewhat of a loner/homebody anyway so I'm kind of used to being alone. It does make sense to befriend other asexuals who won't "go settling down" on us! :o) The problem is that we're so few and far away from each other. My way of enjoying my solitude is to read books about places I'll never visit, write stuff about stuff, go to movies alone, go to the roller rink alone, go to the park alone, etc. I enjoy these quiet times because I can get up and go when I'm ready. I don't have to wait for someone else. Then again...I'm a bit antisocial so alone does not equal lonely to me. I've noticed that some older people who are loners seem to be quite "set in their ways" and they are not inclined to reach out to a younger community of asexuals. (I don't think they see the point.) It seems to me (notice how I keep mentioning that these are MY opinions/viewpoints?) that most older asexuals say, "I'm happy being alone, now leave me alone! Figure out your own way of being alone!" I don't like this mindset. I'm all for building a public awareness of the fact that asexuals DO exist so that other asexuals can find us and know that they are not "the only one". We might even coax some of those leave-me-aloners out of their shells. I like to have hope. I hope that more people will admit to the fact that sex ain't all it's hyped up to be. I'm not talking about recruiting people who really want to have sex. I'm talking about the other asexuals who still don't know that it's OKAY to not like sex. Maybe 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now, we'll have more asexual friends with whom we can build "primary relationships". I like to have hope.

I like that term "primary relationship". I have always sought a primary relationship with little success because of my indifference to sex, however I totally believe it's possible with another asexual person, and I always have thought this way. I just did not think there were other asexuals until I found these resources on the internet.

I have a primary friendship with a woman now who is asexual for her own reasons (she is a transgendered male-to-female but has another year before her final surgery). I know that after her surgery she may look for a primary relationship with sexual intimacy, so I may, as you put it, end up "staying behind". I do notice that over the years I seem to have served as people's temporary primary friend/relationship when they were between sexual relationships. Not a way to live!

I think for me, "primary friendship" applies to someone I don't have romantic feelings about, but is my mutually primary friend, whereas "primary relationship" would be an asexual romantic relationship with a man I loved.

I know by experience that a primary platonic friendship is possible, and I have faith that a primary asexual romantic relationship can exist too.

On the subject of 'settling', I have been on my own in apartments for 13 years now (eek!) and lately have actually thought about buying a place. I would be lonely all alone in a house, so I have found a great solution for this - a cohousing community in Tucson (where I live) wherein all the neighbors are close friends and have community dinners nightly, etc. I am now (as of the past two years when I began my involvement in CoHo)able to realistically imagine myself in 10 years from now and be happy with it! ..and to add more, I have thought about adopting kids someday. I don't know if I really will, but the fact that it's an option is cool.

There's my 2 cents on the matter.

Samantha

Hey, thanks for the welcome note! It's funny because I feel like ET when he finally got in touch with 'home'! YOu know, reading your post, and postings from others in general, I have to say that I *envy* those who do not get lonely, or at least as lonely as I do. I think I was lucky, or strong, or something because I always opted to endure the depressed feelings of loneliness over doing something I didn't feel was "who I am" (i.e. sex) in order to keep a guy interested. Also, instead of feeling sorry for myself with this seemingly ill-fated dichotomy of emotional yearning combined with sexual indifference, I have instead used the emotional energy to seek out other asexuals, go into mental health for a career, and now to promote like you said PUBLIC AWARENESS of asexualism. I am sure that there are many asexuals out there whose loneliness causes them to sexually compromise themselves in relationships. I'd like to do a research study on that. Hmmm.....

Another interesting thing I just thought of: I have another very close female friend (apart from the one mentioned in my previous post) who is acutally a recovering sex addict, who has found peace for herself by abstaining from sexual relationships (kind of like a sober recovering alcoholic). Our common bond being chronic singleness has allowed us to channel our emotional energy into our friendship, as opposed to the world of dating. Cool, huh?!

Sorry if I seem to be talking on and on and on... It's just that I'm excited to find a group of people who can *relate* to me about sexuality, for the FIRST time in my life! *LOL*

There are so many posts for me to read and I want to comment on them but I have such a busy work schedule I am going to have to chip away at them slowly. I've been talking so much about my story, my experiences, my definitions,etc; and I look forward to being able to comment on everyone else's.

In the end I would say I don't like the term "primary relationship" all that much, just because I think that the less status is acrued to relationships the better, but it is definitely useful to discuss. That being said, I'm REALLY glad that this group is getting into a discussion about relationships, as this has been the chief asexuality-related thing on my mind for about the past year. (Sorry, crish, if some of the stuff on AVEN made you think that I was associating asexuality with a lack of interest in relationships. I'll have to rewrite it.) Despite my theoretical objections to them the notion of a "primary" relationship has always been extremely appealing to me. I've always been scared that there was some sort of a "cap" on how close I could be with people, because eventually my friends would date and be swept away in some sexual/emotional torrent. Even if we managed to remain friends while they dated the "primary" relationships they formed, where they wound up living/raising kids together, would be sexual ones. (Parenthood, and asexual parenthood specifically has also been on my mind a great deal recently, definitely a related topic, but one perhaps for another post.) The notion that I can only form "primary" relationships with asexual people is also scary, just because I've actually been in the same room as (maybe) 2, and given the current state of asexuality in the world I would be limiting myself to an extremely limited population. Which would mean that I would have to "date", I would have to form relationships with people simply because they were asexual and therefore potential primary partners, not because they were people that I knew I could get along with. This is not only counterintuitive to the way that I form relationships, but everything I know about relationship psychology tells me that those type of relationships are doomed to fail. Relationships that work are ones that form without expectations, where people get to know each other before deciding how the relationship will work. (I'm running out of space, continued in a later post...)

If asexual people can only form relationships with other asexual people then any two lucky enough to be in the same general area (given our current rarity) are going to feel tremendous pressure to nonsexually shack up or be lonely for life. While this can work it doesn't make for the most stable relationships, which is why, I guess, I still stress over relationships stuff a great deal. And it's also why I don't want to give up on the possibility of forming "primary relationships" with sexual people.

This may not be as impossible as it sounds. A book called "Boston Marraiges" which analyzes nonsexual relationships among lesbians talks about a few instances of relationships between what seem to be lesbians and asexual women. The relationships have some tension, true, but they appear to work, and it's possible that that tension simply results from a lack of understanding of asexuality. Think of marraiges where sex dies out, of lesbian bed death, sexuality has a habit of falling off as relationships become more stable, posing some interesting questions. How important is sex to a relationship because it's sex, and how important is sex as an expression of emotion, a mode of communication? (Shit, I'm all abstract again. Oh well.) Because emotion can, of course, be expressed other ways. If we as asexuals (which I think we have to anyway) can get people out of the mindset that sex is the end all and be all of emotional expression then how much would sex really be necessary? It seems that not everyone, but a signifigantly larger portion of the population could get by without it, if they were in a complete emotional relationship. That's all for now, I have to run.

-BRC

I hear you on the "why limit our pickin' pool" thing, but let me ask you this:

Let's say you develop an emotional closeness with a "sexual" person and the two of you decide to "shack up" later in life. Would it bother you if this person has sex with other sexual people while maintaining an emotionally close cohabitive relationship with you?

I'm not trying to "force" you to limit your "pickin' pool" (I like saying that...pickin' pool - LOL). It would be a great relief to think that such a feat is possible. Can one asexual person make a sexual person give up sex and be happy that way? If you say that it wouldn't bother you to live with the love of your life (or "primary" person) and come home to find that person moaning in your bedroom with someone else, then good for you. Just food for thought.

I said before that I like to have hope. I, personally, don't want to share my bedroom with anyone. I like having my space. I WOULD like to have a "primary" friend to hang out with (movies, dinner, bowling, skating, walks through the park, etc.), but I already know that these friendships often diminish when the other (sexual) person "finds someone". So I'm prepared to be alone most of the time. That's why I focus on my hobbies so much. The other option is to have one "primary" friend for X duration of my life, then (when that person "finds someone") I might develop another such realtionship and go through life with that pattern until I reach the age when my peers are no longer interested in sex. Who knows when that will be. Again, this is just food for thought. I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on this discussion. It's pretty interesting.

Heh.. hmm.. well, ...where to start.

:-}

In response,

My experience with dating has been *not* to limit myself to other asexuals because then I would have never dated at all. My two nicest relationships were with guys with whom I had been 'just friends' with no outcome expectations for years prior to the gradual evolution into romantic intimacy, however eventually they did feel an emptiness in the absence of sex (for them it would have been part of their whole expression of love for me), and becasue I cared about them I had to give them a choice, given who I am:

1. stay with me in the relationship,

2. stay with me, and get their sexual needs met

by someone else (something sexual only)

3. end the relationship with me

THe first guy chose option 2, and the second guy chose option 3.

The first guy was *not* insensitive; it was a very difficult choice for him to make and required much persuasion on my part. For awhile I thought this could work, and I was pretty happy about it, but it was too much of a challenge for his value system, so he, too, eventually ended up looking for another relationship.

Though I never did 'walk in' on him and some woman having sex (he avoided that possibility at all costs to save my feelings), I think I might have been amused (as it is pretty amusing when I see it in movies!).

Honestly though, I think that for me, knowing there is a community of sexually like-minded people to me just gives me more faith about the option for a working relationship in my distant future (without holding out till my peers are all needing Viagra!) Also, I would hope *not* to view every asexual guy I were to meet as a potential 'date', since I did not view all guys that way when I was still young and naive in assuming that *everyone* was asexual (up to about 20 years of age!)

samantha

...and on the subject of naivete, a funny story:

When I was in college with the first abovementioned boyfriend, I sometimes shared a bed with him (for me the ideal has always been sharing sleeping quarters in our pajamas, and curling up in bed with him as we fell asleep).... anyway, so my parents were always concerned about my asexuality and the limitations in relationship potential it has caused me, and one day I mentioned I was sleeping with him, and the parents practically dropped their forks with mouths agape... then it was that I learned that "sleeping with" means "having sex with" to everyone else in the world!

It was interesting to hear celebbrat's comment on the subject of sharing beds with, or not, in the context of a relationship. I wonder what thoughts others of us have had on that. Hm.

b4 I go, one last thought:

In recent years since my naivete has been replaced by awareness of the true 'sexuality' of most people, I have found myself dating much less than before.. .

What bothers me is *not* simply a biologically ticking worry about not finding a LTR (long-term relationship). No. What disturbs me is feeling like I have not had LTR as an *option* (becuase of the sexual nature of everyone, incompatible with Samanthian life)! I still may choose to be single, but having the option somehow makes me feel a sense of belonging to this species, which has been a more painful disconnect perception for me than the disconnect from the dating pool is.

SaMaNtHa

quick thought on BRC's part 2 post:

I do agree that if there was only me and one asexual guy on the planet and I just happened to know him, there would be that awkward 'pressure to hook up or else' but what I'm seeing here is the fact that a community of us exists out there! ...so that the 'pressure' can be significantly diluted! .. Also, the option of remaining single takes much of the pressure off too. I mean, I would choose singlehood any day over an asexual guy who was abusive, an addict, or a cat-hater even if he *were* the only guy on the planet who was sexually compatible with me!

samaNtha

Yes indeed, I have read the book "Boston marriages". I found that the book was not so optimistic. Most relationships had trouble by the fact that one of the partners "didn't consider it worth to continue the relationship because there was no sex anyway". A lot of people had difficulties to define their relationship, because a lot of times "people consider themselves in a relationship when they have sex with their partner". If they don't, it's often called "just a good friend, but nothing more (!?)". There was also a lot of stress because of this "not being able to define the relationship". The sexual one mostly left for another relationship where there was sex.

Personally, I find it terribly difficult to form a romantically asexual relationship, because I've never met (besides on the internet) any other asexual. So, when I start more intimate talkings with someone else, after a while, it always seems that sex is so important to the other. I know that I can't give that, so the relationship doesn't become romantically. When I really like someone, I even fear that the other one will "fall in love" which I really don't like (I don't like being presured to act against myself; and I feel very lonely when I realise that I again seem to be the only asexual on the world). To be able to become romantically, it seems to be necessary to know that the other will not want sex from me ...

Which limits the possibilities to find a partner ... I'm lucky I'm good at being alone!

"Primary relationship" is not my invention. I read it in the book "Boston Marriages".

But I liked it too... You finally have a way to describe the importance of a relationship, whithout having the definition problem (is it a "relationship" if you don't have sex ... in another mail, I mentioned that a lot of people call the interaction with someone else a "relationship" if they have sex).

I sent this to djay at AVEN (=BRC on this list?)

but I thought y'all might be interested:

In reading lots of what little asexualism literature there is out there, I have noticed that for asexuals, as for sexual people, romantic drive seems to be implied as a subset of sex drive. Maybe a revision could be made on the triangle diagram so it's more like a square:

Hetero- Bi-(or neither) Homo-

| sexual only spectrum --->

| (the one-night standers probably here)

|

|

|

|sexual plus romantic spectrum ---->

| (most people being in the hetero end of this one)

|

|

|asexual spectrum (where the intense romantic attraction varies

| from hetero to bi (or neither) to homo, most

asexuals may be in the middle)

The main idea being the separation of the concepts of romance drive from the sex drive.!! It seems as if there is a link in most everyone's brains, sexual *or* asexual, that directly connects sex drive to romance drive, whereas that link apparently does not exist in me.

It's funny how many times I must have confused and frustrated young men in my early 20's when I satisfactorily and happily stopped, with the proverbial cigarette in hand, after the kiss (before I stopped the dating thing in realization of their frustrations)! !

My theory is that my hetero-romantic drive is just a primordial hetersexual drive that somehow got stunted in the embryonic development of my brain, never forming the sexual component of it, and/or the link betwixt the two.

the top line of that spectrum I just posted is supposed to have space between the words 'hetero', 'bi/a', and 'homo'. I'm sure you figured that out but just in case.. :-)

samantha

Funny- because I now do not date because I now need to trust/know that they will not expect sex, however in my younger days I dated like anyone else, and whenever they started talking about sex I was in denial that they really wanted it!!

Just like they were always in denial that I really did not want it!

So, it took me many trials and (painful) errors for the reality to finally sink in! :-)

Hi everybody...I've been reading the fascinating posts here and just had to join. I guess I'm not a true asexual because I wasn't born one, but I have become more asexual with age, and have been celibate for several years. I have no desire to have sex any more.

Someone asked, Is it a relationship if there's no sex, or is it just friendship? I believe (and I'm speaking from my own experience) that there is a kind of relationship without sex that goes way beyond friendship--a real love tie.

I believe that real love has nothing to do with sex. Sometimes it seems to accompany it, but in my own experience, sex confused and destroyed my relationships rather than enhancing them.

The posts about finding another asexual were interesting. I can see that it would be very hard, if not impossible, for an asexual to have a real love relationship with someone sexual. I am at a point in my life where I have no desire to get involved with a straight man because I know that it will lead to sex, which I don't want. And, happily, I don't have to deal with any of that tiresome business, because the man I love and who loves me is gay, and is, like me, sick and tired of sex. We have a long-distance relationship, and since I'm a happy loner, this works fine for me. I have never been happier or felt more loved by anyone. I guess it seems weird, but what isn't nowadays? I never thought I'd find myself in such a relationship, but here I am. So, I would say, you just never know how your need for a sexless love relationship might be fulfilled....you might be surprised!

X.

Xzprtlq,

I am a new member here also. I am a guy.

<Hi everybody...I've been reading the fascinating posts here and just had to join. I guess I'm not a true asexual because I wasn't born one, but I have become more asexual with age, and have been celibate for several years. I have no desire to have sex any more.>

I agree that the posts have been fascinating. I also have evolved into an asexual as well---depending on how a person defines it of course!!! If one defines asexual as "not-intercourse oriented", I have always been there. I remember when I first heard about the sex act---and how appalling it seemed. I have never been big on the idea...not ever.

Yet, I have always had erotic feelings. As a result, I have sought and dreamed about alternatives since being a teenager. For many, many years, I sought women into the bdsm scene. It was my hope/impression/desire/expectation that a dominant woman would never permit a submissive lover to genitally penetrate her. I did manage to meet a few dominant women who felt that getting laid was anathema to the power exchange in a dominant/submissive relationship. But such women seemed to be surprisingly few. It seems that there are many more men who feel that way than women. Tip: Any asexual woman who would like to explore the power relationship scene can find lots of men who would be content with a relationship without intercourse.

As years have rolled on (I am 51) the appeal of the bdsm scene has waned. Perhaps a direct function of waning testosterone? For many years my "orientation" was "heterosexual submissive male." I think that the submissive component was directly connected to my romantic needs. Expressing my love by adoration, worship and submission to the needs and desires of a woman was very, very romantically appealing to me. I am still attracted by the dominatrix role, but my submissive feelings ain't what they used to be. I don't want to experience the kisses of a leather whip anymore. Getting older I guess. :)

<Someone asked, Is it a relationship if there's no sex, or is it just friendship? I believe (and I'm speaking from my own experience) that there is a kind of relationship without sex that goes way beyond friendship--a real love tie.

I believe that real love has nothing to do with sex. Sometimes it seems to accompany it, but in my own experience, sex confused and destroyed my relationships rather than enhancing them.

In the above quote, substituting the word "intercourse" for "sex" I have to tell you that I have been (in as many words) saying the same thing for years. You are absolutely right on the money from my own experience and perspective.

<I have no desire to get involved with a straight man because I know that it will lead to sex, which I don't want. And, happily, I don't have to deal with any of that tiresome business, because the man I love and who loves me is gay, and is, like me, sick and tired of sex.>

I am bisexual. I wonder that being bi, instead of "straight" doesn't also correlate with the desire to not have intercourse. I might add (for what it is worth), intercourse with guys has never appealed to me either.

I have often wondered why a relationship between me and a gay woman might work. I am sure I could love a gay woman. But why would a gay woman want a relationship with a man? Why would a gay man want a relationship with a woman?

jay

<<What disturbs me is feeling like I have not had LTR as an *option*...the option somehow makes me feel a sense of belonging to this species, which has been a more painful disconnect perception for me than the disconnect from the dating pool is.>>

Yes, I think many of us here feel the same way. Eliminating oneself from the dating pool creates an almost palpable detachment from the rest of the world.

As celibbrat said: "The other option is to have one "primary" friend for X

duration of my life, then (when that person "finds someone") I might

develop another such realtionship and go through life with that pattern

until I reach the age when my peers are no longer interested in sex. "

Your "primary friend" is what I've talked about in other posts, except I was calling it an "asexual partner". They only last as long as it takes this friend/partner to get a date, and these people come along so rarely. So far, this is what I've been doing. Perhaps I'm showing a bit of my cynical side, but I really don't think that it will change. You'd think that my pickin' pool would be huge since I'm always on the lookout, but I guess I'm picky. Or perhaps eccentric. When I'm 60, I'll probably only be able to befriend widows until they remarry.

A woman I know is a widow, and she spends most of her time alone because all of her friends are coupled. Women can get possessive, and they don't want the widow around their husbands. Now, this woman isn't exactly asexual, but she's not out to get anyone's husband. She's 67 and I doubt she plans to marry again. Welp, I've gotta run.

Ta ta,

drk

Jay asked, "Why would a gay man want a relationship with a woman?"

Why not? Gay men and women have a lot in common, seems to me. But beyond that, my conviction is that gender isn't really divided into little compartments like gay, straight, bi, tran, etc. Rather it is a continuum and there are no two living beings who are exactly the same gender. Therefore, anyone can love anyone. And the real love comes when we stop identifying ourselves sexually and start seeing more of our real individuality.

X.

Wow!! So much to respod to. I think I'll start with a question that was asked to me directly a while ago...

Would I mind if a sexual person who I was in a "primary" relationship with had sex?

Depending on why they did it I might, but generally I wouldn't. I don't mind that much when my close friends now have sex, I wouldn't mind at all if there weren't the implicit threat that they might be emotionally swept away from me. Though I imagine that if I was in the sort of LTR (go technical relationship theory!! Fucking sexuals and their "you can't describe love with math" BS) the other person wouldn't really find a need to have sex with people. It would probably be infinitely cleaner and easier for them to just masterbate. And I think that it would work fine. Here's why:

I'd say that close to 10% of sex and sexuality is actually about sex. From the flirting to the emotional trauma to the act itself I would say that it's an amalgamation of expectations and emotional expression and play and insecurities and physical contact and power and so on. I believe that it's possible to, in effect, take the sex out of sex. If you can achieve all of that stuff nonsexually then your need for sex is greatly diminished. The only problem is that because sexual relationships are so emphasized in our culture sexual people are trained to feel incomplete without it (anyone here know any femenist/queer theory? There's a reason for this sort of training..) and so the notion of a nonsexual "primary" relationship seems drastically inadequet. Even if they wind up in one that satisfies all of the above catagories they will still feel that there is something big missing, not because there really is but because that's what they've been taught to believe.

So here's the thing. We challenge the notion that sex is vitally important by our very existance. The reason that "primary" relationships between sexual and nonsexual people have not worked in the past is because asexuality has not been well understood, so the fear that "something is missing" has been allowed to grow. It still sucks that they have to give up sex itself, but what LTR doesn't require people to give something up?

I met this guy once, a complete jackass. The first day I met him, he started talking about his wife who had vaginismus or some other physical problem that prevented her from having sex. She gave him permission to get sex from other people, which he did in spades. I was horribly offended at the very thought of this (though mostly because he was telling me this after I'd known him 10 minutes or something).

All he could talk about was sex, so it made me wonder what his wife saw in him at all. I was stuck with this guy for about 12 hours, and he never stopped talking about sex even once. Obviously, it was very important to him since he wasn't getting any from his wife. If it was so important, though, why were they were married? I agree with you, BRC, that all relationships require the people involved to give something up. Sometimes it bothers me when my friends have sex, but usually it doesn't. It bothered me when I found out that my ex-best friend was having sex (esp. when I found out that she had sex with the jackass guy I just mentioned)- she and I bonded somewhat over the fact that neither of us dated. For some reason, it really bothers me when straight men I befriend (however briefly) have girlfriends, and it often bothers me when my straight female friends have boyfriends. It doesn't bother me at all if a gay male friend has a boyfriend. For whatever reason, I don't see gay men as a threat. In some ways I think it's a form of heterophobia - I sort of assume that straight men will ditch me as soon as they find someone to have sex with. There have been men (and one woman) who have turned my best female friends into something ugly and horrible.

I think it only works if both people give something up, too often it seems that one person does all the giving, and the other the taking.

I also have this problem with friends when they line up girl/boyfriends. I have a close male friend who calls me a lot and we go out together, but the minute he lines up a girlfriend, he dumps me and I never hear a word from him until he gets fed up with the girlfriend. To me this is one of the many problems with sex--and I'm not talking just about intercourse here. The whole mating routine seems to detract from our specialness as human beings--the things that distinguish us from animals. The sex ritual causes us to act in ways that we would not normally act, and, IMHO, causes a large percentage of the misery on the face of the earth.