Conference quark::human_relations-v1

        <<< QUARK::DISK$QUARK2:[NOTES$LIBRARY]HUMAN_RELATIONS.NOTE;1 >>>
                         -< Humanity - what a concept >-
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Note 187.6         Breaking up is harder for men than women...            6 of 7
REGENT::KIMBROUGH "This is being hostessed"          11 lines  19-JAN-1987 10:57
                           -< state it upfront.... >-
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If you are going to not be faithful to a spouse or steady than I think
that should ne something agreed upon from day 1.  

"Honey I love you and would like us to be together but I want you to
know I am going to stray from time to time, can you live with that?"

Then there is a choise from the start... one can ask themselves if they
can agree to such an arrangement and be happy with it...  it is in the 
case of "I love you and will always be true" and then that vow is broken
that only heart ache and disater will follow..

    Dear -Eagle_
    
    Any relationship worth a damn is based on trust. 
    
    If the partners have an agreement that they won't be 100% faithful, 
    then there is no breaking of this trust if, in fact, one or both of 
    them has an affair with somebody else. 
              
    However, if they both agree that they will be faithful to each other,
    and one of them does have a go around with somebody else, that trust
    is broken. The other partner may or may not want to forgive, but
    the first partner has shattered that trust.
    
    Personally, I don't see how you can have a viable relationship when
    there is no trust. (I also don't see how you can have a relationship
    and agree to be unfaithful - but some people think I'm sort of
    peculiar, anyway.)
    
    -bs

    
    What I think you are looking for is a room-mate that you are good
    friends with, and you can have sex with yet that is it.
    That would quite a nice arrangement, and many of us would probably
    agree, however,  its probably not for everyone.  
    
    Cheating is doing it behind someone's back, knowing you cant tell
    them because it would hurt them,  if you could tell them and they
    wouldn't be bothered by it, then it wouldn't be cheating. 
    
    You also see to be saying that women are overly possessive, and
    men wouldn't be bothered if their girlfriends cheated on them.
    I dont agree with this, men are as possessive as women, however,
    I do feel they are more apt to cheat then women are.  But this is
    just my opinion.
    
    Paul
    

    Why?
    
    Well, any sociobiologist would say "It's in the genes."
    
    Anthropomorphizing frantically what can be done with more rigor:
    
    1.	Your genes want more copies of themselves.

    2.	They thus want you to have lots of children who survive
    	to have children of their own, etc.
    
    3.	This can be achieved by having lots of children and not
    	investing much effort in each child, or few children
    	and lots of parental investment ("oyster" vs. "elephant"
    	strategies).
    
    4.	Given the facts of human reproduction, women are stuck
    	with the "elephant" strategy.  Men can use the "oyster"
    	strategy--if they can persuade thousands of woman to go
    	along--or the "elephant" strategy, or a strategy inbetween.
    
    5.	Genes in a woman can get more surviving offspring if
    	they can make her act in such a way as to keep another
    	person around to help support the child.
    
    6.  Genes in a man can win by staying around a woman only if the
    	child which is eventually produced is his.  Otherwise
    	the man has used the "elephant" strategy to the benefit
    	of someone else's genes.
    
    Result?
    
    1.	Men and women want faithful mates.
    
    2.	But men are tempted to stray more strongly and more often
    	than women are.
    
    3.	And men are much more irritated by thier mate's straying
    	than women are by mens' (after all, a one-time fling
    	can mean she's pregnant with another man's child, but
    	if an unfaithful man has a fling but comes back and
    	supports the child, that's ok by the woman's genes).
    
    4.	All of this is genetically programed--while the
    	environment can alter it, it's in the hardware and
    	is hard to change.
    
    I think this is elegant and persuasive--but it may not be the
    whole story....
    
    				-John Bishop
    
    
    

        This discussion appears to me to be a muddle of a couple
        of issues. On the one hand we're talking about why do men
        and women act differently regarding monogamy and promiscuity,
        and on the other hand there's a lot of talk about divorce
        and the like.
        
        On the topic of fidelity and trust in marriage, which is really
        a digression, I have this to say (and you just may have heard me
        say it before): If you don't intend to live the rest of your
        lives by the literal meaning of your wedding vows, then DON'T
        MAKE THEM. Marriage, as they say, is a serious and venerable
        estate and should not be entered into lightly. It needs to be
        built on trust, love, and commitment. If all you want is good,
        frequent sex--don't get married. Today you should be able to
        find a like-minded individual to share a portion of your life
        with.
        
        Now that I'm over that digression, I will admit that it has been
        my experience in romantic relationships outside of marriage that
        girls (back when I was last dating it was not only more
        acceptable to call them girls, but they actually were girls, I
        was just a kid then, too) were a little weird about fidelity.
        
        When I was in high school, I had a whole string of girlfriends
        all to the same slightly odd pattern. I would be going out with
        one girl and then meet another. I would strike up a romantic
        relationship with the new girl, not feeling very monogamous.
        Being basically honest, I wouldn't hide my relationship with the
        first girl. The first girl, wanting a monogamous relationship
        would split up with me. Sometime later, I would get involved
        with a third girl, and the second would leave me because she
        wanted a monogamous relationship. But when we got involved she
        knew about the first girl! She knew I wasn't looking for an
        exclusive relationship or SHE would have been excluded. Why
        should she expect me to act differently with her? Great mystery
        of my young life. It repeated over and over.
        
        I think that there is a tendency in girls and women to be more
        monogamous than boys and men. It may be based on the teachings
        of our society or upon the genetic results of different breeding
        strategies being successful in propagating the genes of males
        and females, as alleged by some. Whatever the cause, I think
        it is a real phenomenon. It is, I suspect, why men and women
        have different difficulties with marriage and different roles
        in ending it.
        
        If there is such a tendency for men to be a bit more promiscuous
        and women a bit more monogamous (and remember we're talking
        tendencies) then the men are more at home in the premarital
        romantic world, and would have a harder time adapting to the
        requirements of a monogamous marriage. To be perfectly candid, I
        know it took me a while to realize that I really don't WANT to
        get involved sexually with women other than my wife. I was so
        used to being involved with multiple girls that I actually
        didn't notice that my wife was all the woman I needed or wanted. 
        
        Given this, the statistics Andy Leslie quoted about more women
        initiating divorce and the like is no real surprise. On the
        average, assuming there is such a tendency, men are faced with
        the problems of adjusting their behavior to the new state of
        marriage, of ceasing to act as if they were still dating and the
        women have the problem of men who are catting around on them.
        The one problem is much more likely to lead one to decide
        to end the marriage than the other.
        
        It often seems that just as men have a hard time not treating
        marriage as just another romance, girls have a hard time not
        treating teenage romance as if it were a marriage. On the whole,
        and again this is a trend not a dichotomy, girls and single women
        seem to expect romantic relationships to be more exclusive than
        boys and single men. 
        
        I understand first hand the hard transition from young romance
        through courting to marriage, but I don't have a good feeling
        for this other difficulty. Could any of the female members (or
        anyone who tended to be very exclusive when dating) enlighten
        us? Do you know what makes us different from each other? 
        
        JimB.

Elegant as all the (socio)biological theories are, I have a
feeling there's more nurture than nature in this one.  The
fact is that our culture makes such a big deal about sexual
behavior of any kind that folks tend to be very conflicted
and not very sensible about it.

Looking at ancient Irish (pre-Christian) society, there was
definitely a marriage-type relationship that men and women
entered into, but it had no concept of exclusive sexual
fidelity as part of it.  The rearing of children was also
radically different (possibly because of that preceding
fact) in that families exchanged children with allies,
friends or distant relatives and went through a complicated
"fostering" arrangement.  The biological motive was twisted
around the clannish or "superfamily" orientation of the
culture to produce a markedly different set of behaviors.

Our culture favors the "nuclear" family.  We also have an
inherent anti-sex bias that causes high levels of anixiety
about any sexual behaviors that fall outside of a well-defined
set.  Is the bias a reinforcing strategy for perpetuating the
isolated family units?  Or did it give rise to that form of
family organization in the first place?  Chicken or egg?

Infidelity seems usually to cause anxiety in the "faithless"
partner and anguish in the "faithful" one (no matter which
is the male and which the female, in my experience).  But on
a closer look, it's the attitude that both people were raised
with about sex and marriage that magnifies both the suffering
and the attendant dishonesty so extremely.

    Reply from a woman
    
    Re .0, Steve, there is nothing wrong with living with "a man who
    can't be true", unless that is what was expected of the relationship
    at the start.
    
    Most people go into marriage with the assumption that there will
    be some sort of exclusivity involved.  And it ain't fair for one
    partner to change the premise of the partnership without the other's
    consent.  That's all.
    
    I don't think at all that women are more "monogamous" than men,
    just that they have more to lose through promiscuity in our Western
    culture.
    
    G
        

    Reply from another woman...
    
    I was never monogamous and never professed to be!  I was a lot like
    Jim and had a string of guys and total freedom.  Any cutie coming my 
    way was fair game!  I did it deliberately because I always felt that 
    that's the way men wanted to be and I was curious to see how they
    would "ask" for my loyalty without offering theirs.  
    
    It caused lots of guys a lot of heartache because they simply expected
    I would be a "girlfriend" and that they would have the secret life
    and the upper hand.  One even came right out and told me that he
    and his crowd always believed that you just had to "get them into
    bed once and they were yours".  (Ha, ha!!)  Some tried to broach the 
    subject but all of them knew they couldn't ask for what they were un-
    willing to give and usually gave up after a few awkward words and
    inferences.  So I enjoyed my life with their reluctant blessings!
                    
    For the record, when in love I am fiercely loyal and completely
    monogamous simply because no one else is as good as my guy.  And
    the only time I ever found myself in love with a guy who cheated
    I got myself out of love the very same day!  There's a lot of
    power struggles in a relationship and I have NEVER and WILL never
    allow romantic notions to make me a victim of them.  In my 15 or
    so years of dating I have given my loyalty to very few and all but
    this one guy deserved it and treated it with respect.
    
    Sex is still taught as something women give and men get but no matter 
    WHAT crap-o-la they teach women, (and this applies to men and women
    alike), the greatest gift you can give is NOT your sacred, all-
    wonderful body.  Men, (and women), can get bodies anywhere and plenty 
    better than yours and mine.  Your greatest gift is your loyalty and 
    NEVER cheapen its value by giving it as the 'default'!
    

    Hi Steve!  That's probably the crux of the whole issue - being in
    love as opposed to being in a relationship.  I too have found many
    people who don't really know the difference.
    
    I've found that even men are easily monogamous but only WHEN IN
    LOVE.  So if a man is 'catting around', (as someone put it), he's
    not in love no matter WHAT he says.  I expect a few flames but nothing
    will ever change my mind.  The few who have convinced themselves
    that they can 'love' more than one person are not thinking of love
    but of sex, power and the avoidance of vulnerability that love demands.
    When in love, simply no other person measures up.
    
    Any woman who sighs that men cannot be faithful has never had one
    in love with her.  Men say they will KILL for their country.  Doesn't
    that prove that they have the power of conviction within them?

    'even men', ooooh.

    

    I thought I'd get called on that one.  It was meant as sarcasm because
    I believe that men are as monogamous as anyone needs to be.  This
    note, (and other readings, I'll admit), give me the feeling that
    lots of people think men have a harder time with monogamy than women
    and I think that's a load of bat guano!  I think women as a group
    tend to be over-eager for 'love' and consequently give their loyalty
    with precious little provocation, becoming voluntarily monogamous to 
    move things along and then get frustrated with men who won't do the
    same.  "Forsaking all others" is a mighty big step and there's no
    reason at all we can't have fulfilling, happy lives, AND SEX until
    love really does come along.

    re .15
    
    Bravo!  Men don't have a harder time with monogamy than women, because
    it ain't that easy for us women, either!  That's an assumption I
    find hard to accept (a real double standard that implies that sex
    does not have as strong an influence on men as on women).  
    
    This might be unsettling for some men who are assuming the women
    they are involved with will be faithful because women are "naturally"
    more monogamous than men, when the real reason is that they *choose*
    to be (which mean they can choose *not* to be!).
    
    Gloria

Well, freedom is all well and good, but I'd still like to believe that when I
get physical with a women, that love is involved...  In my experience, it's more
the case that love is involved, but, in my experience, it takes a lot more then
love for a successfull lifetime marriage.  For me, I love many people, but with
most of them, I know that things would not work out permenantly, so I do the
best that I can, getting to know them, learning from them, teaching them,
sharing with them, loving them...  Someday maybe I'll get lucky... 

Jim.

    >I'd still like to believe that when I get physical with a woman,
     love is involved.
    
    Who's saying you shouldn't believe that?  What concept are you arguing
    against?  Who's advocating you should sleep with people you don't
    love?  
    
    No, it certainly isn't just sex but from my experience if I had
    always waited for "love" before having sex I'd be a pretty celibate
    person!  Can anyone out there say they have honestly NEVER had sex
    with anyone with whom they weren't consciously in love?  And "wanting"
    to be in love with them doesn't count.
    
    Then you talk about a successful lifetime marriage.   We're only
    discussing monogamy and promiscuity not legality or lifetime
    commitment.  And I'm somewhat hesitant to accept that you "love"
    people with whom things would not work out permanently.  Keep in
    mind that in discussing monogamy vs promiscuity, only romantic love
    is implied.  If things would not work out permanently, my guess
    is you would like the opportunity to be in love with these people
    but it is not to be.  You say instead you settle for "getting to
    know them and learning from them" etc.  I think that comes WAY before 
    love is even considered!  I just don't see romantic love as something 
    that develops from afar.  Infatuation, fantasy and crushes do -
    absolutely.   But love?  No.
    
    I see a great new topic developing here - "What IS your definition
    of romantic love, anyway?"  If I don't start the topic in due time
    anyone else is welcome to!
    

    Romantic love is a Judeo-Christian myth spurred 
    on by people who know not what is good for them.
    
    

        I didn't mean to say that women *have* to be more monogomous
        than men because of genetic destiny or the like. In fact I agree
        with you that both men and women can choose to be either
        monogamous or not. I just observe that (aparently) more women
        choose to than men, for some reason. I explicitly said that I
        didn't know if it was a question of nature or nurture. 
        
        If more women freely choose to be monogamous then there must be
        a reason. They must value something more or want something more
        or fear something more or something. The question is what is
        that something? Sociobiologists and the like have their answer,
        but although it makes sense it isn't dreadfully compelling to
        me, which is why I asked for first hand reports of why women (or
        anyone) felt more motivated towards exclusivity early in
        relationships.
        
        JimB. 

re: .18

Any connection between "romantic love" and "lifelong commitment"
is in the eye of the beholder.  Most of what I've read on what
characterizes actual lifelong commitment-type relationships has
very little to do with romantic love -- in fact, the two may even
be in conflict.

re: .21

Only in the last 20 years or so have women even BEGUN to get
decent employment/pay opportunities as a rule.  Only in that timeframe
has the infamous "double standard" been called into question and
widely condemned.  Given that, is it any surprise that many of the
dichotomies of the "bad old days" still persist?  Let's see if there
is a difference in male and female preference for monogamous behaviors
when we're drawing our pensions, Jim.  I'll bet we'll both have
trouble reconciling reality with our memories/upbringing then!

    re .21
    
    "first hand reports of why women choose monogamy"
    
    Personally, my reason for choosing monogamy early in a relationship
    (where intimacy develops early) is that I don't feel I can reasonably
    enjoy more than one sexual relationship at a time, or devote my
    full attention to more than one at a time.
    
    My opinion has always been that the best sex is that in a relationship
    where the partners have a real committed interest in the other person's
    total pleasure and satisfaction -- in and out of bed.  Sex doesn't
    start in the bedroom -- Leo Buscaglia says it starts in the kitchen
    (or wherever else your mundane daily interactions take place). 
    I don't like giving less than my best in a sexual relationship,
    or getting half of someone else's attention.  
    
    Gloria
    

        I may have given a poor impression by my use of words and
        implicit references to earlier notes. I understand fairly fully
        the motivations to monogamy in marriage, in having sex, and in
        permanent relationships. In fact, I am a definite advocate of
        the position. The difference that I perceieved (and I'm willing
        to admit either that it isn't real or that it is a temporary
        cultural artifact), is that in dating girls and women seem more
        interested in exclusive relationships than men and boys. I
        probably shouldn't have spoken of that as "monogamy".
        
        As I said in my earlier message it was my impression that the
        male is much less exclusive when dating and that it can take
        him a longer time to adapt to the exclusivity of marriage, and
        that the female tends to treat dating relationships as if they
        were as exclusive as marriage. It was this apparent tendancy
        to get committed earlier that I was wondering about. 188.24
        touches on this but addresses the broader issue (including
        real monogamy) as well.
        
        JimB.

  From a historical perspective, women have preferred exclusivity in
  relationships in terms of both sex and intimacy more than men have.
  This is true even in homosexual and lesbian relationships.  The _trends_
  are that lesbians stay together longer than homosexuals, and they are
  more monogamous than homosexuals.
  
  Today there exists a variety of choices, traditional exclusivity and
  monogamy being among them.  (Isn't freedom hard?)  Today there also
  exists a distinction between intimacy and sex.  You can sex without
  intimacy, intimacy without sex, and, what most seem to want, intimacy
  _and_ sex.  Historically, men have made this distinction; women have
  not.  Women are becoming aware that they, too, can have sex simply for 
  the physical pleasure.
  
  Note that I do not advocate sex without an intimate relationship already
  in place and/or growing simultaneously with a sexual one.  I am merely
  pointing that such an option is available in today's society where it
  never was before.
  
  
  							Terza
  
  

    I think a few notes back that The Eagle did not get the whole gist
    of the idea that Gloria presented.  Good sex/love comprises a lot
    of activities.  It would be difficult for her or myself to communicate
    that well with more than one person.
    
    When I sit in a boring meeting I look around the room (I have my
    DECCIE interested in the meeting look on) and wonder how many others
    are planning on how they are going to make love to their SO that
    evening.  How could you plan if you didn't know who it was going
    to be?
    

    I don't have an SO but I have a mental image!!!!!!

    Despite all of the birth control methods available today - I think
    that the possibility of pregnancy is still a factor.  I know of
    one close friend who had an abortion which did not go well, and
    nearly ended all her chances to have normal childbirth later in
    life.  I also know of one occasion of a "pill baby" (yes, that 1%
    chance *does* happen) and two occasions of "were using something"
    pregancies.
    
    Given that quite a few of my closest friends still have some amount
    of basic moral values, the three pregnancies did not end in abortion.
    In all three cases they eventually led to marriage (two have been
    married for 8 and 9 years and each have three children now - the third 
    ended in divorce after two years).
    
    What I really do is my own business and no on else's, but I'm willing
    to share what I personally believe is right and wrong.  I don't
    believe in abortion for myself.  In that case, no matter what
    precautions I take, I will not make love with someone whom I wouldn't
    want to be the father of my child (not necessarily marry).  Also,
    given that 1% chance that I were to get pregnant, I'd sure as hell
    want to know *who* the father was.  Beyond that, if I got to the
    point that I no longer felt that I loved this man, or I loved him,
    but wasn't willing to raise his child, I'd end that part of the
    relationship.
    
    There are also a lot of personal reasons that come into play, but
    moral responsibility to a possible child is a topic that hasn't
    been raised yet.
    
    More_old_fashioned_values_sometimes_make_for_less_second_dates,
    
    Peggy           
    

    There is an interesting article in the February, 1987 issue of _Natural
    History_ that pertains to this discussion.  The author, Barbara
    Smuts, spent some time in the wild observing male-female relationships
    among a troop of baboons.  Baboons are sexually promiscuous, but
    she found, to her amazement, that baboons formed close friendships
    with members of the opposite sex.  Sometimes these friends were
    sexual partners, sometimes not.  Often the male would care for the
    young of the female, even in instances when the infant could not
    have been the male's offspring.
    
    The title of the article is "What are Friends For?"  The front cover
    of the magazine contains a picture of a male baboon affectionately
    nuzzled against a female baboon, head on her shoulder, which is
    alone worth the newstand price.  The article is fairly lengthy;
    here are the last few paragraphs.
    
    --Mike
                                                           
    Male-female friendships may be widespread among primates.  They
    have been reported for many other groups of savanna baboons, and
    they also occur in rhesus and Japanese macaques, capuchin monkeys,
    and perhaps in bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees).  These relationships
    should give us pause when considering popular scenarios for the
    evolution of male-female relationships in humans.  Most of these
    scenarios assume that, except for mating, males and females had
    little to do with one another until the development of a sexual
    division of labor, when, the story goes, females begain to rely
    on males to provide meat in exchange for gathered food.  This, it
    has been argued, set up new selection pressures favoring the
    development of long-term bonds between individual males and females,
    female sexual fidelity, and as paternity certainty increased, greater
    male investment in the offspring of these unions.  In other words,
    once women began to gather and men to hunt, presto -- we had the
    nuclear family.
    
    This scenario may have more to do with cultural biases about women's
    economic dependence on men and idealized views of the nuclear family
    than with the actual behavior of our hominid ancestors.  The nonhuman
    primate evidence challenges this story in at least three ways.
    
    First, long-term bonds between the sexes can evolve in the absence
    of a sexual division of labor or food sharing.  In our primate
    relatives, such relationships rest on exchanges of social, not
    economic, benefits.
    
    Second, primate research shows that highly differentiated, emotionally
    intense male-female relationships can occur without sexual exclusivity.
    Ancestral men and women may have experienced intimate friendships
    long before they invented marriage and norms of sexual fidelity.
    
    Third, among our closest primate relatives, males clearly provide
    mothers and infants with social benefits even when they are unlikely
    to be the fathers of those infants.  In return, females provide
    a variety of benefits to the friendly males, including acceptance
    into the group and, at least in baboons, increased mating opportunities
    in the future.  This suggests that efforts to reconstruct the evolution
    of hominid societies may have overemphasized what the female must
    supposedly do (restrict her mating to just one male) in order to
    obtain male parental investment.
    
    Maybe it is time to pay more attention to what the male must do
    (provide benefits to females and young) in order to obtain female
    cooperation.  Perhaps among our ancestors, as in baboons today,
    sex and friendship went hand in hand.  As for marriage--well, that's
    another story.
    

    Please consider the following:
    
    When pregnancy is not a viable issue and a relationship between
    two adults is strong, then sex may sometimes, upon agreement between
    both partners, become recreational.  It becomes a matter of trust
    that the emotional bond in the marriage will not be broken.  
    
    If sex is looked at in a non emotional sense, but rather as a
    pleasurable act induced by the chemistry between two people it
    generates an excitement that can be taken back and actually enhance
    the marriage. There are very few people who can honestly say that
    they don't know or haven't met members of the opposite (or even
    same) sex who "turn them on".  Whether they choose to persue this
    becomes a personal decision.
                         

    HOORAY, FINALLY SOMEBODY HAS SAID IT.  I HAVE ONLY JUST LEARNED
    NOTES AND I AM BEHIND ON MY READING.  HOWEVER, I MUST ADD TO
    THIS ONE.  I THINK IT IS "BAT GUANO" MYSELF TO SAY THAT MEN
    HAVE A HARDER TIME THAN WOMEN WITH MONOGAMY.  WHAT ABOUT THE
    SITUATION WHERE THE HUSBAND IS NOT EVEN REMOTELY INTERESTED 
    IN SEX, PERFORMING, SPEAKING OR THINKING ABOUT IT??? AFTER A
    14 MONTHS OF BEWILDERMENT AND PAIN WONDERING IF IT WAS ME
    I HAD TO THINK ABOUT BREAKING MY VOWS...

    All this rhetoric is for not because there is an epidemic out there.
    The End could very well mean the death of a loved one we would be
    all to willing to forgive...and/or it could be the beginning of
    a long and painful illness for ourselves.  On this subject I would
    like to see us noters take a more realistic approach then to dream
    of what we would like the world to be...
    
    Every morning as I listen to the news I hear "Safe S*x".  They are
    educating our youngsters and we as adults are living ten years back
    where if we got a 'dose' we took a few pills and it was 'all better'.
    
    

re: .37

I dunno, it sounds like on those grounds you should either marry
the first person you have sex with (maybe not that uncommon) or
stay celibate all your life.  In getting married you're also
making the rather large assumption that your partner will actually
be monogamous too (I believe many a marriage has come to grief
here, no?).

Being non-monogamous does not necessarily mean being "promiscuous"
(in the sense of being totally undiscriminating, impulsive and
uncaring in one's sexual behavior).  The ordinary "pre-monogamous"
single person today is probably not "promiscuous"...he or she is
just not (yet) committed to exclusive sex with one other person.
Similarly, one can imagine a marriage in which the partners are
not committed to an exclusive sexual relationship without being
either promiscuous or even especially viewing "infidelity" as a
likely occurrence.

"Safe sex" has to do with taking precautions.  Those precautions
may be mechanical (condoms, choice of sexual acts, etc.) or may
be based on a more sophisticated analysis of the behavior and
"contamination" potential of the prospective sexual partner.  I
don't think there are any guarantees either way, however (even
if I stay celibate, for instance, in the worst case I could be
wrongly imprisoned and get raped by someone with AIDS), so the
whole concept of "safety" is relative rather than absolute.

The idea of "Safe Sex", as something to combat a fear, something to have
seminars promoting, and a bunch of other hype, makes me sick!  Not to mention
that I don't 'have sex', I 'make love'; does 'Safe Love Making' sound strange?
It should...

To me, safe sex means knowing your partner well, over a period of time... If
you're paranoid, which I'm not, you should have plenty of time to have a blood
test done, or whatever...

If that's not your lifestyle, then you have risks which can be minimized,
but to me the minimization, and whole attitude are abhorrent!

Jim.

        My own opinion is that for many reasons a monogamous reltionship
        is the best idea. Sex is a very complicated thing with a lot of
        effects on one's life. Steve Thompson in 188.36 asks if monogamy
        is necessary "in the absence of public vows, kids or AIDS". The
        problem is that all though kids, disease, and deep commitments
        may CURRENTLY be absent from your relationship, it is very hard
        to guarantee that they won't be at any given point in time.
        
        Sex has many outcomes. It results in kids. It can result in the
        transmission of disease. It can change your whole outlook on
        somebody very radically and very suddenly. In animals we talk
        about its effects on "pair bonding". With you humans we may
        choose to say that you can become very attached to someone with
        whom you've had sex. It amounts to the same thing. Our sexual
        partners can suddenly become vital to our lives. 
        
        Concurrent sexual relationships with different people are
        fraught with the possibility of unexpected children, unexpected
        disease, and unexpected changes in attachments. 
        
        A women who is having sex with more than one man can be face
        with a child of ambiguous parentage. A man can suddenly find
        himself with family ties to two women (either with children by
        both or married to one and with a child by the other). Both of
        these situations can have serious negative affects not only on
        the partners involved but on the children. 
        
        The number of sexually transmitted diseases and the seriousness
        of them are a significant factor in today's world. I feel that
        AIDS is probably being treated unrealistically by the media, but
        the fact remains that it is a contageous terminal illness and
        can just ruin your whole day. And it isn't alone. It is the most
        severe and the least well understood, but herpes, gonorea, and
        syhpillis are no picnic, even with modern pharmasudicals. The
        fact remains that the more partners you have and the more they
        have, the higher the chance that one of these diseases will show
        up and get passed along before the victims know they have it. 
        
        Even if you think you can prevent both unexpected children and
        disease, there is still the question of unexpected attachments.
        Good sex is a profound experience--in all senses of the word.
        Elsewhere in this conference Jon Callas spoke of Love at First
        Sight as a species of mystical experience. I don't think he was
        overstating it. Mere "chemistry" in the form of Love at First
        Sight can really turn your life around. Good sex can do just as
        much, either as rapidly as LAFS, or slowly over time. This can
        be tremendous, but it can also be devastating if the attachments
        aren't reciprocal or if there are conflicting relationships
        already. (Hell, it can be devastating even when it is reciprocal
        and without conflicts.)
        
        All-in-all, until you can perfectly predict the future, I say
        sex is best kept between two people, two people who are either
        involved in or willing to become involved in a permanent
        committed relationship. It's an old-fashioned belief, but many
        things get to be old-fashioned because they work. 
        
        JimB.

re: .40,.41
>    re: .40	sex => attachment ... multiple partners => confusion

I think Jim's reasons are very sound, but I think it's important to
recognize the cultural forces that _make_ them sound.  Just in your
little equation above, Eagle, I think that the causal operators ("=>")
may not necessarily apply for other types of cultures.  We are born
into and raised in this culture, so I have to accept that the equation
pretty certainly holds for me too, but I think it's important to see
that it's not a "law of nature" or simply "the way things are" (with
the implication that things could only be that one way).

Some animals do the "pair-bonding" routine that Jim mentions, but a
good number of our fellow primates seem to have no problem doing a
"multiple-marriage" routine instead.  Sex MAY lead to attachment, but
it probably tends to do so more readily when that attachment is expected
to occur.  Similarly many of the "harmful" consequences of non-marital
sexual behavior (NOT including sexually transmitted diseases) are likely
to be psychologically damaging because we are _taught_ about how evil and
degrading they are (e.g., losing your virginity other than maybe on your
wedding night is shameful, masturbation lowers your self-esteem and makes
you feel guilty, homosexuality is of course an "abomination" and "against
nature", etc., etc.).

For those of us who are too old to change our ways, this may seem like
crying over spilled milk.  This is the culture we live in, so let's be
realistic and live within its constraints.  Well, we may have to, but if
we take the attitude that the prejudices we have inherited are "God's will"
or some such, then we are effectively dooming future generations to live
with our neuroses.  (I don't intend to imply that Jim or Eagle are taking
this tack!)  We have to see that previous generations have often had to
learn a hard lesson at toleration of those who didn't conform: but that we
are in many ways the beneficiaries of those hard lessons (just looking at
the right to vote, for instance, a hundred years ago it was pretty much
accepted as "only natural" that this should be restricted to white males
--how many insane assumptions like that do we want to perpetuate?).

        Although it is quite popular to ascribe almost all of human
        nature to nurture these days, I'm afraid that the reality of
        life is that there's a lot of nature mixed in with the nurture.
        Specifically, I'm unaware of any culture which is immune from
        the tendancy for people to become attached to their sexual
        partners.
        
        It is quite true that many cultures have allowed for polygyny,
        polyandry, secondary sexual relationships and more premarital
        sex than ours has traditionally accepted. However, you will find
        that polygamy is generally either a reaction to ineqalities in
        the numbers of available spouses or of exploitation.
        
        Middle Eastern polygany, for instance, is restricted to the very
        rich, and is based on the treatment of women as either second
        class people or chattel. The legendary south seas openness
        towards sex tends strongly to be very largely PRE-marital rather
        than an alternative to marriage. 
        
        I think you will find that there is a very strong biological
        component to the first of Steve Thompson's causal arrows (sex =>
        attachment), the second one--at least as I see it--is more of a
        tendancy than a strong causal connection. SOME people--in any
        culture--can manage to cope with the conflicts raised by
        interlocking attachments. MOST people in any culture can find
        that the problems of interlocking or unreciprocated attachments
        can get to be overwhelming.
        
        As evidence of the universality of the problem of synchronizing
        the attachments of sexual partners please note the universality
        of the practice of marriage. Monogomous marriage can be found in
        every culture in every era. Regardless of culture it is the most
        prevalent human social institution. There is a lot of variety,
        but the basic 1 man, 1 woman, "till death do us part" pattern is
        found everywhere. 
        
        The great apes follow the human pattern fairly well, by the way.
        Orangs are largely monogamous. Gorillas, at the other extreme,
        have a polygynous system, but it is based on both a social and
        physical sexual dimorphism. Lady gorillas are just not the
        equals of their their silver-back lords and masters. The mating
        patterns of each of the great ape species, and of the higher
        monkeys, like the baboons, are determined by biology rather
        than culture. 
        
        Finally, although there are animal species which do not pair
        bond, I believe you will find that in species in which sex is
        prolnged enough or frequent enough to be called "good", it
        serves to strengthen the bonds between the mates, even if the
        bonds are sustained only for a season. Species which can be
        truly casual about sex do it rarely or in a really wham-bam
        fashion. 
        
        JimB.

    I have always enjoyed the times I was related monogamously, as opposed
    to those few (and as I recall, unhappy) times I was seeing several
    people at once.  My SO was, until meeting me, non-monogamous (and
    openly so to all who related to him).  After meeting me, he decided
    I was worth a commitment, and told me he wanted to be monogamous
    with me.  I agreed.  However, since nobody is perfect, we have an
    agreement that *any* subject is completely open to discussion. 
    Nothing is taboo to talk about - especially if one of us should
    feel there are weak spots in the relationship.  And we have both
    agreed that, should we feel a need/desire for something/someone
    else, we will  openly discuss it, and decide, prior to any actions
    on either part.  The thought of the other having love/sex
    relationships with someone else scares both of us at this point 
    (very close friends of the opposte sex are completely acceptable 
    on the basis of strong mutual trust), but the fact that I know he 
    will speak to me before doing anything (and vice versa) gives our 
    relationship an enduring sense of honesty, and  acceptance of our 
    inherent humanity (both strengths and weaknesses).  Yes, it seems
    somewhat utopian to some, and no it has never been strongly tested,
    but we hope to be together a *long* time, and we're trying to do
    everything within our power to make sure we are.
    
    Jody
    

Hi Jody.  This sounds like a healthy way to go.  Here we are, several years
later.  How has it been working ?

Thanks.

/Eric  (who's been taking a break from relationships)

    
    We broke up in 1988.  Since then, it's been a few more relationships -
    learned a lot, loved too much, grew a lot, laughed and wept a lot.
    
    It was a healthy way to go, and I continue to encourage honest
    discussion and mutual agreement to boundaries and groundrules in each
    relationship - that is something I hope to always maintain.  
    
    -Jody