05-07-2017, 06:34 PM
A post inspired from Duke's journal:
I used to be a big believer in "romantic love." In fact, I dare say that belief helped land me my wife, initially. Chivalry - opening doors, pulling out chairs, buying flowers, thoughtful gifts, "love" notes, jewelry from Tiffany. It was the ritual of courtship, all part of "falling in love." I believed there was a difference between "sex" and "making love." And there is, to an extent. But, life isn't The Bachelor or a Disney movie. It's not a romance novel like The Notebook or Outlander.
When a child is born into your life (or adopted, in some cases), love comes built-in. There's no "falling," it's just there - a shining light, bathing your heart in its purity. Then comes the sleepless nights, aggravation, reward & punishment, teaching, etc. But the love remains, even if you block it out with anger, sorrow, or other negativity at times, it's there waiting when it clears, and many times, love clears it away for you. For those who didn't get to experience this kind of loving home, well, that just breaks my heart, man. It's a feeling I never felt that strongly before I had kids (not for my own parents, siblings, or friends). I've felt it for my wife, sure, but with children (for me, anyway), it's an amazingly strong feeling.
Love for pets comes just shy of having children. I love my pets - from the dogs I had growing up, to the cats I have now. They're like my kids. People talk about how animals are just pure, unconditional love, but that's bullshit. There's conditions, they're just different than people's conditions. One cat beats the shit out of another, or looks at me with jealousy in his/her eyes as their nemesis sits purring on my lap.
What's interesting about societal conditioning is we're all taught that there's only "one person" you can love when it comes to adult relationships. I have the capacity to love my parents, siblings, children, and 6 cats - but I can only love one woman? If I love another woman, simultaneously, society says that must mean I don't really love my wife. Not really. What a crock! I used to have a lot of shame and guilt about having feelings of love, or sexual feelings, for other women than my wife (or even past girlfriends). Not anymore, and that's merely helped the health of my relationship!
In real life (opposed to the fantasy of "Happily Ever After"), as relationships continue to develop, you realize there's a lot more to love than the initial feelings you get when you're excited about a new relationship. Those feelings are a natural part of the emotional bonding phase of a relationship. It fades. But real love isn't just a feeling - it's a bond, devotion - a real, caring connection to another person (or pet/animal, whatever). For me, I used to use "making love" as a way to gauge the health of my relationship. Since then, I've grown a lot. I realized that's not my wife's love language, and that I'm adaptable. It feels good to express my love sexually, but she's more like a typical guy. It's "Lets get this over with!" She likes sex and all, but knowing what she likes, it's "Get to it, give me my 3 orgasms, and let's watch some TV!" I used to take that personally. Now, I don't. Accepting that, I get to have more sex, b/c I don't end up getting all butt-hurt and make a huge fight about it, again and again.
Anyway, what makes the difference between a person I love and want to have sex with vs. a person I love and don't? To me, sexual attraction can be many things. Usually, it starts off as physical. But sometimes it develops because of attraction to a person's attributes, such as intellect or sense of humor. I have strong sexual attraction to intelligent, independent, hard working women. If that woman was 350 lbs., however, the likelihood of attraction is essentially zero. There are deal-breakers. Or what about a chick I want to have sex with, but don't love? In that situation, it'd be a woman I don't know well. If I know a woman for awhile, and find I'm *still* sexually attracted to her, there's usually feelings that have developed as well. I can find reasons to love people pretty easily. So if I don't, it's likely I've also lost sexual attraction. That's just my personality type.
It probably took two years to develop feelings for my sister-in-law. We had common interests, her intellect is high like her sister's (my wife) but in a different way, her sense of humor is dark and dry - which I love. She's independent and has very strong opinions. Oh, and she's sexy as hell. If I was in "Create Your Own World, Without Judgement!" I could easily have loving, sexual relationships with multiple women, in addition to relationships that were purely sexual, without diminishing how much I love someone. Eventually, you'd run into logistics issues. A person has only so much time to devote to different tasks. The same goes for children. I want my children to know me well, and spend a plethora of time with me. I can't do that fairly with 10 children from as many different women.
I could talk about this all day, so I'll try and stop there.
TL;DR
I believe you can love more than one woman simultaneously. You can have sex with women and still love a person you're in a relationship with.
You can make love, and you can have purely physical, animalistic sex with women you love while not "making love." You can have loveless sex with women you don't love, but find sexually attractive. You can have quickies with all of the above.
Sex with someone you love, versus someone you don't, always has been more meaningful (in my experience).
Like Duke said, as people age, there's some veering that can happen, and to good people.
To me, DMSI has etched my beliefs deeper. If before I had ideas written in sand, I'm starting to see lines chiseled in stone. It's helped clear guilty feelings away and realize that even if I'm deeply attracted to someone else, the love for my wife and family remains. That makes the love even stronger, because I'm more certain of my feelings than ever.
I used to be a big believer in "romantic love." In fact, I dare say that belief helped land me my wife, initially. Chivalry - opening doors, pulling out chairs, buying flowers, thoughtful gifts, "love" notes, jewelry from Tiffany. It was the ritual of courtship, all part of "falling in love." I believed there was a difference between "sex" and "making love." And there is, to an extent. But, life isn't The Bachelor or a Disney movie. It's not a romance novel like The Notebook or Outlander.
When a child is born into your life (or adopted, in some cases), love comes built-in. There's no "falling," it's just there - a shining light, bathing your heart in its purity. Then comes the sleepless nights, aggravation, reward & punishment, teaching, etc. But the love remains, even if you block it out with anger, sorrow, or other negativity at times, it's there waiting when it clears, and many times, love clears it away for you. For those who didn't get to experience this kind of loving home, well, that just breaks my heart, man. It's a feeling I never felt that strongly before I had kids (not for my own parents, siblings, or friends). I've felt it for my wife, sure, but with children (for me, anyway), it's an amazingly strong feeling.
Love for pets comes just shy of having children. I love my pets - from the dogs I had growing up, to the cats I have now. They're like my kids. People talk about how animals are just pure, unconditional love, but that's bullshit. There's conditions, they're just different than people's conditions. One cat beats the shit out of another, or looks at me with jealousy in his/her eyes as their nemesis sits purring on my lap.
What's interesting about societal conditioning is we're all taught that there's only "one person" you can love when it comes to adult relationships. I have the capacity to love my parents, siblings, children, and 6 cats - but I can only love one woman? If I love another woman, simultaneously, society says that must mean I don't really love my wife. Not really. What a crock! I used to have a lot of shame and guilt about having feelings of love, or sexual feelings, for other women than my wife (or even past girlfriends). Not anymore, and that's merely helped the health of my relationship!
In real life (opposed to the fantasy of "Happily Ever After"), as relationships continue to develop, you realize there's a lot more to love than the initial feelings you get when you're excited about a new relationship. Those feelings are a natural part of the emotional bonding phase of a relationship. It fades. But real love isn't just a feeling - it's a bond, devotion - a real, caring connection to another person (or pet/animal, whatever). For me, I used to use "making love" as a way to gauge the health of my relationship. Since then, I've grown a lot. I realized that's not my wife's love language, and that I'm adaptable. It feels good to express my love sexually, but she's more like a typical guy. It's "Lets get this over with!" She likes sex and all, but knowing what she likes, it's "Get to it, give me my 3 orgasms, and let's watch some TV!" I used to take that personally. Now, I don't. Accepting that, I get to have more sex, b/c I don't end up getting all butt-hurt and make a huge fight about it, again and again.
Anyway, what makes the difference between a person I love and want to have sex with vs. a person I love and don't? To me, sexual attraction can be many things. Usually, it starts off as physical. But sometimes it develops because of attraction to a person's attributes, such as intellect or sense of humor. I have strong sexual attraction to intelligent, independent, hard working women. If that woman was 350 lbs., however, the likelihood of attraction is essentially zero. There are deal-breakers. Or what about a chick I want to have sex with, but don't love? In that situation, it'd be a woman I don't know well. If I know a woman for awhile, and find I'm *still* sexually attracted to her, there's usually feelings that have developed as well. I can find reasons to love people pretty easily. So if I don't, it's likely I've also lost sexual attraction. That's just my personality type.
It probably took two years to develop feelings for my sister-in-law. We had common interests, her intellect is high like her sister's (my wife) but in a different way, her sense of humor is dark and dry - which I love. She's independent and has very strong opinions. Oh, and she's sexy as hell. If I was in "Create Your Own World, Without Judgement!" I could easily have loving, sexual relationships with multiple women, in addition to relationships that were purely sexual, without diminishing how much I love someone. Eventually, you'd run into logistics issues. A person has only so much time to devote to different tasks. The same goes for children. I want my children to know me well, and spend a plethora of time with me. I can't do that fairly with 10 children from as many different women.
I could talk about this all day, so I'll try and stop there.
TL;DR
I believe you can love more than one woman simultaneously. You can have sex with women and still love a person you're in a relationship with.
You can make love, and you can have purely physical, animalistic sex with women you love while not "making love." You can have loveless sex with women you don't love, but find sexually attractive. You can have quickies with all of the above.
Sex with someone you love, versus someone you don't, always has been more meaningful (in my experience).
Like Duke said, as people age, there's some veering that can happen, and to good people.
To me, DMSI has etched my beliefs deeper. If before I had ideas written in sand, I'm starting to see lines chiseled in stone. It's helped clear guilty feelings away and realize that even if I'm deeply attracted to someone else, the love for my wife and family remains. That makes the love even stronger, because I'm more certain of my feelings than ever.
