I have never ever been involved with more than one guy at a time, and I've never ever cheated. I've had no desire to, because even though I admit that I've had an attraction for as many as half a dozen men at one time, I feel it is disrespectful to date more than one person at a time (and neither could I handle such multi-tasking). I admit, I am a randiful flirt and maybe the opportunity has never actually been given to me to date more than one guy, but I can honestly say at the moment that I wouldn't do it.
This topic came up after I was reading through a forum called Why does Pisces lie about the tendency of the Pisces personality to lie and have affairs. I found some of the statements to be outrageous, for example,
So to really keep him faithful to you, at least emotionally, I would recommend you let him be as promiscuous as he wants to be. Showing that you are so strong and secure in yourself as to let him do what and who he wants and still love him is a HUGE turn on for him (at least for me). He may or may not take you up on this freedom you are allowing him (although I'm sure he'll flirt), but regardless, he'll certainly become more attached to you emotionally, regardless of his actions. This may seem counter-intuitive, but if you let him fool around with others, you are basically the absolute perfect woman, and I'm sure that he will do everything he can to make you happy otherwise. It's a different sense of faithful, but grant him sexual and emotional freedom, and he'll always be there for you. Emotionally.
WTF? Only on Granola World could anyone make such an outrageous claim that goes so much against what a relationship is supposed to mean, or at least what it means to me.
As a side-note, I've dated a few Pisces (three I believe). My first experience with a Pisces still lingers in my heart. He was a gorgeous man, a professional model with a taste for morbidity and piercings, but he was a psycho manwhore when it came to relationships. We were friends for several months before we started dating and every week he'd blog about another girlfriend who had betrayed him. How many times can you get betrayed before you figure maybe it's your fault? He was so open with what I thought was intimate stuff, where he'd post an announcement on his MySpace bulletin looking for someone to come over and cuddle. After two disappointing dates and lots of broken dreams, I found loving him like being in love with water.
To stay in a committed relationship, do we have to be polygamous?
On every level I do understand what the polygamous Pisces freak above is talking about, though. Emotional freedom is a major cause for the ruin of a relationship: the minute someone feels trapped in a relationship, they freak out and hit the road. By allowing a person to have a legitimized affair, they are given their emotional freedom. As the freak above mentions, it takes a strong person to be secure knowing that her boyfriend is out screwing someone else. Aren't we attracted to strong people? Don't we like people who are un-possessive?
On the other side, I see the opposite, where I have too much respect for myself to get involved in an open relationship and I'll explain why in another paragraph or two. Likewise, I know something about management and in any complex social system (which means a system of more than one person) absolute freedom is impossible. If you run an office or raise children laissez-faire, the results will be horrendous!
I've also read about the necessity of having competition in a relationship. Emotional bonds can grow stale and your significant other can start taking you for granted. It is necessary to create the illusion that your love could be lost to someone else. Competition also satisfies personal emotional needs that are restrained by being with only one person. One person isn't capable of satisfying every need and having friends of the opposite sex can re-vigorize a faltering libido that has been tied down too long. If used within the confines of a monogamous relationship, competition can improve self-confidence and improve a relationship.
Our cultures doesn't promote competition because competition means someone has to lose and we don't want to damage the precious self-esteem of our troubled youth.
I've seen competition at play in one of my college classrooms at a more almost lackadaisical level where one of my professors, a handsome and suave younger gentlemen, was constantly playing the female students off each other, stirring up competition. He'd grin and gleam and say something like, "Melina is my favorite student, not Megan," and Megan would be so pissed but you could see the desire just raging behind her eyes. Why else then would she be so pissed?
I've never been one for competition in dating. I am a competitive person, yes, but back when I started dating, I had a guy who played me off someone else. He was dating another woman but giving me fresh attention and naive little old me just soaked it up, thinking if I were patient, I'd be the only one. Of course that never happened and the guy was just a player (and abusive as well). I eventually became his worst enemy. His life didn't turn out that well as he got a couple girls pregnant and married a real loser.
The minute a guy even makes a move towards another woman, I immediately lose respect for him and I kick him to the curb (usually after kicking him in the balls). I can see no redeeming value in someone who seeks to manipulate or disrespect me in such a way. I can throw it back easily: I've screwed over a 100 men and I'll screw easily a 1000 before my life is over. No one man has any value to me that I'll let him push my monogamy button.
When I was doing my Bachelor's, I studied extensively the psychology of Karen Horney (it's pronounced Or-nay) and one of her articles is called "The Problem of the Monogamous Ideal." In her article, Horney talks about how polygamous desires are natural -- we are naturally attracted to multiple lovers and the fulfillment of these sexual desires is a natural goal. Monogamy, however, frustrates these subconscious goals by forcing a person into sexual satisfaction with one person, with satisfaction being an impossibility because our natural tendency is to have sexual fantasies about multiple partners. Even worse, polygamy is viewed as a sin and sexual frustration is enhanced by guilt and other unnatural repression of normal tendencies.
I had a boyfriend who propositioned me about a menege a trois. I had sensed that there was someone else going on but I let the thought go to give him the benefit of the doubt and not come across as being insecure. Of course, there was someone else and eventually he came to me and said something like this:
My room-mate is a woman whom I was was once engaged to. She is bi-sexual and it bothers me that she is attracted to women. I am still in love with her even though she only views me as a friend. I am sad because she is moving out soon and I don't want to be alone. I want you to stand by me while I pursue this relationship however long it may take.
I politely asked him not to contact me again and walked away from the situation.
I've always considered myself a sexually risque person but that doesn't mean that I believe everything is okay. Somewhere boundaries need to be set up and people who try to break through these boundaries are not pioneers but freaks who should be sterilized.
Relationships have an emotional investment in them and a polygamous ideal is just as unhealthy as a frigid woman, as a single mother, or as a divorced couple. These are not positive signs of a changing culture but rather of a culture that is lost and dissatisfied, not knowing what it wants but trying to conform with values that it can no longer understand or connect with. The result is somewhat adolescent.
The contra idea is that the open sexual relationship is not the problem but rather the repression of sexual desire and the need for secrecy created by affairs. Open relationships, if evolving out of shared and open desires, can be a dream come true. No secrecy, no trust issues, only free love. Of course, that worked for the Hippies, right? Welcome back, tofu-suckers!
A polygamous relationship will never survive because relationships require security and priority which cannot exist when emotional bonds are being shared in multiple directions. Trust cannot be built. Each partner will always wonder if he or she is being loved the most. Equity is impossible.
The polygamist is merely another dysfunction that is attempting to validate itself. Activists make it look like polygamy is a widely practice arrangement that everybody does, but how many open marriages or relationships can you name in your personal life, not on TV or in your fantasy world? These people working on open relationships or playing around are simply out-of-control children who need corporal punishment to remind them of their failures as a human being.
What type of culture values deception and mistrust as an ideal?
Serial monogamy has been another emphasis in our new polygamous ideal where people point out that most people do not dedicate themselves to one person but rather through a series of monogamous relationships. I am guilty of that. Am I being polygamous by having screwed over 100 guys in my short life span? What is the difference in being intimately involved with more than one person at a time versus being involved with over 100 people in an assembly line?
That's a stupid question...
...but the point is, we generally do not have lifelong partners and this is a flaw in our enforced need for monogamy in light of the fact that polygamy sems to be the ideal.
But it isn't a flaw but rather an answer. Instead of screwing around with multiple partners, take your singular relationships to their limits and allow them to dissolve naturally rather than maintain them indefinitely. Polygamists are suffering from the same neurosis of maintaining a lifelong partner but also fooling around on the side as a way of maintaining that lifelong partner. The lifelong ideal is just as bad as the polygamous ideal.
This is not to say that the idea behind polygamy is completely incorrect. We are raised, at least I was, to embrace an ideal of marriage that is unrealistic and when we fall to do the impossible, we are smacked down with the guilt and worthlessness of our failure. People enter into new relationships with the expectations of a lifelong relationship and then rationalize infidelity rather than re-evaluating their expectations.
Some comments on monogamy and polygamy to help with your own relationships:
1. Don't enter into a new relationship with the intent of staying around forever. Be honest that you are more than likely just having a fling that won't last. Likewise, don't deceive the other person by giving off a sense of a long-term commitment.
2. Develop friendships rather than relationships. Why does every male and female relationship have to become intimate? Isn't it possible to have a nice sexually tense relationship with someone? Work on this. I worked in a place that did not allow people to date and at first it was nerve wracking and sterilizing to be around so many hot guys and not be able to date any of them. After awhile, though, I found the feeling to be refreshing, to be able to flirt and have fun without the pressure of making the relationship work (because I knew it wouldn't work out anyway).
3. Sex rarely lasts in the long term. Similar to idea #1, everybody advises against having sex too early because it could ruin a relationship. Those people are right but use this fact to your advantage. Why prolong a sexual encounter in order to postpone a break-up. I've done that and ended up never sexually consummating some relationships. These unconsummated relationships are the ones that still have control over me because I never achieved climax and closure to move on. Instead of having polygamous sex, let sex be the adjudicator.
4. Don't advocate or tolerate polygamy. If a person suggests an open relationship, politely refuse and give them the option of either staying or closing the relationship. Explain to them what I've written: your relationship with them is ending and that if they want to pursue sex with someone else that they either provide closure to your relationship with them (either one last romp in the hay or something) and leave or just plain leave. There's no point in continuing the relationship. You can also give them the opportunity to re-examine what they want honestly out of the relationship with you in order to gain a sense of closure but if closure is impossible and they want to have an open relationship, end your relationship with them.
Ideals are something to strive for, not to abandon.
2 comments:
I gotta say, i feel like there is nothing wrong with intimacy. I know what I'm about to say is totally the devil's advocate of your whole blog, but, I think that having a relationship with someone can be great. I think the mentality of "well, it won't last, just a fling, whatever" is kinda cheating yourself, i mean, you might as well just hit him in the face with a 2X4 and call it an evening. Truthfully, I think that when going into a date or a relationship or any "thing" you want to call it, it is wise to give it a chance and to try NOT to think about ANYTHING except "i am gonna try to enjoy this". I feel like life is a series of choices and adventures you have when you make those choices. You have to be patient, understanding, spontaneous, open-minded, ready to go on a journey for awhile. Now, that while could be 10 minutes, 10 hours, 10 months, 10 years, whatever, but if that is what life is offering, that's what you gotta do, and do it to the fullest, without preconceived notions and self-absorbed cynicisms.
Now, I am not making any accusations here, I am simply saying that people are funny. I mean, I have had my fair share of great relationships, as well as heartbreaks, but the one thing that I CAN agree with is: they've all ended, for now. But i take out of them something wonderful each time, some tidbit to who I am and what is important to me, and never do I pre-judge or regret. You go through what you go through and then you make the next choice and you go on that adventure. Maybe it's your last adventure, maybe not.
I know this sounds crazy, maybe a little ambitious in terms of being happy, but i can tell you this much, without intimacy this world would be a lot more depressing. Now we're all different, you don't have to be intimate on the first date, usually aren't unless someone is trying to get into someone else's pants, but if it comes early on, I see it as "good for them" and not "whoa, too soon!".
Oh and let me address sex. It's important and awesome. Not in the direct "let's have sex" or "Come on, baby" or "We never make love anymore" way, but the simple fact that people were put on this earth to do the nasty and if it wasn't right, then why would it feel so good? It's our instinct and without it, there is reason to feel strange and insecure about the mate. Here's the thing: relationships evolve, and with this evolution different values come into play. Early in a relationship, sex can be often and great. If it isn't, then there is no fire and the relationship changes. Maybe into friendship, maybe its over, maybe it continues but they read books in bed instead. But sometimes, relationships start without sex, and they last a long time or not at all. Really it's the compatibility of two people, and how they are with each other. Some people are chomping at the bit to make the two-backed monster, and some are stimulated in different ways. Does their relationship mean any more or less? No way. In relationships that start with sex and start to fade, its just the evolution of the relationship; different values come in, different ideas of happiness with each other come in, maybe more walks in the park or romantic dinners or going to the movies or going on vacation or doing something totally crazy and spontaneous is in order. Its different across the board with most people, but stimulation can be the key. It's just that people get bored and complacent and move on without giving a little effort maybe.
Anyway, I am ranting and raving, but I said I would leave you a blog and that's what I am going to do. This should hopefully give you some food for thought, or maybe I am a stupid hopeless romantic.
of course, who doesn't like a good ol' sexually charged relay?
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