Hot middle-school babes

nomadthethird said:

People have "emotional" affairs all the time, too, where there's no sex, but there's everything else, all the same sorts of intensity that would be there anyway...but somehow these are considered less "real" in terms of cheating, or less threatening.

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Yes, and those are vastly interesting.

In terms of the sex, there's always the third party to consider as well (ie the person who's, er, being fucked but isn't in the relationship) - 100 per cent honesty with them is paramount too, but how often does that really happen (it ebcomes a bit 'contractual' at this stage...)

nomadthethird said:

Sometimes I think the difference is in how people think about sex itself. Some people think sex itself defines a relationship, so that you're "breaking" the bonds of the relationship by going elsewhere for sex.

I think there are all sorts of ways to measure and define relationships. Because I love my boyfriend, I don't want to limit him sexually for the rest of his life. That just seems ridiculous to me.

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I certainly think sex-as-love and sex-as-fucking (of course boundaries aren't that clear, but still) are vastly different, and I forget how different sometimes. In fact, for the first time in my life the latter genuinely (and not out of any posture) appeals hugely less than the former. Mainly cos i forgot how good it was to sleep with someone who blows your mind...as well as your dick (apologies for crapness, though not crassness, but i couldn't not end that sentence.)

With regard to the second point, fair enough, but the interesting question to me would be, 'what is he (or what do you perceive him as) getting out of the extra-relationship sex'? The answer is not going to be just as simple as 'pleasure', in that he's interacting with other human beings, and not dolls.

No comment on your relationship, but I know that what would bother me in an open relationship (or however you want to term it) would not be feeling sexually jealous, but rather jealous of the possibility of intimacy with another person. As you said before, of the fact that they could walk away at any time, being brought into very sharp relief.

baboon2004 said:

100 per cent honesty with them is paramount too, but how often does that really happen (it ebcomes a bit 'contractual' at this stage...)

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I think it's easier as a female to be able to be honest about being in a relationship and still have sex with other people. Most girls would think a guy is lying about being in an open relationship I would guess.

It would probably be easier just not say anything tho, urite. Then ignore the text messages.

I have no voice mail set up on my phone on purpose. For a few reasons, but...

baboon2004 said:

IWith regard to the second point, fair enough, but the interesting question to me would be, 'what is he (or what do you perceive him as) getting out of the extra-relationship sex'? The answer is not going to be just as simple as 'pleasure', in that he's interacting with other human beings, and not dolls.

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Same thing I would be getting...lots of different things...

nomadthethird said:

People have "emotional" affairs all the time, too, where there's no sex, but there's everything else, all the same sorts of intensity that would be there anyway...

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in the mood for love...

no it's cool if she reads this. we are pretty communicative about these things... she knows very well how, um, libidinous i am and what the basic reasons are for me to not act on promiscuous impulses. the second part because i told her.

good things being said here w/r/t the arbitrary nature of the rules and regulations we set up to govern the relationships between men and women, and the complete inadequacy of these laws in considering the full range of human interactions - a lot of it unsaid, thus deemed not as important, because we have no words or discourse which describes them - (perhaps an interesting note for the linguists).

nomadthethird said:

I think it's easier as a female to be able to be honest about being in a relationship and still have sex with other people. Most girls would think a guy is lying about being in an open relationship I would guess.

It would probably be easier just not say anything tho, urite. Then ignore the text messages.

I have no voice mail set up on my phone on purpose. For a few reasons, but...

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Easier that way, yeah, but then it becomes (potentially) exploitative of other people's feelings.

As to being easier for a female to be honest initially, you're prob right. But the fallout could well be the same - just because you tell a guy that doesn't mean they'll instantly process it as reality (libido does horribly stupid things to people) and act in their own best interests.

I don't know - I'm uncomfortable with the extent to which open relationships (if indeed they don't fuck with the people in them) treat other people as objects to be discarded, in line with very mainstream male (and female?) thinking.

baboon2004 said:

As to being easier for a female to be honest initially, you're prob right. But the fallout could well be the same - just because you tell a guy that doesn't mean they'll instantly process it as reality (libido does horribly stupid things to people) and act in their own best interests.

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Yup, this is basically the weak link in the whole operation...

Some people seem to understand, nod and smile or whatever, and then you realize later that nope, they really didn't understand, at all, but they either thought they did or just didn't care because, well, we'll deal with consequences later this seems like fun for now.

I've had sex with all kinds of genders at this point, and I'll tell you something: men get waaaay more emotional about sex (the actual act) than women do. Much more. It's kind of funny to me how backward our stereotypes are when I see the reality. Like men want to believe they're not like this, and that sex has less emotional consequences for them, but it's just the opposite I've found. Maybe there's some kind of sampling error involved but I don't think so.

hmm, i would suggest that it's roughly equal for both. maybe for men it is more suppressed and comes out in different/weirder ways, though, and women have had more social opportunity to process their emotional feelings towards sex.

PS "I've had sex with all kinds of genders at this point" - how many are we talking?!?

baboon2004 said:

PS "I've had sex with all kinds of genders at this point" - how many are we talking?!?

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Lots, there are all kinds of genders, esp if you get into any fetish communities you'll find lots and lots of em...

baboon2004 said:

I don't know - I'm uncomfortable with the extent to which open relationships (if indeed they don't fuck with the people in them) treat other people as objects to be discarded, in line with very mainstream male (and female?) thinking.

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I've been meaning to respond to this, too. I understand that what you're saying here is the sort of default, accepted "moral" position on the matter, but I'd have to disagree, or at least, voice some misgivings about this line of thinking.

The idea that because you've had sex with someone that you should exercise some sort of "rights" over that person, or over their body, or that a person has some sort of continuing obligation to another because they've had sex together is really a pivotal and essential part of what feminists called "rape culture."

I think this is a very, very dangerous way to think about sexual relations, and not only because it tends to be applied via a double standard, where women are seen as more indebted to men whom they've slept with, and more obligated to them, more their "property" henceforth, than men are to women they sleep with. It's this sort of thinking that kept people from thinking marital rape was "possible" for thousands of years. It's still nearly impossible to prosecute rape when it involves couples or a situation where a woman has consentually slept with the rapist on previous occasions.

I don't think of having casual sex as "discarding" people. I think of it as people enjoying each others' company the way friends do any other activity. Say you went to the movies with someone a few times--would it be considered "throwing them away" if you decided you didn't want to go to the movies with them anymore? No, it probably wouldn't. Would people think you had some sort of rights over their body, or that you were somehow obligated to them emotionally for the next 30 years of your life because you'd seen a movie together? Nope.

While I realize most people have good intentions and aren't thinking about sexual monogamy as a way to enforce rape, this is the actual effect that this thinking has on culture. I think it's time people looked more critically at this. Cultures where people don't think this way about monogamy tend to have lower rates of sexual violence. So perhaps there is more of a link than people want to admit...

nomadthethird said:

Lots, there are all kinds of genders, esp if you get into any fetish communities you'll find lots and lots of em...

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Can you explain, not quite with what you mean on this?

Hmm, this brings up several strands of debate.

I wasn't presenting this as a 'moral' point of view, so much as a need to acknowledge that 'third parties' in this kind of situation have feelings/an existence as human beings that ought to be acknowledged too.

What I certainly wasn't saying that one has 'rights' over someone that one has slept with - I agree, this leads to very dangerous territory. Then again, when does one have such a continuing obligation to another person? In a 'relationship' (taking that word in the common, mainstream usage of the term)? As we've discussed before, and I think we both agree on, either party in a relationship has the perfect right to leave at any time, and therefore even in a seemingly rock-solid relationship, no rights can be evoked.

This would be the purely logical way to look at things, and I incline to such pure (and inarguable, I think) logic in my more pessimistic moments. But I can't live like that, with the knowledge that every relationship is rooted only in quicksand.
I think that some space has to be made for the human feeling that emotional interaction (see next paragraph) has some sort of meaning. Logically it doesn't, and no-one owes (in a weak sense, not in a 'rights' sense) me anything, regardless of our relationship/past/feelings, but I don't believe anyone can live like that without becoming very cold indeed.

With regard to your point about casual sex being an activity comparable to many other activities in which one enjoys the company of friends, I don't think this is true, from experience and from the experience of many others I've talked to. And, (in the context of the debate about open relationships) sex between someone who is in a relationship, and someone else who may well not be, involves all kinds of power and emotional games that we are (blissfully) free from in going to the movies with a friend. I think it's overly idealistic to argue that they are somehow the same on an emotional level.

I don't take the point that, just because a notion can be applied as a double standard, or even is generally applied in that way (and I agree that rights-based notions of sex often are used as a double standard against women), it is a reason to reject that notion altogether. Surely you should reject the way in which mainstream society has applied the idea of 'owing' someone something because of sexual relations, which is a very different thing?

As regards statistics on sexual violence - given the unreliability of such figures for so many reasons (eg I think it's clear that in the UK or US for example, any figures on sexual violence based either on the number of cases brought forward, or on direct questioning of people's experiences, would hugely underestimate the rates of sexual violence), it's problematic to uncritically use these statistics to try to prove that "cultures that don't think this way about monogamy" have lower rates of sexual violence

I'm not saying that your point isn't correct (it may well be), but I don't think you can use such statistics to prove it. Nevertheless, I agree that it's a point that needs to be looked at more critically.

If any of the above is unclear, I am tired and wired on coffee. I know what I meant, but..

Well, I'm sure this is really how you feel about all this, and so I can't question that.

But the way you've described things is not how my feelings work. I don't think open relationships require that people be "cold", I think they require that people have a completely different way of feeling about sex, and one that has nothing to do with how most people are brought up to think and feel about it. I think I actually have a much stronger bond with my partner than a lot of people I know who are in traditional relationships have with theirs. This might just be a feeling, but it's based on observations that seem to hold. I'm not cold about him at all, I care very much, that's why I don't want to be in a "property holding" type of relationship.

What I think people are ultimately afraid of about open relationships is sex getting demystified... and, yes, I think this happens in general, but it happens to everyone regardless. It happens naturally as you get older, have more partners, understand life and yourself better, etc. (I think this is part of why people get tempted to "cheat" in the first place-- and then there's the guilt, and the neurosis, and the oh nooo my relationshipp is ovvveerrr stuff. It doesn't have to be. It really doesn't.)

In my mind, demystifying sex is a good thing, not a bad thing, for a lot of political reasons.

involves all kinds of power and emotional games that we are (blissfully) free from in going to the movies with a friend.

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Such as?

You can use statistics to prove that there are differences in rates of violence across nations, because in statistical modeling, it's possible to correct for things like discrepancies in reporting rates versus actual rates, etc.

P.S. What I mean by there being different genders is that, say, a lesbian can identify as dyke, or a lipstick lesbian, or a tomboy, etc. There are tons of w4w genders, and m4m, and then there are the tranny ones (those get reeally complicated), and then there are the variations within straights, too.

Mr. Tea said:

I bet it makes them a fucking pain in the arse if you aren't interested.

I dunno, I can't really see that there's anything noble or admirable about going around ready to stick your cock in the first thing you bump into that has a hole and is still warm. If a woman opens her legs for every guy who walks past, is that really hot? Can't say it would get me going in a big way. Of course I'm not saying a woman's got to be some unattainable ice queen before she's got my attention - that can be fun for a bit but rapidly brings on a case of "Oh get over yourself" - it's more that I can't really imagine someone being willing to fuck essentially anyone of the opposite (or same, whatever) sex without there being some ulterior and not necessarily healthy drive going on there, like a lack of self esteem or some retarded macho ideal of virility (and it works both ways, so don't give me any grief about double standards).

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nonsense, whats wrong with loving sex with many different partners? not everyone has the same morals, and i certainly never associate sex with guilt, or worry about desires that human beings don't fully consciously control anyway. maybe they aren't doing it because they want to be admired, but because they like it. you are projecting on to people you don't really know anything about, and lets face it if its consensual then what harm can there be?

its hardly like being addicted to crack cocaine, you can indulge in it as much as you want, and you won't lose your job or house, or have to go into rehab. thats wicked as far as i'm concerned, because there aren't that many things of such intense pleasure that you could say that about.

@nomad - wasn't meaning to cast judgment on your relationship, just voicing my own thoughts, of course in relation to my own situation (near impossible not to be relative on this topic). Maybe if I'd been in a similar relationship for 8 years (iirc?) then I'd think very differently. I know that after 4 years with my longest-term ex, my mind was in a very different place. It's all so relative, anyways.

Would reply to the rest, but must get on with reading about 18th century African raiding states instead...

What do you mean exactly by demystifying sex? I like that idea - I think sex has assumed a near-mystical place in modern society, which makes itr very difficult to know what one feels about it. i know that that contributes vastly to the unhappiness I feel when not having sex, which I'm still not sure in what proportion is due to genuine unhappiness about it, as opposed to societal-pressure unhappiness.

But, anyways! Off to the history books.

Doesn't sex release neuromodulator oxytocin, which reinforces bonding? Difficult to fight against - inject oxytocin into a female vole's brain and it will shack up for life with the closest male vole to paw. Who knows, it might be the same with guinea pigs. Or even baboons.

Mr. Tea said:

I just don't think that the 'natural' human state is to want to fuck every single person you come across and the only reason not to be like this is because you're languishing under a complex of neurotic bourgeios hang-ups - maybe no-one's saying that per se, but some of the posts in this thread seem to be heading in that direction.

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Yeah, people struggling to maintain a certain ideal of the purity of love are just irredeemably brainwashed delusional losers. How much better this world would be if people only realized that all it takes to free your mind is to start cruising the fetish communities and fuck a tranny with your leather mask on!

mixed_biscuits said:

Doesn't sex release neuromodulator oxytocin, which reinforces bonding? Difficult to fight against - inject oxytocin into a female vole's brain and it will shack up for life with the closest male vole to paw. Who knows, it might be the same with guinea pigs. Or even baboons.

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Ha! Only with certain baboons with long dark wavy hair (what an image...hmm).

Inject oxytocin into a female vole's brain - this does make me wonder if you are the lead charcter in The Wasp Factory. Are you?

mixed_biscuits said:

Doesn't sex release neuromodulator oxytocin, which reinforces bonding? Difficult to fight against - inject oxytocin into a female vole's brain and it will shack up for life with the closest male vole to paw. Who knows, it might be the same with guinea pigs. Or even baboons.

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Sure, people release a couple of chemicals that make them feelgood during/after sex [Edit: come to think of it, I think it might only be after orgasm. So if you're female, and the sex is only so-so-- no feel good chemicals ]. Though I'd say "bonding" is just a word that we use for that feeling. Lots of species do. But almost zero species are monogamous, and primates are terrible at even trying to be. Just terrible at it. The best they can do is serial monogamy, which isn't even really "monogamy"...

I've never heard of this vole experiment... I don't know why you'd inject it into a female necessarily, both sexes produce these chemicals.