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The following questions came up during a conversation (are lj-posts considered conversation?) with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
theazureman. In case anyone else would like to express their opinions on any of them, I'm posting them here.
1. Does a marriage/close partnership-type relationship need some form of regular intimate physical contact, whether sexual or otherwise, to survive?
2. If your significant other rarely, or never, wanted to have sex with you, would this make you to feel that they didn't really care about you anymore?
3. Is there such a thing as love without sex? (Excluding parent-child type love, I suppose... but that gets into the whole issue of what love really is.) Perhaps I should rephrase that. Is there such a thing as romantic love without sex? (which probably depends on what "romantic" really means...)
4. Is a relationship without sex really just a friendship, and not love?
5a. Is it possible to have an enjoyable marriage/relationship where one person wants sex but the other doesn't? (between a given 2 people, either in a monogamous or poly situation)
5b. If both people were to agree that the person who wanted sex could have sexual relations with other people, could the non-sexual relationship between the initial 2 people still survive without diminishing in quality?
5c. Would such sexual relationships with other people feel more satisfying and/or important to the person having them, than their non-sexual relationship with the initial person?
6. All other aspects being equal, is a relationship with sex always better than one without it?
Bah. I feel so stupid sometimes. Some of the answers to these questions seem obvious. But it all depends on... a lot of factors, I suppose.
theazureman. In case anyone else would like to express their opinions on any of them, I'm posting them here.1. Does a marriage/close partnership-type relationship need some form of regular intimate physical contact, whether sexual or otherwise, to survive?
2. If your significant other rarely, or never, wanted to have sex with you, would this make you to feel that they didn't really care about you anymore?
3. Is there such a thing as love without sex? (Excluding parent-child type love, I suppose... but that gets into the whole issue of what love really is.) Perhaps I should rephrase that. Is there such a thing as romantic love without sex? (which probably depends on what "romantic" really means...)
4. Is a relationship without sex really just a friendship, and not love?
5a. Is it possible to have an enjoyable marriage/relationship where one person wants sex but the other doesn't? (between a given 2 people, either in a monogamous or poly situation)
5b. If both people were to agree that the person who wanted sex could have sexual relations with other people, could the non-sexual relationship between the initial 2 people still survive without diminishing in quality?
5c. Would such sexual relationships with other people feel more satisfying and/or important to the person having them, than their non-sexual relationship with the initial person?
6. All other aspects being equal, is a relationship with sex always better than one without it?
Bah. I feel so stupid sometimes. Some of the answers to these questions seem obvious. But it all depends on... a lot of factors, I suppose.
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Date: 2003-07-13 12:04 am (UTC)From:Not at all. I lived with my friend Aaron for 11 years in a non-sexual close-bonded friendship. I was less happy then than now because most of this time I didn't have a lover, but having a secondary relationship with a lover and a primary relationship with a non-sexual life-partner seems perfectly reasonable (primary and secondary being terms from polyamory discourse).
2. If your significant other rarely, or never, wanted to have sex with you, would this make you to feel that they didn't really care about you anymore?
My primary partner is a highly sexual person, so such a change would mean that she was severely depressed or otherwise troubled or that she loved me less.
3. Is there such a thing as love without sex? (Excluding parent-child type love, I suppose... but that gets into the whole issue of what love really is.) Perhaps I should rephrase that. Is there such a thing as romantic love without sex? (which probably depends on what "romantic" really means...)
I do not distinguish in feelings between people I want as lovers and people I want as close friends (such is the result of me being both bi and poly). In general, when I meet someone (and they are fairly infrequent) who I feel a close bond with, I end up their very close friend if they see the relationship as one of non-sexual partners and as their lover if they see such relationship as a sexual one. I don't particularly feel closer to lovers than to very close friends.
4. Is a relationship without sex really just a friendship, and not love?
I love everyone that I am significantly close to. These days, that is 3 people, only one of whom is a lover.
5a. Is it possible to have an enjoyable marriage/relationship where one person wants sex but the other doesn't? (between a given 2 people, either in a monogamous or poly situation)
Being in that situation is begging for disaster. I've seen such relationships and they are never stable. There are two answers (assuming both people's feelings aren't changeable) - either the two people need to separate or the person who wishes sex needs to find another primary, secondary or tertiary partner with whom they can have sex. The 2nd option can certainly be done w/o compromising the initial relationship. In fact, I know of several examples of such relationships and they can be extremely stable.
5b. If both people were to agree that the person who wanted sex could have sexual relations with other people, could the non-sexual relationship between the initial 2 people still survive without diminishing in quality?
In my experience, it certainly can. The best option is for the person who wanted to have sex to find lovers who were poly and had no desire to end the person's relationship with the non-sexual partner, and if at all possible, partners who got along well with the non-sexual partner and who could at minimum be casual friends with them.
5c. Would such sexual relationships with other people feel more satisfying and/or important to the person having them, than their non-sexual relationship with the initial person?
I don't see any reason why this would need to be true.
6. All other aspects being equal, is a relationship with sex always better than one without it?
No, definitely not.