Let's talk love and sex.....
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Let's talk love and sex.....
| Fri, 12-15-2006 - 9:18am |
My GF, Ivy, and I were talking about this....like, are we IN LOVE with each other....can you have sex without love?

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This, LM, is a tuff one.
So, how about you...can you have sex without love? Many years ago, I felt that NO I could not have sex without love, I passed on a few opportunities in college for this reason....it would have been a drunken romp in the bed and I couldn't face myself in the morning (even with a bp fueled high sex drive). After some serious ML issues in my marriage I discovered that YES I could have sex without love, both in the marriage and outside the marriage.
How do you define love? Not sure if I can....it is a feeling one has when the person you are with meets/speaks your love language/emotional needs and makes you feel valued in that special way (not like valued when your boss commends you LOL)
can you be in love with more than one person? I believe so, but may not be conducive to a long term relationship if one of those you are in love with wants it to be monogamous.
Would you rather keep emotions out of it, and just make it about lust? DEFINITELY NOT, again due to major ML issues, I have had both kinds of sex (emotionless lust, and loving sex) and loving sex is the best, even when the sex is all about lust, it is still more fun with someone you love.
tk
i've always had sex without the love. I guess I've never seen it entwined together. I shag and then I go. I get my pleasure, he gets his, and we go on with our seperate ways.
How would I define love? I can't. There is no way that i can articulate the words to describe love since i have no experience with it. How I would want love is another thing. I want to be loved for who I am with no judgements, no insensitive remarks and never would raise a hand to me, no matter how angry. Someone who's there for me until the bitter end, whenever that may be. And if it does end sooner than expected, then I'd like to treasure the moments I had, knowing i loved without abandon and same for him.
i'm not ready for love so I'm just going to have to accept lust lol
I can have sex without love and enjoy it.
So, how about you...can you have sex without love?
I am a very passionate guy who loves sex. There still has to a connection for me to do the deed. I can't just see someone go shag and move on. I love and crave the soft affection and passionate kisses during the event, so I couldn't do that with out the connection first. It doesn't have to be love.
Love is so hard to describe, but I know when I can't get her out of my mind and everything she does I find cute, and can't go ten minutes with out a touch from her or being near her, she drives me nuts in a flannel night gown or sweat pants. My stomach does flips when she calls my name or when I hear her voice on the phone. What she does to me when she comes out of her shower or bath and that scent of her lotion drives me crazy. The look in her eyes when she smiles and you can see the love she has for you, just wants to make me grab her and kiss her deeply. Lust doesn't do that, love does.
Edited 12/16/2006 7:28 am ET by bronco2006
There has to be some kind of emotional attraction for me. Strictly physical attraction or "lust" doesn't do it for me.
The best thing situation I've ever known is what I have with my partner. There's an incredible amount of love and emotional intimacy, but also so much lust for each other.
Howdy! I gotta pipe in, directly answering your questions one by one without really getting into the rest of the thread because I could write a frikkin' NOVEL on all these thoughts and still never directly answer any of these specific questions.
"can you have sex without love?"
Sure! See my first marriage. ;-) No, not really. I can have some gnarly sex without love, and hardly with any positive regard for the person I'm shagging. To me, it's glorified masturbation. It's fine, I'm not casting aspersions, but yes, it's possible and done with great regularity.
"What does it mean to be IN LOVE?"
It's when you get that sweaty palm loving giddy excited feeling that is a HUGE componenet apart from the sex.
"I love sex with her and her DH, it's very intimate and loving, not just a shag. ANd I love them both very much."
That definitely sounds like love, and not necessarily like being *in love*. Is that a good thing with your poly couple? Well... it depends on what works for you. I have been madly head over heels for my gf and it nearly killed my marriage because not EVERYONE was feeling EXACTLY the same thing at EXACTLY the same time. Feelings were mangled. It ended up being horrible, in much the same way as it ended up being horrible with your ex gf. There was an imbalance, there were feelings of betrayal... it was very jagged and difficult. It just didn't work when I had tunnel vision like that.
"My last GF fell in love with my DH, and I felt very threatened."
You were in love, and she was in love with you (as far as I know), yet she was falling for your husband... which drew away from what the two of you had. As she fell in love with your husband, your stability with her was rocked. Does that mean there was something WRONG with your relationship with her or with your DH? No... it just means it didn't work that way for you guys.
"But Ivy doesn't threaten me at all, I love seeing her with my DH. It's very sweet and tender."
I could probably pick at this one and muse on all sorts of angles. I think though that at this point it boils down to balance between each of the twosomes in your arrangement. She is not so into Bruce that her loving tenderness with him makes you feel less important to her. And you are not left alone, twiddling your thumbs in any instance when the two of them are together... you also have a positive, loving situation with her husband, which is probably about equal in intensity to what she has with your husband. It's balanced. And you're experienced now, more than you were with gf #1. It's two couples coming together (ooooh, nice double entendre!)... not your two separate relationships as you had with DH and gf #1.
"Can you have sex without love?"
Oh yeah. And I can love someone and have sex with that person and not be IN LOVE. It can be very loving and tender and sweet and kind and safe... without being in love.
"How do you define love?"
Fack that!!! You can't define it. You just know. During or after the relationship, you know you love(d) the person.
"Can you be in love with more than one person?"
Yes. But. It's so tricky. It's so hard. I don't think it's possible to have that same new relationship energy for more than one person at a time... I don't know if it's possible to FALL in love with two people at the same time. I know that falling in love with my gf drew lots of energy away from my marriage. Thank goodness, we have all stabilized and I can say that I am in love with a handful of people all at once... it is romantic love. I'm in love with DH, I'm in love with gal winnie, I'm in love with her husband... but the actual *fall* when falling in love was very, very tricky and painful due to the feelings of betrayal and limited amounts of time and energy. I definitely recommend taking these poly situations one person at a time... love one another while loving one another, and keep your eye on whether you are falling in love, and where your energy is really going and whether your spouse or primary is feeling betrayed.
"Would you rather keep emotions out of it, and just make it about lust?"
No. Been there, done that, and I felt like a whore. I don't think that people who make it JUST about lust are whores. I just didn't like the way I felt when doing it that way. I like emotions. I have a huge capacity for love. I dig that positive energy and tenderness, whether it's love or being in love. I think you guys are likely to do very, very well for a very, very long time.
Think of it this way... You are not in love with your mother or your brother, but you have very strong feelings for them and you have years of history and bonding. The relationship with Ebony and Ivory (teeheee!!!) isn't a blood relationship, and it's not a normal falling-in-love situation either. It combines the loving, the sensuality, the history, the bonding, the longevity of other kinds of relationships. It's a different kind of monkey all together, and it's not a matter of being either friends who love one another (like "normal" people) or being all in love with one another and having this passionate sex like you and DH were having when first falling in love with one another. It's a different kind of relationship... so the love is real, the sex is hot, and there's nothing cheap about what you all are doing. And you don't have to be *in love* or not... you can love one another and express that physically as well, and it's a beautiful thing.
"Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error."
-George Bernard Shaw
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