Profile picture of TheMatter
Familiar Face

2495

QA Reputation

60

TheMatter said 9 years, 4 months ago:

See, I find sex to be highly important/significant, emotionally and whatnot, and though I’m an atheist I suppose you could say I almost hold it at a sacred level of importance. Anything from kissing to touching to sex I think should only be done with someone you love. That’s been my opinion since forever, which is why I had a huge issue with some of the things she did in our relationship and had done before it. I don’t like the idea of having sex with someone who’s had sex before, and I don’t like the fact that if I am to have sex with someone else then that’s a double standard since I want them to accept my past but have trouble accepting theirs (if they have done it before). I figure at some point I’m gonna have to come to terms with the idea of those things. I just don’t like the idea that doing them will feel morally wrong to me. I want to fix them before they’re tested.
I mean, at some point I’ll inevitably have sex again.

Maybe I should explain a bit more about my understanding of what emotional effects sex has on a person. This is really personal, I’m struggling a bit to put this concept into words…

Well this is probably really quite closed minded, but I think that there are three huge factors to romantic/sexual relationships – vulnerability, intimacy and polarity. The first involves allowing yourself to be effected by your partner. The second involves allowing them to know about you and understand you. The third involves the idea that, like with magnetism, ‘opposites attract’, and so males commonly like females and females commonly like males, and sure there are homosexuals but don’t they often have feminine qualities? And I find also that bisexuals show a more even balance of qualities between male and female, and even moreso in pansexuals.
So I believe that Intimacy is generally the last to show up in a romantic relationship.
Let’s face it – we can be attracted to tens of people in a day. Guys especially are found to fall into a shallow amount of love with most people of the sexes or genders that they are attracted to, to the point where it’s been agreed by scientists that it’s almost impossible for a straight guy to be friends with a girl without there being some amount of sexual interest there. That’s polarity.
We can actually cry in front of any friend, or even in public, showing vulnerability to anyone and everyone. So I find that the most defining part of a romantic/sexual relationship is intimacy. It can exist otherwise but I imagine and hear it to always feel fake and manufactured. Maybe that’s not always the case, but reguardless, when it comes down to it, intimacy is the defining part of a sexual relationship, in my opinion. And can you think of anything more intimate than sex? I mean, regardless of method or position, it’s the most exposing and accepting action we can take. Open, pure nakedness and alowing people to explore our bodies.

See, the difficulty for me is that I’ve let someone explore me and know every part of me. (I won’t go into detail). I know how that feels. I also know that if I were to explore another person and be their second, I’d feel like it was impure.Like because I wasn’t the only one to know this body and mind, I’m not unique or special, perhaps even to that person, and even that my partner’s previous partners are still part of the relationship or are more intimate with her than I am. I can’t shake the feeling that I’d not be the only person that my partner is intimate with in that scenario, and would feel strange and unsettled knowing that someone else had known the things I was exploring before. To me it’d feel as though there were a third person in the relationship that symbolized all of their past partners, or that they were all still in that relationship, touching and kissing and loving my partner.

I’d love some help here because this is a big belief of mine and I need to come to terms with these things.
I’m not here to question my beliefs on whether or not intimacy, polarity and vulnerability are all things that are involved to the significance that I hold them to; this is a conversation about intimacy and how to deal with the situation I describe. I’m just trying to find a new belief and a new opinion.

|
Profile picture of ElenaJay
Passing Stranger

149

QA Reputation

27

ElenaJay said 9 years, 4 months ago:

Hey! I saw your post and I felt obliged to make an account just to reply to you. Honestly, I don’t know if I can help at all, but I’m going to try. Your post saddened me, not because of how you feel, but because you’re trying so hard to find a new belief.

First of all, I don’t understand why being an atheist makes a difference here. You see love/sex as “sacred” and believe they should be put at the same level and whether you are an atheist or not, it honestly doesn’t make a difference. You’re entitled to seeing things as sacred too you know, even if you don’t have a religion. Sure, it sounds paradoxical, but it’s only truly incongruous to the shallow-minded.

Let’s call this little belief of yours being “old-fashioned.” (I know it’s not, but for the sake of practicality please bear with me. I’m choosing old-fashioned because if someone hears you saying that you believe sex should be limited, then they’ll immediately label you as old-fashioned). There’s nothing wrong with being old-fashioned! In a society that over emphasizes on sex, I’m surprised there aren’t more people who are “old-fashioned” like you are. We plaster sex everywhere, on TV, movies, books, ads, even everything we work on is ultimately believed to be for the sake of having sex (Freudian much here, sorry). My point is that, if sex is this important to society (there wouldn’t be a society without it in the first place, right? lol), I understand why someone like you would put it so high on a podium – along with love. What actually worries me though is how society doesn’t; if you’re one of those people who isn’t following the typical standards, I think you should stick to your beliefs and proudly share them, in the hopes of at least opening other people’s eyes. Call me uptight for saying this, call me whatever you want to call me, but just as some see nothing wrong with casual sex, there should be nothing wrong about the complete opposite behavior.

So like I said, I think you’re trying too hard to change. No one, no standard, no unspoken social norm should ever make you feel imposed to change. I know, you’re confused, and you’re not able to come into terms with yourself and what you have done, it is probably causing some anxiety too, but in reality I think that the way you feel about the whole situation is rather beautiful. You’re seeing this as a whole new level of intimacy and at some point in your life you will meet that person that won’t make you regret at all how you’re feeling right now.

The issue now would be though, how to make this mind-set of yours work in a society where sex is not always backed up by feelings (Let’s call this, empty intimacy). Something else that seems to bother you is that even if people are not “emptily intimate,” then others they fall in love multiple times, which leads to levels of intimacy with several partners throughout their lives. I think that the only way to deal with this is to look for the right person who hasn’t been in love before. I’m sorry, I know I’m not helping much, and I do realize that’s not a practical solution, but it doesn’t sound to me like you will ever change your opinion, and I’m not even encouraging you to. It will just be more logical for you to fall for someone who thinks the same way you do, because while you think opposites attract, the truth is that birds of the same flock stick together. I think someone like this will be the only person you will get along with – at least at an intellectual level.

I realize such a person isn’t easy to find, or maybe someday you’ll get to love someone who’s been in love before but that you’ll love so much that you won’t think twice about the things she has done in the past. I could be wrong, but in other words, it sounds to me like maybe the problem you had with this previous girl wasn’t that she had been in a relationship in the past, but that she wasn’t compatible with you in the first place. It sounds to me like maybe deep inside you’re a true romantic who wants a “pure and sincere relationship.”

No one can make you come into terms with yourself except for you. We can help you, but no amount of talk can change you. No one can be forced into changing his mind-set, if you try to, you’ll just be suppressing things and that can cause a lot of anxiety. I probably confused you more than how you already felt lol but I just wanted you to know that you shouldn’t be trying so hard to change your attitude about this.

|