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Friday, February 6th, 2009
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12:38p - Sex, Lies, and Internet. Part IV.
Women, if you recall our last discussion, almost never “swing alone,” yet tens of thousands of them happily engage in casual sex with virtual strangers as part of a couple. Baffling, isn’t it?
To better understand this phenomenon, let’s look at various types of “open” relationships. We’ve all heard about “free love” introduced by hippies in the 60’s and 70’s. Everybody screws everybody else—just come and get it. On the other end of this spectrum is polyamory—the ability to love, truly love, more than one person. Families of three or more partners are out there, and I am not talking about religious cults. Practitioners of polyamory live together voluntarily, and their rates of happiness are about the same as for the traditional families. You can read multiple articles and studies about them—it’s a well-known movement.
Swinging is entirely different from other non-monogamous lifestyles because in the midst of all this whirlwind sex you always have a couple, a man and a woman, in a long-term, stable relationship based on love and respect. Swingers are emotionally faithful to each other. For them, emotional fidelity has little to do with physical one. They enjoy watching their partners have sex with other people. It’s a game, like S&M or role playing (nurse-patient, teacher-student) for other couples.
Women need to love and be loved. With no-one to love, “screwing around” feels like plugging the wrong hole; no matter how you fill the other orifices, that empty spot in your souls remains. Men are not that different by the way—life without a loved one is not a happy affair.
Swingers don’t have that vacant spot in their hearts. What they do have is a loving, caring partner who happens to share their attitudes on what’s acceptable in bed as well as out of it. In such relationships, women feel emotionally safe to unleash their fantasies. Swingers are much happier than those couples where one partner desires sexual variety while the other is adamantly against it.
Constant suppression of sexual impulses (not to be confused with purely physical satisfaction) is akin to excluding an entire food group from your diet. Anybody who’s ever tried the Atkins plan would tell you they were not hungry. The Atkins diet meets all your caloric needs as well as most vitamin and mineral requirements. Some people manage to stay on it for a long time. The majority, however, starts daydreaming about bread and pasta after a relatively short period of time.
If you like role play, constantly fantasize about anal sex, or would love to watch your partner with another man or a woman, but your partner wouldn’t hear of it, sooner or later you would feel dissatisfied, and even three-times-a week-intercourse wouldn’t change that. Your “forbidden” fantasies play the role of lasagna for those on the Atkins diet. Obviously, some people can do without pasta or “simple carbs” altogether and some have enough willpower to resist the urges for the rest of their lives, but they are a minority.
Have you ever tried holding a ball under the water? How about doing it for years?
If you’re content with nothing but “traditional” sex, I am very happy for you. It does not, however, render you superior to those with unconventional sexual fantasies, although in most cases it does make you luckier, at least in the context of our society. Regardless of the amount and quality of conventional sex, if certain desires are unsatisfied for years on end, people slowly go crazy and start howling at the moon. We—all of us—are only truly happy when the sexual “makeup” of our partners matches that of our own.
God help everybody else. What are their choices? Trying to “break” somebody who is different and make them do things they disdain (or not do the things they desire) is the option least likely to succeed—and most likely to backfire. Divorce is another not-so-lovely alternative. How about a lifelong diet where you are not physically hungry but have to say good-bye to all the cakes and candy for the rest of your days? And then there’s cheating. Frankly, I don’t even know which option is worse here, and I refuse to judge anyone in this situation.
This brings me back to swingers. Instead of sneering, we should be happy for them. They do what they want, don’t lie to anybody, and enjoy themselves in the process. When conversations turn to swingers, somebody invariably points out they have their share of divorces, quarrels, and all sorts of family problems. But of course—what would you expect? They are human. The swinger community has its share of bastards and idiots. While swingers solve one major problem in their lives, they don’t solve the others. Their world is far from perfect, but I find it much more appealing than the one where people lie, cheat, wallow in guilt, or suffer from constant physical and/or psychological discontent. I hate diets—they don’t work.
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So far we have discussed two very separate categories here—swinging couples and “single” men and women looking for casual sex on the Internet. These two groups have one thing in common—monogamy is not their cup of tea. It is time to bring them together and talk about why they are wired this way. (Please note that adultery in not the focus of this article. Most people who use the Internet to search for sexual partners are either single or do it with their spouse’s consent. Those looking to cheat did it long before the advent of the Internet. The issue here is sexual behavior, not social issues or morality.)
People can be roughly divided into those who easily “separate” their souls from their bodies (please don’t take this literally) and those unable to do so. For some in the latter group such separation is physically impossible (women from this category almost never survive rapes—they go insane, or even commit suicide). Most, however, are capable of taking their emotional and physical experiences apart, but feel unhappy during the process, not to mention miserable and guilty afterward. Those who spend a portion of their youth enjoying purely sensual pursuits feel emotionally hollowed after a while. The “united body and soul” people are happiest with a stable, monogamous partner and are not looking for anybody else when they have one. Moral convictions have nothing to do with it; for them swinging is a slow destruction of the soul from within. And they are the majority—especially among women.
The majority from the second category has a tough time understanding the minority from the first one. Having tried, at some point or another, sex for the sake of sex, they found it emotionally wanting and spiritually unsatisfying. They then conveniently extrapolated their findings to the rest of the population. According to them, people who “screw around” are empty-headed bimbos, hippie hedonists without any moral compass, or weirdoes with psychological problems.
Yet, thousands and thousands of people from all walks of life enjoy sexual encounters with those they find attractive, and don’t expect anything more from these rendezvous than pure, physical pleasure. A multitude of intelligent and productive members of society believe sex with three of four partners is quite all right. Moreover, they enjoy it not only on the physical, but also the emotional level. Why not act out whatever sexual fantasy you have? And no, most of them were not sexually abused in their childhood.
The minority from the first group doesn’t comprehend what soul’s got to do with any of it in the first place.
People have different attitudes toward sex. Often, these attitudes change over the years. As long as all the participants are consenting adults, most people agree there’s nothing wrong with whatever rocks your boat. However, “right” and “wrong” may not the best criteria here, especially not in this day and age. Maybe it’s time we look at swinging from a different angle and learn to hold our judgments. Besides not being “wrong,” it is also not corrupting or soul emptying. The soul is not between one’s legs—at least for those who choose not to put it there.
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