Is monogamy becoming an underrated value in our society?

[afleitch]

Girls are the worst when it comes to this. They all want to love a story like The Notebook or whatever, and if that doesn't happen, they grow flaky. Part of the reason my ex and I broke up after 2 and a half years was distance and because her perfect love story was falling apart. She did not want to work on it or try to work through the distance, which was temporary, and instead just wanted to end it.

That fits in with what women have told me, I find they're more likely to have the following order of preference:
Be with someone they're crazy about > be alone for life > "settle" for someone

Is that really wrong though? To me, "settling" seems like the worst of both worlds, the loss of freedom and independence of a relationship without the closeness and emotional connection of one. I look at my parents, for example, who were "married" only in the sense that they owned their house jointly and filed taxes together, but never showed any real love for each other, slept in separate beds, etc. That sounds like hell to me personally. I think the order of preferences you gave is the most rational, unless you have a strong desire to have children, stronger than your romantic desires, and you don't want to have to deal with the problems of single parenthood (not that there's anything wrong with being a single parent, but it's a lot of work). Since I don't even want kids, that doesn't apply to me.

Well, there's nothing really wrong with it. Although (here comes the 'but') I suppose in an earlier time it would have been termed 'selfish'. As people then did get married and did have children simply because they were expected to, and they didn't have so many choices. The arranged marriage, the idea of love growing with time, the idea of commitment, and so on. Having children, initially, is a sacrifice for the continuation and growth of the community. It isn't really supposed to make yourself happier at first.

Part of the problem is the constant 'interchangability' of marriage with sex for the raising of children; the idea that you have to have the marriage in order to have the sex in order to have the children. It's sex which leads to children and this has always has been the case. The other offshoot of this is the fairly recent societal demand that those who had the sex to have the children should raise them. While this has never really been the case at all it still remains an unreasonable ideal. All humans, sociopaths aside, have the ability to be care givers. It is often the parents or their extended family but that should never be exclusive. The idea of the 'nuclear family' while thankfully fleeting in practice was very much contrary to the traditional of care giving, yet people still hark back to it.

Also women always get the short end of the straw on this one; they can never fully escape their biology where as men can quite literally f-ck and go.

[afleitch]

Desiring to have sex to the obsessive or near-obsessive extent that you do is perverse, pervert. Social norms can certainly be perverse relative to some higher ideal.

I have to disagree with you on that point alone. Sexual desire for another adult itself is not a vice no matter how many times you actually desire to have it. I personally (and for this discussion don't mind being open about it) have a fairly constant sexual desire. Now it doesn't stop me going to work or pissing about this forum, but it does drive me to obtain an outlet for that at least once a day. I however choose to do so within a relationship and a marriage.

[afleitch]

Well this was fun. First of all, I think jumping on fezzyfestoon for his comments and some of the implications that he’s in the same league as a homophobe was one of the most bizarre things I have ever read on here. It was unmerited. At the risk of exposing myself to similar accusations I also have reservations, as a gay man, about individual claims of asexuality. In some cases (as has later been proven) a self labelled ‘asexual’ can be someone in denial about their homosexuality or bisexuality because of a personal or religiously driven discomfort over non vaginal sexual acts or intimacy. I am not for one second suggesting this applies to anyone on the forum, but merely pointing out observations from my own experiences. As a result, while there is nothing pathological about asexuality in that it isn’t a sexual disorder, claims of asexuality from some people can be nothing more than a ‘closet’, in the same way in which in claims of heterosexuality can also be a ‘closet.’

Part of what I think fezzy may have been trying to say is that we know from studies by the Kinsey Institute that some asexuals are not entirely sexually inhibited but comfortable with sexual release through masturbation but less comfortable or with less desire for sexual intimacy with another person. People are often too keen to compartmentalise their sexuality; the same goes for gays and straights too. For those with a degree of social awkwardness, you may have a generally ‘sexless’ life until the point in life where for whatever reason, you simply don’t.