Another Pink World

About

« Starlite Drive-In 2005 Season Passes | Main | covermewithkissesbaby,covermewithlove »

December 03, 2004

this is a weird fence to be sitting on

ok so i read the nerve personals blogs a lot and a discussion of fuck buddies has broken out across a couple of the blogs and in the comments. it is definitely interesting to get a little insight into the minds of people when it comes to this kind of thing. i know people who can't imagine having casual sex, and indeed not all of them have had the luxury of being in relationships throughout most of their adult lives. a few of them figured out that it wasn't going to work for them and pretty much stuck with it through hell or high water.

now oddly most of my sex partners have been casual but in all honesty, i do not really think i am a casual sex person. but i would like to be. gosh it would make things a lot easier, you know?

but i realized that i was shocked when one guy said that he has been sleeping with his FWBs (that's Friend With Benefits for the uninitiated) since March. wow. there are actually two people in the world, somewhere (France, actually, though neither of them are French) who can pull something like that off for almost a year?

for a while last year i read this book of essays about Buffy and in one of them, discussing her brief relationship with yucky Parker (i can't tell you how many Parkers i have encountered in my life) the writer comments that Buffy has the classic problem that all girls with absentee fathers have, which is that they cannot tell the difference between sex and intimacy.

so i guess the people who can pull off casual sex for extended periods are people who can distinguish those two things... but is that entirely a good thing? can sex be any good without any intimacy? how clear are the gender lines on these things?

but here is what i come back to time and again, which is that i wonder, if i have been dating for twenty years and have spent only three of those in actual relationships, perhaps i am not what is called a "relationship person". perhaps if i were of the coupling inclanation i'd be coupled. but if i am not a couple person, i am kind of left with casual sex and no intimacy, right? and that doesn't seem right. i mean, something makes me misreable when i'm single.

aw jeez. anyway, i am curious to hear what all of y'all have to say on this one.

Posted by lisa at December 03, 2004 07:16 PM | TrackBack

Comments

i think you really have to quantify what "coupling" entails

for some people coupling is damn near codependency. for others, couplehood is a partnership. still others probably define it as cohabitation.

i would be careful about saying you're not a relationship person (or a "couple" person) when there are so many different variations of each. i suspect you're probably a coupling person, but just haven't found the best couplehood variation for you.

Posted by: christa on December 4, 2004 03:06 AM

Well, I think the strictly defined boundaries of "relationships" are a crock, anyway. You make whatever arrangement with whomever you like, and live by that.

Arrangements take many forms, really. I've had extremely intimate relationships that didn't involve sex, and things that were just sex. It depends on what you want, and what the other person wants.

I don't think I've ever run into a relationship that was more than just two people. Even various poly things all seem to be comprised of a permutation of all the couple combinations, because all it takes it two people having a bad time to screw up the whole thing.

Honesty seems to be the key, not just with the other person, but also with yourself and what you want and can provide in a relationship. Some people work fine with the "Live close by, visit often" thing, others aren't happy unless you're in the same bed every night. The sex and monogamy thing is a whole nother issue.

It's true that most people are going to be looking for some kind of live in monagamy relationship, and that those that aren't are usually looking for just fucking around and please don't talk too much; but I've met enough people looking for something in between that I can't help but think it's possible to find exactly what you want if you know how to define it.

And if you know what you want.

Posted by: Jason! on December 4, 2004 10:41 AM

i feel like there's a chicken and egg problem where i don't know that i'll know what i want until i experience or build it or work it out with someone. but yet not knowing what i want seems immature and like something i should work on... yet i do put a great deal of thought and navel-gazing into it.

Posted by: lisa on December 4, 2004 04:04 PM

i know you groan every time i bring up ruth, the life coach. but one of the biggest things she did for me was help me figure out what i wanted... not only in relationships but in, uh, life.

it sounds stupid that i had to hire someone to help me figure it out, but that's what i needed... someone every week to nudge me and say, "so, where are you at with this?" it helped me immensely.

Posted by: christa on December 4, 2004 05:39 PM

Post a comment