Been thinking about this word a lot of late and about my take on sex and love…
What bought this all on you ask? Do read on…
Regular readers of my take on sexuality and its coexistence with everything we are and do may remember that the girly and I are in an open relationship and have been for a few years now. It wasn’t easy getting to this point but it may be a little easier going forward now that I know better where my head and heart are. Thanks in a large part to the cathartic writing and research for this blog.
On with the story…was on the train last weekend complete with my copy of The Ethical Slut which for the record I have only been able to pick up and read little by little over the last few months since purchasing it. Why?
Well, my experience’s thus far over 40 years on the planet dealing with women and sex and love has been quite the saga. I really only have had a few opportunities to have sex with women without having to answer 1000 questions prior, prove myself via dates a plenty and so on and so forth. Then there is the issue of giving your heart to her and only her. It is, has and continues to be very draining I can tell you.
So while reading this book has been a wonderful experience, coming back to reality is like being in a 747 crash landing. I am winning the war though albeit slowly and know in my heart that polyamory is for me in the long term. Slow and steady will win this race.
So where do I stand right now…?
On sex, yes I want more and could quite comfortably have sex once a day for the inevitable future if I could find women of a similar mindset. That has proved nigh on impossible thus far and in fact I think I have only met maybe 5 women over my life who seemed comfortable with communicating sexually which is overly negative but it is what I have experienced. But to end this paragraph with a bit of positivity I will state for the record I have been talking to a woman via a dating site and she is so wonderfully open in regards to sex and it is such a fresh breath of air I feel positively buoyed when I get a text from her. The small downside is that I don’t think it will go anywhere so I guess I will just have to be happy with hot texts and emails etc.
On love, I am all for loving more women but again they need to be of a similar mindset in that they are comfortable reciprocating without any jealousy involved or being overly needy. I would love to know 4 or 5 wonderful women who I could be intimate with when required but also just to hangout with, have dinner with, enjoy coffee and a chat, walk the beach together and so many other things. We all need love and as I get older I realise that it certainly isn’t going to hurt having more of it around and also dishing it out to those women whom I share a connection with. Finding them is the issue.
As an aside to this thought, I have a young niece and I hope to in time even if it takes 20 years sit down with her over coffee and share of my experience but I fear by then she too like far too many other women might be contaminated by the vacuum that is monogamy. Maybe things will change more between then and now? I certainly hope so and I hope she meets interesting people who expand her mind just in case that conversation doesn’t happen.
As for me, I will keep plugging away, one step at a time but I do know right at this moment more about me and what I want going forward from 40 and that can only be a good thing.
Adios
Clyde
Peninsula Polyamory 
It’s a good thing that you now know what you want moving forward. Great article. 🙂
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Thank you very much. It has been one hell of a journey thus far. Crazy thing is that I am only halfway…YAY!!, well, that is if I crack the big Eight Zero? All the best, C.
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Go Clyde!
I think TES should be a primer for all relationships. Many monogamous ones could be improved with the degree of openness and honest the authors lay out. It’s so much more than sexual choices.
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I so agree and it would be quite funny to see the reactions of conservative parents when young Sarah or Craig bought this book home in their bag during year 10 as part of their relationships module!!! I can just see them now at the school gates with their placcards chanting and maybe going as far to burn the book etc..! Maybe one day it will happen but I don’t think it will be in our lifetime.
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Clyde sez: “I really only have had a few opportunities to have sex with women without having to answer 1000 questions prior, prove myself via dates a plenty and so on and so forth.”
The thing is, getting involved in the polyamory community isn’t likely to change that. Folks who are engaging in open relationships now are, in many cases, the polar opposite of the (stereotypical) free-love bedhoppers of the 70’s. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised to have a prospective lover hand me a form to fill out for a background and credit check (not to mention full and recent test results).
As someone in an open relationship, things with new partners often proceed MORE slowly than they did when I was dating in a serial monogamy context. Why? Because the person I’m dating already has a spouse or other partner, and going too fast with me could upset the applecart at home.
Many people try to find ways around the rigors of courtship to get to the sex — everyone from pickup artists to the clients of sex workers. But ultimately there’s no fast-forward button on relationships, and that’s unlikely to change because the potential damage that could result from making the wrong choice about who to sleep with — particularly for women — is so incredibly high.
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And that my dear is my main issue in life and indeed a lot of men. We are put on this planet with a whole lot of sexual energy and I would argue for the most part are women’s sexual starter motors a fair bit of the time. That demographic is changing though as women slowly are coming to understand and more importantly not be afraid to voice their sexual thoughts and feelings. Maybe there will come a time when we get close to a balance with both sexes doing an equal share of the work but I certainly wont be around to see that. In the meantime however how do we manage that excess sexual energy, the excess that keeps sex-workers in business, that drives a man to commit sexual assault, that sustains a whole tribe of uber-feminists aimed with the dual missions of wiping the world of prostitution and pornography, that drives men underground when their sexual tastes involve minors, that sustains and industry that objectifies and treats women poorly for the most part etc etc etc…
This is why I would love to see more women take a supplement of testosterone for a short time monitored by their doctor just to see what it is really like being a man with a crazy sex drive and blog on it or have it surveyed so that the TRUTH is finally displayed for one and all to read and digest. Then maybe we might be able to take steps in the right direction because currently the debate that is happening is just opinions from people who have never experienced what it is like to look at women all day long and think dirty thoughts every 10 minutes or so.
Thank you again for voicing your opinion.
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My overall response to this?
You can’t possibly be serious.
What work? The fact that men want to satisfy their sexual needs isn’t my problem; it’s theirs. It’s not work that I need to do an “equal share of.”
If men think women are “the problem” when it comes to not getting the sex they want, they need to look at their own role in creating and maintaining that problem. Most men are just shooting themselves in the foot.
I really hope that you don’t believe that women “drive men to the edge of sexual assault,” or that that was just a poor choice of words. No woman in the history of history has ever “driven a man to sexual assault.” That’s a CHOICE that a man makes to take sex against the will of another human being. How a woman dresses, acts, or saying no to sex she doesn’t want doesn’t cause rape: rapists cause rape.
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Lily, all my thoughts are on my blog and it your right to disagree with them as you see fit. They are garnered from 25 odd years of being sexually active and whilst they may not be correct for all men they are an indication of how some of us feel. This is why the sexual gulf exists between men and women and why I cant see it disappearing anytime soon. Maybe there will be a scientific solution that enables women to experience how men feel during their waking hours and that will then drive the evolution we all desperately need in the area of sexual politics. Maybe it wont too and we will all just continue to plod along arguing that each other is right and basically go nowhere.
I have no real answers just thoughts and I don’t impose them on anybody. Just puttin it out there for discussion!
As for creating and maintaining the problem…men and women both do their bit in this area and yes for the most part men have subjugated women for an awful long time and I am genuinely sorry for that but women are by no means innocent in that area as well.
I did not say WOMEN drive men to the edge of sexual assault. I implied that testosterone as sexual energy does this. I agree with the rest of your comment but we all genuinely need to look at the base level brain chemicals because they when combined with life experience, inherent psychology and other factors are the reason why some men take their sexual urges too far.
As you may if you choose to read further am a big supporter of sexual education from an early age. If we could all get over ourselves, our embarrassment, our disgust, our fear of sexuality and achieve this goal by implementing excellent sexual education we would I believe cancel out a lot of the sexuality based problems you can read about in any paper all over the world on any given day.
One other comment is that I long for a day where men will get over this fear of engaging in sex with other men. It is an interesting experience I can tell you as a young man when you first line up at a urinal with other men and no one looks any other way than straight ahead. Nothing is said with the exception when alcohol is involved and one’s inhibitions are at a low. Maybe that is part of the answer in solving the problem that exists between men and women but I still think that keeping our heads in the sand IRT to the sexual pilot light that is testosterone is a pointless road to travel as has been proven well and truly in my lifetime.
Thanks,
Clyde
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