Tuesday, December 1, 2009

A QUESTION. . . .and some comments. . . .

Question for you-- Is it possible to be in love with someone and not have any sexual feelings for them? Thanks.

First off, Anonymous, thanks for your comments and your question.

Hmmm first off, I don't know. . . how do you define "in love"? Ordinarily, "in love" means a somewhat exclusive involvement. . .and being in love with someone usually involves deep and intimate manifestations. Is this too broad or too exclusive?

I know this: I love many people, some more than others, but I am not sexually attracted to them and do not have any sexual feelings for them. There are those for whom I do have "sexual feelings" but I do not love them; I don't even know them. . .but lustily desire their bodies. . LOL

There have been those I class as being "in love with" and this did involve sexual feelings. And I am currently "in love" with someone and there definitely are sexual feelings and expression.

This is my limited take on your good question. NOW, I hope OTHERS will share their views on this question. Please. . if I am narrow, I DO want to expand. . .as it were.

Thanks all.
Justin

5 comments:

Arch said...

The neat thing about "love" is that there is no limit to how much you spread around. I've been "out" or so I thought at work, with friends, and some of my family for about 10 years. On "National Coming Out Day" I donated my status on Facebook and put everything out to the world. I came out to the rest of my family and talked about it with a lot of people at work. Seem I wasn't as out as I thought. Anyway, since then I've been a lot more free with the "I love you" to all my friends and family. Straight friends and co-workers had a problem with it at first, but it's just part of a conversation they accept from me now. So yeah, I love a lot of people and have made a conscious effort to let them know quite often. Most of the people I love has absolutely nothing to do with sexuality. In fact, with a lot of them those two words together are just creepy.

I've been "in Love" with the same guy for about 9 1/2 years [although there might be a couple of occasions when that was tough]. This relationship has definitely involved sexual feelings.

There are always going to be those occasional "in lust" moments with a few people you love, but aren't in love with, but I've found that in most cases, those don't really last.

Gary Kelly said...

It's certainly possible to love another person without having any sexual feelings for them... or lust feelings. I loved my best friend very much - in fact, more than I've ever loved anyone - but I wasn't IN love with him. He once told me that it was okay if I masturbated while thinking naughty thoughts about him. Hahahaha! Yeah, right. I told him thanks but no... besides, it would have been sacrilegious.

BTW, he loved me too. LYT (love ya tons) was often his email sign off.

I'm certainly no expert in matters of love, but at least I've experienced the genuine article.

Jack Greenman said...

I tend to agree with what you said, I would find it hard to expand on, we're in mesh there.

Unknown said...

Almost 11 years together and probably about that same number of times that we have had sexual feelings. I love him and could not imagine my life without him. Sexually, I get along just fine on my own.

JustinO'Shea said...

Thanks for your continuing comments, COOP et al. This is aan area which needs for and in each of us a lot of clarification and sorting of ideas.

One of the guys in our therapy-support group [made up of five gays and one str8 psych majors + our prof-mentor) was talking about this yesterday in session.

He was saying that way too many notions and variants of ersatz "love" are just swallowed [sic] without any kind of selectivity. It's "anything goes" whatever turns you on, baby", "f*^k you, I got mine" etc and we don't make intelligent choices and decions re:the highly volatile emotions we think of as 'love'.

Basically, qualified and time-tested authors and academicians talk about 2 kinds of love: 'agape' and 'eros'. Agape is that love for family, parents-children, buddies, best friends and so forth.

It is an "universal" love, admitting of different degrees of intensity. For christian writers this is the kind of challenging other-centered love best expressed in the words of Jesus "Love one another as I have love you." [Try it and see how much that really costs us! hehe]

"Eros" is erotic love which by its very nature knows an exclusivity about it. Erotic love is not the activity of a group=grope, orgy,circle jerk, whatever. That isn't erotic love.. . that is classic narcissism. [cf Dec 4 post in JustinDunes for more on this.]