From: miss059@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Pug)
Subject: Re: Sleeping with friends...
Organization: Pug's Pub and Pleasure Palace
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 12:26:08 GMT

In article <92096.155008SEK@psuvm.psu.edu> SEK@psuvm.psu.edu (Sonja Kueppers) writes:
>>What I have a very hard time figuring out is what/where the boundary between
>>what sleeping with a friend means, ans what sleeping with your SO means.
>Hmm.  Well, for me, there are two kinds of sexual relationships I have with
>people other than my SO:
>  1) Close
>  2) Distant
>Close relationships are relationships which appear to be "dating" type
>relationships.  I generally know what the other person is doing at any
>particular minute of the day, etc.
>Distant relationships are ones which are more casual and infrequent.
>Someone I might sleep with a few times a year falls into this category.
>The "distant" category doesn't mean that we can't be close friends; the
>relationship just doesn't have the intensity of the "close" type of
>relationship.
>I have had relationships which have moved from the "close" type to the
>"distant" type.

This is how a good number of my relationships have gone. Luckily the
majority of the relationships I have had just don't end. The people I
get close to usually mean too much to my life to just go away. Seems the
more the person means to me, the less distant it is, but theree is
always the problem of sometimes you just can't see them. 

>>If I and my SO were having an open relationship, what is there, that
>>distinguishes our relationship from the other people we were sleeps with?
>>where is the boundary between friendship and "romantic" love?
>For me, the answer is commitment and security.  My primary SO is the
>person I'm planning my life with.  That's the person with whom I
>make important life decisions.  Comfort, trust, friendship...these are
>things I have with my primary SO that I don't necessarily have with
>anyone else -- certainly not to the same degree.

For me it's mostly trust, love, security, comfort, friendship, emotional
stability.  These are the things that me and my SO share. Any of these
can be missing from the more casual relationships.

>>Do you have to be able to separate the emotional from the physical?
>Not necessarily.  I don't think it's such a bad thing to have serious
>emotional relationships with more than one person.  And I do feel a
>certain amount of attachment to anyone I've been intimate with, even
>if it was only once and I don't even know their name.

Do you have to separate? Of course not. Should  you? Of course not. Sex
is one of the wonderous things in life. Enjoy it with anyone you feel
you would like to. As for emotions, as long as you and your SO are
secure in you relationship, which I hope everyone is, you can be as
emotional as you wish with as many people as you wish. This sharing of
emotions makes a person feel wonderful and loved.

Take care.

-- 
Richard Bainter          Mundanely     |       "Teachers are supposed to
Phelim Utred Gervas      Society       |        teach you *HOW* to learn 
Pug                      Generally     |        not *WHAT* to learn."   
  miss059@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu  |  pug@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu  |  pug@wixer.UUCP
Newsgroups: soc.couples