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Separating Sex and Love

Remember when you were a teenager and beginning to get curious about having sex? If you were fortunate enough to have parents that actually discussed the topics of sex and relationships with you, then you were more than likely advised to wait until you fall in love before having sex. "Wait for Mr./Miss right to come along!" "Don't waste yourself on someone that doesn't love you." Yeah, it's all coming back now; you can clearly hear your mother's voice dishing out her words of wisdom.

Why were we so strongly led to believe that sex and love had to come all wrapped up together in one neat little package? It might come from the simple fact that our parents were worried about unwanted pregnancies. If they could get you to wait until you fell in love before having sex, it would reduce the chances of having an unwanted child. If by chance a pregnancy occurred, if it was with someone you loved, then hopefully you'd get married and the whole problem would be covered up. The "wait until you're in love" theory was also used as a delay tactic, because most teenagers go through many short lived crushes. To actually "fall in love" takes quite a while and when you really believed that you were in love, your Mom told you to wait to make sure that it was true, long lasting love. We were too young to understand that it was just a clever way for our parents to keep our raging teenaged hormones under wraps.

Now that we are all grown up, living on our own, supporting ourselves and old enough to handle the consequences of our actions, we can do whatever the hell we want. Do we still wait for love before we have sex? Should we? Should we instead just let loose and have some fun? To what degree are love and sex entwined and what happens when you separate them? All are good questions.

Chances are that when we start seeing someone, we go out on a number of dates and then have sex with the person long before love ever comes into the picture. Let's face it; we all have physical needs that have to be fulfilled. If we waited until we were in love with Mr. or Miss right, half of the 30 year olds in this country would still be virgins. Of course this is a generalization, but it seems that as long as we like our partners "reasonably well", we seem to think that this is a high enough standard to justify sex with them. This is sex on the road to love.

So what about one-night stands, which most certainly qualifies as sex without love? Some folks sleep with people that they barely know on a regular basis, while others don't feel particularly comfortable with the idea. It is, however, probably safe to say that most of us have done it at least once. Surely casual sex with strangers is going against what our mothers told us. Are North Americans just too conservative and hung up about sex? We most certainly are. Does that mean that we should go around having casual sex with whoever asks us? Probably not.

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