Monogamy

You sound blessed. :slight_smile:

Hmm, perhaps but I do think it was more of a destiny thing. See we met on a blind date. When I laid eyes on him I knew him immediately. I had had dreams about him shaven bearded, happy angry etc. I knew him from only my dreams throughout childhood(I was 18 when we finally met). He always chased after redheads. I was raised in Arizona , he was raised in Oregon. When we met that night we fought as only two people who trust each other could fight. Our lives together was more meant to be than a blessing. Really ,trouble has followed us all over this country but, we still love and laugh because we know each other and trust each other as the closest of friends , two people becoming one.

It sounds like a poem, and in regard to that it sounds like serendipity; congratulations, if only everyone was so lucky. :slight_smile:

I’m a cynic about many things, but love, well I am a romantic.

Luck is the right word, but it still takes love patience a sense of humor and alot of work. Ours is not unique i think many people find the one but they just don’t realize it. Like I said we fight , we are opposites in many ways, oh heck in most ways. we are both very stubborn though ,we both have tempers, and we both love to laugh. Perhaps most people think their opposite won’t work? What is a coin without both halves? If you look for someone who is like you then you are two halves of the same side of a coin, you cannot make one coin. Does that make sense?

Makes perfect sense to me. :slight_smile:

:smiley: Good then monogamy will be impossible if you think to only look for your side of the coin right? Since most people tend to only wish to look for someone they think is like them, monogamy is not going to happen readily, you will still be forced to look around for the other side of that coin even though you don’t realize it.

I think monogamy has a lot to do with future expectations rather than immediate gratification.

I seem to have come across as having some sort of “perfect” (i.e. fairy tale) marriage. I don’t. I just don’t want to fight with my husband. He often wants to pick a fight with me as a way of working things out between us. I’d rather not ‘fight,’ because I’ve learned that I have a very low stress level. My husband seems to thrive on stress and argument–it’s what he’s used to. So be it. We generally work things out.

I read an interesting article in Time magazine while waiting to get my hair cut. It very briefly talked about the differences between a consumerist mind and a mind that can wait. The difference seems to be that the consumerist mind is geared toward instant gratification, even though instant gratification gives them little reward. Those who wait receive a greater reward in the end.

We’re all hit today with advertisements for the ‘newest and the best’ of toys that’ll turn everything into something. If you want it even though you don’t know exactly what it is, here’s the electronic toy that’ll get it for you–right now. If you don’t have the money to pay for it–borrow that money with your credit card.

Is Monogamy like grabbing the marshmallow when it’s initially presented or is it waiting for the second marshmallow?

yes but if you fit together there is no expectations or gratification it just is. it just feels right even if you are angry at the other.

Yes, Kris, I was trying to think of the psychological reasons for not wanting a workable monogamous relationship–why some people prefer to go ‘from flower to flower,’ as the King says in The King and I.

LOl well, the main reason I think would be how you saw the adults in your life live as you grew up. That seems to me the biggest influence on Monogamy. It will make or break that need or desire.

I don’t see how you could limit influence to adults. The development of psycho-social propensities is dependent on the entire sphere of childhood experience, including the larger social milieu. Your stance on relationships is certainly not set in stone prior to the influential pubescent period where your experience with sexual/romantic relationships will be most abundant (in the formative years). In this case, the influence would not be so much by adults as by peers.

The socio-commercial environment also plays a substantial role…I would think. Firstly, we can see that indeed a common theme of drama is betrayal by the spouse, lover, etc. and divorce rates, rampant marketing of sexual themes, etc. could be said to influence polygamy–these things are ineluctable aspects of the modern society. Contrarily, we have Walt Disney, all manner of romance novels, the industry of marriage (as opposed to the institution–modern marriage is a corporate enterprise) the church, social convention, etc.–these are hegemonic variables are certainly not .

And who influenced those Peers and all the rest? who made the society? Adults. Children are influenced by what the adults do around them. Those peers are going to be sexual according to how they were influenced by Adults, at home commercially socially etc. Who makes Walt Disney? Adults.

Then are we to believe that in the absence of adults the child would simply not be sexual?

Really ???How do you get sexual and sexual behaviorisms as the same thing? When hormones hit there will be sexual. How that sexual need is translated depends upon the upbringing since we are social creatures. we simply do not rely on nature as much as most animals do. We are more influenced by our society than nature. Do you see males sniffing the butts of females while the female is menustrating? Do they automatically start following the female fighting each other and trying to have sex with that female? There are very few males that are sensitive enough to know when a female is menustrating and ready to breed. So really nature plays very little in our behavior. Society forms the sexual behaviorisms.

Indeed men do not know, for the most part, when a woman is menstruating. But men are also men as opposed to dogs. If you wish to delve into the semiotics of sexual stimulation by innate propensities, we can discuss pheromones, the high heel’s effect on the buttocks, the influence of curvature, provocative clothing, etc.[1] The fact is that sexual attraction is not preempted by the ethics of social convention–these serve only to discourage the act itself; being raised as celibate will not contradict the biochemical response to a potential mate.

But this is beside the point, as I have not argued anywhere that sexual behavior, in the sense of action, is not heavily dictated by the social milieu–just that the adult is not the sole arbiter of socio-sexual practices. Hence in the absence of adults, adolescents would still develop one or another such practice.

[1] While society may be responsible for high heels and provocative attire, the reaction to such articles and accessories is nature’s own.

Nature has far less to do with it than society does and society is maintained by adults and their behaviors. If a child has no human contact it will most likely go for the nearest hominid or other animal to sate a nonunderstood hormonal lust but, that does not form a bond or behaviorism it is not necessarrily going to form a habit. Sexual behavior in society is habit learned by the child from the adult influence, not nature as such. Feral children are few and far between they do not figure into a conversation about societal behaviors. There is not enough Data on feral children to form a certainty

Could you perhaps give me something more convincing than a statement of opinion and over simplified formulas? All I see that you have presented is the origin paradox of the chicken and the egg.

How old are you? Are you male or female?

Against my better judgment, 23 and male.

So when a woman is putting out that monthly amount of pheremones and hormones do you get aroused? Do even know which one it is? Can you tell? Can you go straight to the right female and get sex from her without her permission? Can you just go around forcing females that are breedable to have sex? Or do you?