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From: barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry)
Newsgroups: soc.singles
Subject: Re: Best of Both Worlds..
Message-ID: <1661@ames.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Sep-86 03:23:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames.1661
Posted: Fri Sep 19 03:23:09 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Sep-86 20:04:08 EDT
References: <794@cuuxb.UUCP> <4016@reed.UUCP> <576@Diamond.BBN.COM>
Distribution: net
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 67

From: tjc@hrcca.UUCP (Thomas J. Chapin):
>> >In <1652.@ames.UUCP> Kenn Barry still thinks he has the best of all
>   possible worlds:

	I guess I'm incorrigible :-).
  
>> 				 One can share sex with people one
>> cares a lot about, who are nevertheless not potential SOs. This
>> may not be as emotionally profound as sex in the context of real
>> bonding, but it's a lot more than pleasant exercise. 
>
>More?  Perhaps.  But still in the same level of experience.  I guess I'm
>not looking for someone to "care a lot about."  I am looking for a
>relationship of overwhelming totality.

	Me, too; I guess we're both incurable romantics. I
haven't found open relationships inferior in the "overwhelming
totality" department. It's also important to realize that you and
I aren't everybody. Some may prefer less overwhelming
entanglements, and who are we to say they're wrong? Not what we
want, perhaps, but wrong for them?

>Not a relationship which can be
>concerned with accepting or rejecting "traditional pair-bonding roles"
>or with the politics of "freeing yourself from externally imposed
>stereotypes," but a relationship full enough to give life meaning.  

	Sorry if I got a bit pedantic. Writing about open
relationships and living them are two different things. If you
want my *personal* reasons for preferring open relationships,
they are too numerous for a short article, but I'd say two are
primary: one is that I can't convince myself I have the right to
demand that another person have sex with no one but me, under any
circumstances. The other is that I seem to lack the sex-jealousy
reflex. I've never had to overcome sexual jealousy because I've
never felt it.
	But I haven't been trying to argue *for* open
relationships (well, OK, maybe a little :-)), but merely for the
idea that they are best for some people. Maybe not you, maybe not
even most people. But for those that are suited to open
relationships, I don't think your objections apply.

>And if I find it, then the years of pain, both my loneliness and hurt I
>caused others who deserved my love but were rejected because I could not
>give it fully, will have been justified and given meaning.  And if not,
>then many who were better than I have also wasted their lives following
>a vain hope...

	You write well. But I wonder if you are assuming things
about my views on love based on my views on sex. I truly am a
great believer in Romance, and the kind of relationship I'd like
to find is little different from what you seek.

>I suppose I can have sex with friends and sex with acquaintances and sex
>with the sheep at the local meat market...and all the while I'll be
>looking over my shoulder, hoping to find the real thing.  Yeah, I guess
>it's all just a matter of taste.

	Always the either/or; sometimes stated, sometimes merely
implied, as above. A timely opportunity to restate my thesis: it
ain't that way for everybody. Believe me, I speak from experience.

-  From the Crow's Nest  -                      Kenn Barry
                                                NASA-Ames Research Center
                                                Moffett Field, CA
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