Intimite relationship, desires and commitment

[Identity]

Some conversations I have had with my girlfriend sparked this interest of hearing different perspectives on the topic of desire and commitment within intimate relationships. The perspective of me and my girlfriend are quite far apart. I would love to hear how other people view this topic.

My perspective:

I shared with my girlfriend that I have desires for other girls then her at times.

In the form of:

- Getting aroused by hot girls walking down the street

- Daydreaming about sex with other girls

- Watching porn from time to time

From my perspective, this is normal for a young guy being in a relationship.

For me commitment is the choice of what I do with those thoughts and desires, thus not acting on them.

So, as long as I honour our agreement to be monogamous, all is good. I don't want to suppress any of these desires, but just deal with them deliberately. 

My understanding of her perspective:

For her basically any form of desire outside my desire for her is hurtful. 

She also claims (I say claims because I am sceptical) that she has no desires outside of me of any kind. I explicitly asked for different desires, and she denied to have any of these:

- Feeling aroused when a hot guy looks at her with sexual intention

- Wanting to watch porn

- Daydreaming about intimacy with other guys

To her the ideal relationship is one where you basically only see each other. No thoughts, emotions, desires for other people of any kind. 

Anything that falls outside of that mould she regards as hurtful, not the maximum amount of love you could have for each other.

Questions:

- To guys in relationships; do you also have desires for other women? If yes, to what degree? Has this evolved during the course of your relationship?

- To girls in relationships; do you ever have desires for different men? If yes, what form do they take?

- As a guy, I want to be honest, yet not hurtful. My approach so far has been to try to answer questions honestly (not easy), but not share much otherwise. However, I am not sure what approach to really take. I could play into her desires and fantasies vs. be honest to different degrees...

- Are the perspectives and desires of men and woman just inherently different on this topic? Just because we are both devils, or do these perspectives remain add odds at higher states of consciousness?

[wwhy]

1 hour ago, Identity said:

Some conversations I have had with my girlfriend sparked this interest of hearing different perspectives on the topic of desire and commitment within intimate relationships. The perspective of me and my girlfriend are quite far apart. I would love to hear how other people view this topic.

My perspective:

I shared with my girlfriend that I have desires for other girls then her at times.

In the form of:

- Getting aroused by hot girls walking down the street

- Daydreaming about sex with other girls

- Watching porn from time to time

 

Maybe for her being aroused means ready and willing to have sex. Same with daydreaming. Or maybe she is one of those people that just dont think in pictures at all. And maybe she just hasn't seen any porn that does it for her. How about trying a different question:

Get two pics, one of a man you consider really good looking, another of one you consider really ugly. Ask her which one is hotter. If she picks the attractive one, ask her how she knew that. Tell her thats what you meant by getting aroused, and you did not really mean like getting always hard and ready aroused... just "i acknowledge good form" arousal. If she picks the other or refuses to play, those are issues. I don't know her, so I wont speculate on what kind of issues.

Edited August 4, 2020 by wwhy

[Preety_India]

 

Maybe she is the type who wants a monogamous committed relationship like me.

If that's her type, then she deserves her type. 

If my boyfriend was seeing other women and or having sex with them, it would hurt me too much. 

I think this is natural for most people. Even men don't want their girlfriends to sleep with other men. 

In basic terms, it's called cheating. 

But people have ways to justify and rationalize cheating. To each his own.. 

[flume]

13 hours ago, Identity said:

My understanding of her perspective

I love how you worded this

I used to think like your girlfriend some years ago so I can see where she’s coming from. I even thought that thinking about someone else is basically cheating. I wasn’t badly hurt but I thought “Something must obviously not be right in the relationship to this wouldn’t happen”. Now I see things more like you do.

Here are some things that helped me shift my perspective:

• Working on my self esteem
• Getting more independent (It only ever happened when my life was overly based on one person)
• Getting a good inner guidance system through meditation and learning how ego works
• Therapy
• Learning about feminine and masculine dynamics (David Deida’s books for example)
• Learning to Distinguish attraction from commitment.

I’ve been in relationships where I haven’t thought about other guys for years (Like maybe as a thought experiment but not emotionally or sexually charged). So it definitely exists. I think it’s especially difficult for woman because men are attracted in such obvious ways like by looks, so it hurts. For woman it’s more sneaky, I for example dream more about a mans strength, vision, support, presence, integrity, etc. not so much about his muscles ;-) But when a man provided that, I felt truly fulfilled in the relationship :-) Hope this helps.

Don’t beat yourself up for getting aroused. It’s chemistry. Acknowledge it, let it work through you and when you have clarity on what you want in your life, make a decision. Do that every single day. I think you’re doing well being so honest with yourself and your girlfriend. The only thing you could ever owe her is truth.

All the best!

[flume]

@Preety_India He hasn't cheated nor has he ever said he would. Shaming people for their basic biology or feeling a certain way helps no one, makes them feel guilty and like there's something wrong with them. It creates all sorts of twisted behaviours. I'm being a bit sharp because I've experienced it on myself and I've created a problem where there really wasn't any. Seeing how honest he is with the whole situation is really the only way to go about this. Most people would never talk about these things so it just stays in the dark. He's just saying what so many people are thinking. It's not "justifying cheating".

No offense meant! 

[Preety_India]

@flume I didn't shame anyone. Stop shaming me. 

I only explained my perspective and how I see it in my eyes 

If you don't like my perspective or comments , don't bother to reply. 

Be respectful instead of typing "no offense" doesn't work like that 

Edited August 4, 2020 by Preety_India

[Identity]

@Meta-Man Cool thanks for your reply. Your perspective basically overlaps 95% with my perspective on this issue.

Now I’m gonna defend my position even harder.

Just kidding ?

[Identity]

@wwhy Hahaha, funny, I must have spend 10 minutes giving her different scenarios.

So... you have no attraction in this situation whatsoever?!

You never have this type of thought?!

No feelings in your body arise.. at all?!

She was pretty adamant.

But yeah, she does say she can ‘objectively’ say that a man is good looking. But she does not make the step to saying that she is attracted in any way. 
I guess we are both doing some mental gymnastics, making distinctions in certain ways, that help us justify our view.

[Identity]

@Preety_India So.. I am not talking about actually acting on thoughts and desires. That in my mind does indeed cross the line of our monogamous Relationship.

How does this question apply to you?;

- To girls in relationships; do you ever have desires for different men? If yes, what form do they take?

[Identity]

@flume Thanks for your response! Interesting to hear your perspective on this and how it changed.

It must be quite hard being at the other side of this, and I see how one would indeed need high self-esteem and stuff to be able to deal with it.

For me it is easy, as she has no desires (maybe some sneaky ones you mention ??‍♂️). But if she would also have these types of desires, I would probably also be scared and hurt.

??

[Gesundheit]

@Identity She's obviously lying or has low consciousness. Is she at stage Blue?

You should particularly watch out of women who claim to be angels, they're usually devils with a halo around their breasts lol

[Farnaby]

@Identity completely normal. At least that has been my experience in every relationship I've been.

Maybe the first couple of months in the limerance phase you don't get attracted to other girls, but I don't know any guy in a long term relationship who doesn't find other hot girls hot. 

It could be that due to how we men function it happens more frequently to us (because we're very visual and women usually need some emotional connection to feel attracted). But I highly doubt it's exclusive to men. My girlfriend finds other guys (in movies or in real life) physically attractive. This can trigger insecurities, sure, but it's a natural thing IMO. 

Sometimes it's some desire/fantasy that's unfulfilled in the relationship and in that case it could be important to talk about it with your girlfriend. 

I agree that commitment doesn't mean that you lose your instincts. It means that you value your relationship more than having sex with a random stranger and you don't act out. 

[bejapuskas]

14 hours ago, Identity said:

It must be quite hard being at the other side of this, and I see how one would indeed need high self-esteem and stuff to be able to deal with it.

For me it is easy, as she has no desires (maybe some sneaky ones you mention ??‍♂️). But if she would also have these types of desires, I would probably also be scared and hurt.

??

I guess she might be more attached to you because you are already having sex together I assume and because you already were considering a break up with her once in the past, so that might also be a significant factor for her.

[Identity]

Thank you all for your replies, I really appreciate it. It was nice to hear some other perspectives on this.

Over the past few days my girlfriend and I have talked quite a bit about it. Now that we both understand eachother’s perspectives better, a lot of the differences have been resolved automatically.

We’re gonna talk more to find a good way to move forwards.

@bejapuskas Would you be so kind to close the thread my friend? ???

[bejapuskas]

I am glad this thread has served you well