I will share a specific experience that changed my perception of human normality. I was in a co-ed locker room getting ready to go swimming. I heard a man’s voice behind me, someone I knew slightly, comment, “Oh, my god, your breasts are amazing!”
Not being something you often hear a man say to a woman, I turned to humorously watch the interaction between a forty something man and a beautiful woman in her twenties.
The woman replied, “Thank you!”
The man asked, “Can I touch them?”
She delightfully replied, “Of course!”
Curious, I watched the two of them as he confidently reached out and touched her. It was one of the most interesting interactions I have ever witnessed. As he casually hefted and softly squeezed her breasts, they continued their discussion with the same emotion two people might have as they discussed avocados at the store. It wasn’t sexual, per se, not at all. Her breasts might as well have been her arm, or any other bodily feature. She wasn’t offended, he wasn’t leering, it was just one person expressing appreciation for the artwork that is the human body, to the person whose body he was admiring.
I looked around the room at the many people present. None of them were alarmed at the conversation. They were a group of about thirty unrelated friends and acquaintances, who were all in various stages of nudity. About ten of them were showering together, perhaps washing a back, or talking about some topic of the time. Every body shape was represented, tall, short, fat, thin, and many different races. What wasn’t present were the obsessions and hangups people have with their bodies, or those of others. When people’s clothes came off, the façade they lived was removed as well. There was no rich or poor, no status seeking, or confusion about roles or gender.
I was struck that this was health, and what was in the outside world was illness, but as I describe this, people from the outside world would think WE were perverse. These were the most emotionally healthy, real, honest, and accepting people I have ever experienced, and that extends to any church I ever attended. I am not saying that polysexuality is the cure all to our evils, but my observations is that we should be more open to deliberately and with forethought blending old social structures into our future.
The other thing that some people might find curious was the number of regular church attenders there were in that community. We often attended services together, and of course nobody in the sanctuary except us knew that we were joined in a closer than usual relationship. They thought we were just friends going to church with friends. As I write these words, I am smiling while remembering the many hours of intimate, often non-sexual times we spent together, as well as those times of loving expression.
I am quite comfortable with suggesting that every person who reads this article knows someone who belongs to that culture, although most likely you have no knowledge of it. Of those who don’t belong to such a society, many have had affairs. Which brings up another interesting fact: Of the thousands of people I encountered in that culture, I never heard anyone talk of having an affair. There was no cheating because permission and rules were defined. The attraction to cheating, and the excitement of it, was removed by permission and accessibility. Anyone who wanted attention, variety, or excitement got plenty of it. This is part of my discussion here. We have a path that provides a solution to many of the problems our culture faces. If we were to openly accept and embrace behaviors we involve ourselves in anyway, and perhaps modify them slightly, I can’t help but believe some of our most difficult challenges could be overcome.
As it turns out, two of my best friends were also involved in that lifestyle, and I had no idea. I had known him and his wife for twenty years, saw them weekly, and had no knowledge of their involvement until I ran into them at an event. They had no hint of my involvement either. Imagine the laughter. I have known countless hundreds of others whose family and friends had no idea that they had lives that included enjoying sex with their friends on weekends and vacations.
The purpose of this paper is not to promote one lifestyle over another. Neither is it an endorsement of any specific religious sect or spurious of others. Rather, I wanted to explore some aspects of human sexuality as it relates to intimacy, family bonding, and to explore one big reason why we are in a freefall of infertility. We lack intimacy and sexual satisfaction. That is not the only issue, and we will explore others, but as a culture we are not bonding into intimate colonies, and I believe that it is within our DNA to do so. In my paper on Marriage, I explore this colony idea more, but let’s continue to explore the sexual aspect of our challenges and the divergence between what we pretend to be, and who we are.
Research done in 2009 estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of polyamorous families in the USA, mostly polygynous, and 1.44 million participants. Other research indicates that there are 17 million people who are poly-relational, 5% who practice that family structure, and 20% of single people have been involved in some form of consensual non-monogamy. My experiences and observations growing up support those numbers. I knew of several families who had an unrelated person living with them, housekeepers who were actually lovers, or close friends who purchased property together. Often these relationships were casually understood by others in the family, and although not usually openly acknowledged, were often the source of jokes and innuendo.
My point is that, while generalizations are challenging, the number of people who are NOT monogamous, either by being openly poly relational or cheating, GREATLY outnumber the individuals who are. Yes, I am equally certain that there are people who find their person and mate for life, are happy, loyal, and feel fulfilled in their marriage. The truth is obvious, however, that those instances are far from being the norm. There are more than eleven million sex workers in the USA between the ages of 18 and 24. Do we need to discuss who their clients are?
Studying thousands of men and women at various kinds of events within poly cultures, I have some observations:
First, women who had NEVER expressed any interest in sexual contact with another woman, and vigorously denied any interest, often respond eagerly when in a situation where they were uninhibited by social stigmas. That often happened in a social circumstance like dancing at a club. I have watched as many husband’s eyes bugged out while their wife heatedly made out with another woman on the dance floor. In my years of observation I only saw one or two women out of thousands where this wasn’t the case. It is clear that for women, desire emerges out of being sexual, not from situational expectation. Just being in bed on Saturday night isn’t very desire producing for women. Preparing for social interaction, getting dressed up, applying makeup, doing their hair, especially if they are doing that with other women, enhances desire. Touching and facial expression is very important for women. For men, visual stimulation is crucial and they are much more transactional and goal oriented during sex. This becomes obvious if you have ever observed men sitting and watching women dancing together.
Secondly, women are MUCH more sexual than society would expect. The sexual capacity of a 40 – 50-year-old woman is astounding, and far more than any man that age. As we saw in the statistics of lesbian sex, it is not unusual for women to have many orgasms and engage in sexual activity for hours at a time, sometimes for days. These were the same women who rarely had sex with their husbands. I could not possibly count the number of times I have heard astounded men exclaim, while his wife was having sex with another man or woman, “I have never seen her like this and we’ve been married twenty, (or thirty) years.”
Rather than reading that with judgement, I hope people think about the experience, which, in my experience, is universal among many tens of thousands of women that have shared their experiences in online forums.
To be Continued in next Post for conclusion……