many partners

I'm hardly a slut myself but for me it's always been a bit because the opportunity has presented itself and I'm not likely to turn it down in a hurry.

What are reasons people like to sow their wild oats? and why do others (not necessarily in committed relationships) not do so?

i am a non-slut mainly becuz i am a MASSIVE intellectual snob who is also v.shallow eg i seem only evah to be physically attracted to those whose minds utterly smother me with boredom...

My top ten list of motivations would be: apathy, permissive society/parents, passivity, need for approval, popularity and enjoyment of others company, lack of moral judgement, lack of judgement in general, desire to make others happy, addictions which impair judgement (okay, that might not be a separate category), self hatred and accompanying desire to be swamped by another or destroyed, self confidence and accompanying ability to set others at their ease and make them feel good, and finally an idiotic inability or stubborn refusal to admit the sameness or emptiness underlying all being.

These aren't all 'motivations' and there aren't ten, but I know you want to fuck me anyway.

(does that cover everyone or are you just talking abt yrself)

(#10 is a cracking chat-up line also)

i don't quite know what makes a person qualify as being a slut. i have had some one-nite stands though. what makes me do it? errr cos i find someone attractive and want to fuck them. i don't think i am looking for approval. i think if anything i am looking for disapproval (was notoriously good when growing up and so probably trying to rebel even though no-one gives a toss!) but anyway that was a phase i went through and now i only have sex with people that i know and like.

Rebellion as motivation? Rebellion against what? If against prudish or patriarchal society, 1) too late, 2) by fucking them?

i've probably had more partners for my age then most in my, uh, demographic (indie sad boy saddo), but less than, say, yr average frat goon/chucklehead/mook-type-creature. (given as i am a ugly as a mule and twice as ornery, yr guess is as good as mine as to why this is.) that said, it -still- tends to provoke: "(insert number here - a lady never tells), wow really?! that's so many!" from the average gurl-type punter. (i have a sneaking suspicion i could say .05 and the average gurl-type punter would be shocked and dismayed, but this is probably genderism on my part.) i don't think i'm a slut; i do - like- sex. but i would erase oh, all but two...maaaaaybe three on the outside...of those people. i -do- have a problem with conflating sex with emotional intimacy. (i.e. i need it to have "good" sex, so i try to convince myself it's there when it's not.)

that said, i can't fucking fathom the notion of having a "relationship" with more than one person at once. i'm "in it to win it" when i am.

Yeah, 'polyamory' is a definite dud in my book

Rebellion as motivation? Rebellion against what? If against prudish or patriarchal society, 1) too late, 2) by fucking them?

rebellion against my own prior prudishness really.

I am seriously thinking about starting a free love commune with en suite STD clinic. Restricting love to just one person is mean-spirited, selfish and bourgeois.

I am a non-slut because not enough people fancy me.

which is a shame, really, I'd like to think I was a non-slut by choice.

You'll need an STD clinic with some of your fee lovers, boyo ;).

Momus, embrace yer bourgeois upbringing. Don't deny it by having multiple partners. ;-)

Seriously, though...

Have often thought about the lots-of-partners issue and it seems to me that try as one may, it doesn't work and offers nothing but diminishing returns. And there is always an imbalance, eg. you might be one person's only partner but that person may be one of many you use for the purpose of sex and companionship. As to whether monogamy is mean- spirited, selfish and bourgeois, I am not inclined to agree. That sounds like a very convenient opinion to have if you want to rationalise sleeping around. I think the tendency for men to privilege themselves into multiple partner situations while not allowing women the same entitlements is about as bourgeois and selfish as it gets. I can think of quite a few men who have kept multiple women on the go, only to dump the one woman in this circle who dares to take other lovers (and it's often the way with high-profile men: I had one such boyfriend who was seeing three girls at the same time. As one of the three, I knew who the other two were, they knew who I was, and the humour in the situation for me was the speculation about which of us had the best shot at him, really. We all reckoned it was one of the others! I just got bored and stopped returning his calls). Would it be too invasive to suggest that having all these partners is a way to avoid getting hurt by infidelity? It might look good, but lots of superficial, shallow things do. If you don't allow yourself the possiblility of getting emotionally attached to one person, you are trying to avoid the pain of eventual unattachment, which is pessimistic to say the least.

I do actually believe that all these swivelheaded considerations lose their relevance when you actually meet someone you want to be with. You don't keep one eye on the other people who are out there because you're stimulated enough by a relationship to actually invest in it. It isn't some scenario, drama or game that continually has to be 'spiced up' to save your precious attention span. You begin to realise the futility of jumping over to the other side, where the grass looks greener. It seldom is.

what suzy said really...

you may have many partners, but you're surely going to prefer one to the others in the end, and they are going to prefer others to you, or you to others. the 'lesser' ones are going to end up 2nd choice, 2nd best, when the leading person is busy. who wants that?

but, y'know, this is a personal reading, how i feel. i wouldn't be comfortable with it. if it works for other people, i guess thats fair enough (and i'm sure y'all tell all your lovers yeah, cuz theres nothing wrong with it, and therefore nothing to hide?)

incidentally, i'm always amused when people who are polyamorous tell me "oh monogamy, its just a societal construction man, why don't you break free". like, duh, of course its a societal construction, like incest is. why don't people break free of that societal construction? go home tonight, fuck your mum, try it! (if you use protection no harm will come) or if not, don't patronise me about 'constructions'...

heh!

I like gareth's argument, although it does remind me a bit of meat eaters and vegans saying "Ner ner, but you wear leather shoes" to vegetarians.

Because I'm worth it. Plus, I like the idea that you can be a significant remembered presence in the life of somebody you've totally forgotten about, or better yet, discarded in crass fashion. (True, it may work the other way around, but where would the fun be if it didn't? Also, that's good practice for repressing inconvenient emotions, after a while you don't even notice they're there anymore!)

Do Kristen Hersh's mum. YUMMY! if you know what I mean. Ah, the ICA, 93...

Hmm, guess that makes Sarah a MOTHERFUCKER. And by my reckoning at about the age of 11. Heh.

12, if you please. Sheesh. Some people have some SICK ideas.

i think suzy's argument is spot-on. did anyone see that film THE LIFESTYLE? it was about senior citizens who do the spouse-swapping thing (that film marks the first time i heard someone say 'i'm fucking your wife' while actually performing said act), and the interactions between people had all these tensions prickling beneath the surface.

mind you my only experiences with polyamory have been anecdotal - i am very much a monogamist and even annoyed at the (single digit) number of people i've been with for various reasons - but i think those sorts of relationships tend to have a higher result of bad feelings because of the imbalances built in ('primary' and 'secondary' partners). not to mention, and this here is another gross generalization but hey, it's early in the morning still, but most of the people i've met who have told me that they're into polyamory have tended to live their lives with an extra amount of ... performance. drama, if you will. and what better way to achieve drama than to have the whole nth-angle aspect of a relationship built into it from the getgo?

of course there might very well be people who are into polyamory etc who haven't blared that fact from every web site they have access to or made that the first introductory fact about themselves who might be handling their situations quite well.

feel free to disagree, add your own experiences, etc. i'm just reporting from my admittedly limited perspective.

I think polyamory is kind of a side issue - the qn is about people who sleep with lots of different people, but that doesn't imply any overlap really. How many is "lots", though? I don't know.

The only question I can answer is - why *don't* I sleep with lots of different people? Practical reasons - because I'm in a relationship with one person; because very few people would fancy me so the opportunities aren't there. Positive reason - because I'm not sure if I can decouple sex and love. Negative reasons - because I'm scared of the competitions and humiliations singledom or non-monogamy implies; because I need a steady partner to feel validated. (Actually I don't know to what extent this last is true because I've been in a relationship so long that it's stopped being a conscious issue, but a lot of people go through a stage at least where they need to be loved in order to be happy themselves.)

In my limited experience I find I can't get involved with people I don't like. Or if I do it's cos I'm drunk and I wake up the next day feeling like complete scum. And I'm not saying people who like me that I don't like, I just mean people I don't like myself, regardless of what they think of me. But even if it was someone who liked me it's not a guilt at messing them around, it's just self loathing.

well, 'lots' is a totally subjective term.

i was 99% sexually inactive during college, which i guess falls outside the norm, and i can tell you that it was mainly because i was totally a) insecure about my appearance (still am) and b) not willing to risk the relationships i did have with my male friends by taking them, or trying to take them, to a sexual level.

For those of you who haven't met Maura, I'd like to point out that she has NOTHING to be insecure about re: her appearance.

Re: polyamorist drama queens: yes, there are a lot of them about. I know a bunch of people with multiple partners, and they definitely fall into the "watch me shouting it to the rooftops" and "it's not that big a deal" camps. Generally the ones who don't make it like the second thing they tell you about themselves are the ones who can handle it better. And the only situations where it seems to work out more than briefly are the rare ones where _everyone_ is in the "it's not that big a deal" camp.

As for the personal side of it: as someone who was pretty open to anything when I was younger (though was never too interested in polywhatever) and am now married, monogamous and very happy about it... Everybody's radically different sexually--I liked seeing what there was out there. It also seemed like a way to understand people better. (I'm making sleeping around sound like a lab experiment, I realize. Don't mean to.) And now I've found exactly what/who I want, and I'm glad I satisfied my curiosity when I was younger.

Thing I once wrote to a friend of mine that made her not talk to me for like six months (and I can't blame her): "If you're going to call yourself a polyamorist, learn to spell it."

Original qn seems to be not necessarily about polyamory, which we've already done AHEM 'in the board sense' of already tackling the subject sheesh get yer minds OUT of the guttahs. Although warning: original thread ended about talking about russian lit if I remember correctly. POLYAMORY = ruskies = THE RED MENACE!

i was 99% sexually inactive during college, which i guess falls outside the norm

Take heart -- you were not alone. At least in terms of undergrad years.

Very sorry to have to bring Mark Sinker's great personal friend Nick Hornby into the debate, but I was thinking about what he had to say in "High Fidelity" (which, as a book, is actually pretty good and moderately wise as long as it keeps off music) as regards people's reluctance to enter into a monogamous relationship because of the fear (well, the knowledge) that their partner will eventually die, so better not to commit to one person and keep "jumping from one stepping stone to another" to dull/annul the fear. The example Hornby gives is if their partner ends up dying of cancer. The dread of eventual unattachment from a different angle.

Of course, objectively in my case the field is, as they say, wide open now. But I couldn't do it. I won't make any crass generalisations such as "I'll never love again" because ten years or ten weeks down the line, you never know what's going to transpire, do you? You can't predict. All I do know is that if I were ever to get involved with anyone again, it could only be with one person. The chance of repeating the loss which I've just had would remain, of course, but surely that risk is better than the infinitely emptier loneliness of bedhopping which would suddenly hit payback when you hit 70 and there's no one with you as you prepare for the exit.

I'm really scared of that happening. Of course I am. But if I have to wait even 20 years for the right person, then so be it.

(Then again, the right person could come along in 20 minutes. Who knows?)

I haven't heard monogamy described as "bourgeois" in AGES!

I think there's only one reason why I don't sleep with oodles of people: I'm too damned lazy to get up out of bed and find vaguely delectable men to love.

I recently had dinner with a male artist who said to me 'You're having a wonderful time now, but you're going to be lonely when you're old'.

This is such an old -- and odd, when you think about it -- fixation on having someone with you at the moment of your decay and death. Hollywood representations aside, that's going to be a messy and unpleasant sequence of events in even the best of circumstances, so the wish to drag someone else through the misery is a peculiarly sadistic one. And if your heart is really set on being unalone at the moment of your expiration, wouldn't having many accumulated and unalienated partners increase your chances of not leaving people indifferent with your passing?

The artist had been boasting of his newfound monogamy with a new girlfriend who was out of town. We were dining with a girl we'd both dated. I noticed her legs were touching mine under the table. At the end of the evening the artist got on his bike went home alone, I went home with the ex. Not to sex, but to the kind of non- exclusive affection which, in my humble opinion, is one of the things that makes life worth living (though perhaps not death worth dying).

its not so much monogamy vs polyamoury though is it? its the smug and rather superior attitude people have presuming that because something is right for them, it must be better for you too, *if only you could see!*.

in my case, i get patronised by people who think i am unable to escape the shackles and conventions of bourgeois society and see things *as they really are!!* - ie - be like them

in momus case, a friend hitches up with one person and says *it was all a lie, i see true love for what it is* - ie - be like them

i mean, i enjoy people telling me how i should live my life and all, but...

Yeah, Gareth has a very good point. I'd never recommend monogamy - actually in Momus' example I think his friend gets a pretty fair deal (good company at dinner, solitude and a good wank later) but each to their own. One problem is that if you're in a long-term monogamous relationship and you give it up you can't usually go back if you decide you don't like polyamory or promiscuity or whatever: you can go back to monogamy but not to *that* monogamy.

Whenever I'm in a relationship I cannot imagine being with anyone else, past present or future. I'd never presume to judge anyone else, but when ever I'm in love I can only love that one person.

Momus:I am seriously thinking about starting a free love commune with en suite STD clinic. Restricting love to just one person is mean- spirited, selfish and bourgeois.

This is almost exactly like a quote in a movie (that Ned introduced to me to) called "Love Camp" -- a Greek, Hindu, Marxist, Pagan, Christian ex porn from the late 70s, starring Laura Gemser as "The Divine One". In one exercise where The Divine One is about to sentence two members of her Love Camp because they were in love with each other, she says "Don't you understand.... Love for only one person... is EGOISM!"

A Greek, Hindu, Marxist, Pagan, Christian ex porn from the late 70s...

I'm putting that on my business card under my name.