Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Love Lives of the (Not So) Rich and Famous

16:33 / 10.09.04

Partly because the Sex Lives thread has got very rotted, and partly because it went (very early on) in the direction of talking about a sort of social dimension (singledom or coupledom?) to one's 'sex' life, rather than primarily about the sexual or emotional dimension of those things, here is a thread to talk about your significant erotic and/or emotional attachments, whether romantic or not. Who or what do you love? How do you care for them? How does this affect the way you apportion your emotional, financial and physical resources?

I have to go now but will contribute later.

17:44 / 10.09.04

I hate everything apart from penguins and Powerbooks.

ideally

both

21:07 / 10.09.04

You know, I feel more comfortable talking about whether I'd like to get married than about my sex life and emotional life. This seems too private to discuss.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

23:51 / 10.09.04

Weeelll... as you probably know, the thing I love(d) most in the whole world, my little dog, is no longer here. Still takes up the majority of my emotions, though, and probably always will.
BUT... as a result of recent tragic events, I've come to love my friends more than ever.
More even than alcohol, with whom I'm stuck in a highly destructive physical relationship.

No star here laces

03:21 / 11.09.04

I'm in a mushy mood: I'll bite.

Well in typical barbly fashion, I have the love of my life, who I will never be with in a romantic fashion.

Difference is, I don't want to be. We have a unique relationship that is completely mutually supportive and about as close to the platonic ideal as I can think of and I know it'll last till one of us dies, and that works for me and for her. Despite being a long distance from one another we are in constant touch and due to having known each other for so long can offer a lot of support over phone/email.

Then I have my ex, who I had the most complete relationship of my life ever with (love, caring, sex and support), and who is part of the reason I moved to singapore, and is currently not talking to me because...

...of a mis-sent text which informed her (instead of a friend) about some details of my sex life here. I arrange my life in singapore to have the maximum amount of sex with the maximum amount of people, with maximum variety, in a fairly shameless and unscrupulous manner. Why? Because I can, and because I figure it's something I need to get out of my system.

Method? Pretty standard - talking to people in bars.

I have a wide network of friends in London, maybe 4-5 of whom I maintain contact with from Singapore. They offer support and advice, as needed. And I help them out as much as possible.

Then there's the folks, which is a subject I ain't talking about here.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:52 / 11.09.04

Interesting. No polypeople on Barbelith then?

10:55 / 11.09.04

What's meant by "polypeople" in this particular "love, caring, sex, and/or support" context, Flowers?

11:02 / 11.09.04

Parrot shaggers.

11:17 / 11.09.04

Well, when it comes to genitalia, I do like a cockatoo.

(I've already got me coat.)

Our Lady Has Left the Building

14:23 / 11.09.04

I was thinking of polygamous relationships as it was obvious we've already got loads of the other kind of polys.

14:27 / 11.09.04

Polygamous sexual relationships? Seems to me you're being prematurely dismissive, Flowers - or did I miss the bit where everyone declared themselves monogamous (as opposed to 'fixed up')?

16:43 / 11.09.04

Many of my primary emotional attachments are to books, which connect me into the world the way people do for other people.

I feel like I'm still reshuffling my human-relationship energy after the (protracted and messy) end of a fifteen-year 'passionate friendship' and the (protracted and messy, but much more enjoyable) beginning of a shagging+romantic relationship. All this reshuffling has also coincided with my chief local friend, T, moving in on her own and - last month - having a decisive falling-out with her closest friend, J (they've gone from going to J's foetal scans together and cooking/eating at each other's houses two or three times a week to no contact at all), and one of my closest local friends getting a job and moving away. So my love/caring/support are all in flux at the moment.

As for the shagging - I call myself 'endogamous' rather than the more usual 'exogamous' (marrying in rather than marrying out), which means that, for me, sex has to evolve out of growing intimacies of other sorts. Which means that mostly the people I could want to sleep with have put me into their "Like-A-Sister Zone".

Don't know how much sense any of that makes, but I'm enjoying other people's responses so far...