9/6/16
Your Call: Does Love Mean the End of Sex with Other People?

We get a lot of advice questions coming in at EMandLO.com, but sadly, we just can’t answer them all. Which is why, once a week, we turn to you to decide how best to advise a reader. Make your call on the letter below by leaving your advice in the comments section. 

When a guy really loves you, how often is he really thinking about being with other women? Can he be in love with you and still want to hookup with other women? Does he view wanting sex out of a person differently from wanting love out of a person?

— Lovefool

What should Lovefool do?
Let her know in the comments below!



3 Comments

  1. Sounds like you’re dating someone you KNOW is not interested in being exclusive, or else someone who’s probably already cheated on you. Everyone has a wandering eye to some extent or another, both women and men, esp after the glow of initial love/lust has dimmed. But there are three types of people who deal with those impulses in different ways: 1) the monogamist who will look but not touch, 2) the polyamorist who will look and touch, but with total honesty and transparency, and 3) the cheater who will look and touch behind the back of the one with whom they’ve promised or implied monogamy. You just have to figure out who the person you’re with it and proceed accordingly.

  2. Long ago, when there were wolves in Wales and the ice giants lurked just out of sight when the wind blew the snow against my eyes, I might have written such a letter to a trusted source. This is a letter from what sounds to me like a very young woman, confused about boys (men?) and herself. Let me answer in that spirit, perhaps more directly than you would prefer.

    Boys just want to have fun. They think using the head without the brain. Many will tell a young woman any damn thing she wants to hear to get into her pants and will continue to say those things until the young woman decides the boy is just jiving her; at which point she re-dons her panties and walks away, having learned something about herself, boys, and life.

    A decent young man will not do this. He will say honestly that he loves you and will show that through his words and deeds. And in most cases he will still use the head without the brains and lust after other women. And sometimes chase and catch them, because he is very young and does not think with the head that has the brains. At which point you can forgive him or not, but since I am assuming you are very young the next boy you find will be the same way.

    One of the things you will learn through these experiences is how to tell the decent young men from the players. One thing you will learn about is your own sexuality–if you are smart enough to insist that these boys treat your pleasure as at least as important as your own. (Kick out any who don’t, and tell your girlfriends what selfish pigs they are.) One of the things you learn is that all things break.

    Eventually you will find a young man for whom emotional intimacy is at least as important as his dick. By then you should have found out how to identify him. This is the young man you should invest in. He will almost surely eventually break up with you anyway, because that is what life is like when you are very young, but you will have had a real relationship.

    To answer your question more briefly: all men, no matter how much in love, want to fuck anything vaguely attractive that crosses their path. A man who doesn’t isn’t much use to you–sex is like that. The good ones will keep their vows. The bad ones won’t. You probably will only learn how to tell the difference through experience and time, so not dropping your panties too quickly, no matter how much in love you are, is probably a pretty good strategy.

    Good luck. Remember: no matter what decision you make it will probably be wrong, so don’t worry too much about it. “Men have died and worms have eaten them/But not for love.” And oh yeah: safer sex. Keep your mistakes easily fixable.

  3. Dear Lovefool,

    First thing to remmeber, honey, is that Love and LUST are two seperate entities; one is an emotion, the otheran instinct. Problem is, the two ften get mistaken for each other. Now here, i’m guesing you don;t just mean Lust; you mean “how long until I become the only girl he feels ANY kind of gentler emotion towards so I can be totally secure he wants, craves, desires, is sweet to, affectionate with, and anamored by ONLY Me?” And the honest truth is, my friend, that no ordinary human being, male or female, EVER really becomes so completely wrapped up in their partner that the totally forget about softer feelings or disregard the presence of others. The catch?

    Nor SHOULD they; it can be very Unhealthy to do so!

    Being that males evolved as the sexual chasers, most guys, even those COMPLETELY In Love with their ladies will OCCASIONALLY have s scant thought or attraction to someone else. It’s natural, and healthy; means he is emotionally and mentally aware, and reacting to normal stimuli, and, you know….is breathing and has a pulse. These instances can sneak up out of nowhere, from seeing the comely co-ed at the bus stop, to a cute waitress giving him the eye, to an old girlfriend he still talks to bumping into him and saying hello. He may well feel an attraction to, and even briefly think about physically being, with ALL these women. Wanna know the best part of this?

    Because he DOES love yu, despirte these natural urges, he CHOOSES to be with YOU.

    New romantic Love [coupled with the excitement of sexually getting to know a new partner] can and often does create a “buffer” period—-let’s call it the Infatuation Twitterpation Stage—- where your soooooooooo into your current paramour, you kind of get blinders to other people. This is ususally temporary, though, and a lot of new couples go through it. What makes it clear that the affection between you both is real is that when it dissapaites, your partner still has little else but you on their mind DESPITE feeling attraction to others. So while he CAN be technically in love with you, the urge to “hook up” with others may well still be there…. however, again, BECA– USE what you mean to him is so great, that’s all it is: an urge he’d not act on.

    Think of it as you loving eating healthy; you’re exercising, and getting the body you want, and enjoying the new life style, yea! BUT… every once in a while, don’t you get that “urging” for a tripple bacon cheeseburger, a hankering for those chilli cheese fries, an unexpected desire for that decadent piece of triple chocolatefudge cake, or tempted by some tantalizing terimasu?

    Same thing! The cravings will likely always be there, no matter how much you love eating healthy seasame seed chicken and spinac salad with pine nuts and cranberries.

    As to your last question,…it depends on the guy. Many guys—i’d even venture to say most—- do take a different view on Sex when it comes to seperating it from Love. This is why a lot of dudes will date aroundand try a lot of wild things with girls, but be over protective about their girlfriends. This doesn;t mean there’s no cross over, just thatsex is by far more common and often more commonly sought after than love, which is infinitely more complex and intimate. You can have sex with a friend for excitement, or enjoyment or pure stress rel;ief. You can be vulnerable and real with your Lover….something you CAN’T do with every sex partner.

    My advice: don;t worry about your guy just being a healthy guy if you think he might wonder about other girls from time to time. Just know that’s his biological programming doing what it’s intended to do: keep part of him recognizing viable mating material. If he’s good to you, funny, fun, decent, helps makes your life better and willingly shows he cares for you, once you have no reason to suspect him of acting on his urges, consder yourself in possesion of a really good guy. Use THAT as motivation show him how lucky you think you are…and make HIM feel lucky to be with YOU.

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