[A human Being]

Originally Posted by Lorelyen

No doubt you guessed I'd turn up sooner or later!

What a dirty-great subject! Well, yes, I had this email from God saying “Look, I put two genders down there for a very good reason. Stop messing about, stop all this waffling and get on with it!”

Did wonder if you'd swing by to proffer an opinion at some point tbh, yeah, and yep, characteristically enough you're cutting through the bulldust straight off the bat

I reckon you’re probably right and in this taboo ridden age with its media-driven morality when flirting borders on criminal offence much gets suppressed rather than just contained. Hardly healthy from any viewpoint. Men have a different take on this I’m sure. They’re the initiators after all. If they can’t rise to the occasion LOL nothing happens.
My dear parents tell me that in the more “permissive” 1960s this wasn’t an issue – that a second date almost guaranteed you were going to “sleep together” without all the fuss that seems to prevail nowadays.

Mm, a shame really though not that surprising - the pendulum swung too far one way, now it's come back t'other, and hopefully at some point it'll settle in the middle (some hope!). What a lot we are... I wonder if God didn't set himself a challenge of creating the most neurotic species he possibly could when he created humans :o

I think it’s possible to contain and eventually overlook the sexual fluence but I can only speak for me. Possibly things get suppressed but if so they don’t seem to matter. It surely depends on the understanding you create as the friendship develops. A slight undercurrent may still exist but isn’t obsessed over.

For me it's ultimately a question of fully integrating all aspects of ourselves, including our sexuality (stop rolling your eyes!). I think our tendency is to compartmentalise, suppress, fixate, because we're subject to all this conditioning about how we're 'supposed' to relate, what's 'proper' and what's not, and that's how it had to be for us to reach this stage in our evolution - but now we need to go beyond that because our society has become dangerously dysfunctional, and that's reflected both individually and collectively.

I think age comes into it too. The vigour of youth comes with drives that manifest probably as a constant fluence between the opposites no matter how the rhetoric goes. As people move on those drives are probably tempered with other needs: companionship, reliability, collaboration and stuff – not always but mostly I’d guess. Understandings are more easily reached, boundaries are implicit in the small signals we give each other.

Oh yeah definitely, age is a factor. Maturity comes with experience, and desires and priorities change with age; initially we tend to be more beholden to our primal urges and therefore more prone to irresponsible behaviour, but as we grow we (hopefully) become less 'me'-centric and we recognise the rights and needs of others.

It was interesting that a different topic ago, Freud was drawn into the discussion and how basic drives are converted into outward symbolic behaviours – displacements came into it. I hadn’t wanted to revise that stuff in my mind on the forum but it rings true. Leaning on his theories your view is right-on although it is adjusted by the people involved surely, whether they find each other attractive or repelling (not directly sexually but whether their deportment and looks make you think "Yes, I'd consider him a friend if he has the right qualities"). I know it doesn’t come just down to looks but if there’s an innate feeling that nothing is sexually possible, what bearing does that have on a potential friendship?

Fascinating about basic drives and displacement, I managed to miss that particular conversation but I may have to have a look. Good question, too... I'm not sure, I'll have to think about it!

I may need to edit this. It’s one of those days when I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Step away from the edit button, it's fine!