> ever any value in long term monogamous relationships
rhetorical question ? I wonder if a large group of young people just do not know what true 'contentment' feels like. To truly be at peace. To feel like everything is just right. To be relieved of all insecurities in that one moment, and just take in something for all that is.
None of my most cherished memories are ones of peak happiness or gratification. They are all moments of gratitude. Something that let me understand how content I felt. I didn't need, I didn't want, I had no desires. Everything was simple, and everything was there for that moment. The moments were, like all others : ephemeral. But the memories and the nostalgic feeling of security that it left behind sticks around for a long long time.
That to me separates sexual gratification from being in a long term monogamous relationship. The contentment that comes with time. To know that there is someone who accepts you in your entirety. Not because you were born soul-mates, but because each person has expressed an explicit intention to do so by committing the most important currency of them all : Time. And as you invest more time, the belief in the commitment strengthens, as does the contentment it produces.
What if that's being alone modulo sexual satisfaction from porn or hookups? :sunglasses: :gigachad:
A tax on the romantically challenged :)
Again, I say this as a proud and happy husband of 19 years!
Yeah, you basically won the lottery. For every one of you, there's a bunch of people who lost the relationship lottery: divorce, abuse, etc. The odds really aren't in one's favor.
As the article points out, the rise of sexual gratification without relationships, coinciding with women's reshaping of the financial stability side of relationships, has mostly just resulted in a lopsided winner takes all market around biological attraction.
But sexual gratification is .. just ... that. Ephemeral, weakly bonding, "childish." You don't need another person for it, you definitely don't need a member of the opposite sex, even if you want someone from the opposite sex, you can pay for it, even with a more committed relationship it's more or less transactional.
The real question is was there ever any value in long term monogamous relationships? I say this as someone in a long term monogamous relationship who is super happy, but the divorce rates and gender imbalance in domestic violence tells a different story.
Instead, we should work on ensuring everyone having access to paid, consensual sex workers, and bring "dating apps" back from the hookup apps they largely are into something more like eHarmony or OKCupid were - a niche app for those looking for long term relationships.
People demanding other people choose sexual partners based on long term relationship dynamics that are completely irrelevant in this day and age is a weird hill to die on.