SOME TWISTED WORDS CONTINUED

Hamlet

Turning to happiness you're right. You may only know you are happy if you have truly suffered. Anyone who has suffered manic depression (like me) knows what its like to be on the edge of losing their mind - thats suffering. To rise from that and then to marry, have children and a "fairly successful" career is happiness. Part of that is momentary but without contrasts one can't appreciate happiness.

Its true "happiness isn't everything". Gibran writes with great eloquence. Psychiatric science has come to a similar conclusion as him - that even rising mania (too much "happiness") masks a deepening depressive undercurrent.

Intensity of feeling appears to be the key creative strength of a depressive but in many more cases it is a recipe for burnout. Writers like Hemingway and Robert Burns were extremely creative but then burned out. As manic depressives they knew deep depression and great success (maybe they were happy) but they drank too much and died early. Looks like Gibran (a Lebanese Christian) died of cirrhosis of the liver so maybe he "self medicated" as well.

Anyway looks like I've shifted from one unmentionable personal area (sex) to that of depression (via happiness).

Just don’t tell anyone on OLO. We never know whose watching!

Just to clarify...

My first post was addressing the original article which suggested that legislating legal polygamy meant legislating for happiness… trying to give some credibility to an age old misconception that SEX = HAPPINESS. Evidently the author of this notion believes that the utter and overnight disruption of millennia old social norms and mores is going to make people happy!

I resent the personal attack planet, and yet I think I understand it… perhaps you feel that I have attacked your manhood and so left my womanhood up for criticism. I am highly aware of the balance of the scales tipping in favour of women in many ways in recent years... the fact that women in some ways today enjoy a greater freedom than men who are still stuck in societal roles dating from two millennia ago.

I think this is partially because women have stood up and fought the hard fight and earned those freedoms and partially because our suppressions did not necessarily directly relate to our 'WOMANHOOD', whereas men who talk about their feelings, relationships etc are still open to attacks on their MANHOOD; (for being homosexual or 'snags') something few men are willing to have challenged... and understandably so.

I am not in any way adverse to open and honest conversation about sex. Admittedly, I seem to have outgrown the double-entendre and flirtatious edge to such conversations, but these have been replaced with a keen interest in what makes people and societies tick, an important part of which is sex.

Nor am I embarrassed or disgusted by conversations about the intimacies and intricacies of sex, no matter how explicit… I am however irritated by the presumption that sex is somehow the cause of happiness. It is no more the cause of happiness than having children (for want of a better analogy). Great, strong, overwhelming feelings of joy rush through you, and then you get on with a life interspersed with happiness and suffering, children are A cause of happiness and A cause of suffering… so is sex... this is my point!

Planet, believe me; I had no intention back then of attacking anyone’s personal posts, only of addressing the original premise, one that I found to be incredibly juvenile and banal. I did intend however to attempt to return the conversation back to the ‘happiness’ aspect of the debate… not to steer away from the sex aspect entirely, just to put it back into perspective in relation to the issue of scientific research into the causes of happiness.

If the original article had a premise along the lines of ‘freer and more open sexual relationships can make people happier’, we’d all be saying ‘no sh** Sherlock!’ The fact that this article promotes the premise that polygamous sex causes happiness is utter rubbish. In my opinion it is crackpot science catering to a personal whim of the worst kind because it perpetuates a social dichotomy that has been an age old cause of suffering.

Scientists would have us believe that happiness is caused by endorphins. Certainly there is a correlation, but if it were exclusively true every junkie would have it right, just give me more endorphin rushes and I’ll be happy!! Presumably scientific research into happiness is looking more at the ways to ‘naturally’ increase and release endorphins… obviously sex is ONE way to do that, but even more obviously not the only cause… if it were, even paedophiles could be considered altruists!!

I’m 35. I love making love and sharing orgasms with the man I love, and I love when we’re both too tired to continue and just fall asleep mid-coitus, with no insecurity that we ‘have to get the job done’. I pray to fall asleep with my husband in that way when I’m 90 and likely to die of the multiple orgasms that some men seem to take such pride in.

Just one last point… unless the woman you’re having sex with has issues, you don’t have to be a particularly wonderful or sensitive man to give her multiple orgasms, you just have to know female anatomy and get off on her getting off. Don’t flatter yourselves boys.

Dancing..

Your last two posts address the imbalances of McConvill's article with deep insight. So I agree with what you've said and we now seem to be on the same wavelength.

Two things: As your 35 and I'm 44 I regret that I was throwing an age-ist aspersion at you. I also noted that your first two posts (that I criticised) were the first that you'd ever made on OLO - being instantly critcised clearly wasn't fun. For that I apologise.

I agree that the concept of group sex (that McConvill treats so superficially) should be rejected by those already in a fulfilling relationship.

Yes good sex is but a side effect of a happy relationship, not a cause.

On endorphin rushes - they can also be generated by mental illness and (again) this type of production does not lead to lasting happiness.

About your own approach to love making - we clearly will need to respect our different attitudes. Our differing attitudes are partially guided by our respective partners differing expectations...

You appear to be experiencing the deep love that I also have (finally) found.

On your last para (unless mass studies are out about the prevelence of muliple female orgasms in Australia) I have to rely on anecdotal research that multiple orgasm is not as common as you think. Orgasms on a SOLO basis may be more frequent and men aren't needed to assist of course.

I may be under a misconception here.

Anyway I hope we can discuss such matters much more on OLO.

Regards

Peter

plantagenet, As a 60 year old bloke, I can assure you that multiple orgasms in women are common. Over the last 40 years it has become more common as women approach sex from their own point of view and not a sociological stereotype, that they were fed previously.

Young women back then had little knowledge of their sexuality, striving to maintain the decorum, they were supposed to have. Those same women have changed dramatically as have young women of today. Today, they don't feel bad about wanting sex and are very open about their intentions, why and what they expect.

I have gained this impression from my business life, which is in hospitality, entertainemt and tourism. I have watched as my younger female staff have no hesitation in expressiong to me what they would like from a prospective male. Mind you it is just like the blokes, they undress them in their minds. I may be lucky that they feel comfortable in being able to do that with someone much older than themselves.

I thinks its brilliant, just wish, they were so open back then.

Sex, it gets better as you get older, as long as the body holds out, more exhilerating and frequent

What pathetic sicko posted this? The world is certainly a sad case when people dont know what the words dignity privacy and respect mean.