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OMG, isn't it about time for some overly parental admonishment about sensitive feelings?!? Lord knows, it isn't possible for any of us to get through a day in the real world, much less years and years, without the guidance of an auto-border-bot. Well?? Well?? (looking left and right) OK, guess not. Whew! Just had to get that out. Moving on now ...
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I clicked this thread just to see what it was about. That was my downfall. ;-) Hours and 150+ posts later, some things jumped out at to me.
Men, of which I'm one, except not in this case, seem to have this innate need when asked about sexual desire to give a knee-jerk response. Regardless of age, they say "A man's gotta have what a man's gotta have!" and "No, no trouble here, gear all working just like new, yep!"
Let's add a little realism for our assumably young friend who's asking about desire over time. In short, it reduces. Yes, for everyone. Yes, for everything. But sticking with gender interaction, there is a old saying about this and marriage. The newly married are told to be realistic. How? Practical visual aid. Get a big jar. Put a jelly bean in the jar each time you make love the first year. At the beginning of the second year, reverse it and start taking one jelly bean out of the jar each time you have sex. What happens? You'll never get all the jelly beans back out of the jar. The old farts say it's really true. But then again, they say lots of stuff.
There seems to be a lot people here with more or less healthy and realistic attitudes, about the opposite sex and about themselves, earned the hard way. Rather than being sad, it constitutes a much saner foundation for any interactions that do take place. On the other hand, and I say this with some compassion, there are others whose ideas and expectations could really benefit from watching more National Geographic. Giraffes, wolves, and bullfrogs don't sit around pining away about "soulmates", straining to like his or her friends, or agreeing to watch
Nights in Rodanthe instead of football. And there's a good reason for that.
Although Bob said something similar, but more delicately, we are what we see on Nat Geo, with a forced societal overlay of monogamy. Any other idea came from religion (thanks again, religion!) or from Hallmark to sell cards. If that one "monogamy" expectation and behavior could be removed from us magically, what would happen? No, not the wild orgies some might imagine or naively hope for. Instead, I suspect that the majority of serious gender interaction problems would disappear overnight. Well, except for the one Gary mentioned related to unwanted biological gifts.
Why? We'd stop trying to force our partners to wear the right thing, or to say the right thing, or to get the right job, or to say "I love you" reflexively. We'd mostly stop screaming and shooting each other for sleeping with someone else. We'd all stop trying to change our partners, mainly because we wouldn't even have "partners", but also because we wouldn't have to live with their behavior and moods 24/7 x 50 years.
The genetic desire to go find and do something new that we acknowledge and often encourage in every other facet of our lives, because it is natural, would apply to gender interaction as well. Or not. Overall, whatever interaction we had would be consensual, and would last as long as it needed to last, and then it would go back to a much more natural, and peaceful, state of affairs. Some peaks and valleys of interaction, but mostly plateaus. Interaction as nature intended, rather than this artificially created fodder for marriage counselors and stress-induced early heart disease.
Oh, and my last observation, people on this forum actually do have a sense of humor. Glad to see it.
Stepping off soapbox now ...
Vagabound