Oh, baby! Surprise guest joins wedding party

Toledo Blade ^ | 3-2-10 | Claudia Boyd-Barrett

[timeflies]

Just eeewwwwwwwwwww!

[tom h]

"I’ve never really understood the whole cow-milk cliche. "

There's an old adage that "men use love for sex and women use sex for love." While it's not fair to tar all men and women with this fact, as a middle-aged fellow married for 22 years to the same woman, and having observed countless friends, both men and women, in successful and failed marriages, and in cohabitation situations, I can say that it is a subtle motivation in all circumstances.

The corollary to the above is that when sex is largely restricted to marriage, then the natural urge of men to not make a commitment is thwarted. Not all men, mind you -- but most.

There have been many instances throughout world history where, when unrestricted sex is available without commitment, men lose themselves in orgy and neither take care of the women or the offspring; also, because they are so sex-besotten they lose their other urges to invent, create, protect, etc.

I am hardly the expert here ... Dennis Prager talks about this frequently and some of his books dwell on the topic. And his thesis reflects a certain fact -- that civilization, and civilized humanity, depends on a male sex drive channeled toward marriage and responsibility for offspring.

The adage about the cow and milk really derives from the very primal urges of men.

There is subtle evidence of this in today's post-modern Europe. The decline of the Christian faith, the rise in women's income, and the widespread use of birth control means that (1) neither men nor women have to worry about the consequences of sex beyond pleasure; and (2) they do not have to marry -- why bother?

Look at today's American teens. In the old days, boys had to dress nice and take girls out on dates just in order to be able to hold her hand and get a chaste kiss. Today, teen male slobs can get whatever they want from randy or desperate teen girls.

Sorry, I could go on about this for ages ...

[discostu]

That’s just addictive behavior. That’s got nothing to do with the cow-milk cliche, that’s entirely about a subset of people (which comes from both genders) that when given ready access to instant gratification (of any type, drugs, sex, whatever) will instantly gratify themselves to death.

In a relationship, marriage or otherwise, there is no unrestricted access to sex. So none of the addictive behavior applies.

I still say anybody that thinks the only reason to be in a relationship is sex, that’s sex is the milk, just plain shouldn’t get married anyway, they’re missing 90% of the reasons relationships exist.