“People who engage in casual sex often feel a sense of emptiness”

If you feel empty after having sex just because you do not love that person or that person does not love you, then you need therapy. Sex is not repressive only our history has been so no one should feel bad about the natural body functions and needs. Do you feel depressed after deficating or unrinating? If you do then again you need therapy.

Sex has been demonized by society, politics and religion. If you are in your right mind and do not have any emotional issues tied up in your past due to your upbringing or for whatever repressive reason, then casual sex will not hurt you emotionally. If you buy into all that repressive BS about human sexuality, then you will have issues with casual sex and it can damage your life.

I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you, Robert. I just think that if you are going to say that people “often feel a sense of emptiness” due to casual sex, you should also explain that these people tend to feel that emptiness due to lack of any fullfillment in their life in general. They are unhappy with their upbringing, their lot in life, their children, their ex-husband/wife. If their life is empty, so will they be and no amount of casual sex is going to fix it. But for those of us healthy enough to be able to not confuse reality with fantasy or confuse someone else’s ideals or moral for our own, are healthy and happy enough to have casual sex without the “emptiness” that a few (not many) feel.

And again those who feel that way, please get some therapy. It will help you grow, take responsibility for your own life and lead your own destiny.

I think you may have failed reading comprehension. Dr. Yvonne is a sex educator and the question asked was about sex and whether they risk having someone possibly fall in love with them from having sex. Now I’m guessing Marty is a guy and like most guys not ready for a commitment, they would like to have casual sex without risk of that person falling in love with them.

No where does Dr. Yvonne state emphatically as well as conclusively that dopamine = love. What she is stating is a scientific fact. Increased levels of dopamine, oxytocin, vasopressin and seminal fluid MAY increase the chance of a person feeling more attached and romantic towards that partner.

In no way does she state this is a guarantee and in no way did she confuse being “in love” with loving someone. Everyone should know that being “in love” and “in lust” are really no different; but loving someone is also in no way related to being in love/lust.

Can sex cause someone to be in love whether they intend to or not? YES. Can sex actually cause someone to actually love someone else? NO

Being “in love” involves an ideal that people tend to nurse and in turn expect from another even if it goes beyond all rationality. Loving someone involves deeper emotions and connections that cannot be put into mere words but have to be expressed in conjuntion with everyday and continuing actions.

The simplest and the most general way to put it, is being only in love is fantasy, actually loving someone is reality.

Imagine the expression possible between a man and woman, without words, and how that physical expression illustrates, not just any love, but specifically the marriage union: man with the initiative, the powerful drive, received and enveloped by woman; two becoming a part of one another, creating a mystical and permanent bond. We’re of one mind, one body, giving every part of ourselves with full abandon. Just the two of us. I trust you; you have proven by taking life-long responsibility for me that you have my best interest at heart; you’ll be here tomorrow; I am safe, free to devote myself to you without fear that I have given too much.

This is intimacy–knowing the lives intertwined by day are the bodies intertwined by night. This is good sex.

I could indulge now and enjoy counterfeit intimacy to a degree. But to the extent I partake of the substitute, I dilute the real thing. I’ll hold out for the BEST, and no regrets.

This is one of the truest statements and I agree with you. You have summed it ip perfectly. Love is one of the topics that you cannot put science behind to try and figure it out, like faith. People will believe what they want to. As long as you are enjoying yourself great. Casual sex can lead to great love or friendship if that is the way you want things to go. It’s all about living life on your terms!

Moreover, I would doubt that it’s just the mixtures of body fluids that cause this. Reality is that certain mental/emotional/spiritual barriers need to be crossed before one exposes one’s private parts to another adult, and I would have to guess that this would also play a part in bonding.

Which is a long way of saying that no, condoms don’t make sex “safe” this way. The NIH even found that they’re not a terribly good way of stopping the transmission of any STD besides AIDS. Maybe it’s time to take sex seriously–it’s not a “game” that a person can walk away from, whether you consider it physically, emotionally, or spiritually.

“if a man is depositing his seminal fluid in a female partner, he’s giving her a dose of the chemicals needed for sex drive, attachment and romantic love. This increases her chance of falling head over heels”.

Now that is a powerful statement, be careful with that one guys, one would think that wearing a condom might prevent the attachment as the dosage should be hindered. Or, on the other hand,
would the dosage be more powerful if it were delivered orally, I personally think it might, but that is probably a nutrition question, perhaps another contributer (from above), “Tanya Zuckerbrot, MS, RD is a nutritionist and the creator of “The F-Factor Diet”, might care to comment. I’ve heard it is a great source for protien, but I never knew it had such emotional power.