Maybe you would. But those 4 exquisite meals for the year? Enjoyed much more than if you ate exquisitely 4 times a week.
Obviously false. Go to Paris everyday, and tell me if you still enjoy it just as much as your first visit.
You’ve missed the point badly. Allow me to repeat it:
People wouldn’t take their father to a fancy restaurant for his 60th birthday if said family visited fancy restaurants 5 nights a week. It matters zero that said family might not be able to afford to do it 5 nights week. What matters is, this family considers going to a fancy restaurant as something special, partly-but-importantly because it is a rare thing for them to do.
Pretty sure I never disagreed with this, you’ll have to quote which one of my posts you’re responding to here.
For those who still don’t understand the exclusivity = greater enjoyment and greater cherishment:
Consider this: The NHL announce that the Stanley Cup is no longer going to be an annual prize. Instead, the Stanley Cup will become a weekly prize, awarded to whichever team wins by the greatest margin in a given round. If this were to happen, would we still see the customary scenes of Stanley Cup winning teams overcome with joyous emotion, embracing each other, many of them in tears, confetti and tape in the air, fans partying for days on end, etc?
The principle of something being more coveted, enjoyed and cherished the more rare of exclusive it is is a self-evident fact of human nature. If someone chose to eat nothing but plain oatmeal for a month, yes, he would savour a meat pizza far, far more than the guy who eats junk food all week.
Hence, if two people wish to save themselves for each other and each other only, to try and claim that this couple would be experiencing, on some level, a sense of value, cherishment or joy no different to a couple who have had 50 previous partners, is obviously utter bull.
No, I am not saying that couples who get together who’ve had 50 previous partners each would still not enjoy, very much, any sex that they may have.
But the couple that have saved themselves just for each other are clearly savouring the experience on a different level. If they weren’t, they aren’t human.
You know what happens when you spend your life saving up to move to Paris? You get there and you realize it’s full of street urine and creepy dudes, and you forgot to spend time practicing the language. But now you’re stuck with it.
To each her own, but I think it’s odd and sad to consider sex a definite, unchanging experience that is the same no matter who you might have it with and can only get worse over time.
By this logic, once you do finally have sex with someone, you should still only do it very rarely, so it’s that much more special. Which is fine, I guess, but I wouldn’t want to marry anyone who looked at it that way.
Erm… I eat at “fancy” restaurants all the time. I still take my dad to them for his birthday. You see, birthdays should be special no matter where you spend them.
I understand your point perfectly. You believe that you can only truly appreciate what you generally deprive yourself of.
I disagree. I have plenty of capacity for appreciation, I see no need to be stingy with it.
Nothing is taken away from sex with someone you love by having had sex before, but sex with people you don’t give a shit about is ultimately pretty empty, especially if that’s the only kind of sex you ever have.
Well, here’s another little thing… As much as people enjoy going back to their same favorite food and restaurant time and time again, they also like discovering a new spice or restaurant. I hate to sound cliched, but variety is the spice of life… Unfortunately, the only new food is different food.
If your family (dad included) visited a fancy restaurant 5 nights a week, then taking your dad to a fancy restaurant for his birthday would be a somewhat lesser experience than taking him somewhere you don’t normally go. No, don’t twist what I just said so that you can respond with “My family would still enjoy going to a restaurant for my dad’s birthday! How silly for you to suggest that I wouldn’t enjoy each and every experience of going to a fancy restuarant!”.
I’ve never used the words “truly appreciate”, I’m simply stating the obvious - experiences lose some of their cherishment while still being cherished, some of their enjoyment while still being enjoyed, and some of their value while still being valued, if done all the time, with lots of different people. That’s not a contentious point, DianaG, these are just facts I’m dealing with here.
Your repeated use of the word “facts” makes me wonder if you understand what it means. You can’t possibly objectively measure or know how much I cherish any given experience. We’re dealing with perceptions.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding you. You seem to me to be asserting that it’s a “fact” that “experiences lose some of their cherishment while still being cherished”. Facts are measurable. How are you measuring other people’s “cherishment”?
Getting back to the numbers point: I wouldn’t normally ask, as such, but for a person my age (mid-30’s) who I found compatible, I’d expect it to be on the order of 10 or so. Much more than that would indicate, as some have said above, a mismatch of viewpoint; I’m not saving it for That One Perfect Relationship, and I don’t expect absolute monogamy, but I’m not interested in having sex with someone whom I don’t like and feel affection for (it would be physically awkward and emotionally unappealing), and I don’t think that someone who enjoys “just physical” sex is going to be a good fit.
I don’t need to come up with a unit of measure for cherishment. I don’t know what “love” is measured by, but I know that I love my mother more than my pet dog, and I know that I (along with everyone else I know) would enjoy eating my favourite meal more if it was preceded by eating oatmeal for a month, than if it was preceded by eating my favourite meal 3 times a day for a month.
I’m a bit confused about your point as well. I don’t think anyone would argue that there’s a level at which a person can saturate themselves in something to the point that it becomes pedestrian, but that’s the extreme end of the spectrum. What about the middle ground? Does every sexual experience mute the specialness of the sex you have with your eventual spouse in your opinion, or only if taken to an excessive degree? And if so, what about after you are married? Should one abstain from engaging in sexual acts too often in order to preserve the specialness?
I bet you wouldn’t enjoy your favorite meal nearly as much in either case if it was being prepared by somebody who had never cooked anything more complex than a TV dinner before.
Ah, very interesting comment. I agree that the month-long oatmeal fast would probably make that meal feel more enjoyable, but I suspect that you (and everyone else you know) would not choose a month of oatmeal and one exceptional meal over a month of three good meals a day.
