One of the chapter end discussion questions in a sexual psychology class I took was the following: You are allowed only one person to spend the rest of your life with. At the start of the relationship, however you must make the choice between loveless sex, or sexless love. What do you choose and why?
I would choose the loveless sex, because a relationship can survive without love. Humans have a biological need for sex and cannot maintain good physical and mental health without it.
They again sex with the same person that you can never love might turn you off to sex altogether - then you have nothing.
Not sure what I would choose, and it might very well depend on the person.
I’m not sure I buy this one. I think humans have a need for release of sexual tensions, but I’m not sure sex is actually needed.
Cite? (Not the need for sex part)
Sexless love, as long as cuddling is allowed. I can sex myself, thanks.
Kinsey did discuss the physical effects of a lack of sexual experience in women.
See this link for more info:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Display&dopt=pubmed_pubmed&from_uid=642847&tool=ExternalSearch
Oh, Kinsey, my eye. A great many of us get along quite well without sex or love, because we have to. It’s really no big deal. As my mother says, “you can get used to hanging, if you hang long enough.”
Especially if you’re well hung.
Probably “neither”, given that we only get one partner.
If forced to choose, sexless love as opposed to a relationship with one person I didn’t like as a friend and didn’t have the chance of leaving.
Sexless love.
I’ve just come out of a dodgy relationship. Was every guy’s dream at first. My lady was not only tightly built with curves in all the right places, but she had a very high sex-drive.
Last couple of years it was almost a chore.
I’d much rather have somebody I can stay up late with, drink, smoke, and talk shit to.
Ten years ago, I would have said loveless sex. Now, no question about it, I’ll take love.
Don’t get me wrong, I love me some orgasms, but those I can have them all by myself, and I need someone else for conversation.
Besides, IMO, relationships *can’t * survive without love. Without love, what you’ve got is a business arrangement.
I’ve had loveless sex. Invigorating at first, not so good over the long haul. Even if the two of you are a really good fit for each other in terms of physical combatibility and adventurousness, eventually you lose interest in the purely physical, especially if you’re at it constantly, monogamous and get all the freaky stuff out the way. Although a nice long break will have you climbing all over other again.
I’ve had sexless love. I have sexless love now. Sexless love never lasts for me. I’ve made an ass out of myself with female friends insisting we needed to take the relationship to “the next level” and lost several close friendships / relationships because of it. The two relationships that started out platonic that became sexual were very fulfilling, at least a first, but something happened both times that made each not so nice after awhile.
So I want both. Gimme one woman to regularly have sex with and I’ll happily be emotionally intimate with another.
By “sexless love” do you mean “No coitus” or “no yearning”? If the act of sex was not possible, for whatever reason, I could accept that. What I couldn’t accept would be a lack of intimacy-- I couldn’t be with someone who didn’t want to touch me or who didn’t want me to touch them, even if we couldn’t (for whatever reason) escalate that. Even if there was no proper libido (and there are medical conditions that kill your libido), in a romantic relationship there is this quality of physical yearning for the other person that I would have to have and would have to be recipocated.
Without that, a relationship is just a friendship. I have plenty of those, and the love there is rea and truel, but they don’t substitute for a romantic relationship.
Definitely sexless love. That’s what I want, anyway. 
There is no evidence that doing without sex makes one mentally unhealthy. That sounds like a line a guy made up to get sex. I would choose love without sex. Some couples have it where one partner was in an accident and cannot have sex, and the love is there. Sex without love just makes one a body with no feelings inside. Heck, they could become a prostitute and make money off it.
But you aren’t claiming that sex wouldn’t make it better, are you?
I too would need to know why we can’t have sex.
Going from my own assumptions though, I’ll take the love.
My highspeed internet can help cover the rest of the bases.
I think for some people going without sex could be harmful. But I think there are a lot of people who not only can actually do just fine in such a situation, there are some people who prefer it.
There’s an entire “asexual movement” comprised of people who feel little desire for sex. IF you check out some asexual message boards there are many posters on there who, while they may have had sex, indicate they really have no interest in it, don’t actively pursue it, and many of them have been happily living without sex for years.
Eve has the right of it. Plenty of us out here getting along quite nicely without either one. First step is discarding the misconception that there must be somebody else in your life.
The biggest asexual message board is AVEN, at asexuality.org. The main site also has some good general information about asexuality.
Loveless sex, please. I’d rather spend my life having sex with someone I like than not having sex with someone I love.