Do You Believe Love and Sexual Attraction are Dependent on Each Other?

On a side note, I have noticed that the relationships with the most longevity, (as in, lasting into old age) seem to be those that have a good combination. The couples that both love and enjoy one another, tend to stay happy together rather than becoming bored or disinterested as time goes by.

 

people who experience romantic+sexual attraction can be happy in relationships that fulfill just one. for me, the only times romantic+sexual attraction have co-occurred is with fictional characters. IRL it's one or the other.

 

You definitely do not need to be sexually attracted to someone to love them. Maybe when it comes to liking someone at least initially, once you discover that someone has a good personality they become more appealing. For me personally, I would like and want to be attracted to the person I'm with.. what I find attractive of course differs from what other people find attractive though.

 

Not really. What is perpetuated as the norm in society is that love and sexual attraction are intertwined which is so harmful. Love and sexual attraction are so different and unrelated.

For myself, despite being both aromantic and asexual, I can love as deeply (platonically) as someone who feels romantic love. And just because I love someone doesn't mean I want to do the do with them. There doesn't have to be a physical aspect in a relationship to cement any type of love.

 

For me, there is no romantic love without sex/sexual attraction.

Sexual attraction can be exist without love tho... having sex with someone you hate has its own charm... it feels like winning.

 

Not always. They usually seem to go hand-in-hand, but it's not always like that for some of us. Personality-wise, I could fall in love with any gender, but I'm only sexually attracted to women and certain men.

 

It can be something that is very important to some people. It used to be very important to me that I be sexually and physically attracted to a person. Unfortunately emotional attraction was way below the other two in my priorities. Probably why I got treated badly. I started to change my way of thinking and made emotional attraction my priority. Sooo even though it may be an important factor to some people, it has nothing to do with love. As some people have said, asexuals are capable of being in loving relationships. The human heart is an amazing thing (not to offend those who believe in soul mates) but I believe we are capable of loving just about anyone...platonically, romatically, in whatever way.

 

I've been in several long-term sexual, romantic relationships, and I think there's only ever been one time where I found the person I was dating actively sexually attractive.

My two longest-running relationships were with people who I actually found physically unappealing. This isn't to say that they didn't turn me on - I think sexual chemistry is a really important part of a relationship between people who are sexually-inclined, and romantic chemistry is just as important in relationships without a sexual focus. But there's a difference between chemistry and attraction, and at least in my case, I've found that sexual attractiveness has played almost no role in either my ability to fall in love with someone, or my decision to pursue a relationship.

Except once, when I found a guy so sexually unattractive that I found myself faking nausea and headaches to avoid having to get physical ... in retrospect, I really should have ended that relationship a lot sooner.

 

No. There are different types of love, somehow. Family love, friendship love etc.

 

Sometimes romantic and sexual orientation match, sometimes it doesn't.

For some people it's love at first sight, for some it's lust at first sight. People are different.

 

They interplay, one supporting another, usually double whamming your poor emotions together. But sometimes just one of them is enough to ruin your day with a lot of lovely dovey feelings or fire burning in your loins.

 

I would say both things are important in a relationship, but they don't always come together. The one relationship I've had I was in love with the guy but not attracted. This would have been fine if he also didn't want sex, but I know he did, and I was not fulfilling that need. We had other issues come up in the way before that did, as he was very patient, but in the long term it definitely would have been a problem.

On the other side of it, if you're attracted to someone but don't really care for them as a person, that can't really work, either. To me the emotional aspect of the relationship is far more important than the sex. You can sleep around, sure, and plenty of people do but for me that would not make me happy or help me feel connected to others.

 

It is absolutely *not* where it *has* to start.

I know that for me, it's perfectly capable of working the other way around: an attraction to a person's mind or spirit can lead me to become physically attracted to them as well.

But neither would I claim that my experience or "ways of forming attractions" are universal. I can easily believe that for many people, there needs to be physical attraction first, and then emotional/spiritual attraction can grow from that.

Any attitude that "___________ can never work" strikes me as a reflection of *that* person's issues, rather than of any kind of actual reality. It's more about them than about relationships.

 

I think it probably depends on the person. I think for most people there needs to be some sexual attraction to have a romantic relationship. I remember seeing a study recently that said married couples who have sex more often in a long term relationship are generally happier with the relationships. And I think it is generally true. It helps with intimacy. I think some people can have on antic relationships without pure sex though, but you have to find someone else who can do the same.

 

i feel like they are both one to me i cant take one and leave the other

 

Well, i have never went boyfriend searching, so I Don't know how apropriate my opinion is, but most of my crushes are personality based, I am most likely to be atracted to your personality than to your body. Its not that steel abs would hurt or anything, but no body is going to leave me crazy for a person in any other way than sexually.