So in my group of friends (mostly gay men) I think we all get up to interesting things where it`s kind of normal now to be unconventional. However, I`ve found when I`m with straight men/women they are quite judgmental and have quite normal relationships, so like only seeing one person at a time or looking down at people who have one night stands.
opinions!
Your sexual choices are your business. A person can be sexually promiscuous and also honest, non-manipulative, considerate, reasonable - all the things I value in a friend.
Would I look down on a person for being promiscuous? Not exactly. I'd like to go into some depth on this...
Sex is a deeply personal and private part a person's life.
But because it can be so deeply experienced, tied up with one's deepest values, and can be so emotionally powerful, it's a part of one's own sense of identity. That's true whether a person has religious taboos attached to sex or not.
I'm totally straight. I simply am. The thought of doing anything sexual with another woman is repellent to me. When I first learned that there was such a thing as homosexuality, I felt amazed and grossed out at the thought of doing sexy things with another woman. But the fact that some people actually *preferred* their own sex to the opposite one didn't offend me, and I didn't see anything immoral in it. I simply wondered what made for the difference, because for me at my deepest emotional level, it was so *not* for me.
As to promiscuity - I could never be happy with that, either. I can't be casual about sex. I can't treat it as recreation. I don't have any interest in sex with someone who isn't a "soulmate" that I know well and who knows me, someone I trust completely. And, to tell the truth, there are very few people on earth - and all of that few are men - who have ever made me feel desire. But when I feel it, I feel it powerfully.
But if I find out that a man has a major ethical flaw, my desire drops away like an anvil off a cliff.
For me, engaging in promiscuous sex would be just as false to who I am as if I were to try to force myself to have sex with a woman.
Now, here's my point as it pertains to your question: people whose sexuality affects them in a deep way, who have no desire, who literally can't stand, to have casual sex have - quite naturally - a personal, emotional, identity-based rejection-response to promiscuity itself. Promiscuous sex seems shallow. It seems empty. Someone like me can't relate at the *sexual* level with someone who is happy having multiple partners and treating sex as purely recreational - especially if it's with strangers picked up at a bar. I mean, the closer you are as friends with your partners, the better I can understand it, personally.
Now, if you're an honest, reasonable, non-manipulative person who's enjoyable to be with, and you're not deceiving any sex partners or committed partner, I'm going to like you regardless of your sex life. What I feel about promiscuity personally won't affect whether I can like or respect you as a person. Your ethical values regarding honesty and coercion are what matter most to me.
But if you tell me about your promiscuous sex life - gay or straight - I'm not going to know how to react to that, because to me having that kind of sex would not be fun, it would not make me happy, I can't relate to the desire to live that sexual lifestyle, and I have a strong, immediate emotional reaction against it that comes from deep within my core of self - a reaction which might show on my face before I'm able to politely mask it.
If you tell me about your promiscuity, I can't react as if I approve. My heart can't be in it. My sexuality doesn't "get" your sexuality. It might feel to you as if I'm looking down on you, when really I just fucking don't know what to say to what you've told me, when my heart and soul reaction is: No! No! No! Wrong! Anti-the-core-of-me! Even if I like you and don't want to hurt your feelings or put you down, I can't honestly react as if I like promiscuity, or feel nothing about it. And I'm not that good at faking my reactions to be polite. My politeness would look stiff. It would look fake. The message you'd take from that fakeness would still likely be that I'm looking down on you.
Now, see, here where I can *write* my thoughts I have all kinds of time to go in-depth. But in a face-to-face encounter it's very likely not to be appropriate or possible to explain all the stuff going on in my head when I'm confronted with a person's description of his sexual adventures. How the heck do I condense all that? If I try, I very well might stuff it up, put my foot in my mouth, and you'll walk away thinking the wrong thing.
I can't speak for all the people who might seem to be looking down on you, but I'll bet at least some of them are coming from the same place that I am. It may not be as bad as you think.
Topic: What do you think of promiscuous people?