Is promiscuity a sign of deeper emotional pain or childhood abuse? Or, has our culture made us ashamed of our primal instincts?

Because society is fucking stupid.

This is really 2 questions.
To answer your main one:
it can be. Or it can be a sign that someone is very comfortable with themselves, secure, emotionally healthy, and likes sex.

@Grisaille That pretty much sums it up :P

I feel quite strongly about this particular point. I think it’s most probably due to the male-focused history we have. While it would be perfectly reasonable for men to have something ridiculous like 8 wives, it was damn-near abominable for women to lose their virginity prior to marriage.

It’s not just in the US, by the way. This double-standard is just about everywhere.

I really don’t think of it this way. If someone is constantly getting laid, regardless of their gender, I think “Lucky bastard.”.

Also, there’s been a lot of this ‘your body is dirty’ kind of thing spread around by the church and other such sources. I don’t think that’s helped.

I have instincts to do many things, and I don’t give in to all of them. How is promiscuity different?

@Facade Do you eat?

@daemonelson Don’t be an ass.

@Facade – thanks for your response, however what I’m digging for goes deeper than instincts. Instinct is ingrained in you from birth, and developed. Habits or preferences for things like sex are either learned or genetic.

I’m wondering how much environmental factors have to do with the development/desires of adults who enjoy lots of sex.

Do you think people who are abused are more inclined to utilize/abuse sex as a means of communication with others because of what they experienced?

I know people who are strong, healthy, and intelligent and they choose to have different types of sexual encounters with multiple partners, who display far greater and varied sex drives than others who have abuse in their lives..

@iLove Yes, I think abuse can often lead to promiscuity, but promiscuity does not always mean abuse. It’s a matter of self-discipline, IMO.

@Facade I see that instinct was a little to difficult to repress.

“Is promiscuity a sign of deeper emotional pain or childhood abuse?”
Sometimes. Depends on the level of maturity when being “promiscuous.”

“has our culture made us ashamed of our primal instincts?”
I find that a cop out statement. Just so you can find it easier to be “promiscuous.”

I see men and women being whores. When in the right context.
It is a question of being mature enough to accept the title.

Because, when God asked for a volunteer to hold the responsibility of nurturing and raising the children and maintaining a healthy, happy home, Man took one step backwards, making Woman responsible by default.

Badgering Women to refrain from promiscuity became necessary to prevent Woman from abandoning that responsibilty, forcing Him to “step up to the plate”...

…an action Man is anxious to avoid.

I’m not sure monogamy is the natural inclination of human beings.

Monogamy is a norm that has long been imposed by many successive societies. It is in some ways adaptive in that it helps (when it works) to provide two adults to care for offspring.

Promiscuity, or an excessive tendency to have multiple sexual partners is often attributed to unstable family environments that impairs a person’s ability to form lasting intimate relationships based on trust.

Society imposes stricter demands for fidelity in monogamous relationships on women because they are seen as the primary caregiver for children. Men are given more slack because in most societies men made and enforce societal rules – and thus a double standard frequently exists.

I can only speak for myself, but it was an attempt to feel wanted and loved – something that was lacking in my home life.

@daemonelson I think the question you meant to ask @Facade was not if she eats, but if she overeats.

I’d like to try to field this one if I may, as I’ve been doing some research. I started from another angle, which is criminal type behaviour. It lead me down the same road. Indications are that early childhood exposure to single parent, low income family life pre disposes children to, and I can’t list them all here, promiscuity, mental and physical health issues, inability to process social cues, intimacy and trust issues, poor academics, substance and alcohol use/abuse, poor life choice making skills…. it’s a pretty long list. For anyone really interested I can give a bibliography of various articles. Incompetent parenting isn’t a crime, and low income mothers are not by definition abusive. It’s just that from a child developmental standpoint, several factors that are necessary to good mental health and adjustment are necessary, and single mothers simply cannot provide them by themselves. They’re too busy just trying to keep it together. If you add in other negative factors, it gets worse, but even without stupid loser boyfriends or drugs and alcohol, or going out to the bar or partying wherever, the fact remains that children need a couple in a loving, financially stable relationship. Other indicators point to a need for SOME kind of consistent religious belief adhered to by the whole family. And there you have it. I believe that our current system of justice is completely missing the point and too may individuals are slipping through the cracks. Until the system can address in a comprehensive, holistic manner the UNDERLYING CAUSES of criminal behaviour, locking them up and letting them back out will avail us nothing. The laws themselves need to be changed so that the judge has authority to enforce mandatory theraputic rehabilitation that addresses ALL their issues. I don not mean to imply that we coddle law breakers, only that they ALL of them were children at one time, and our children of today will grow up too. What will they become? Unless we change the now, the outcome is fairly assured.

@Trillian—- WOW. that’s what I am talking about! Thank you, thank you.

@trillian

I’ll add a bit of personal info here.

My mother suffered from MS in the 80s. For some reason, her doctor put her on a daily diet of Xanax to ease the ??? As I have personally witnessed, many people have different reactions to anti-anxiety medications.

My mother’s reaction was delusional. At my young age, she was verbally abusive to me and accused me of being a prostitute before I even knew what intercourse was.

As a result, I have found that I enjoy FWB (friends with benefits) sometimes more than true intimacy, because it just is easier to leave when I choose to let that person no longer fill my space. I have always been told by therapists that I am “running from intimacy” but I swear I feel quite alive when I have phenomenal sex that is not tied to emotion.

I don’t blame my mother for her illness but the factors that arose as a result of her psychotic behavior (mostly due to medication) truly have affected my intimate relationships. I wasn’t sure if the sexual aspect of it was common only to children of abuse.

I am realizing the more I embrace the enjoyment of it, the more I actually love myself and feel less like a pariah.

I don’t consider the term Player to be neutral, fun or complimentary. I consider it to be the same as Man-Whore.
I think we are conflicted by the urges of our bodies, and the call of our spirits. Some people are very comfortable cheating on their spouses. That isn’t me.

I’m not sure that promiscuity is necessarily a marker for anything, but I have the opinion that hypersexuality in dress and in manner can sometimes be a marker for previous abuse, depending upon the person.

In my opinion men and women my have some differences in the way that they approach extra-pair copulation, but I doubt the numbers are as profoundly different as we think. I believe that it is just underreported in the case of women, and there is more social stigma attached, but that’s nothing rational, since we are all of us human.

I believe that we’re all looking for connections with others. In particular, I think we gain the most from relationships where we feel loved and where we give love. For me, sex is the way I experience love. It is the most intimate connection. It is where I most often feel like a person.

I find that sex with someone I truly care about provides me with much more than sex with people I hardly know. I also find that one relationship does not seem to always make me feel loved. Sometimes I think I need more than one relationship.

However I’ve never sought sex for sex sake. I want it only within the context of love. If I were fucking a stranger…. well, I don’t think I could. Even so, I have sought out multiple love relationships. I don’t know for sure, since I’ve been doing this all my life, except for a twenty year period (well, maybe not doing it, but certainly thinking about it).

It turns out that one symptom of bipolar disorder is this enhanced sexuality. Most people I know who have multiple partners deny that there is any feelings involved. It’s purely about sex.

I’m not sure I buy it. Promiscuity, I believe, is not necessarily a sign of abuse. I think it is a sign of searching, and what I think people are searching for is love. Perhaps they can not, for one reason or another, easily find love, but I still think that’s what people are looking for, even if they deny it to themselves.

I believe that promescuity is just an excuse that people use when they are horney to go out sleeping around with whatever comes their way… without regard to the health and safety issues as well as moral ones .

@HighShaman What on earth do you mean by “moral issues”? Having sex with whom one pleases when one pleases is immoral? Grow up.

Well .. If he or she .. Talks Like a “HO” ..and Acts like a “HO ” .... I guess He or She MUST be a “HO ” and I’ll not make any apologies for having decent morals…

@HighShaman What do you call it when someone posts like an asshole?

@Supacase Not at all. Eating is an instinct.

@pdworkin You tell me since you do such a damm god job of it !

I can’t say that I see anything morally wrong with wanting to have sex. Or even having sex with multiple partners. It’s kind of built-in.

Unless you’re in what’s supposed to be a monogamous relationship and then the morality has to do with not betraying the trust of your partner.

Promiscuity certainly can be a sign of emotional pain or childhood abuse, but I’d say that usually it isn’t. Usually it’s just people doing what they are biologically designed to do. Fuck. It’s like eating or sleeping, our bodies and minds are made to do this. Powerful people like to trick us into denying our instincts to make us easier to control. “Your body is dirty and you should be ashamed!! Sex is icky!!” Sound familiar? The Church has been spouting that line for centuries. It’s all about the control.

As to why it’s worse for women than men…. again, control. We live, and have lived for a long time in a male-run society. Men (sorry guys) seem to like controlling women. What better way to do that than to convince a woman that she is disgusting, and to convince her that if she doesn’t act how you want her to act (in this case, if she doesn’t act like a sexually repressed prude), no one will ever love her. It works on a small scale in abusive relationships, and it has certainly worked on a large scale, in our society. Heck, they even have other women so convinced that they are disgusting that they’ll attack any other woman who acts differently… “She’s such a whore” “Slut” “Frigid bitch!!” All words and phrases designed by men to make women feel bad about their bodies and their natural sex drive, and to manipulate women into having more or less sex than she is comfortable with.

Can I get back into this without making anybody angry or defensive? I think what many who are posting here are missing is not the fact of the ACT of sex, but the significance to which we attach it. As in; people do things without ever really understanding their motivations. I understand the biological cravings to reproduce and the 20 something profile – in the bars or at parties – dressing for capturing attention in a sexual manner. I’m just not sure we can write it all off to that. We are also, as another couple of people posted, driven by the need to feel “loved”. It takes us right back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. So, might not the child who grew up with the multiple strikes against it in my previously mentioned be more inclined to seek out, over and over without ever being satisfied, those feelings of love and fulfillment by the opposite sex? And since the sexual partner can provide only a bit of what the person seeks, he/she turns repeatedly to yet another and another partner, always looking for the feeling of “acceptance” might be a better term. I’m not criticizing the behaviour, merely stating that perhaps the person should look more deeply at their own motivation and understand that which it is they are seeking. Wasn’t it Socrates who said “The life unexamined is not worth living.” ? I think it means that we’re more than a bunch of impulses and actions. To write off promiscuous behaviour then, as a Darwinian impulse reduces us to animals incapable of self restraint or rational action. We are thinking, rational beings capable of greatness, each an every one of us. To achieve that greatness, we must examine ourselves and seek enlightenment, through whatever means is most comfortable for us. It isn’t that having sex with multiple partners is bad in and of itself, it’s that those who are driven to do so MAY need to take a closer look at what it is they are seeking from their partners. I hope I’ve stated this in a non confrontational manner. ;-)

@Trillian I agree with you, as I’m sure you know. I agree that close self study may lead someone to understand better what is motivating their behavior. Hell! It should help. However, I think there is a great deal of difficulty in truly seeing oneself, particularly in this area. It is fraught with moral judgments and political ideologies.

In order to gird oneself up, especially for a woman, one often uses the rubric of sexual empowerment. I.e., that one is choosing to express one’s sexuality as one sees fit. (God, how did I get into using “one?”) Once into such an intellectual framework, it is hard to see beyond it, even if one admits to desperately seeking love. People separate love from sex, and once they have done so, it’s as if they are in two separate worlds, and it is extremely difficult to reunite them, for, in order to do so, one must admit that one was misleading oneself.

The rhetoric of sexual empowerment is highly significant for women who are fighting the Madonna-whore view of femininity. It allows them access to what has traditionally been seen as a man’s perogative without being subject to the “whore” complex. It turns things around so the woman is using sex for her enjoyment, not for the pleasure of her “clients.”

To come to admit that sex can not be separated from love is well-nigh impossible under such circumstances, I think. And thus, both women and men who believe that sex is different from love are trapped into a life where it is extremely difficult to become close enough to love someone. Or so I believe. I could, of course, be wrong with my generalization here. But I do wish people happiness, and I have found that people who engage in rampant sexuality often do not seem to have a very positive outlook on the possibility of love. At least, not for them. Thus, lots of sex is a kind of substitute, because at least it feels good, even if it doesn’t last long.

@Trillian Exactly. The irony in your answer is the fact that I asked the question. I am examining my own behavior, being conscious about it, while at the same time trying to not judge myself for it based on the societal standards I’ve been taught to believe.

My favorite part of your response was;

I think it means that we’re more than a bunch of impulses and actions. To write off promiscuous behaviour then, as a Darwinian impulse reduces us to animals incapable of self restraint or rational action. We are thinking, rational beings capable of greatness, each an every one of us. To achieve that greatness, we must examine ourselves and seek enlightenment, through whatever means is most comfortable for us. It isn’t that having sex with multiple partners is bad in and of itself, it’s that those who are driven to do so MAY need to take a closer look at what it is they are seeking from their partners.

This is the best answer I have received to this question. Thank you, thank you, and no-by no means was that said or understood as confrontational.

@iLove You’re certainly welcome. I’m pleased that somebody got something out of that. I hope it helps. I wish you well.