"It's not just her attitude towards it; it's also yours. How will you feel seeing her with someone else afterwards?

Sex, like money, changes everything."

Right on, Cluin. That's why I said that the best way to lose a friend is to have sex with one. Having sex with someone tends to activate all those underlying cultural sexual expectations/roles we've been conditioned to hold and play out, consciously or otherwise. Friendships often buckle under the pressure of "You should - I should". WHoever would want a "monogamous" friendship? A friend-turned-lover is a friend no more - the parameters of relationship change entirely, and often not for the better imo. And true friends are too valuable to lose for a few minutes of the wild monkey-dance.

"...if your heart ain't in it, you're better off playing with your instrument alone." That does sound lonely. How bout playing your instrument "al-one"?!

John in Kansas, thanks for sharing your insights into the pitfalls of having "casual" sex from a man's perspective. I've watched that very scenario play out among my acquaintances a few times, and the biggest losers are so often the children involved.

Re sex and war - I submit that they are related, because

(1) The production of the hormones that govern both sexual and aggressive functions (ie. adrenalin, testosterone) in humans is regulated by the same area of the brain, the hypothalamus. And there is a definite correlation between testosterone levels and both aggressive and sexual behaviors, in either gender. When testosterone levels increase, both behaviours increase. To quote from James Kalat's "Biological Psychology", "Testosterone probably enhances the likelihood of human violence. Throughout the world, males engage in more violent behavior than females do ... Moreover, the highest incidence of violence, as measured by crime statistics, is in men 15-25 years old, who also have the highest levels of testosterone in the blood." Is it any wonder that it is the young men of any society who form the bulk of it's armies?

(2) The ancients recognized this connection even though they had no biological, "scientific" explanation for it. That's why the God/desses of war in so many traditions are the very same as the God/desses of sex ie. Shiva and the Kali-Ma of the Hindus, Freya of the Norse, Bast/Sekhmet of the Egyptians, even Mars/Aries of the Greeks and Romans (although they had other sexual deities as well).

(3) Sex and war both have 3 letters, with a vowel in the middle! ;)

daylia