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From: purtell@reed.UUCP (Lady Godiva)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: How far can friendship go?
Message-ID: <1691@reed.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 15-Jul-85 19:20:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: reed.1691
Posted: Mon Jul 15 19:20:13 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Jul-85 04:44:25 EDT
References: <315@tektools.UUCP>
Reply-To: purtell@reed.UUCP (Lady Godiva)
Distribution: net
Organization: Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Lines: 64
Summary: 

In article <315@tektools.UUCP> janec@tektools.UUCP (Jane Caputo) writes:
>I'm starting to suspect that the difference in attitudes about platonic
>relationships has something to do with age.  Most of my younger friends
>seem to agree with Chris Anderson:

  [Why can't people hug, etc. without turning on and why must they feel
that everytime they touch they must go 'all the way'? - Forgive me for
paraphrasing Chris.]

>In the fifties and early sixties there were girls around (I wouldn't dream
>of calling them women) who bragged about going to bed with their boyfriends
>and refusing to allow them to finish.  They were "saving it" for their
>husbands.  They were "good" girls, in contrast to the "bad" girls who let boys
>go all the way.  Listening to them turned my stomach.  

    What you say is interesting, but I think that it is an unfair
comparison. There is a difference between turning someone on and then
leaving, or not finishing, and just hugging and kissing when you both
know that you are just friends and that it's for a close physical
relationship, not a sexual one. I know because I have experienced both
although I have never been the one that left or didn't finish when it
was expected that we would finish. I agree - it isn't a good thing to
do.  Like I said - I've hugged, cuddled with, some people who I knew 
found me sexually attractive. But it was also very clear that I didn't 
find them sexually appealing and they knew that I just thought of them 
as a friend. It was also clear that if they found it too frustrating to 
hug, etc. that we didn't have to do it and I understood. 

>but actually to me the kissing
>and hugging *is* making love.  In fact there are a whole complex of other
>things, like certain kinds of compliments, that also to me are part of the
>lovemaking.  I would never do them under any other circumstances.
>
   With certain people I do think that hugging and kissing is making
love. In fact, (forgive the following terribly romantic sentiments)
holding hands, gazing into each other's eyes, walking on the beach arm
in arm under the stars, and talking about the love that we have for each
other are all ways of making love, if they are done with the right
person. But hugging, kissing, holding hands, etc. is not making love if
done with someone that you feel only friendship, however close, for. In
short, it's not what you do, it's who you do it with. I agree that there
are limits to what I do with my close friends, but even if I were to
have sex with one of them it still wouldn't be making love, it would
be having sex. 

>There have been times when I've changed my mind.
>But I haven't felt good about doing that to someone.  
 
   There's the difference. We (or at least I) am not changing my mind.
This is what I, and hopefully whoever I'm hugging, kissing, has wanted
and expected all along. 

> You're really the post-revolutionary generation, 

   Didn't they do this sort of thing in the sixties? I'd sure like to
think so. It's hard to believe that something this good was just started
so recently. Of course I was born in the middle of the sixties so I
wouldn't know. (oops - my youth is showing...)

    cheers -

    elizabeth g. purtell

     (Lady Godiva)