Hey babe. Hehehe, 'Poppycock'- Latin root please? Yeah, yeah, I know I was just having a momentary laps of surreal morality. But then again, don't assume that current social equality and attitude has always been as it is today. Society is evolving in its perception of influentially powerful positions and womens roles in them.

So men are dominated more by hormonal needs and women by emotional?

You just lie back and think of England.

then you're probably thinking about an attractive woman, thereby conforming yet again to the ideals of mainstream society. there's no real way around it if you think about it.

That is so sexist. That's why so many people are getting divorced, because when the honeymoon wears off they don't even know eachother. There is more to love than sex and it is called friendship. At least know who your doing it with.

I always thought of this is terms of evolution. Loving your mate is evolutionarily valuable: Really loving your mate makes you go out of your way to protect them, to protect the bond you share with them, making it more likely for you to have more children. Especially because (if you're emotionally healthy) you'd be more inclined to have a child with someone who you love than with someone you just met.

It actually kind of bothers me when people try to talk about sex and love and leave out reproductive issues. It is how we are; we are hardwired to make children with someone we love, it is a big chunk of our nature. Leaving children out of the equation is selfish at best.

To answer the title question: No, sex and love are not interchangeable. "Making Love" is a total misnomer because, how often does sex actually manufacture love? It is my belief that sex should only be shared between people who are in love because the chances that problems that arise from sex will split them apart are slimmer if they really are determined to make things work.

i disagree that its slefish not to want to have children. oftentimes, lovers are not in a financial position to procreate or they feel that it wouldn't be fair to the child if both of them have full time jobs so that the child would always have to be left with another caretaker. i could probably think of more reasons, but i'm too tired at the moment to think properly.

the origional reason why this thread was posted was because i wondered if a relationship could be based completely on love but without sex. and the same goes for sex. as much as many people will deny it, sex repeatedly done with the same partber does register some degree of love or there would be no pleasure in the act of sex. even two people who claim that their relationship is based on sex alone would, i'm sure, be quite upset if their partner cheated on them with another. thereby forming a certain bond, possibly of love, between the two individuals.

so the true question remains; can you have love without sex and vice versa?

Some you love in a relationship should complete you. When they are not there you don't know what to do and when they are you take it for granted after awhile.

That's not what i meant. What I mean is that procreation is as close to the core of humanity as sexuality is, and that they are intertwined completely. EVen though the miracle of contraceptives has made it seem like the two are different issues, it doesn't change the biology of the situation: When you are horny, your body is telling you to procreate. We can pretend the massage means something else, we can misconstrue it to be a need for release, a need for intimacy, but we would be acting irresponsibly.

What I mean is that up until contraceptives, when a man said to a woman he wanted to have sex with her, there was no mystery involved, no misconceptions. If they were having sex, they were having children. (excluding the possibility of infertility)

I don't agree with all you've just said man. You seem to bind all the biological components together and totally leave out the emotional ones. Intimacy is just as important as the other reasons you give, otherwise people who were infertile would not have an urge at all. There is obviously a difference between the sexes as far as intensity for this need, but sometimes all you want is closeness, comfort or intimacy. I don't believe for a moment that we are solely motivated by procreation (whether we know it or not) when it comes to love. I believe we are more complex than you may realise.

We are ignorant of our constant urge to procreate because of psychological denial, but mostly by random incident (we are, apparently, made this way). We are monstrously complex, yes, but that's no excuse to try to pretend that procreation has anything less than everything to do with sexuality.

People can died from loneliness but they don't die from lack of sex.

I'm not saying it's essential to our survival to have sex. I'm not interested in having sex, not for a long time. I'm saying that, because of he biology of it, sexuality and procreation are the same issue.

So sex and love are seperate issues?

Oy! Yes, they are separate issues. We can satisfy our need for intimacy, closeness and love without having sex, yes? But can we satisfy our need to procreate without having sex?

Edit: all this new, disgusting technology aside, can we?

Of coarse not. From your earlier post I assumed you believed love to be an illusion designed to trick us into procreating. I disput this, not the fact that sex leads to procreation.

All right then. Now what I meant about love is no that it is a trick used to make us procreate. But it is evolutionarily beneficial to love the one with whom you procreate.

And I do concur with that statement. ...to a certain extent, due to the fact that 'love is blind' therefore we do not necessarily choose partners to love that are the best choice to father/mother children.

Not to mention the fact that if everyone had sex with everyone they loved, most people would in psychiatric treatments now. Who knows maybe society wouldn't have developed at all? Most friends love eachother as do family members have close bonds. Most people make jokes about Mississippi in that context though.