On the Ethics of the Love Life of a Single Woman...

(Using a stylus & tablet allows me to create a transparent layer underneath which I can layer other images, though I could have done a better drawing with a pencil... those are real love letters from years ago, and the writing in the border was from a one-time flame...)

Love Letters: On the Ethics of the Love Life of a Single Woman...

Please bear with me while I express this, sum it up, even if only for myself.

My ethical position came finally to this. I would not get involved with a man unless I had an openess to a relationship of forever. I wasn't putting time limits on it. If I thought that I'd maybe never want to see him again after one night, I would resist sleeping with him even if we were making motions towards; if I thought I might like perhaps a few weeks or a few months with someone at most, similarly I would walk away. That might all be fun while it was happening, but what if he fell in love with me, I'd only hurt him. I don't want to knowingly hurt anyone. It's a creed I live my life by, including my love life.

So, only if I could conceive of a forever would I get involved. That seems fair enough. And if he's not in that same space, and is looking at being into me for one night, a few weeks, or a few months, that's the risk I take. That's preferable to my doing it to someone else. The guy I did the "intimate friends" with got terribly hurt. Did that make me a better person? No. It made me a person who knew there was no commitment on my part and even though I told him that and did it anyway I knew there was a risk if he fell in love. And breaking up was hard to do because I became part of all the failures of love in his life. I don't want to go through it again. It wasn't a case of, 'well, we tried & it didn't work,' so much as, 'this was never anything more than a sexual diversion in my life for a short while.' They are two different scenarios. I simply chose not to do the latter any more; I can live without the sex, I can't live with hurting men who I more-or-less use, even if they agree to it.

It's my position, not anyone's else's, nor do I expect anyone else to adhere to my decision for myself based on what I can and can't live with ethically. And it's coincided with aging, so that's helped. And with increasing financial difficulties, that make me far less attractive. Etc.

But, then again, I wonder. A man of the cloth? And I a non-organized religion non-congregation spiritual rebel. And now man who lives nearly a continent away? Is it just that I'm afraid of intimacy? Or that I'm really choosy and the circumstances just happen to be the circumstances and not part of the design?

I hope this isn't too torturedly introspective for you.... I've never actually taken the time to write out my position in this free-wheeling world of free-love before. And it might explain why I'm at your doorstep free of entanglements and baggage. And why you don't need to worry about a thing, either, my dear lover.

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