Id like to add one thing. That a healthy intimate relationship doesn't require you to lose your independence. This is a main cause of relationships failing. When one or both partners become dependent upon each other.
A healthy positive relationship is a trinity. There is the individuals and then the relationship as a unit.

Your partners happiness is not your responsibility nor is yours theirs. This doesn't mean that your not there for them to lean on, go to when in need, of coarse you must always be there to support your partner being happy but its not YOUR job to make them happy. Support is the key word here.

Often times, as we learn how to be a good partner and how to have a healthy relationship, one or both people try to make their happiness or self confidence the others responsibility. This causes ripples and stress on the relationship as a unit. Its impossible for one and self defeating for 2.

Once a person is dependent upon their partner for these inherent needs there instills an underlying resentment as well as mis-trust. A person can fail you or even hurt you. This is why independence must be maintained within the union. When you take responsibility for your own happiness and self assurance the relationship can blossom to its healthy full potential and nobody feels suppressed or reliant.

To be a good partner you should never require the other to be the same person you fell in love with. You should allow them to grow and change and support and cherish this. We all to often feel threatened by our partners changing because we are RELIANT upon them and have lost our independence. This is scary because since we need them in this way their changing is a threat, "what if this new person doesn't make me happy". Well make yourself happy and then their changes and growing becomes a beautiful thing rather than threatening.

Maybe think about this because these words of your feel like you have a negative perception of relationships as if they hold you back or stop you from being you, which is the case 90% of the time until we learn not to make this mistake. A healthy partnership is one of the most beautiful life enriching things we can do as peoples. Sadly IMO 90% of relationships don't know what I'm saying or don;t apply it.

If all you have seen or experienced in relationships is co dependency, its no wonder a person wouldn't want to be in one. Who would?

As far as watching porn, I think that yes this can be damaging. Its not an accurate example of intimate sex with your partner usually. Often times we like porn because its us living out our repressed sexual fantasy's. There is nothing wrong with this but people who watch too much porn or especially young people this can be damaging painting an often times misogynistic picture. I like some porn at times but like it best watching it with my partner. Enjoying it together and being open to each others desires and fantasies IMO is very healthy in a society that suppress' sex as much as ours does. I am most sexually open and diverse when its with a person Im in love with. In fact the older I get the less sex without love is appealing to me.

Now, if you want to have love... that is gonna take a huge commitment. Generally, it will be larger than your career or hobbies... often combined. Don't listen to what anyone tells you. Despite the rather incredible high moments... relationships generally devolve into murky trench warfare in a fetid swamp. You may garner some peak experiences along the way... but you are certain to find your lowest points as well. Your first love is statistically nearly certain to break your heart... usually irreparably. This is not so bad, though, as that overly romantic thing you thought was your heart was actually some deeply ingrained programming.

I have to say your post is about the most pointed and realistic take on love/sex/etc I've read. Really a nothing held back reality check and advice for those willing to listen. It is advice I wish I had received as a kid. Too bad I also know I wouldn't have listened and would have just called you a jaded old fart. Some lessons in life have to be learned first hand and damn am I not having much fun with my set of them at the lately! I have spent the last 22 years with my high-school sweetheart and first love. You are more than correct that "Your first love is statistically nearly certain to break your heart... usually irreparably". It feels even more irreparable when three kids and a couple decades are involved.

Thanks for the post.. Yours and olympus mon's posts really hit home for me at a time I needed to read them. Time to dig deep and sort out my inner crap..... seriously considering an iboga flood to force the journey.

This might qualify as too much information, but perhaps not. Either way, I think it's an important thing for men to talk about. I abstained from masturbation for either 6 or 7 days last week. I succumbed to the urge to my great dismay, but I didn't watch porn at least. Anyway, I subjectively felt a pretty steep boost in libido, energy, focus. The last time I went that long was in 2008, I believe, but that was under different circumstances. And although I didn't get laid in this past week, my interest in women gradually started to rise. They just caught my attention more easily, I was more likely to start a conversation, I was more likely to be flirtatious, and I was more confident, etc. All good things in my book. So anyway, this is progress in a positive direction.

See the positive.

However, I've come to realize that unlike I had thought, there is no significant link to my desire for women.

Cheap shot hug46, cheap!

"Energy flows where attention goes"

"Impeccability is nothing else but the proper use of energy. My statements have no inkling of morality. I've saved energy and that makes me impeccable. To understand this, you have to save enough energy yourself.

Warriors take strategic inventories. They list everything they do. Then they decide which of those things can be changed in order to allow themselves a respite, in terms of expending their energy.

The strategic inventory covers only behavioral patterns that are not essential to our survival and well-being.

In the strategic inventories of warriors, self-importance figures as the activity that consumes the greatest amount of energy, hence, their effort to eradicate it.

One of the first concerns of warriors is to free that energy in order to face the unknown with it. The action of rechanneling that energy is impeccability."

Cheap shot hug46, cheap!

Could you please elaborate why suggesting one of the alternatives on a sexual preference is considered a cheap shot? Just out of interest.

Could you please elaborate why suggesting one of the alternatives on a sexual preference is considered a cheap shot? Just out of interest.

If he where a homosexual i think he would have simply watched gay porn instead. ^_^

You kinda put words into Hug's mouth yourself.

He asked if he "may be" attracted to men. Not if he "already" knows that he is homosexual.

You do realise that not everyone who at some point accepts their homosexuality, not always knew that they had such tendencies, right?

Isn't asking that he may be attracted to men kind of implying that he already knows he is homosexual in the first place?