5.1.1999

PETER: Hi,

Thanks for your mail.

RESPONDENT: Hi, Peter. I usually am pretty swift with my delete key when reviewing postings to the sannyas list, so I never read some of your postings which, I gather, may have been criticized?? Loving and harmless, men and women relating... this is the gold of life, in my estimation. I’d like to refer you to a very active, very open minded, very stimulating list, moderated by a lovely woman who is the founder of ‘Loving More’ magazine, which espouses the philosophy of just that – loving more, poly-amory, being in open non-monogamous relationships, successfully.

PETER: If you had read any of my journal particularly the Living Together, Love and Sex chapters, you would have discovered that my companion and I undertook an intense and extensive investigation into the failure of men-women relationships.

We began our relationship with a simple commitment – that we would investigate everything that stood in the way of us having a perfectly peaceful, harmonious and equitable companionship. Absolutely everything! – no holds barred, nothing hidden, no bargains, no deals. The essential addendum was that we would look at what it was in each of us – not the other.

What we found was astounding to say the least. Not only are men and women socially conditioned to be forever in two camps in the battle of the sexes, but that we are genetically programmed with instinctual drives and emotions that actively prevent any chance of a direct intimacy being at all possible. To adopt the traditional approach of love, love and yet more love as a solution to temporarily bridge this gap is to either invite the usual failures or at best a set of hopeful bargains and deals. These very compromises cause either a simmering resentment or feeling of sacrifice that covertly conspire to prevent not only the actual freedom of each party, but inevitably result in a second-rate life being lead by each of the parties.

To cobble oneself with a partner, as a succour to loneliness, is but a sad compromise.

However all is not lost.

Given sufficient intent, courage and sheer bloody-mindedness one can overcome and eventually eliminate both one’s personal fears, social conditioning and instinctual programming and succeed in enjoying the delights of living with a companion in a free, mature and direct intimacy that leaves love for dead!

One is then neither a man nor a woman, not blindly driven by instinctual behaviour, not beholden to the other as a sop for loneliness. One finds at last one’s ‘best mate’, as they say in this country, one whose company is constantly and irrevocably delightful, interesting and ever-fresh. And the mystique of sex is exposed and laid bare such that each and every sexual encounter is a new, sensate, sensual experience of such astounding physical pleasure as to leave no room for such interfering emotions as love.

So, as you can see, the web-site you offer would be of no use to either me or my companion.

We have discovered and unearthed a far superior way of living together in peace, harmony and equity.

But thanks for the thought.