Platonic bed sharing while married.

[USCGrad90]

I'm not sure if wedding vows still include the phrase "forsaking all others" but it was part of mine. Failure to forsake all others has destroyed untold marriages and has crippled countless others. No one is intended to ever come between a husband and wife.
So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate. (Matt. 19:6 NIV)
Call it what you will, but sharing someone else's bed instead of your spouse's is allowing another person to come between you and the person you made a vow to.

 

[Jonathan Jarvis]

Maybe I'm just being dense here, but I simply don't understand what kind of platonic friendship virtually requires sleeping together and cuddling? Why not just marry the platonic friend and be done with it?

Any advice on how to stop my wife sleeping with me only in in a platonic way?

 

[selfinflikted]

Any advice on how to stop my wife sleeping with me only in in a platonic way?

LOL

 

[quatona]

Ah, so if a person doesn't want to "handle" their SO spending time in bed with another person, they're immature. Got it.

No - you haven´t got the difference between "is" and "may be".
But I guess the way you have "got it" is way more convenient - since else you would have to address what I actually said.

 

[quatona]

Maybe I'm just being dense here, but I simply don't understand what kind of platonic friendship virtually requires sleeping together and cuddling?

Maybe I am just dense her, but I simply don´t understand how doing only what is "required" has become the criterium for what we do?
IOW: I never said it was required, and the question I answered wasn´t asking for requirements.
This criterium has been added post hoc, and it doesn´t seem to be particularly consistent. If "It isn´t required therefore it is not intelligibly desirable" were a broadly accepted tenet we would have to stop 90% of what we do immediately.

Why not just marry the platonic friend and be done with it?

Because it´s a platonic friend, because for the person you are addressing sex is a necessary prerequisite for marriage (and sex is neither had nor desired between those two persons), because this platonic friend - despite fulfilling one or several needs that the person you are married to can´t fulfill - there isn´t the deep connection that you have with or expect from your partner.
This entire asking "If...then why not?" is just veiling the fact that you speak about where you personally, individually draw the lines. The next person may ask "If you want to go to the movies with a person why not marry her and be done with it?".
But the question I had been asked was not: What are my (the questioners) lines? It was a different question: Why would someone who is different from me (the questioner) draw the line differently than me?
I tried to answer it.
However, I´m just not good at answering "Why not?" questions.

 

[Hetta]

The next person may ask "If you want to go to the movies with a person why not marry her and be done with it?".

Going to a movie with a person =/= sleeping in a bed with a person. There is an intimacy with one and not with the other.

 

[quatona]

Going to a movie with a person =/= sleeping in a bed with a person. There is an intimacy with one and not with the other.

Well, for another person the significant line of intimacy isn´t between going to the movies and spending time in a bed together. It may be between spending time in bed together and having sex with each other, or even between having sex with each other and being committed to each other.
For yet another person the significant line may be between going to the movies with a person of the same sex and a person of the other sex.

So people are different, and when you ask where other people draw their lines, there isn´t much point in countering their response with "But this is where I draw the line."

When I tried to answer the question why other people do what you aren´t willing to do I was already fully aware that this isn´t what you are willing to do. It was the premise, even. It was more like I had the feeling you and other people were trying to understand those who feel different from them.

 

[Hetta]

This doesn't even make sense any more.

Only someone really bizarre would believe that going to the movies with a person is as intimate as being in bed with them.

 

[quatona]

This doesn't even make sense any more.

Only someone really bizarre would believe that going to the movies with a person is as intimate as being in bed with them.

The actually bizarre thing is that you keeping putting words in my mouth. I never said anything to that effect.
You needn´t put up with what I say, but there is absolutely no point in holding against me what I didn´t say.

 

[Hetta]

I find it hard to understand what you do mean.

 

[bhsmte]

Spooky stuff on this thread.

 

[quatona]

I find it hard to understand what you do mean.

Yes, I noticed that. I´m not sure how to deal with that.
Basically, I am saying that different people feel different things to be a threat to their partnership. They draw the lines differently - which however doesn´t mean they consider those things that are within in their lines the same (and it also doesn´t mean that they consider those things outside their lines all the same). "Going to the movies together is fine with me, and spending time in bed together is fine with me" doesn´t mean you feel going to the movies and spending time in bed together is the same. You can easily make a list of differences between those pasttimes - however, a communality is that you are fine with both.

 

[quatona]

Spooky stuff on this thread.

Yep.

 

[Hetta]

I understand that different people have different limits/lines in the sand, but it would still strike me as weird that a married person would have a platonic bed time with a person not their spouse, and that their spouse would agree with that. Just color me old fashioned.

 

[MoneyGuy]

Yep.

Yep, yep.

Very weird thread. I can't believe what some are saying.

 

[Belk]

I understand that different people have different limits/lines in the sand, but it would still strike me as weird that a married person would have a platonic bed time with a person not their spouse, and that their spouse would agree with that. Just color me old fashioned.

It is weird in the sense that it is outside the normal experience for most. But then there are many different quirks in the world. I honestly find it strange that so many people seem to have a negative reaction to this. My question is would sleeping with a platonic friend who was the same sex be as big of a deal? If not then why the distinction because of the sex of the friend?

 

[Sayre]

Any advice on how to stop my wife sleeping with me only in in a platonic way?

Bwahaha

 

[quatona]

I understand that different people have different limits/lines in the sand, but it would still strike me as weird that a married person would have a platonic bed time with a person not their spouse, and that their spouse would agree with that. Just color me old fashioned.

I have no intention to ascribe your feelings to being old fashioned. That wouldn´t provide me with an explanation why you and others find this thing so weird.
Also, it´s not me who keeps calling those who feel differently "weird" and other such attributes.

The interesting part here is: What an understanding of committed partnership/marriage leads to the opinions expressed here (on both ends)?

Personally - while I am quite familiar with it - I don´t consider the emotion jealousy a virtue but something that to overcome is a necessary part of successful self-actualization.

 

[Hetta]

The interesting part here is: What an understanding of committed partnership/marriage leads to the opinions expressed here (on both ends)?

Personally - while I am quite familiar with it - I don´t consider the emotion jealousy a virtue but something that to overcome is a necessary part of successful self-actualization.

I think there's a missing word in the first question.

I don't think it's a sign of 'jealousy' to expect your spouse or SO to sleep only with you. But I guess there we differ.

 

[Hetta]

It is weird in the sense that it is outside the normal experience for most. But then there are many different quirks in the world. I honestly find it strange that so many people seem to have a negative reaction to this. My question is would sleeping with a platonic friend who was the same sex be as big of a deal? If not then why the distinction because of the sex of the friend?

Oh come on. The majority of heterosexuals will not be tempted to have sex with a person of the same sex, but that may change considerably when two heterosexuals of the opposite sex are sharing a bed. Yes, yes, self-control, blah blah - but why even put yourself in the position where you have to exert self-control or where there is temptation? What's the point? I will put myself out there and say that if I could imagine having a really, really close friend of the opposite sex, and for some reason we are in bed - because he's meeting some need my husband doesn't meet - and we're snuggling .. well, maybe just me and my Gallic temperament but I would be tempted .. particularly if intimacy was something missing from my marriage.

(I have never been in these circumstances, so this is all a guess.)