Dear Dr. Holmes:

Hi! I would like to seek your help regarding my situation. After working overseas for three years. I came back to Manila to give birth. The father of the child and I are not together anymore. But that's not my problem.

I had a boyfriend before I left abroad. We parted as friends. We were sexually active during our one year relationship together. But no penetration. He knows that I'm back. We still talk over the phone and go out with friends. He is currently courting someone else.

Since I came from abroad, I've been fantasizing about him and our escapades. How I long for it to happen again. I thought the feelings of lust would go away after my delivery, but they didn't.

Though we can talk about anything, I hesitate telling him how I feel about him. I know there is no chance of reconciliation here. I'm just after clean and healthy sex.

Do you think its a good idea to ask him about it? Is it immoral? What will he think about me? What are the consequences, I will have to face?

This problem is really bothering me for quite sometime now. You are the only person who I can turn to regarding this. I do hope you can help and explain to me what's happening to me.

Thank you very much in advance. I do pray you can help me. More power to you!!!

LINDA

Dear LINDA:

Thank you very much for your letter although I am afraid I cannot answer the following two of your four questions: (1) whether it is immoral to ask him about having sex and (2) what he will think about you if you do. But not to worry, I doubt if any really honest person would try and answer those two questions for you either. After we reach a certain age, it seems presumptuous to answer questions about morality for someone else (the only guide I can give you regarding morality is to ask yourself if you would be respecting him treating him and/or his current girlfriend the way you want to be respected if you asked him what you wanted). and as for speculating on what he may think of you if you *do* ask him, ...well, anyone can speculate but real answers are hard to come by unless the person has confided in you (which he hasn’t)

SO...with your permission, let me answer your other two questions: (1) Do you think its a good idea to ask him about it? (2) What are the consequences, I will have to face?

Let me answer (2) first since (1) is somewhat contingent on (2). Presuming that you take sufficient protection against unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (including AIDS), you will still have to face one possible consequence, and that is of either you and/or he caring more for the other than what the other expects. It is very difficult to have clean and healthy sex and have it remain simply (and only) as such. One or the other usually falls in love (or thinks he/she is). Although it is not politically correct to say this, clinical experience bears out that it is usually the female who gets more involved than the male when sex is involved. Perhaps that will not happen in your case, but why bother?

If clean and healthy sex is what you want (and *all* you want) I suggest masturbating or, if you *insist* on a warm, live body with whom to have it with, then maybe not with the warm live body of someone who (1) is courting someone else and/or (2) someone whose friendship you will miss should things go wrong. Between clean sex and good friendship, good friendship is much much more difficult to come by. SO...even if it is the path of least resistance to suggest to your former boyfriend that you and he get it on, it is also the path of not-so-smart accommodation to do this.

It makes perfect sense that you would want to do it with your ex-boyfriend with whom you have already shared wonderful physical and emotional good times with. It is equally tempting to want to extend the warm friendship you have now to what you hope will be a no-strings-attached-but-very-warm-and-loving sexual relationship. But things very seldom stay as cut and dried as all that, LINDA. Something will have to give. With the situation the way it is now, he courting somebody else, etc., chances are that *if* you will have him as friend and lover over the short term and you will have him as neither over the long haul. Seems to me it is much better (certainly gentler to the other person he’s courting and to each other too) to get a vibrator, a trusty finger or even someone else, (someone more neutral) than to risk losing your friendship. All the best!

MG Holmes

(BodyMind Vol. 2 No. 15 - First posted: 4-19-98)