If I just have sex with a friend or feel like having a one night stand, then yeah- it's just sex. We use protection, have a little fun, and go our separate ways. It's not intimate or emotional or bonding in any way.
^^This describes almost all the sex I've had in my life. You can bet money, if you're not my W (and one other person), and you had sex with me, it was this. That's why I have such trouble with this association of "feeling" with sex, it's not always the case. In my personal life, it's not even a good guess. And add in "your already married RIO" well.. I'd bet every dollar I have, if I had an A, it would be "just sex". And I'd also say, while people always tell me otherwise, I have a pretty good suspicion that just about every male affair I know of also falls into this category.
I've even had sex that's purely recreational with my husband. But sex can also be deeply intimate and connective, and that's NOT just sex.
Agreed, it can be either. And I've had both with my W too. I actually prefer "just sex", let's leave the emotions for discussion elsewhere, but sometimes we do the "romantic love" thing too, and that's fun as well.
Either way, I find the comment irrelevant. If a WP's philosophy is that it's just sex and no big deal, then why didn't they try to negotiate an open relationship? Clearly, because they knew it was in fact a big deal to the BS. Big deal or not- being open, honest, and ethical is paramount in a marriage or LTR.
And that's a very important point. Me saying that "my A would be just sex" in no way invalidates feeling betrayed, in fact, for some, it may make it worse. My issue is that people often attribute feeling to a WH when a BS comes here; in fact, I think that WH's are encouraged to NOT say "just sex" here, people will tell them to dig more. But betrayed spouses getting all torn apart by the "emotions" in an A makes, to me, a lot less sense than other BS getting all torn up about the physical acts performed/frequency/etc in an A. The physical acts actually happened, the emotional component of the A, in a lot of cases, was a complete fabrication. No, this DOES NOT make it better, but, beating yourself up over a BS's "feelings for the AP" when they've said "it was just sex" makes about as much sense as me beating myself up about the "OM's impossibly good performance in bed that I cannot possible top", which is to say.. It's beating yourself up over something that probably didn't even happen. Things DID happen, bad things; and, just like me, sitting around thinking "God, is my wife really so stupid to cheat for words" you have every right to think "God, he really cheated for a 10 second spasm". Yup, a whole lot of people do. Don't attribute meaning to something that, in many cases, doesn't have one.
