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Comment by fizixer | Hacker News Reader

Thought experiment:

Imagine you are not dependent on your current partner in any way. You are financially stable (let's say you a multi-millionaire). Either you don't have kids or if you do, somehow they're not dependent on you (or something).

Now think of your favorite media personalities that you have a crush on, and imagine one of them meets you in person and takes an elevated level of interest in you.

If you don't have any celebrity crushes and that there is no one in the world you find more attractive than your current partner, I give up.

If there is, would you be tempted to cheat? If not, I give up.

If yes, I rest my case.

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Would I have consensual sex with an attractive celebrity if they took an interest in me? Sure.

Would I fall in love with an attractive celebrity if they took an interest in me? Well, no, not automatically anyway, I would have to get to know this person first and see how I feel about spending time and do things together. I'd definitely not dump a person I've known and loved for years over a fling with an attractive celebrity that I don't really know on a personal level.

You keep saying that sexual attraction and love are the same thing, but they are not.

My perspective is that falling in love with someone doesn't mean having to replace your current lover.

That's only true in a society that enforces monogamy.

My birth culture is plainly polygamous. My grandfather had five wives. My uncle has 4 and a half. My brother has 2.

4 and a half wives? would you mind to explain?

4 wives and a lover?

IMHO that should be counted as 6 wives. I was thinking of different scenario: if his wives has the same rights as he has - one of his wives can have 2 husbands. So if we look at it this way - he has 4.5 wives indeed

Wish a country had both polygamy and polyandry to allow for those situations. Although the tax code might become a tad complicated.

> Would I have consensual sex with an attractive celebrity if they took an interest in me? Sure.

Would you proclaim that at the time of marriage vows? No. (so the whole idea of marriage is either a hypocrisy or a joke).

Would you proclaim that when your recent date asks if it's time to go steady? No. (so the whole idea of monogamous relationship is either a hypocrisy or a joke).

And the very idea that you have celebrity crushes while you claim you're in love with someone flies in the face of the idea of love.

I'm not saying what you think is immoral. All I'm saying is this whole thing is a big make-believe, an arcane circus that we like to play our whole lives, when the alternative is quite simple: just admit the reality that it's way more superficial and increasingly more and more useless than what the society would like you to believe.

> Would I fall in love with an attractive celebrity if they took an interest in me? Well, no...

You completely missed my point.

> And the very idea that you have celebrity crushes while you claim you're in love with someone flies in the face of the idea of love.

How so? This is where you lose me.

I think they're trying to define "being in love" as "never having a romantic or sexual thought about anyone else, ever," and proclaiming the concept of love invalid if it can't meet that threshold.

>Would you proclaim that at the time of marriage vows? No.

"Freebie lists" (shared lists between couples of people they'd be allowed to cheat with, if the extremely unlikely opportunity arose) are a thing - at least in pop culture.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=freebie%20lis...

The premise of your experiment of your flawed: having a physical attraction towards someone does not mean you fall in love with them or suddenly want to replace the person you are in love with.

Hmm. I'm sympathetic to your overall perspective (that love may not be the universal blessing as it is often perceived) but this is rather unconvincing.

You should not confuse how most people are, or how you perceive most people to be, and how you perceive yourself to currently be, with how you or other people could be.

I tend to think that if you're still interested in media personalities, people who you don't, at the end of the day, know much about, then you can't really hold high ground on romantic ideas. There are, of course, potentially appropriate and awesome people among media personalities, but there are also plenty of awesome people who are not media personalities, but the reality is, you don't know any of those people, and it's always easy to imagine that a person you know very little about is much better than what you currently have. This is not something you want to trust.

Which is too bad, because I think the discussion on what relationships mean should be opened up more, and I think people can develop much more complex preferences than "attractive, popular, wealthy", they just often think that their instincts cannot be overpowered despite that being the human experience in a nutshell.

Most people would be tempted to cheat, but would not actually cheat. So love must be pretty strong to counter such a large difference in physical appearance.

There's no doubt that physical attraction plays a strong - perhaps dominant - role in determining who we pair up with. But after initial pairing most people develop a deep emotional bond that counteracts the desire to switch partners when someone more attractive comes along.

> is no one in the world you find more attractive than your current partner... would you be tempted to cheat? If not, I give up.

There are plenty of people whom I find less attractive than my current partner that I'd happily sleep with.

Of course, I would first ask permission to do so... and if not given I wouldn't be tempted to cheat. That's like asking "would you be tempted to steal if someone doesn't want to sell something to you?" I'd hope the answer is always 'no', not "yes, but I wont' steal because I'm afraid of being caught".

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