oh yes!
The single person's heart guide had a couple of tips which i had not considered yet ened up coming up last year. Because of the guide i was prepared...

man oh man i see some seriously bad characteristics of myself in the relationship guide! yikes!

I've read the heart guide before and was really glad to have found it, I'm glad you posted it here!

Best relationship advice I can give is if you or your honey are getting cranky and arguing, both of you should drink some water, eat some food, lay down for a hour. A great majority of the time, this will make everything MUCH better.

Thanks so much for that...although my partner backed out on me this time around its good advice either way.

I'm a single person Burning Man virgin this year. Thank you for posting this, and it's funny...a few months ago, i had a dream where i finally got to the playa, and there was this attractive guy hitting on me like crazy. Any other time, i might have flirted back, but this time, i looked him in the eye and said "Dude, we're on the playa! We are on the playa, man! Get your priorities straight!" lol Here's to hoping i can keep my wits about me that well at the actual event. :p

My BF and I are attending the festival and I am worried that either of us may "wander off" and find someone else, and I don't want to spend my time constantly worrying. : ( How is the playa on relationships?

Since I'm a resident virgin(tm) I can't offer advice about how Burning Man affects relationships. What I can do, though, is offer a general idea of my own experience with many relationships, and with the one long lasting one that I've had for the past 12 years.

ANY relationship is rooted in trust. That goes for friendships, acquaintances, family, and so on. Each of these are an expanding bubble of trust. Even family relationships are this way where, although we can't choose our family, we can certainly choose how/if we interact with them.

Romantic relationships, though, can be a lot more complicated in our modern world. We've been conditioned to believe a number of things about these types of relationships that are somewhat counter to our basic nature. Many facets of various world cultures have done a tremendous amount of damage to how we perceive this sort of connection. It probably all started with agriculture, but I won't get into Anthro 101 here :) Essentially, the diminution of women started the long, slow path to sexual alienation.

As generations passed, and men became more abusive/dominant, women came to use this situation in the ways they could, and forged weapons of culture that had to do with sex, which was really the most potent power they had. Over time, and since it coincided with the public face of various cultures, sexual repression became the norm, and still is to this day.

These days we are in a phase of unraveling. People are educated enough so that by and large, the notion of sexual repression is being dismantled bit by bit. Burning Man wouldn't have been possible in 1920, for example. However we are still saddled with all sorts of outmoded ways of thinking that create corrosive effects on how we THINK about romantic relationships.

There really is a point here... be patient :)

Ok, so right now, there are many ways of having a romantic relationship. You can be monogamous, which is lauded by society as the "best" type. Most of this is cultural and legal, but has nothing to do with our basic nature. You see, enforcing monogamous romantic relationships polices us in a way that allows culture to force alienation upon us. We are not "Free To Love" however we like. People should have choices, not strictures. Ultimately, things break down without choices. You can also be polygamous, polyandrous, polyamorous, or any combination of the above. I am definitely not saying Monogamy is Bad! I am saying it should be a choice, not an expectation.

I am a poster child for this. I have a wonderful open marriage. I could have sex with anyone I liked (responsibly, of course) and it would not impact the relationship with my wife badly... in fact it has done us some good. Even given that, I have been with only 3 others in the 12 years I have been married. My wife has been with few as well.

Why? Well, because I have the freedom to CHOOSE TO LOVE. We always have each other to which to cling for support, and so the sex thing only comes up occasionally, when we feel a powerful attraction to someone else and feel the need to express it. But just randiness.. hey, we have each other for random craziness on the kitchen table ;)

Trust, now, is the catalyst for this. In a romantic relationship, generally the two (or more) involved don't know each other that well before they start having sexual contact. This means that false trust is built into things from the beginning, well before it becomes possible to decide where this person fits into your trust matrix. Hence, breakups happen pretty often after 3-6 months. Again after 1-2 years. And so on.

So, in other words, before you commit to someone as a "boyfriend" or "girlfriend" in a bubble of very close trust, take the time to get to know them well enough so you know how to trust them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with dating and being friends!! If someone doesn't want to just hang out from time to time and be your "FWB" then maybe that's a signal flag. In other words, it is perfectly OK (from a secular standpoint) to have sex with someone without having some sort of deep commitment to them, almost always made terribly prematurely.

Whole books have been written about this.. I hope I have made SOME sense here.. it's all about trust and love, in the end.

Obviously, there are particularly male things to be wary of (objectification) and particularly female things (emotional traps) but there is a lot of cross pollination. The biggest things I've seen as split issues is an almost sociopathic tendency towards hedonism from males, and the "sexual weapons" attitudes among many women (denying sex and assuming monogamy, at the cost of social outcast status for a non complying male). So.. GET TO KNOW THEM before you TRUST them folks. And as they say, Be Very Clear about your intentions, your expectations, and how you view your relationship. The worse thing that can happen then, usually, is they will say no. And there are billions of beautiful people on this blue ball of ours. :-)

bump. if you've found some helpful advice elsewhere about relationships, share the link and help your fellow Virgin. :)