by Natalie Case

Created on: August 13, 2008

I have heard a lot of crazy things in my time...but a pill to reduce sexual desires in order (specifically) to keep a partner faithful? That's a new one, even for me.

It's bad enough I have people who aren't a part of my relationship trying to define what that relationship can or should be; churches and religious institutions telling me who I can or can't love, government passing laws to do the same. Now some pharmaceutical company wants to step in to help curb my sexual desire in order to keep me locked inside that dictated relationship?

We have a world filled with diseases that kill, main, disfigure and impair the livelihoods of the victims. Why on earth should we waste time, money and brain power on a pill like this?

Perhaps I'm in a minority here, but what happened to personal responsibility? The choice to "stay-faithful" is one we all face when we are in a relationship, whether they are traditional monogamous relationships, open marriages, or polyamorous ones. The choice is there no matter if you are gay or straight or bi-sexual.

I'm not sure how reducing sexual desires with some magic pill isn't going to sabotage the relationship you're already in, over and above keeping you from wandering. It's such a loaded concept. I guess if you chemically castrate your partner to keep him from wandering, you can feed him Viagra when you're ready to actually have sex. That should keep the pharmaceutical companies rolling in dough.

Granted, my ideas about sex and sexuality are not mainstream, and I accept this, but there are lifestyle choices to be made for any man or woman who honestly do not feel that they can remain faithful in a single, monogamous relationship. These choices can be moral and fulfilling, if more work than traditional marriages. Which isn't to say that cheating doesn't take place even in those relationships.

We have to realize that relationships do not start and end with sex, nor does sex necessarily define our relationships. There are many ways to be unfaithful in a monogamous marriage that has nothing to do with sex. Marriages are wrecked by emotional unfaithfulness just as surely as they are by sexual unfaithfulness.

However, within a committed, adult relationship, sex is a natural expression of love and affection. Any attempt to medically define when or with whom that expression is appropriate is going to fall short. And in fact has the potential to ruin sex within the relationship as well.

Pharmaceutical companies should keep their eyes on the research that matters. Cure AIDS. Cure cancer. Develop treatments for Alzheimer's and fibromylagia. Just like government and religious institutions I don't belong to, they need to stay out of my bedroom.

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