Love & Sex

[lesbiaphrodite]

I once heard it said that women play at sex for love and men play at love for sex. Is this true? If so, explain how. If not, then enlighten me on how the two genders deal with the whole thing.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I'm male and I'm an affection junkie, always was. Can sex be separated from love? Probably, but it's better when they go together. Of course, I admit to being a high vasopressin-type, so I can't claim to speak for the rest of my half of the population.

 

[Stella_Omega]

in one post you want this?

Let me take your clothes off, and I'll explain as much as I know. With diagrams and hands-on demonstrations.

 

[driphoney]

, I admit to being a high vasopressin-type, so I can't claim to speak for the rest of my half of the population.

Okay, okay. So, I got all excited about having to go dictionary diving. So, I came up with this.

vas⋅o⋅pres⋅sin- Biochemistry. a peptide hormone, synthesized in the hypothalamus and released by the posterior pituitary gland, that stimulates capillary muscles and reduces the flow of urine and increases its concentration.
2. Pharmacology. a synthetic preparation of this hormone, used as an antidiuretic in the treatment of diabetes insipidus.

 

[Guest]

in one post you want this?

Let me take your clothes off, and I'll explain as much as I know. With diagrams and hands-on demonstrations.

Hands-on?

*perk*

 

[3113]

Okay, okay. So, I got all excited about having to go dictionary diving. So, I came up with this.

Try this instead:

 

[Stella_Omega]

Okay, okay. So, I got all excited about having to go dictionary diving. So, I came up with this.

vas⋅o⋅pres⋅sin- Biochemistry. a peptide hormone, synthesized in the hypothalamus and released by the posterior pituitary gland, that stimulates capillary muscles and reduces the flow of urine and increases its concentration.
2. Pharmacology. a synthetic preparation of this hormone, used as an antidiuretic in the treatment of diabetes insipidus.

Many hormones function one way in the body and another way in the brain.
Vasopressin, Oxytocin, and a buncha others act like opiates-- (or more accurately, opiates act like these hormones) and regulate many of our moods. These are very much a mammal hormones, by the way, other phyla have similar peptides that do similar things for them, and not every mammal brain uses the same hormone in the same way.

Vasopressin seems to stimulate territorial impulses like nest building if you're that kind of mammal, and promote a desire for monogamy-- NOT jealousy, please note-- and Oxytocin is involved with all kinds of sugar and spice kinds of love things-- mommy and baby interaction being the start of it all, comradeship, connection, association, and sexual attraction all in their own due time.

Bear has plenty both, IMO.

 

[driphoney]

Hands-on?

*perk*

~dh~

 

[Stella_Omega]

Hands-on?

*perk*

Yes darling, and what would you like to have demonstrated?

 

[3113]

I once heard it said that women play at sex for love and men play at love for sex. Is this true? If so, explain how. If not, then enlighten me on how the two genders deal with the whole thing.

I'm not sure it should be play at sex for love so much as "play at sex for romance." And vice versa. I say "romance" rather than love because love, to me, is long term, multi-layered and involves a lot more than hearts and flowers. Though, way back when, it might just have meant that the woman was hoping the man would stick around to provide for her and protect her and the children she was going to have thanks to him.

But it seems that when I meet women looking for "love" it's "romance" that they're really after. Candlelit dinners, flowers, poetry and being swept off their feet; most especially, having a man's attention and adoration entirely on them. They want to be Bella to some guy's "Edward"--not having to do anything but smell good to get a guy to declare they can't live without them.

And, yes, certainly, some men of a certain age will play at romance to get sex. Without a doubt. A young man doesn't pay for all the frills of the prom, from flowers to limo to tux without anticipating how the evening is going to end in that hotel room he's also booked

But I think we also have to specify that these truisms apply mainly to younger men and women. I think by the time most men and women have reached their thirties, they've had enough romances and enough sex under their belt (so to speak), know better and want both fairly equally. If they haven't by then, then they're watching Sex in the City and reading Twilight and taking both way too seriously

 

[rgraham666]

I'll take the sex but I prefer it with a lot of love.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I once heard it said that women play at sex for love and men play at love for sex. Is this true? If so, explain how. If not, then enlighten me on how the two genders deal with the whole thing.

NONE OF THE ABOVE.
Females trade sex for companionship. Males trade companionship for sex. If better sex or a better companion comes along they end the bargain. The love & romance stuff is a temporary psychotic condition.

 

[driphoney]

Try this instead:

Stella and 3113,
Thanks! I guess potential mates/spouses should be run out for their vasopressin/oxytocin tests before commitment is attempted!

Sometimes I'm just amazed at how out of the loop I am.

Oh, and thanks for not giving me a chemical model. If my biology prof (molecular biology warlord disguised as an innocent bio prof!), draws one more chemical compound on the board or says 'carboxyl group' again, I swear I'm going to come unhinged! Fortunately, he's sticking with lower life forms. Sex is very basic with bacteria.

 

[Liar]

I once heard it said that women play at sex for love and men play at love for sex. Is this true? If so, explain how. If not, then enlighten me on how the two genders deal with the whole thing.

Could you clarify "play at X for Y"? Not sure what the expression means, tbh.

To exploit someone's need for X to satisfy your own need for Y?

 

[Stella_Omega]

Give them babies lots and lots of love and attention. The more it's given, the more it's reciprocated. And the reciprocation-- the activation of those emotions, of love, security, concern, empathy, pleasure-- encourages the brain to produce and be sensitive to these endogenous opiates; behavior influencing biology which then influences behavior in a beautiful feedback loop...

CF; Renee Spitz's work on something he called "hospitalism" back in 1945, and Harry Harlow's horrifying but very important social deprivation experiments with macaques about ten years later, especially what he called "Motherless mothers."

Not to mention the social maladjustments that are so notable in many adopted children.

 

[Irania]

******

 

[Verdad]

I once heard it said that women play at sex for love and men play at love for sex. Is this true? If so, explain how. If not, then enlighten me on how the two genders deal with the whole thing.

An interesting question, and hard to answer, the way you've framed it. I guess it goes back to whether there is such thing as "just sex." I tend to think not. Which is, of course, not to say sex is always about love, but I think it's always about something—a thrill of conquest, a confirmation of one's desirability, a desire for closeness, etc, etc. If it were 'just' sex, one's right hand would do the job just fine, yet even men who visit prostitutes tend to look for some kind of connection, not just getting off. Because there's so many reasons people, or even the same person on different occasions, engage in sex, it's really hard for me to come up with some kind of gender difference within these parameters.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Many hormones function one way in the body and another way in the brain.
Vasopressin, Oxytocin, and a buncha others act like opiates-- (or more accurately, opiates act like these hormones) and regulate many of our moods. These are very much a mammal hormones, by the way, other phyla have similar peptides that do similar things for them, and not every mammal brain uses the same hormone in the same way.

Vasopressin seems to stimulate territorial impulses like nest building if you're that kind of mammal, and promote a desire for monogamy-- NOT jealousy, please note-- and Oxytocin is involved with all kinds of sugar and spice kinds of love things-- mommy and baby interaction being the start of it all, comradeship, connection, association, and sexual attraction all in their own due time.

Bear has plenty both, IMO.

*'Fur'-ious blush*

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

VERDAD

I've prayed about it and done the research on streets and bordellos across the world, and the idea of a man seeking an emotional bond with a prostitute is an alien and ego dystonic idea in my mind. Males classify sex with casual dancing or singing in the church choir or having a beer with a work-mate.

 

[NoJo]

I once heard it said that women play at sex for love and men play at love for sex. Is this true? If so, explain how. If not, then enlighten me on how the two genders deal with the whole thing.

That's extremely untrue. In my experience men are far bigger romantics than women. Women are more down-to-earth in matters of sex.

Men also have this "fuck a lot of women" thing going on, but that really is a physical urge, not a particularly significant aspect of the male psyche -- it's like needing to eat and sleep. Women don't see past it to what really makes men tick.

 

[lesbiaphrodite]

That's extremely untrue. In my experience men are far bigger romantics than women. Women are more down-to-earth in matters of sex.

Men also have this "fuck a lot of women" thing going on, but that really is a physical urge, not a particularly significant aspect of the male psyche -- it's like needing to eat and sleep. Women don't see past it to what really makes men tick.

Or maybe men don't get what makes women tick, Sub Joe. I have no interest in defending my sex or insulting yours, but it is annoying when people try to use stupid justifications like these, honestly.

 

[Recidiva]

I like sex a lot.

I like love a lot.

So I feel I'm in the game for both these things.

I think these are observations about human interaction, but not applicable to any individual because of their gender.

Same way Astrology describes personality types, but doesn't necessarily describe someone born in a particular month.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Or maybe men don't get what makes women tick, Sub Joe. I have no interest in defending my sex or insulting yours, but it is annoying when people try to use stupid justifications like these, honestly.

Hmmmm. I think Joe's right. I was always the Romantic with the flowers and poems and gifts and nice restaurants and flawless manners, and girls kicked my ass to the street pretty soon. And when I took the attitude I'M GOIN FOR BURGERS AND POON TANG, WANNA COME? The ladies loved me.

I remember my sweetie from high school. She couldnt get a date before I came along, and the better I treated her the worse her attitude got. Her mom finally said LOOK! IF YOU DONT WANNA GO OUT WITH HIM, I WILL! Cuz dad always went for the burgers but no poon tang.

Guys wise up and take the attitude DIFFERENT GIRL, SAME PUSSY. But we like to be romantic cept its the kiss o' death with females.

 

[xssve]

Or maybe men don't get what makes women tick, Sub Joe. I have no interest in defending my sex or insulting yours, but it is annoying when people try to use stupid justifications like these, honestly.

Both men and women cheat for the same reasons, the one 3113's blogger ignores, that the urge to genetically diversify your potential offspring is a distinctly selected trait, however much it plays hob with notions of monogamy. In fact, monogamy itself is rather more unusual in primates, and a more recent development, probably to facilitate K childrearing strategies that enhance mental and cultural development.

With humans, a diversification strategy doesn't have to result in reproduction in order to qualify as an trait, we have and urge to have sex, the reproductive results are technically anoetic in theory, and much of the time cheating involves what is essentially theoretical, abstract diversification strategies, although social strategies are often also involved in there somewhere - it isn't unknown for women to cheat with married men, then Blackmail them for child support for a child that may or may not be his.

Call me cynical, but as far as I can tell, The main difference between men and women, is that when women cheat, it's always the mans fault.

"Love" to women, in your formulation, tends to equate with security, sex, for men, equates with fidelity, given that women are motivated to secure resources and a stable environment to raise children in, and males want paternity assurances - hence, the "morality" formula, i.e., monogamous marriage, which is merely a sort of public recognition of a (mostly) satisfactory way to reconcile these two sets of motivations. The chemistry of love just gives you fighting chance: most "successful" monogamous unions are based on either mutual respect or desperation.

The problem with "sex and love", is that love is generally defined as a monogamous "state" rather than an independent emotion: one can love more than one person, as any mother can tell you, and the ways human beings devise to accommodate the diversification urge without upsetting the monogamous "apple cart" are myriad - formal social recognition of this urge is a lot spottier, and mostly crude and force based: cheating and prostitution, male predation and female quarantine.

 

[Recidiva]

Both men and women cheat for the same reasons, the one 3113's blogger ignores, that the urge to genetically diversify your potential offspring is a distinctly selected trait, however much it plays hob with notions of monogamy. In fact, monogamy itself is rather more unusual in primates, and a more recent development, probably to facilitate K childrearing strategies that enhance mental and cultural development.

With humans, a diversification strategy doesn't have to result in reproduction in order to qualify as an trait, we have and urge to have sex, the reproductive results are technically anoetic in theory, and much of the time cheating involves what is essentially theoretical, abstract diversification strategies, although social strategies are often also involved in there somewhere - it isn't unknown for women to cheat with married men, then Blackmail them for child support for a child that may or may not be his.

Call me cynical, but as far as I can tell, The main difference between men and women, is that when women cheat, it's always the mans fault.

"Love" to women, in your formulation, tends to equate with security, sex, for men, equates with fidelity, given that women are motivated to secure resources and a stable environment to raise children in, and males want paternity assurances - hence, the "morality" formula, i.e., monogamous marriage, which is merely a sort of public recognition of a (mostly) satisfactory way to reconcile these two sets of motivations. The chemistry of love just gives you fighting chance: most "successful" monogamous unions are based on either mutual respect or desperation.

The problem with "sex and love", is that love is generally defined as a monogamous "state" rather than an independent emotion: one can love more than one person, as any mother can tell you, and the ways human beings devise to accommodate the diversification urge without upsetting the monogamous "apple cart" are myriad - formal social recognition of this urge is a lot spottier, and mostly crude and force based: cheating and prostitution, male predation and female quarantine.

I think monogamy and non-monogamy are both equally valid strategies. They don't have to be in opposition and lots of people don't have to justify their personality types and trends and likes and dislikes without condemning the other option or claiming evolution as their champion, making their behavior ideal and obviously the way to go. Evolution has lots and lots of variation.

You can't define love for someone else, and you can't say that monogamy or polyamory or celibacy or whatever is more healthy for an individual.

There are those who make their own choice according to nature and nurture and will and they're fine with it.

But it does appear that if someone feels pressured or forced into behaving a way they don't want to to get something they do want, there's a lot of resentment, self and other. But caving to that pressure is a choice and there's some real or imagined payoff in there, the resentment comes from someone who is prone to resenting. Not from "society."

I disagree that when when women cheat it's the man's fault, I think that's selective observation.