Tag: sexuality

SEX is just SEX

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

SEX is JUST SEX. It is a biological drive, a primal/base urge both genders possess (to varying degree between individuals. The urge is heightened from preteens through early 40s, and tapers with age).

SEX IS NOT LOVE, regardless of the portrayal in movies that the act of sex is profoundly loving, a spiritual meeting of minds, bodies, and souls. Having sex can be an action of love, but it isn’t with someone you’ve just met. Love takes longer and requires a lot more work than a quicky. And fucking on a granite counter top in the kitchen may look romantic, but seriously? Ouch!

AN ORGASM IS NOT LOVE. Dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins, and norepinephrine — the brain releases a surge of feel-good hormones with orgasm. This Pleasure/Reward circuit that lights up our brains is encoded in our DNA — part of our evolutionary process — incentive programming to reproduce.

Consenting partners engaged in sex often equate these happy hormones with feelings of love. This is especially true for first crushes, but the notion that sex and love are synonymous is the gold standard in mainstream morality. It’s proselytized by religion, parents, and the media — ‘making love’ the climax (excuse the pun), consummating the canonical ‘happy ending.’

It is NOT an action of LOVE, in the ‘throes of passion,’ to break marriage contracts of fidelity. It is, perhaps, more egregious to nix the condom to heighten erotic stimulation without knowing the sexual health and history of your partner. These are displays of their lateral orbitofrontal cortex shutting down, blocking out all reason, abandoning all behavioral control to spark the Pleasure/Reward circuitry in the brain.

Kind of like a gorilla. (They have a hard time with complex reasoning, and predictive modeling — examining the possible consequences of their actions, like producing a child.)

Historically, men are more driven by their biology, claiming to require or desire sex 5 times more than women. However, when either gender is touched appropriately, we are equally hard-wired for stimulated free nerve ending nociceptors to trigger a flood of happy hormones.

SEX is NOT LOVE, no matter what your pastor, or TV, or your mother tells you.

LOVE is much harder to attain than an orgasm.

In fact, I can and do take care of my biological craving for intense pleasure all by myself. And heads up guys — I’ve asked hundreds of heterosexual women over the years if they have a more intense orgasm with a partner or without. It has ALWAYS been without.

From biblical times, humanity has made the act of SEX so much more than it is because the consequences can pass on disease, and create life. Even with the advent of birth control, sex is still riskier for women then men. Close to 42% of pregnancies in U.S. are unintended. Approx. 33% of children live in fatherless homes. Over 20% of dads have little or no involvement in their kid’s lives. Choosing adoption, or to terminate unwanted pregnancies — each carries their own weight, for life.

We all expect the primary parent to be the mother, even today. Common wisdom professes women are programmed to care for our children. True or social rhetoric, we generally don’t walk away, which is why women and men usually have sex for different reasons.

Women are looking for a deep[er] connection when we initiate or consent to sex. Even with hookups, most women are looking for an intimate bond, a mythical shared emotional space. Languishing with their loverin the afterglow of sex is more satisfying than the orgasm itself. We imagine the moment lasting, blossoming into a loving relationship.

SEX is just SEX. But if Desire — the expectation of happy hormones — is not satisfied, a predictable pattern of behavior generally emerges.

Sexually frustrated men typically withdraw, become more distant, passive/aggressive. They’re less malleable. Less likely to pay attention, be supportive — from helping with daily tasks, to engaging in dialog over concerns and issues. This behavior leads to further discord between partners, and less sex, perpetuating the implosion of the relationship.

Women generally don’t want to have sex when we’re upset with our partners, but most of us don’t ignore Desire. As mentioned, we simply satisfy ourselves. Infidelity is not about orgasms. They’re typically with a man who lavishes attention, praise, sometimes gifts — actions their partner is not taking — and commonly mistaken as romance.

SEX may be grounded in our biological drive to reproduce, but over millennium women have found it a useful tool, consciously, or not. (You can pretend it’s not true, but you’d be lying to you.) We’ve woven so much crap into coupling — equating fucking with love, making sex the pinnacle of romance, acceptance, and required for intimacy, we ignore the fact that these are myths. Mere social and religious constructs to mitigate the consequences of intercourse.

Rooted in biology, and our encoded Desire to evolve, SEX by no means need be 5% of the relationship when it’s good, and 95% when it’s not, as your church, temple, and social media tells you…

  • Over 18 and still a virgin?
  • You’ve been on how many dates, and you haven’t made it yet?
  • Together for X months and you only do it once a week?
  • Newlyweds? You should be humping like bunnies!
  • No sex for X means your marriage has gone stale.

Most loving, lasting relationships do not hinge on sexual frequency. Pressuring your partner to be sexually available at your whim should no longer be acceptable. Sexual Desire is dynamic — changing with circumstance, age, physicality. Over time, being there for the other andaccepting each other’s frailties garners trust. Trust generates intimacy — LOVE.

SEX can be an intensely pleasurable physical exchange between willing partners. It can be an expression of caring, a sharing, bonding experience for couples, but it will not make some rando fall in love with you. The dopamine rush from orgasm is not an emotional connection with your partner. It’s brain chemistry. More SEX will not save your marriage, or a dying relationship from poor communication. Having intercourse may defer but will not cure issues negatively affecting your partnership.

SEX is just SEX.

The Difference Between Men and Women

by jcafesin, posted in Busiess, careers, Family, family life, Kids, parenting, parents, politics, psychology, science, sexism, Silicon Valley, Teen, Tween, Uncategorized

I’m a guy’s girl, meaning I’ve spent most of my life hanging out with men instead of women. Like the freight train comin at ya, I prefer men’s straightforward nature, their directness, their unwavering, solution-oriented trajectory. Men are simpler than women. Not less intelligent, just not round-about, underneath, from behind.

Women, by contrast, are the poison in your food. Eons of subjugation have forced us to become puppet-masters to get what we want. Not a judgment call, simply a fact that until very recently might was right, and men assumed they controlled the household with superior strength—at first to kill the mastodon and be the provider of food, and in the modern world, until recently, be the supplier of money. Back as late as the 1990s, women were still, and believe it or not still are, the primary homemakers, caring for the kids, shopping for and preparing the meals…etc. In fact, 99% of all household product commercials still show the women cleaning up, even when the men create the mess.

Notice I said, “men assumed they controlled the household.” Well, you know what happens when you ass (of) u (and) me…; -}

Seriously though, probably pretty early on, like cavemen times, women figured out how to get men to do what we want using our wiles—wits. Genetic transfer of memory over thousands of generations of women passing on how to be manipulative eventually became woven into our DNA and imprinted on our XX chromosomes.

Regardless of why women became…complex, the fact that we are scares me about us. Women don’t only manipulate men. Quite often our children, sometimes even our friends. I’d much rather face a freight train because if I’m paying attention I can get off the tracks before getting slammed. This also plays to why I’m a guy’s girl, why most of my friends have been men.

I knew I wanted kids for as long as I can remember. Two boys, I’d told any possible stakeholders, because boys are easier to raise. I now have two kids—a boy, 19, and a 16 year old girl, both of whom I’m madly in love with. Beyond proud, I’m humbled to know them. True to their ‘nature,’ my son is very direct with his feelings, practically the instant he feels something. He rarely lies, probably because he sucks at it, his facial expressions to the pause in his delivery clear indicators he’s not telling the truth or copping to. He’s a consummate whiner, but he respects the family rules and parental restrictions. My son is trustable, for which I’m eternally grateful.

My daughter, on the other hand, listens carefully, expresses just the right amount of contrition and understanding with every lecture, then does whatever she wants, whenever she wants, if she can get away with it. Went to kiss her goodnight a few nights ago and she was underneath her blanket watching Manga videos on her cellphone. She’d been viewing nightly since we took away her Kindle two weeks ago for watching videos on it instead of reading. Reading is all she’s allowed to do on the tablet, per our agreement when she got it for her birthday. (Is it too much to expect a 16½ year old to honor such an agreement when she gets plenty of electronics time on the weekends?)

While my son barely notices his reflection, my daughter spends hours in front of the mirror, preening. For eons a huge part of a woman’s value was/is defined by our physicality, so it’s natural, part of our nature now that our looks are important to us, or at the very least, more important to us than most men. My son likes violent movies. My daughter does not. She is deeply affected when families split up, or a parent or child dies in films, and even in books. Maternal instincts—reproducing and then caring for our offspring—is genetically encoded in our DNA. In fact, her reaction is not uncommon for most women.

Violent movies and video games are targeted at men because they are by far the predominant audience to engage with them.

Times truly are changing, though. Want part of a mastodon, a small ice-age relic? Buy one on Amazon. Most educated women who pursue a career path can pay their own way through life now, even if we still typically make less than men. Most of us don’t need a man’s support to survive, or even thrive. Technology, from the Pill to the personal computer has made it possible for women to control our own destinies, and function equally along side men in today’s business environments.

Sociological shifts in behavior are glacial, and true sexual equality is probably still a few generations in coming. Perhaps our great-grandchildren will share equal incomes, and split the household tasks of rearing the children to doing the dishes equitably as well.

From the dawn of man to present day the divide in humanity is not our race, religious orientation, education or income level. Our greatest division has been between men and women. I’m humbled to bear witness to a quantum shift in our evolution, that, for first time in our history, technology is providing us the ability to become an egalitarian race, and close this great divide.