time_management

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Comment · 17 years ago
"Even when romantic love is not linked with reproduction, this passion can provide a teen or young adult with some exceptional personal and social benefits, including exhilarating joy, increased energy and optimism, feelings of intimacy, self-esteem, inclusion in health-giving social groups, exercise, social and personal support, and crucial practice in the skills of building a long-term partnership—skills they will need to make the most important social contract of their reproductive lives." (Emphasis mine.)

You missed that inconvenient detail, didn't you? Romantic love and casual sex are mutually exclusive. (I'm railing against casual sex, not all premarital sex; if the latter, I'd be a hypocrite.)

Women may be particularly vulnerable to falling in love with a casual sex partner because seminal fluid also contains dopamine and tyrosine, a building block of dopamine (Burch & Gallup, in press). Although these chemicals do not pass across the blood-brain barrier, elevated activities of dopamine and tyrosine may affect brain physiology through other complex interactions. In fact, people report that sex can lead to romantic love. The natives of rural Nepal even use an off-color term for this phenomenon, saying "Naso pasyo, maya basyo," or "the penis entered and love arrived" (Ahearn, 1998).

Once again, this biological link between lust and romantic love is not direct or simple. Athletes who inject synthetic androgens to build muscle do not fall in love. When middle-aged men and women inject androgens or apply testosterone cream to stimulate their sex drive, their sexual thoughts and fantasies increase (Sherwin & Gelfand, 1987; Sherwin, Gelfand, & Brender, 1985). But neither do these individuals become enamored.

Nevertheless, the chemical interactions between testosterone and dopamine and the chemical changes that accompany sexual arousal suggest that those who engage in sexual intercourse are more likely to fall in love; their threshold for this passion is lowered. And women who engage in sex without a condom may be even more susceptible to romantic passion. Hence teens and young adults who pursue "casual sex" with a friend or stranger can become enamored with their sexual partner even when they have no intention of beginning a romance.

Lust Can Trigger Attachment

Sexual activity can also trigger the brain system for attachment. In humans, orgasm elevates the activity of oxytocin and vasopressin (Carmichael et al., 1987; Young et al., 1998); and these neuropeptides are associated with attachment in people and other animals (Wang, Ferris, & DeVries, 1994; Williams et al., 1994" Young et al., 1998). ' B Hence, teenagers who engage in casual sex can trigger the brain system for attachment (as well as that for romantic love), leading to complex, unanticipated emotional entanglements with psychologically and socially unsuitable mating partners." (Emphasis mine.)

In other words, casual sex hacks the brain system, by aping at least some of the biochemical signature of romantic love. Of course, in most cases, it's not romantic love but a shallow infatuated attachment. In any case, it's not good for you.

Comment · 17 years ago
Honestly? No. You've already run the score up against yourself without my help. It would be mean-spirited for me to visit any additional harm upon you, emotional or otherwise. I'm done with this dispute.
Comment · 17 years ago
You have no idea what my religious beliefs are, douchebag.

My objection to this sort of behavior isn't religious. It's that I value the preservation of civilization, and I have a real problem with a bunch of self-absorbed thugs who are trying to fuck it all up. It took thousands of years to get to a society even approaching one where men and women could relate on loving and mutually respectful terms, and the casual sexers want to throw all this progress away within one generation.

Comment · 17 years ago
I'm duly disgusted. Great job. IHBT.
Comment · 17 years ago
I know you're not long for subtlety, but many words have more than one definition. From the elusive and esoteric Dictionary.com:

Notice definition 1.

la⋅dy    /ˈleɪdi/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [ley-dee] Show IPA noun, plural -dies, adjective –noun 1. a woman who is refined, polite, and well-spoken: She may be poor and have little education, but she's a real lady. 2. a woman of high social position or economic class: She was born a lady and found it hard to adjust to her reduced circumstances. 3. any woman; female (sometimes used in combination): the lady who answered the phone; a saleslady. 4. (Used in direct address: often offensive in the singular): Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. Lady, out of my way, please. 5. wife: The ambassador and his lady arrived late. 6. Slang. a female lover or steady companion. 7. (initial capital letter) (in Great Britain) the proper title of any woman whose husband is higher in rank than baronet or knight, or who is the daughter of a nobleman not lower than an earl (although the title is given by courtesy also to the wives of baronets and knights). 8. a woman who has proprietary rights or authority, as over a manor; female feudal superior. Compare lord (def. 4). 9. (initial capital letter) the Virgin Mary. 10. a woman who is the object of chivalrous devotion. 11. (usually initial capital letter) a. an attribute or abstraction personified as a woman; a designation of an allegorical figure as feminine: Lady Fortune; Lady Virtue. b. a title prefixed to the name of a goddess: Lady Venus. –adjective 12. Sometimes Offensive. being a lady; female: a lady reporter. 13. of a lady; ladylike; feminine. Origin: bef. 900; ME ladi(e), earlier lavedi, OE hlǣfdīge, hlǣfdige, perh. orig. meaning “loaf-kneader,” equiv. to hlāf loaf + -dīge, -dige, var. of dǣge kneader (see dough; cf. ON deigja maid); see lord

Comment · 17 years ago
www.helenfisher.com/downloads/articles/17brokeheart.pdf

Pwn'd.

Comment · 17 years ago
Women who have casual sex have a way of not being able to get married, and many of them discover that it's something that they actually did want to do, eventually. Funny, that. Thus they spend their 40s breaking into tears every time a school bus passes by.
Comment · 17 years ago
Trust me that I don't think anyone is jealous of a woman who lost her virginity at 14.
Comment · 17 years ago
Such comments wouldn't be hurtful-- or "assholish" to use your phrase-- if she didn't know she had done something wrong.
Comment · 17 years ago
They're both deviant behaviors looked down upon by the mainstream for the permanent emotional harm they cause to the people involved.
Comment · 17 years ago
You'll never compare up to the best of 20 other guys -- and if you think you have to, you don't understand what having a relationship means.

This is where I have to remain idealistic. I'd much rather have no relationship at all than one in which the woman's constantly pining for some other guy.

In any case, I'd dump a girl on the spot if I found out she'd had 20 partners, so that particular example's not very relevant to me.

Comment · 17 years ago
Alpha male "badboys" become rapists because they feel entitled to whatever they see. Mike Tyson's behavior in 1991 is an example of this: the man was rich and famous, but did it anyway because he was arrogant.

A man who is successful in getting lots of casual sex stops seeing women as people, and starts seeing them as objects to be "acquired". At this point, bad behavior is likely to ensue.

They are ladies, by definition they act ladylike.

Lady is a proper subset of woman. Look the word up.

Comment · 17 years ago
At least I didn't fuck up my life in the first year of high school.
Comment · 17 years ago
I meant the book, not the review, but good call. Okay, another one:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1031259/Casual-sex...

I can keep doing this, you know, given the enormous amount of research that's on my side.

Comment · 17 years ago
You may be right-- you're older and more experienced than I am-- but I wouldn't be inclined to take the risk. All considered, I don't think I could marry a woman with a history of casual sex when there might be someone out there who is just as good and doesn't have that kind of history.

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