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Guys Are Getting More Romantic
Guys are all about getting sex and avoiding love. Guys want random sex more than committed relationships. Women, the old ball and chain…
That’s what stereotypes say. But that’s not what guys say. A large-scale survey called “That’s What He Said” found that young men between the ages of 15 and 19 are more romantic than past generations.
That’s right, 95% of them would rather have sex with their girlfriends or someone they love than with a random girl they don’t know and don’t care about. In fact, over half of these guys don’t want to have sex with a woman unless they really love her. And three-quarters want to lose their virginity to someone they love.
The lead researcher told the New York Times:
In fact, (the young men) often used strong, almost hyper-romantic language to talk about love. (A) boy whose condom broke told me the most important thing to him was being in love with his girlfriend and “giving her everything I can.”
Interestingly, while 61% do say they’d rather have sex with a “super hot” woman than with someone who is smart and funny, 78% would choose a relationship with someone who is smart and funny over super hot. So it logically follows from the above data that if a young man is in a relationship with Smart-and-Funny he’d rather have sex with her, too, right?
Further, if they must choose between sex and love, most choose love. Two thirds would rather have a girlfriend and no sex than sex and no girlfriend. These young men say they could be happy in a sexless relationship.
Sounds mind blowing.
Yet these findings resonate with a recent study of sex on college campuses where casual hookups are supposedly all the rage — yet really aren’t — as well as another large-scale study reported in the 2006 American Sociological Review which found that teen boys were just as emotionally engaged in their relationships as girls.
The researchers cite one surprising force behind the change. Now that internet porn can so easily feed their sex drive, young men can seek love and not worry so much about sex. But young men should be warned: overindulging may lead them to lose sexual interest in real women. (See my post Porn Can Cause E.D.?)
But young men today also have greater emotional depth, or are at least more willing to express it, than men of past generations. That may be due to less sexism and homophobia, leaving men better able to tap into and express emotion, and feeling less need to act macho and prove their manhood and heterosexuality by screwing a girl.
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Teen Cougars at Prom
A cougar is a hot “older woman” who pursues men twenty years her junior, right? Well, lately teen cougars have been asking junior guys to senior prom.
So why do young women increasingly want relationships with younger men? Once was, girls only dated older guys. As one mom observing the phenomenon explains:
Back in my prom days (when the big slow dance was still “Stairway to Heaven”), I went with a boy who was not just taller than me, but older as well. O.K., I was only a few months younger than him, but that still mattered to my friends and me. We would never have even considered venturing out to the prom, let alone the school parking lot, with a boy in a lower grade, unless we were baby-sitting him.
Why the change? It may be that we no longer expect guys to be “ranked” so much more highly than girls anymore.
We’re not completely over gender ranking, which places males above females. You still see it when a man avoids dating or marrying a highly successful woman, since that success gives her higher rank than him. Or, when guys do girl-things like hopscotch they’re “lowering themselves” and taunted as sissies, wimps and fags — or girls. But girls can climb trees, play with trucks and be tomboys with little worry. And, girls can wear pants but guys can’t wear dresses. Girls aren’t demeaning themselves by doing boy-stuff.
Traditionally, women have wanted someone “older and wiser” as sixteen-year-old Liesl sang to Rolf in The Sound of Music:
I need someone
Older and wiser
Telling me what to do
You are 17 going on 18
I’ll depend on you
But suddenly girls don’t need someone older and wiser.
Furthermore, these girls like “nice guys” who are more respectful and nicer to date than the dominant “bad boys” that girls are thought to prefer.
When they get to college upper-class women often continue favoring younger men:
Here at Dartmouth we have a saying, ‘Get the guy before he pledges’ (because) that way you grab them before they are corrupted by fraternity brothers.
That would be frat boys who work hard to create a “superior man” status by demeaning women as bitches and sluts, and who maintain their independence and invulnerability by avoiding relationships with women, choosing to conquer them in one-night-stands, instead.
But back in high school a senior girl simply reasons, “The senior guys at my school tend to like to go out with the younger girls, so now I guess we are doing the same with younger guys.”
I’m all for gender parity. Why not?
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Porn Can Cause E.D.?
I mentioned in class that, strangely, porn can cause E.D. A male student said he’d thought it was the opposite, that porn cured E.D. Oddly, both could be true.
In a New York Magazine piece entitled “He’s Just Not That Into Anyone” Davy Rothbart, 36, admitted faking orgasm. (Apparently it’s easier for men to fake if they use a condom. Without, they can claim having had a small one.) Rothbart eliminated various possibilities. Antidepressants weren’t causing his E.D. And he got plenty of exercise. It didn’t matter which woman he was with, or what kind of condom he used, or whether he’d had alcohol, or how much.
But after learning that men were increasingly suffering from delayed ejaculation, and increasingly faking it, he began wondering if a “tsunami of porn” accompanied by “over-masturbation” were the culprits, as suggested by sexuality counselor, Ian Kerner.
Rothbart began interviewing others with this problem.
One man was always hard as nails with porn, but couldn’t get anything up with his lady. Another said, “I used to race home to have sex with my wife. Now I leave work a half-hour early so I can get home before she does and masturbate to porn.”
Another had no problem getting aroused by his wife but, “In order to come, I’ve got to resort to playing scenes in my head that I’ve seen while viewing porn. Something is lost there. I’m no longer with my wife; I’m inside my own head.”
And so the real women in their lives fade away as a computer takes over.
Rothbart explains, “For a lot of guys, switching gears from porn’s fireworks and whiz-bangs to the comparatively mundane calm of ordinary sex is like leaving halfway through an Imax 3-D movie to check out a flipbook.”
Typically when a man has sex a combination of dopamine and oxytocin are released with orgasm, creating an emotional attachment to his partner. But increasingly, men are bonding with porn. Their brains are being rewired.
A cure is available: step away from the computer. Rothbart went without for a few days and no longer had to fake it.
Pamela Paul found this same phenomenon when she interviewed men about their pornography habits for her book, Pornified. Those who over-imbibed found it increasingly difficult to get it up with real women but gained relief when they decreased their porn consumption.
The problem isn’t porn so much as overexposure. Are you overexposed? Well, if you’ve experienced E.D. with real women but not with a computer screen, it’s likely.
Read Rothbart’s complete essay here: New York Magazine.
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Men, Women & Internet Porn
The first time you see Lena Dunham’s character having sex in the new HBO series “Girls,” her back is to her boyfriend, who seems to regard her as an inconveniently loquacious halfway point between partner and prop, and her concern is whether she’s correctly following instructions.
“So I can just stay like this for a little while?” she asks. “Do you need me to move more?”
Those are the opening lines from New York Times columnist, Frank Bruni, writing about the HBO series “Girls” which premiered April 15. I wrote a bit about the interview last week asking, “Is male or female sexuality better?” But Lena and Frank have more to say, and so do I.
Bruni says their sex play seems to be all about what “he” wants “her” to do. Dunham’s real life informs the show, and Dunham suggests that what the proverbial “he” wants is often NOT what “she” wants. Amidst aggressive posturing and “a lot of errant hair pulling” she has thought, “There’s no way any teenage girl taught you and reinforced that behavior.”
The scene, and Dunham’ comments, suggest a depersonalized sexuality with women as objects, sex as sometimes harsh gymnastics and, too often, all about “his” pleasure.
She thinks it’s tied to internet porn, which so many young men are steeped in.
Some women get into pornified sex, too, but usually not all the time, or not on the first few dates. And most seem to want something more, even if porn-sex is a part of the experience.
Meet Valerie, who discovered pornography at age 12 and was very excited by it. Today she sometimes finds it exciting when men pull porn moves on her. But at the same time she says, “It’s icky”:
I don’t just want to become Body A. I want men to feel like they are with me, Valerie, a particular woman with a particular body and my own unique personality. I want them to be in the moment, as opposed to going through some form of learned behavior. I want it to be our own experience as opposed to an imitation of porn.
She talks of Miguel, a musician. She can tell he’s into porn by how he acts:
Lights glaring, gaping at her body parts, manipulating her into positions popular in pornography so he could admire her. He was aggressive, he was confident, he was following a formula. He was cold.
As Valerie saw it, “He thought it was hot, that he was a stud. I felt cheapened. I felt so empty after the experience.”
Dunham can relate, saying that, “People can be so available in a superficial sense that they’re inaccessible in a deeper one.”
One woman wrote about her and her friends’ experiences for GQ and offered tips for the internet-drenched generation. She loves both porn and sex, she says, but warns that not all women are charmed by being called a “dirty whore.” Most women don’t want anal three times in one night – and not from men they barely know.
And why is it, she asks, that orgasming inside someone, “the goal of every dude for zillions of years,” now seems to pale in comparison to “facials”? Noting the irony, “It hardly seems fair to call that sex. It’s more like masturbation with a fellow 3-D person. You finish with your hand, after all, like you’ve done with a million clips.” And please, no facials on the fourth date. “That’s stuff to save for later, when the excitement of someone new has worn into a comfortable live-tweeting-Monk-from-bed kind of cohabitation.”
And maybe when there’s a larger context of relationship, and not just empty sex.
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Love Hurts Others
We all know that lost love and unrequited love hurts. But as a headline from Live Science points out, “Love Hurts (Other People)” too.
Florida State researchers surveyed 130 hetero students in long-term relationships on their levels of jealousy (e.g., “How likely are you to surprise-visit your partner to see who is with him/her?”).
They also asked them to think about a time when they 1) felt lots of love for their partner or 2) a time when they felt lots of lust. Next, the students underwent three ordeals.
First they looked at pictures of an attractive or unattractive same-sex peer and then rated the appeal of a Chinese character. When asked to think about intense sexual desire for their partner everyone rated the character about the same. But when asked to think about intense love for their partner those who tend toward jealousy became quite negative.
Next the students played a video game with an attractive, but hidden, same-sex player. Whoever won got to blast their opponent with a loud noise. When reminded of their love for their partners, the jealous types more harshly blasted their sexy “rivals.” (Fortunately, there was no real person to torment.) But the effect disappeared when these same folks were told to think about lust instead of love.
Finally, the researchers upped the ante, creating a seriously threatening situation.
Students were asked to help design a university dating site, and given profiles of “attractive, interesting, outgoing, fun-loving” people of their own sex who were single and looking. After being reminded of their deep love for their partners everyone responded harshly, labeling the rivals unattractive, unfriendly and heaping on abuse. Jon Maner, the lead researcher added, “The more love they felt for their partner, the more negatively they tended to evaluate these objectively attractive members of their own sex.”
He concludes that low- and high-jealousy people may not be so different after all. What matters is the level of threat.
Study researcher and grad student, Jennifer Leo opined,
Ultimately, love works in the service of protecting the relationship and maintaining it into the long term. Even if that means acting out.
Love makes the world go round. Too bad it can also harm innocent bystanders.
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Passion + Intimacy + Commitment = Consummate Love
Love is complicated, arising in many forms.
Passion, intimacy, and commitment are the three pillars of couple-love, says psychologist, Robert Sternberg in his “triangular theory.” We may love based on intimacy, passion, or commitment, or any combination of the three.
We may also experience different aspects of love at different stages of a relationship, and move in and out of various types of love over time. Let’s take a look at a few possibilities.
Passionate love
Early love is marked by the infatuation of “passion.” Giddy, and intense with longing, the lovebirds feel the heart-thumping arousal of the yearning heart. Can’t eat, can’t sleep. (Why let sleep come between you and the “high” that attaches to thoughts of your beloved?)
These are turbulent times, marked by ecstasy and fulfillment when loved is returned; but sadness and despair when it is not.
Intimacy
Love may also emerge as intimacy, marked by warmth, closeness and connectedness. Each partner wants to give and receive emotional support and share their innermost thoughts and experiences.
If the couple feels intimate, but lacks passion, the relationship is more of a liking/friendship sort than romantic love.
Commitment
Sometimes partners commit to stay together and maintain love and relationship through thick and thin. But this love is more compassionate than passionate.
When a couple is committed but lack passion and intimacy, their relationship may be stagnant, lacking the emotional involvement and attraction they once had. When nothing but duty keeps them together, this is “empty love.”
But in places where marriages are arranged a couple might start with nothing but commitment, yet over time become intimate or passionate, or both. So sometimes “empty love” can be the beginning rather than the end.
Consummate love: intimacy + passion + commitment
These different sorts of love may arise in various combinations. Romantic love can be full of passion and intimacy yet lack commitment. Companionate love can involve intimacy and commitment but lack passion. Or perhaps a couple experiences passion and commitment, yet still lack deep intimacy.
When all three pillars of love combine into the perfect blend of intimacy, passion, and commitment, “consummate love” arises in what many feel is the best of all worlds.
Few couples who have been together for a long time will experience consummate love every moment. Most often the feeling waxes and wanes. And most couples experience different forms of loving styles throughout long-term relationships.
It could also be that different styles of love are a better fit for different couples, depending upon where they are, and want to be, in life and love.
Regardless of where you are, couples are best matched when they desire similar levels of each sort of love.
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Are Men More Likely to Separate Love & Sex?
Men separate love and sex more than women, right?
Men do seem to be more interested in having sex without love. They are more likely to say “yes” when offered casual sex and they are more likely to suggest having sex partners outside of a relationship, perhaps threesomes, open marriage, or “swinging.”
In the last few months there’s been talk on the blogosphere about open marriage thanks to Newt Gingrich, as well as Dan Savage’s New York Times piece advocating open relationships. Some say it’s easier for gay men (like Savage) to make this particular fantasy a reality since men can more easily separate out sex and love.
Social psychologists Roy Baumeister and Brad Bushman say men are indeed more likely to separate out love and sex in that way. But it turns out that women are perfectly adept at separating the two, as well. Women just tend to do it in an entirely different way. They are more likely to enjoy love without sex. In fact, a couple of men who read my blog have complained about this very issue, insisting porn helps them cope with sexless marriages.
One national survey asked people whether they agreed with the statement “love and sex are two different things” and women were more likely to agree with this than men.
So it seems that men are more likely to accept sex without love whereas women are more likely to accept love without sex. Who knows how much the difference is based in biology versus culture (the latter certainly has some effect).
But most often both genders think love combined with sex is best.
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Must Sexual Orientation be Biological?
Cynthia Nixon of Sex and the City fame recently announced that she chose to be gay. And she caught hell.
I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.
Some critics insist she is a biologically-based bisexual.
Others have come to her defense. Gay New York Times columnist, Frank Bruni, insists, “She’s entitled to her own truth and manner of expressing it.”
His readers defend her, too:
I am L.A.M or lesbian after marriage. It does not matter that I was “born” this way or not. I just know that I am intensely in love with my wife of almost ten years… I feel like my sexuality has been fluid my whole life. Being identified as bisexual does not feel like the correct label nor does lesbian.
There may be a continuum with some feeling more straight or more gay, but not everyone understands their experience that way.
Evidence suggests that our orientation is biologically-based, as with fruit flies’ master sex gene. Among humans, genetic males who are raised as females almost always prefer females. Males with gay uncles are more likely to be gay. Men with lots of older brothers are also more likely to be gay (this may be tied to womb chemistry).
But there are unsolved questions. So why hitch your wagon to a moving target, Bruni asks.
When a man is gay, his adoptive brother is gay only 11% of the time. His twin brother is gay 22% of the time. But 52% of identical twin brothers are both gay. A follow-up study found only 20% to be gay. What about the remainder? Perhaps the environment has effects at the epigenetic level. Or are there social effects? Or is there other biological evidence we have not yet seen?
Also, the hypothalamus of straight men becomes active when sniffing an estrogen derivative, and the hypothalamus of gay men and straight women become active when sniffing a testosterone derivative. But lesbians’ brains do not consistently activate only in response to estrogen.
In fact, women seem to be more “fluid.” Straight men are strongly aroused by women and gay men are strongly aroused by men, but lesbians have relatively weaker arousal for females, and straight women have no preference at all, says Northwestern University psychologist, John Michael Bailey.
Biology is not a sure-fire shield against bigotry, anyway. As Bruni points out, some Christians might want to bio-engineer heterosexuality. And since Christianity is often about resisting desires, homosexuality could be seen as “their test,” as I’ve heard some put it. The logic goes like this: “We hetero’s must control our lust for anyone but our spouse. Gays must control their lust for ANYONE.” The lack of fairness doesn’t seem to matter.
But shouldn’t consenting adults be able to love who they love? Maybe we shouldn’t worry about the bigots.
When it comes to morality I ask, “Who is harmed?” and not “What’s traditionally been renounced?”
Homophobia hurts. Being gay doesn’t.
How do you act in the world? How much do you love?
Seasons of Love
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?
In truths that she learned,
Or in times that he cried.
In bridges he burned,
Or the way that she died.
Measure, measure your life in love.
Excerpted lyrics from the musical, Rent (see the video)
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Should Men Play Hard To Get?
Who are women most likely to find attractive right at the beginning of a relationship?
- men who strongly like them
- men who may like them
- men who show disinterest in them
On the one hand, plenty of psychological research says we tend to like people about as much as they like us. But what if we don’t know whether someone likes us or not? How does uncertainty affect things?
Psychologists at the University of Virginia and Harvard wanted to know. So Erin Whitchurch, Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert set up an experiment. They told 47 women college students that they wanted to see if Facebook could work as an online dating site. Each was shown (fake) profiles of four “likeable, attractive” men.
Some were told, “These men liked you the most.” Others were told that the men had rated them “average.” A third group was left wondering as researchers explained that the men might either like them “the most” or “an average” amount.
Finding: The women were attracted to the men who found them attractive, just as prior research predicted. But they were most attracted when they weren’t sure how much the men liked them.
Keep in mind that these uncertain women didn’t have to worry that the men found them unattractive. They knew the men thought they were either average or very attractive. When there is a possible negative outcome – being seen as unattractive or ridiculous — women turn off.
So why would women feel more attracted with ambiguity than when attraction is strong?
A couple of things may be happening. When we respond strongly to positive experiences but then adapt, we get used to it. But when we are uncertain we spend more time thinking and trying to understand. So we never adapt.
But also, when we spend a lot of time thinking about someone we figure we must like them a lot.
But consider that this study only applies to the earliest stage of online dating. And the researchers looked only at women. Men have been found to be most attracted to women who are interested in them and not other guys. They are less attracted to women who are either “hard to get” (not interested in anyone) or women who are “easy to get” (they’re happy to date several men).
And as Psychologist, Adoree Durayappah points out:
(These) participants did not meet the men in person, and this was at the start of a relationship. Thus, we are uncertain if women keeping men guessing about their interest increases attraction or if keeping one’s partner guessing as the relationship develops would be advised. My personal hunch is that keeping one’s partner guessing about one’s interest during a growing relationship probably isn’t the best strategy for building a close connection.
Makes sense to me.
And if you don’t want to play games, be yourself and find someone who doesn’t want to play games either.
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Should Women Play Hard To Get?
A best-selling book from a few years back advised women to follow “The Rules” (the book’s title) to catch a man.
The rules are all about playing hard to get. A sampling:
- Don’t talk to a man first and don’t ask him to dance
- Don’t call him and rarely return his calls
- Always end the date first
- Don’t see him more than once or twice a week
- Don’t open up too fast
Guys in my classes have mixed feelings about this advice. A few seem to like the chase but most feel manipulated or say they would think the woman wasn’t interested.
A dating blogger asked some of her male friends to share their thoughts. One felt that playing hard to get is great:
The first rule of relationship fight club: Wait as long as he took to write before you reply to his email, and never write more than he wrote.”
But another guy felt differently:
That sounds like crap. Back in my early twenties, yes, “hard to get” was great. But now, I’m too tired after work, so “easy to get” is preferable, although I can handle “moderately challenging” on weekends.
Another said that playing hard to get definitely doesn’t make him more interested.
If she seems to be only reacting tit-for-tat, I quickly lose interest.
Three of the guys she talked to said they’d likely mistake “playing hard to get” for “not interested.”
On the other hand, “too easy” isn’t appealing, either. One guy put it this way:
It’s a real attraction-killer if a woman comes off like she’ll take whatever she can get — and you happen to be her current target.
So the men were all over the place. Research suggests the most common reaction is a bit more complicated.
Early experiments failed to find any evidence that “hard to get” works. Women who initially declined a date were no more — or less — desirable than women who eagerly accepted.
Eventually researchers realized there are two different ways to be hard-to-get: (1) how hard it is for me to get her and (2) how hard it is for other men to get her.
Turns out that women are most attractive when they are hard for other men to get, but easy for “me” to get.
A recent study on speed dating found that women had the best chance of landing a guy if they both, (1) desired a particular man more than other women did, and (2) were uninterested in the other men at the event.
Researcher, Eli Finkel opined, “People can tell lickety-split whether you have a special attraction for them, and this special attraction seems to inspire their attraction in return.” But he added:
Of course, it’s never good to be desperate, either. The key is to be selectively hard to get. If you’re interested in somebody, make sure he knows you like him, but do so in a way that doesn’t suggest that you’d take just anybody. It’s okay to be eager, as long as you do it with dignity.
For those who want to know.
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