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Pleasure and Beauty 2

Pleasure and beauty are neither synonyms nor opposites. In most cases a certain amount of pleasure is derived from beautiful things. Yet, one can derive pleasure from things which are unattractive or even ugly. Many unattractive foods can be very tasty and pleasurable.

There is no doubt that a beautiful face can get a man’s attention. Yet, especially for a man, satisfying sexual intercourse is about pleasure. The focus and often the goal of sex is passion, intensity and orgasm. While beauty can induce pleasure it is not a necessary ingredient to the visceral pleasures of passion and orgasm.

Since women are generally more preoccupied with beauty than men, they often view attractiveness as a vital aspect of sexuality. While many women are able to settle on a mate who they do not find exceedingly beautiful, fewer are able to engage in a sexual relationship with a man who they feel does not find them particularly beautiful.

The bulk of women’s magazines and TV talk shows spend much time discussing the importance of looking and feeling beautiful. Woman worry about their looks, aging and their bodies far more than men.

Many women would object that if men aren’t obsessed with beauty then why do so many married men have affairs with younger women or remarry younger women? If this stereotype is true than the question could be why do so many women who are so concerned about beauty have affairs with older men, or marry divorced men who are significantly older than themselves?

One explanation is that it is common for both men and women’s sex drives to decrease as they get older, and it is only natural for a man open to an affair to be looking for a woman with a higher sex drive than his wife and more akin to his. Also people’s life styles during the child bearing years often make frequent sex a logistic hardship, and therefore only a younger woman will be accessible to the time and sexual demands of the philandering husband. There also are a ton of psychological theories which talk of a woman’s desire to seek out a father figure in sexual relationships.

This is not to deny that men will more often approach and proposition beautiful women. It is only to try to put into perspective the role of beauty in sexual interest and satisfaction.

A woman who is comfortable with herself and who enjoys sex is inherently more attractive then a woman of similar beauty who is sexually insecure or disinterested. A woman who finds sex pleasurable and makes an effort to please the man she’s with will, in the majority of cases, not have to worry about his becoming dissatisfied with the relationship.

A beautiful woman is often more comfortable with themselves and their body. This often translates into their being more open to sex and to being naked. Since sexually healthy men want passionate and uninhibited sex and the female body is the thing they find most captivating in life, then it is only logical that they would gravitate towards women who appear to view themselves as beautiful.

This entire discussion on beauty and pleasure is a lead in to what I feel is the most important element of a successful life long monogamous relationship from a man’s point of view. This will be taken up in my next post in a discussion centering on male and female sexual compatibility and appetite.

Jim Guido

Pleasure and Beauty

We’ve mentioned a few times in recent posts the dominant role the biological imperative plays in men’s lives. A man’s sex drive can be very pervasive and effects many aspects of their life. Sex and sexual intercourse are events, but their significance can be as pervasive as their desire.

Most men understand that satisfying sex doesn’t make a good relationship. Yet, for many men a rewarding sex life is an important and often essential ingredient in a lasting relationship. For many men the concept of having a fulfilling relationship with a poor sexual component doesn’t make sense.

Woman in our culture place a huge emphasis on beauty. The concept of beauty is present if not central in most conversations between women. Woman comment on the beauty of each other’s appearance, their hair, shoes, the clothes they are wearing, or some little stylish accent. In stores they talk about the beauty of fabrics, smells, artifacts, merchandise arrangement, lighting, etc. It is also interesting to see how often women touch something while declaring its beauty as the enter a store, and similarly as they leave the store. In restaurants comments of beauty go from, the decor, to aromas, to food presentation to knick-knacks on tables and walls.

The list of places and events in which woman note and emphasize beauty in near endless. Of course, we have said nothing about babies, flowers and pets. In my near 25 years of marriage I have never heard my wife tire of stating how beautiful every plant and flower she sees is. I have made note of this and have on occasion playfully responded to her squeal of “aren’t these roses beautiful” with “no, dear I find them butt ugly”.

Just as its not fair nor true to say that woman don’t focus on sex or find it enjoyable, it would also be unfair to say that men don’t appreciate beauty or find things beautiful. Yet, just as it is fair to say that women aren’t as obsessed with sex or as sexually driven as the average man, it is fair to say that men aren’t as preoccupied with beauty.

A woman’s emphasis on beauty gets played out in the sexual arena in a variety of ways. First there is a great amount of energy placed on looking sexy, alluring and pretty. Countless hours are spent by the average woman in “looking their best” or “presentable”. Sometimes this is done to attract men, but often it is done to feel good about oneself and is important in the culture of sisterhood. Where as we pointed out earlier how common it is for woman to compliment each other on the beauty of their presentation. We didn’t mention, however, how common it is for women to make negative comments about the dress and presentation of men and women behind their backs.

Woman are often disappointed when their spouse or boyfriend doesn’t compliment them on their attire or mention how beautiful they look. It is not unusual for a woman to be turned off or get out of the mood, if a man isn’t properly admiring of her dress or sexy lingerie.

Many women expect their man do find them more beautiful than any other woman, and express great displeasure if their man looks at another woman. While beauty does play a role in a man’s sexual universe, it is often not a prominent one. A pretty face is often a strong component in attracting a man to a woman, but often men are physically attracted to their shape or body parts.

In my next post entitled Beauty: Form versus Function I’ll contrast and compare male and female views of beauty. Yet, at the moment I think it is important to say that for many men the most beautiful thing in the universe is the female form (body). All one has to do is study the history of art to notice the predominant role the female form plays in the mind and imagination of men.

What this means is while the woman is focusing on her mate appreciating the beauty of her dress, hair, or frilly underwear, the man is eager to see what he finds most beautiful, the naked female body. On Christmas many a mother is disappointed in her children being unappreciative of the beautiful packaging of the gift as they frenetically rip away the paper and ribbons to see what they got. Likewise, while a dress may entice or accent the beauty of the female form the true vision of delight for most men is the body itself.

This brings us to the main point of this post, and that is much of the beauty of the female form is in it’s promise of pleasure. In essence, the male sex drive isn’t about beauty, but rather pleasure. Bad sex only temporarily relieves the biological imperative, while good sex is a wonderland of pleasure.

While beauty, as they say, is often only skin deep, pleasure is felt in the marrow of one’s bones. Pleasure is visceral, and in many ways the essence of life. Sexual pleasure can be fulfilling to all senses, not just the eyes, but touch, smell and taste. Even the sounds of love making can be rewarding and uplifting.

In my book Exploring Intimacy I talk in detail of the privileged role sex plays in becoming intimate with another human being. How the sharing of one’s body is the most risky and potentially powerful experience one can devise. (The book can be read in it’s entirety in the “words” section of this website.)

Good sex might be about receiving pleasure, but great sex involves giving as well as receiving pleasure.

More on this soon. I’m afraid as usual that I find it hard to get all my ideas out regarding a subject matter within the confines of the length of a standard post.

Jim Guido

Pheromones, Bodies and Faces

Pheromones are chemical secretions of a species which gives a message to other members of the species. Insects in particular are affected by a number of pheromones, some of which play an important role in sexual arousal and mating.

While the existence of sexual pheromones in humans is still under debate, one can make a strong case that there are many biochemical elements of human sexuality which impact sexual arousal and attraction.

When I was a young adolescent I found myself drawn to a number of females on a very primal level. In these situations other elements such as body type and beauty took a back seat to this animal attraction (magnetism). One young lady in particular had an incredible pull on me.

When not in her presence I could find many faults in her. Though I found some aspects of her looks and body attractive there were many other aspects which I found neutral or even unappealing. She was buxom and had a child like innocence in her blue eyes which I found quite alluring, yet she had a weak chin and her body was rather rather squarish, which was a turn off. Being Italian I usually gravitated towards women with big hips, round butts, and an olive complexion, while this lady was blond and kind of washed out.

Yet, when in her presence I found myself more sexually attracted to her than any other female in my life. The closer the proximity the more drugged and enamored I became. Her scent, the warmth of her body and her smile became surreal and simultaneously arousing and relaxing. When I see a cat in a catnip induces stupor it looks like how I felt every time I was in her presence.

Our relationship never lived up to the feelings it induced in me and I’m very lucky that she had the sense to reject me often enough to where I finally gave up all hope of making her my lifetime mate. During the many years when she was in and out of my romantic life, I found many women who I found more physically attractive and many who gave me more physical pleasure to be with. Though we never fought, we really had nothing in common, and I found myself more compatible with most of my other romantic interests.

Yet since her pull and effect on me were so powerful it had me wonder if she was the person I was meant to be with. When in a relationship women always wanted me to assure them that I loved them more than any other female. More often than not they felt that if I loved them more than anyone else I should find them prettier and more attractive than anyone else. This put me in an odd position since: 1) I did not find the woman I was most drawn to to be particularly pretty and 2) the women I found the most visually pleasing were seldom the one’s I was highly sexually attracted to.

When I was an adolescent boy I found myself sufficiently attracted to a significant percentage of females. I would say that I was physically attracted to at least a third of the girls with whom I went to high school. Now while I could easily state that I had a biochemical attraction to one young lady in particular, I could not say which girl I found the most physically attractive or beautiful. There were so many different types of beauty and attractiveness, and my ability to say one was truly superior to the other was impossible.

I felt that while an initial physical attraction was necessary, the biggest task was building a pleasurable and compatible relationship. Since, from a physical attraction point of view, I could imagine myself having a sexual relationship with a third of the woman I knew, I figured the real test was in building and maintaining the relationship.

I was always perplexed with how selective the girls I knew were about possible dating material. While I wanted to just find someone who wanted to dedicate themselves to trying to make a relationship happen, they talked of finding their ideal man, and how they would wait to find him.

This romantic ideal of women has been talked about in great detail in modern literature, and I will contrast and compare it with the male world of relationships in future posts, yet I will end this post with a few more observations of male sexuality.

I personally think that while women focus on physical beauty, men focus more on sexual attractiveness. We’ve already talked of how powerful the biological imperative is in the life of young men. Sex is on their mind and is the major influence in how they see the world around them, and how they view themselves. The biological imperative has men focus on pleasure rather than beauty, on sexual gratification rather than relationship. It’s not that men don’t want rewarding compatible relationships, it’s that sexual gratification is what is consuming his mind and his body.

The next post will deal with the ramifications of a male viewpoint of sexual relationships having to do with pleasure being contrasted with a female view dominated by the romantic ideal and the quest for beauty.

Jim Guido

A Fed Opportunity

 I’ll get back to my posts on male sexuality after this one economic post that I did for Bullnotbull.com.

Let’s look at some of the potential reasons and personal benefits for the Federal Reserve to have cut rates by 50 basis points yesterday.

A perusal around the web and even mainstream economic outlets described the Fed as being between a rock and hard place. Article after article talked of how inflation pressures remained while a crashing housing industry was in need of assistance. Almost every article mentioned how desperately Wall Street was looking for a rate cut.

A rate cut was seen as being good for stocks and corporate America and as being a possible life boat for struggling American consumers and home owners. Those calling for a rate cut felt that the need to save the housing industry and stimulate a falling economy outweighed the risks of inflation.

At the same time a rate cut was seen as a potential kiss of death for the dollar and a risk of ushering in high inflation for the overall economy. With oil and gold near important break out levels many figured the Fed would not want to send them an inflationary message.

When trying to understand the actions of the Fed it is important to realize they are a private financial institution who is concerned with their overall economic success as anything else. Often times I read articles talking of how the Fed is more concerned with their “friends on Wall Street” than anything else. There might be some truth to that sentiment, but one must put it into context.

Like any profit based business the Fed is more concerned about their bottom line than anything else. Therefore, it may be true that they are not as concerned for the economic welfare of the average citizen as they like to portray themselves to be. Yet, their relationship to Wall Street isn’t totally benevolent either.

Most of the time the economic health of Wall Street is a boon to the bottom line of the Fed. Since the Fed loans out money to the economy they stand to benefit by fostering a climate of expanding corporate profits. Corporations which are making money are ready to borrow to fund their growth and expansion.

Yet, like every business in a competitive economy they are ever vigilant for opportunities to increase market share in their field of interest. If you look at the Federal Reserve as a banking institution then it would be only logical that they would like to increase their market share in the banking industry. Since they are not in the business of mergers and take overs their ability to get increase in market share is somewhat limited.

Yet, in the current environment of potential financial and credit crisis their does appear to be a window of opportunity. While most commentators are labeling the Fed’s actions of late towards the banks as a bailout, I see something different.

The way I see it the Fed is not bailing out the banks, but rather putting themselves in a power position. The Fed is not taking on bad loans and subprime toxic waste. What they are doing is giving out short term loans to banks while using their best assets and loans as collateral. In essence this means that the bank is losing their good money to the Fed while taking on more debt without getting rid of their defaulted loans.

What this means is that the Fed stands to benefit from the financial crisis in a number of ways. First, they will make money off of the banks whether they fold or recover. Second, they are not endangering themselves by taking on poor quality loans. Third they position themselves to be able to a creditor that a failing bank is beholding to, and could be in a prime position to take over the bank after the liquidation period. In other words the Fed could increase their market share by taking over failed banks.

Now, the fact that the Fed is not taking on bad debt shows that they have no desire to become sacrificial lambs or financial martyrs. In fact they are finding ways,like any other competitive company, to benefit from the current turbulence.

This analysis still leaves open the question of why the Fed cut rates. In fact the cutting of rates would seem to be counter intuitive to my argument of the Fed just being concerned about their economic survival. As I mentioned earlier most feared cutting rates would cause a dollar crash and a gold boom like none we’ve seen in our lifetime.

If the dollar were to die or gold became king, then it would seem logical that the Fed itself could cease to exist. After all the Federal Reserve is the reserve for the US dollar and if the dollar were to crash it would seem natural that the Fed would suffer or completely fail.

My assumption is that the Fed is self-serving and relatively intelligent and therefore they are not afraid of a dollar crash or gold/commodity bubble forming. So given the Fed’s actions of cutting rates how could they be so sure that this popular logical scenario is not going to happen.

Well, if the Fed sees recessionary deflation on the horizon then the dollar would likely rebound as investors go to the dollar as a safe haven during a stock market crash, and likewise gold and commodities would tread water or go down due to deflationary pressures.

In such a scenario most people would suffer, but the Federal Reserve would stand to gain market share and possibly increase their wealth not only in relative but in real terms.

Maybe, I’m wrong and the Fed is not looking out for number one, but is rather a benevolent socialist leader of the welfare state. Yet, I see no evident to support that notion, do you?

Jim Guido

Varied Reactions

Before going on with some of my observations and theories regarding male sexuality I think it is important to point out the obvious. In the essay regarding asymmetrical sex drives I’m focusing on the experience of rejection as a response to most women’s relatively low sex drive. I fully realize that there are many other possible emotional responses to the difference in intensity of the biological imperative in men and women. Yet, in these essays I’m focusing on an emotional response which I think is most common in adolescent boys in modern America and which helps explain many of the apparent emotional deficits feminists have been quick to point out in their male counterparts.

In the essay on men feeling inessential and needing to prove themselves and find meaning in life, I once again realize that this is only one possible reaction. Just as two children may respond very different to the same parenting strategy, likewise two societies may respond very differently to a social situation. In fact, there is much anthropological evidence to this fact in modern field work with various cultures. In some societies men react to their feelings of being inessential by either being abusive and extremely dominating of women. Other societies revere women and make them into religious and spiritual icons. While men in other societies find meaning by emulating women or find alternative symbolic ways of “giving birth”, or of making male gods responsible for creating the universe and human kind.

While I will stay focused on male sexuality in our modern society I will try not to stay blind to other societies and other possible reactions to gender differences in sexual desire and personality.

Jim Guido

Incidental Man

From the earliest times it was obvious that women were necessary and essential. Without women mankind would die out.  They gave birth and nursed the young. Even though early man realized that a woman housed the child for near a year before birth they came to realize that the child’s body was made out of the same cells as the mother.

Woman were revered and protected by the earliest human communities, for without them the community could not exist. Men, on the other hand, had no visible and provable reason to exist.

As time went on it became more obvious that children were created through sexual intercourse and therefore men became more essential. Yet, this again was a theory and not something for certain. In fact, 20th century anthropologists found existing cultures that still did not believe that men were essential in the birth process.  While acknowledging that sex was a common cause of pregnancy they still believed that a virgin could get pregnant through alternative means. These alternative methods included magic potions, amulets, sacred places, prayer, etc.

In most situations something proven carries more weight than something supposed to be true. While women were essential men were only abstractly or theoretically important. This reality probably had a tremendous impact on the emerging sense of self of developing man.

While women could prove their importance and worth through having and rearing a child, men had to try harder to validate their existence. Up until recently even modern man did not have even a semi-reliable method of proving paternity. When one looks at the behavior of men this lack of essential function has had a dramatic effect on his behavior and self-esteem.

How did men deal with their suspicions that they were not necessary? How did men validate their existence and find meaning in life?

According to the standard analysis of industrial society we say that men went into the world to work and provide for their family. In the classic nuclear family model the man labors and produces to earn a living.

Two questions immediately come to mind. First one must question for what percentage of humanity has this nuclear model been true? Secondly, how true has this model been for the bulk of human history?

Any historical search into family life usually shows that the nuclear family is a recent invention, and that it has been a reality for a small percentage of people for a relatively short period of time.  The idea that it takes a community to raise a child is not a modern invention, but rather the norm than the exception throughout the history of mankind.

In the earliest civilizations it was the woman who not only raised the children but also who tended the crops. The day to day tending of the crops was more often than not an activity dominated by females of a tribe. The men were not the bread-makers nor the breadwinner, but rather the protectors and adventurous of the tribe. While the woman held down the fort and took care of the daily needs of the community the men were out in the world striving to accomplish something vital and important.

Men strove to do the exceptional, to do the dangerous. They became hunters, warriors, adventurers, sages. Their interfacing with other tribes and foreigners inspired them to become traders, merchants, inventors, athletes, philosophers, artists and artisans.  They had to learn the languages and customs of neighboring peoples and flourished through winning competitions and dominating others.

I believe men were more ambitous and daring due to their feelings of being otherwise useless and inessential. While women were inherently important and necessary men had to prove themselves. While a woman earned a little immortality through her children, a man won immortality through accomplishing something of practical significance. Men became obsessed with being heroes, with being the best at something.

The quickest and simplest way for a man to prove himself to be a hero or legend was through being a warrior. As a successful warrior he protected the tribe and insured that the woman and children lived on, and if he was a poor warrior he gained significance by dying for his people. Even in modern societies dying for one’s country through battle is a highly admirable accomplishment.

While becoming a hunter or warrior was the most common vehicle for having men validate their existence, many men found other means of satisfying this quest for meaning.  These men strove to master skills or develop talents. This, more than any other reason, is why men, and not woman, became the inventors, philosophers, musicians, artists, adventurers, scientists, and historians. This is not to say that women couldn’t do these things, this is only to say that men’s lack of inherent worth is what inspired and motivated them to accomplish these things.

Woman not only had an inherent worth, but they were too important to human life to be allowed to put their life on the line. Men were more expendable and their risk taking and irresponsible behavior did not endanger the continuity of human history.

From a biological point of view the male sex drive insured that even a small percentage of surviving males could keep the population growing. While a woman could only have one or two children per year, men could impregnate countless woman each year. Most of the other primates have an alpha male who is in charge of siring the majority of the tribes children, it is, therefore, not improbable that dominant human males were quite sexually prolific and selfish in early human societies.

Coupled with the previous post this essay was written in an attempt to understand some of the sexual and historical factors which have most influenced the emotional and psychological development of men. In the next few posts I will continue my investigation into male emotional and psychological development and make some suggestions of how society could better address male sexuality to help insure the emotional and mental health of men.

Jim Guido