Love, sex and the whole dating shebang is a dangerous game. Aside from a multitude of diseases running rampant (one in eight adults has genital herpes) and cheating escapades ricocheting around newspaper headlines and backdoor hotel rooms (the 2009 sex census found 47 per cent of men and 44 per cent of women have done the dirty behind their partners' backs), the real trouble is that everyone seems to be acting on their biological impulses. Thanks to chemical brain reactions, lust is mistaken for love, good sex for a long-term relationship and a follow-up phone call for true love.
But let's travel back in time for just a minute. So you meet someone you might be interested in and there's that sudden electrifying feeling. (Especially if you've been whining about your sorry single life for far too long.) You have that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. Your heart is racing. Your cheeks are flushed. Your nether regions are tingling. And that's just the beginning. Suddenly you're laughing at all their jokes, swinging your legs to face towards theirs, gazing lovingly into their pupils and imagining what it would be like to kiss them, take them home and, for many women, have them be the father of your child.
But before any rational decisions can be made, chemistry swiftly takes over. Dopamine surges through your veins giving you a feeling akin to being on cocaine. You are instantly motivated to get to know the other person you've just met a little better.
So, to take them home or not to take them home?
For most men, the answer would be a definitive, "hell yes!", and that's not just by my observations either. If Dr Louann Brizendine, author of The Male Brain, is anything to go by, men have a sexual pursuit area that is a whopping two and a half times larger than the one in the female brain.
"Not only that," she tells CNN news, "but, beginning in their teens, they produce 20- to 25-fold more testosterone than they did during pre-adolescence. If testosterone were beer, a nine-year-old boy would be getting the equivalent of a cup a day. But a 15-year-old would be getting the equivalent of nearly two gallons a day. This fuels their sexual engines and makes it impossible for them to stop thinking about female body parts and sex."
And so "the chase" begins. How long will it take him to convince a woman he's just met that it might be a good idea to do the horizontal hanky panky?
Bass, a man I spoke to over the weekend, says that sometimes it doesn't take too long at all. Yet, while he admitted that he hoped to get laid during the Easter weekend, he did admit that nine times out of 10 he'd never call the woman again. (He says that it all has to do with her personality, but that's a whole other column.)
So what goes so wrong? Reckoning it's the women who are to blame.
"Women decide too fast if chemistry is happening," he said. "Many need to realise that sometimes the hottest fire can begin with a slow burn."
For some reason modern women are acting on their immediate chemical reactions faster than a speeding crawfish. Take Jaclyn, who admits that's exactly how her magic number of men she's slept with sped from five to 50 within just one year.
While the average number of sexual partners is about 6.5 for women, Jaclyn says she now realises she's been mistaking the whiff of a "spark" for the real deal.
"Over the years I've come to realise that you can have chemistry with just about anyone," she says. "Especially after a few drinks."
Andrew concurs. "I used to believe in love at first sight, but after watching Louis Theroux last night I'm worried people fall for the idea of each other rather than the reality of who that other person is. The best chemistry is when there is a mutual curiosity and respect for each other - a kind of tiny spark that burns long and intensifies as the relationship progresses. Unfortunately, for most guys the carnal urge takes over pretty early."
Perhaps Rick Marin summed it up best in his hilarious tome Cad: Confessions of a Toxic Bachelor when he said this:
"Women blame men for being fake ... But women are the ones speeding from zero to intimacy like a Ferrari. Which is more artificial?"
Relationship expert and Hollywood dating coach Cherry Norris says that, when a woman ruins the chase for a man, the man doesn't have the opportunity to pursue the woman. When he does get to chase, his dopamine levels rise, making him more desperate to get into her and more inclined to stick around for the long haul. Therefore Norris claims that, when things happen too quickly from the club to the bedroom, it becomes a lose/lose situation for everyone.
"Women need to know their worth and set their price high," she says. And she's not talking in monetary terms either. I listened to Norris's audio advice clip the other day and, when I sent it to Jaclyn, she called to tell me that she'd been undervaluing herself for way too long.
"I don't know why I keep doing it. It actually doesn't feel so great the next morning."
But we can't blame Jaclyn. It's increasingly difficult to tell the difference between love and lust with chemicals giving our nether regions the green light for sexual actions.
And in an age in which loneliness is the biggest factor in the hook-up culture and the "Man Drought" is causing fear to infiltrate into a woman's psyche, it's only natural that, when she gets a whiff of something more, she grabs hold of it.
Even if she knows he won't contact her the next day, somehow she can rationalise that it was all worth the risk ...
No comments:
Post a Comment