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The Beer Goggle Effect Is Finally Explained: It’s All About Sex

March 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment

be961243fa3890ffc2c5ae12724122d1 The Beer Goggle Effect Is Finally Explained: Its All About Sex

(PhatzNewsRoom / The Frisky) — Because some people have awesome jobs, a group of researchers recently set out to study the beer goggle effect. What is it about that third or fourth shot that makes everyone around you all of a sudden more attractive?

It turns out it doesn’t. It just makes you want to have sex more, which I guess lowers your standards. Dr. Ellison of Durham University in the U.K. says that, “We still see others basically as they are … there is no imagined physical transformation — just more desire.”

Ellison’s new book, Getting Your Head Around the Brain, explains that the desire to mate never goes away, even at very high levels of intoxication. You know what does go away the more you drink? . shuts down the portion of the brain that keeps us from acting on our .

Essentially, when we’re sober, our are smarter about the mating selection process, and we are more discerning of potential . Ellison says we are “constantly weighing up questions of looks versus in our search for the right soul [mate].” When we drink, we’re more interested in the sex than in finding a life partner.

Also when we drink, we’re more likely to be more assertive with a come-hither — regardless of our levels of inebriation. A study published in the British Journal of Psychology last year showed that people were more confident in their abilities even if they only believed they were tipsy.

The researchers gave a group of people non-alcoholic beverages, but told half of them that they had the real thing. They then asked individuals to give a speech and rate themselves on it. The ones that were made to believe they were intoxicated gave themselves better scores than those that knew they were sober.

The researchers behind the study noted, “the mere belief that one has consumed alcohol increases self-perceived .”

So basically drinking doesn’t give us per se, but it does take away some discernment when it comes to picking sexual partners. Combine that with a confidence boost from an increase in self-perception, and you’ve got a recipe for hook-ups.

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The Top 10 Lies Women Tell Men

May 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

46d827e556e6405a75542c5bc0ddfc0f The Top 10 Lies Women Tell Men

( News / The Frisky) — Ah, women. So mysterious! So enigmatic! We have more layers than an onion. And men, poor, . Left to figure us out all on their own. Sorry! We don’t mean to be confusing. We just are. While many of us strive to be honest, truthful, and forthright, we do not always tell the . That is the . Sometimes (gasp!), we lie. Most of the time, though, these are little white lies, half-truths told to keep the . Other times, our lies are a little bigger — say, for example, when the subject is sex. In honor of National Day, here’s a of the mistruths that are most likely to come out of a woman’s mouth, and what men can learn about the lies, the sweet little lies, that women tell. (Don’t worry — we’ve got lies dudes tell coming later today…)

1. ”I’ve slept with [X] guys.” Maybe she rounds up. Maybe she rounds down. Maybe she can’t remember. Whatever the case may be, more than a few women have lied about how many sexual partners they’ve had. Maybe she feels self-conscious. Maybe her number is higher than yours. To increase the she’ll tell the truth, make her confess first.

2. “That was great.” Listen, nobody’s . Sometimes bad sex is a no-fault proposition. But if it’s not good for her, it’s altogether possible she may not be enlightening you on that matter. Whether she’s just not that into it tonight or she’s just not that into you, it’s hard for some women to be frank about sex, especially when the news isn’t good. Rely on her body language instead.

3. ”I have never nor would I ever cheat on you.” Do you remember that show on VH1, “Tough Love: “? The number one cause of screaming fights? Cheating. Or, more specifically, lying about cheating. It’s not easy to tell someone when you’ve messed up; the fallout can be brutal. Remember: What you don’t know can spare you.

4. “I weight [X].” Here’s the thing. Women don’t lie about their weight because of you. Their reasons for doing it have everything to do with them. Not all women lie about their weight, but some do, and they do it for all kinds of reasons. Because they want to weigh less, because they want to weigh more, because they’re not sure and that number sounds about right. Women and their weight are a mysterious with which you may not want to interfere. Take her word for it.

5. “Sure, you can call me.” Sometimes, when we’re face-to-face with a guy, and he’s asking us out on a first or for a second date, it’s tough to, er, woman-up and say, “You know what? Um, no.” We don’t want to be heartbreakers. We want to be nice. We’re sure you’ll get the message when we never call you back.

6. “I’ll be ready in a minute.” Listen, if before you left the house to go out on a date, you had to shower, shave half your body, slather yourself in moisturizer, apply 99 overpriced products, put on several layers of makeup, flat-iron your hair, pick out the perfect outfit that makes you look sophisticated/sexy/spectacular, it would take you a long time to get ready, too. So, wait.

7. “I don’t know.” We don’t know (ha!) if we’re going to get a lot of agreement on this one, but we are of the opinion that a lot of times when a woman says, “I don’t know,” she does, in fact, know. Women are intuitive like a nuclear power plant is radioactive, and it is upon our internal sonars that we rely. Mostly, we do know. We may not be ready to tell you.

8. “That was delicious!” If you cooked, we don’t care how it tastes. We will tell you we love it. Love us for that.

9. “I’m fine.” We’re going to go out on a limb here and suggest this is the single most common lie told by women to men. Or, you know, at the very least it’s the lie we’ve told most often to men. We are emotional creatures! Sometimes, we get upset! Maybe it’s because our Aries is in your Venus, maybe it’s because we got promoted at work and we’re scared as hell about living up to our own lofty goals, or maybe we’re in a mood. It’s up to you to figure out if you want to walk into our minefield or keep a safe distance away. Usually, your best bet is listening.

10. “It was on sale.” It wasn’t. Deal with it.

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Guy Talk: Why Cougars Are Better Than Silver Foxes

November 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

5f608d820ac2e6289d11c198849a5038 Guy Talk: Why Cougars Are Better Than Silver Foxes

Hugo’s piece was originally published at the Good Men Project Magazine.

(Phatforums News / The Frisky) — Both at the Good Men Project and at my own blog, my most popular posts in terms of page-views are invariably those that focus on one particularly controversial subject: . (Here’s “What Are Really Looking For From Older Men.”)

As I’ve laid out in those pieces, for a number of reasons I think we should be suspicious of age-disparate heterosexual relationships in which the male partner is substantially older than the female one, and in which the woman is still quite young (say, under 23). Put simply, the potential problems in these relationships seem to diminish based less upon the actual number of years in between the partners and more upon the age of the woman involved. I’m more concerned about an 18 year- and a 30 year- than I am about a 30 year-old woman and a 55 year-, even though the latter has twice the number of years separating the partners. The research of like Lynn Phillips—who has written extensively about relationships between teen girls (including those above the age of consent) and older men—bears out how damaging these relationships can be.

Since this topic comes up so often, I frequently get asked whether I think older women/younger men relationships, or age-disparate relationships between lovers of the same sex, are as problematic. It sounds as if they ought to be—if age really is “more than just a number,” then why not see all relationships with a substantial as equally “bad”? But I think a compelling case can be made that older women/younger men relationships (and those between same- of unequal ages) are less culturally and psychologically damaging.

This isn’t about seeing women as less inclined to exploit younger . It’s about how our are distorted by social expectations. We don’t fall in love, or fall into bed, in a vacuum. What we want sexually is shaped by the society in which we’re raised. Long before we hit puberty and start having sexual feelings of our own, we’ve picked up on what’s “hot” or “not” from the broader culture. And those cultural rules show an astonishing—and depressing—resilience. Ask anyone who’s found himself or herself falling into a stubbornly familiar traditional pattern in heterosexual relationships. A determined young feminist finds herself almost overwhelmed by the impulse to do her boyfriend’s laundry and “look after him”—even when he hasn’t asked for help. An egalitarian-minded guy finds himself strangely troubled that his girlfriend makes more money than he does. This has nothing to do with biology, and everything to do with the gender-role straitjacket with which most of us have been raised.

The older man/younger woman relationship reinforces those traditional gender roles. These relationships have their individual nuances, but they’re all variations on what is essentially the same thing. The older man offers (or pretends to offer) wisdom, experience, and wealth; the younger woman offers her innocence, her beauty, and her malleability in return. She gets a rocket booster into adulthood; he gets to be with someone too young to call him on his crap. Win-win or lose-lose, it’s a very old story.

When I wrote my original piece at the Good Men Project about older men and younger women, many readers of both sexes wrote in to defend these relationships, suggesting that it was “natural” for girls to seek out mentors—and natural for older men to want to sexualize that mentoring relationship. Others argued that these relationships made reproductive sense: older men, according to this theory, always want to be with younger, more fertile women. The theory falls apart when you consider what happens to the quality of men’s sperm after 35; why guys my age would want to sleep with 20-somethings might make evolutionary sense. Why those young women would want to sleep with us, given the degraded nature of our swimmers, is a question evolutionary-psychology is powerless to answer.

Older women/younger men relationships don’t reinforce unhealthy gender stereotypes. They subvert them. They don’t make “reproductive sense” to the aficionados of junk science. (Though if you believe the questionable stereotype about when are said to hit their respective sexual peaks—guys around 19, women in their mid-30s—perhaps there is some sense to be made after all.) Straight women may eroticize youth and vigor in younger men, but they rarely are taught to be turned on by displays of masculine ignorance or uncertainty; high-brow Western literature and low-brow pornography are filled with countless examples of men being aroused by much younger women who either “play dumb”—or are the genuine article. (This doesn’t mean that traditional roles never emerge in older women/younger men relationships. In many societies, boys were initiated into sex by older women, often prostitutes. There’s a notable reference to the acceptability of that practice in last year’s Oscar-winner for Best Picture, The King’s Speech. But that tradition is, thankfully, much rarer now.)

I’m not saying that every older woman/younger man relationship is inherently progressive while every older man/younger woman coupling is oppressive and reactionary. A great many young women do exercise great agency in relationships with older men. But there’s no escaping that given who has power in our culture, the reality is that the potential for abuse and exploitation is likely to be much higher in an age-disparate relationship where it is the man who is the elder of the lovers. We must note, too, that we live in a world where men are seen as growing both more “visible” and more powerful as they age, while women, past a certain age, are either desexualized or mocked. “Cougar” was not coined as a compliment; “silver fox” was.

Young men in consensual relationships with older women (or older men) aren’t having sex in a culture in which they are told, over and over again, that their beauty is their number one asset. We raise men to believe that good looks are a happy and welcome bonus, not an essential component of success. While underage boys can be victims of rape by women (a point I made here), their slightly older male counterparts are culturally better equipped to enter into consensual sexual relationships with older women (or men) than are their female peers. This isn’t because boys mature faster. This is because boys aren’t raised to believe that their sexual value has a rapidly approaching sell-by date. Whatever sexual power he may have in his youth, a young man knows he’s likely to have far more of a different—and more enduring—kind of clout when he gets older. Girls, raised as they are in a culture that values youthful female beauty above all else, have no such reassurance.

What about gay men and lesbians? Of course, same-sex relationships can replicate unhealthy dynamics from the dominant culture. But by their very nature, same-sex relationships “subvert the dominant paradigm” in constructive ways. A romantic relationship between two men or two women reminds us that biology alone isn’t destiny, and that while a certain degree of complementarity is surely present in any enduring relationship, that complementarity doesn’t require radically different genitalia. The age-disparate relationship, while certainly quite common in gay and lesbian communities, doesn’t reinforce an unhealthy norm. Even a wealthy older man with a beautiful young but broke “boy toy” is a fundamentally distinct phenomenon from that of a wealthy older man with his hot young girlfriend. The latter relationship reminds us all of women’s relative powerlessness—and of older women’s disposability—in a unique and far more damaging way.

This doesn’t mean that young men (even those over the age of consent) can never be exploited or harmed, any more than it means that, say, a 19 year-old young woman will invariably suffer lasting trauma from a sexual relationship with a man twice her age. But though individual experiences can and will vary, every older man/younger woman affair sends a clear and visible signal to the outside world that our toxic social norms are left untouched; every older woman/younger man relationship sends the exact opposite signal. An older man and a younger woman need to work twice as hard as an older woman and a younger man to keep unhealthy power dynamics at bay. And so for reasons that have nothing to do with our individual intentions, and everything to do with the culture in which we live, we need to acknowledge that silver foxes have more capacity to do more harm than do cougars.

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5 (More) Sex Moves Women Want In Bed, But Can Be Too Afraid To Ask For

October 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

b6bc0a867b692d612b8f8217497489bc 5 (More) Sex Moves Women Want In Bed, But Can Be Too Afraid To Ask For

( News / The Frisky) — I’ve never been afraid to ask for what I want in bed. The idea that some women can’t ask for what they want, or don’t know what they want in the first place, is foreign to me.

However, I’m well-aware that I may not be in the majority here. Guys have told me other women become self-conscious when asking for something risqué or — and that’s a crying shame. Sexual relationships (any relationships, actually) thrive when you know what you want and can communicate it effectively to your partner clearly. Therefore, I would love to help you out, boys and girls, more so than I already did with my piece “5 Moves Women Love In Bed, But Can Be Too Afraid to Ask For.” (And I apologize for how heteronormative this advice is, but my only have been dudes!)

Men, don’t pressure anything here, of course — but if you offer, you may be pleasantly surprised at how enthusiastically she accepts …1. She wants a finger (or something else) in her bum. Some women enjoy from their back door, while others would prefer to keep that door shut. But even if a woman knows touching that area is pleasurable for her and even if she’s played with that area with another partner, it can be trés awkies to discuss with a new dude. First, she’s scared you’re going to be totally repulsed by the idea. Second, she’s afraid there might be little bits of that will gross him out. And last, but certainly not least, she’s aware how sensitive/tight the area is and doesn’t want to get hurt. We all know that when we actually get over our in that area and enjoy the , it can be awesome. Getting there is the trick, though!

How to ask: You need to ask first. Don’t go poking your finger around her no-no hole without asking first because, , that’s bad sex etiquette, and also you might put her off-guard. A simple, “Can I touch your ?” or “Have you ever had someone play with your before?” will suffice. (If the word “” grosses you out in the bedroom, use another word.) If she hesitates, don’t pressure her, but offer to touch the outside very gently. Ask her if she likes it and if she doesn’t, stop immediately; if she does like it, and you want to do this, ask if you can slide your finger in. You should probably use lube to do this and you should definitely proceed S-L-O-O-O-O-W-L-Y as you slip it in. Y’all can experiment with more fingers/butt plugs/dildos/your penis/etc. from there-on out as you see fit, but you should definitely, definitely, definitely play around with one finger first to start.

2. She wants to be gently choked. I’m not referring to WWE or MMA-style choking here; I am referring to gently cupping your hand below her chin in a dominant, but not dangerous, painful or asphixiating, way. If you press down on her throat or squeeze her throat, you can hurt her; that’s why you should cup, not press. Some people are into really intense sex acts like “erotic asphixiation,” which is something I am not equipped to give advice about. But far more people, I would suspect, are into e gentle choking, which isn’t about asphixiation per se but a show of dominance. Be a dominant sexy dude, not a python! Again, this is not a sex move you should do without asking first!

How to ask: Cupping your hand around a woman’s throat makes her very, very vulnerable. Most women would not let just anybody do it to them. There has to be lots and lots and lots of trust involved here, because obviously you could really hurt her. The good news is that kink is all about trust and if your girl is kinky in bed, you have probably already spanked/restrained/tied her up and she trusts you. So bring it up in the context of other things she likes: “You really love it when I restrain you while we’re having sex. Do you think you’d like it if I choked you gently, too?” If she’s game, then try it lightly at first and together you can find the right intensity/pressure for you both. It’s also a good idea to create a “safe word,” which is something she can say when she wants you to stop immediately. (Sometimes in the heat of the moment people say “Oh, noooo!” when they really mean “Oh, that feels good!” So it’s good if your safe word is something other than “no.”) My safe word is “stop” or “stop now” because it makes my intentions 100 percent clear.

3. She wants to wear cute little outfits during foreplay or sex. One thing I have learned in my decade-plus as a dirty, dirty whore is that dudes like the eye candy of lingerie, sort of, but really they prefer ladies naked. Nude. With no clothes on. In their birthday suits. I cannot be the only woman who has spent something like $75 or $100 on an adorable bra and panties set from Victoria’s Secret only to have a sex partner admire it for about 30 seconds before it lands on the floor. Alas, some women — myself included — don’t just wear sexy lingerie because it is eye candy for our partners. We wear sexy lingerie because we like to, because it makes us feel sexy. It’s disappointing when a partner doesn’t admire our sexy lingerie, not just because of the expense but also because it robs us of that “I feel so gorgeous right now!” moment.

How to ask: You may not need to verbally ask anything about this one; it might just be a matter of what you don’t do. If your lady-partner is already adorning herself in cute nighties or sexy lingerie before a sex romp, then I suspect she is doing it because she enjoys how it makes her feel. Show her the love and compliment her on how great she looks; take more time before you pull it off and toss it on the floor. Appreciate her beauty, rather than just ripping the candy bar wrapper off to get to the gooey sweet center underneath. If she’s anything like me, she’ll feel so gorgeous that it will multiply her horniness threefold! I am also a huge fan of male partners buying their female partners lingerie (or going shopping together, if he is afraid of doing it by himself). Obviously not everyone’s budget can accommodate this. But if it can, I think buying a woman something you think she’ll look amazing in as a special present is one of the most erotic things a man can do to say “I was thinking about you.”

4. She wants to be called names in bed (or call you “daddy” in bed). Ah, the joys of dirty talk. I’ve been candid about how I enjoy being called a “slut” in bed. That’s only a sex move that I’ve started to enjoy in the past year or so. If a sex partner had called me a “slut” in bed when I was 18 or even 21, I might have been offended by the stigma associated with the word. (Today, I feel barely any stigma attached to it because to me it means a sexually liberated female , i.e. my girl friend and I call each other “sluts” or “slutty” as praise.) My point in sharing this with you is to underscore how women have strong, strong, strong associations with words like “slut,” “whore,” and “bitch,” thanks to all the B.S. in our sexist society. You’ll want to proceed with extra-special caution on this one — think of it as like choking a girl, but with words. You absolutely want to make sure she understand these are only words you use in bed for fun, not actual beliefs about her that you hold.

How to ask: Just like you don’t want to go putting your thumb up her no-no hole on the first go around, you don’t want to climb into bed with a girl and say “suck my c**k, you filthy, dirty slut.” I love being talked dirty to, but even I would hop out of bed and put my clothes back on if a guy went from 0 to 60 like that. Do not call her names or humiliate her unless she tells you that’s what she wants. For all you know, she has issues left over from childhood about being physically punished and calling her a “bad girl” might be upsetting. The same goes for women who might have had abusive relationships in the past. So start off by playfully telling her that her behavior is “naughty” or she’s “being very bad” and seeing how she reacts. If she reacts playfully as well, you have a good foundation to start with. Then, some other time when you are out of bed, ask her how she would feel if you called her a “slut” or if she wants to call you “daddy” (or whatever). If she says, “That’s weird,” and looks uncomfortable, then you have your answer. But if she’s intrigued, then you should take pains to explain to her you obviously do not think she is a slut/bitch/whore, but you think it could be fun in bed if both of you used those words. Ask what she thinks. And by all means, have her read my essay about being called a slut in bed and our anonymous writer’s essay about calling a guy “daddy” in bed. Maybe you’ll learn something!

5. She wants to use her vibrator to get off. It’s a lovely thing indeed when a woman can orgasm from vaginal . It’s also quite lovely when she can orgasm from being fingered or a guy going down on her. But let’s be honest: lots of women’s primary sexual is with herself and it probably involves a vibrator. (Or, you know, a “personal massage item.”) Men, fear not the vibrating beast! It is not to be intimidated by, it is to be embraced! There is nothing — nothing — that is more of a relief to me as a woman than a man who isn’t intimidated by the sex toys that I use on myself, because sometimes I want to bring them to bed and use them with him, too.

How to ask: Straight up ask her, “The orgasms you have with your Rabbit are pretty intense, right? Would you ever want to bring it into bed?” She might be embarrassed to use her toy in front of you because, well, she is usually alone when she rubs one out. But her eyes also might light up! She’s having amazing orgasms with you and you just suggested you both add one more amazing element. What’s not to like?

This should keep you busy until, oh, next August. Go forth and prosper, my friends!

And help me help you, Frisky-verse: What other things do women love to try in bed that we’re sometimes too self-conscious to ask for?

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Open Relationships vs. Monogamy

October 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

588163d77ce7a022a4f02d3518eebcf5 Open Relationships vs. Monogamy

( News / Sex101.com) — Is it just me, or are there some fundamental problems with strict monogamy? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not by any means saying we should bed every person we meet, or swap partners with all of our coupled friends – just that strict monogamy seems to do more damage than good.

Monogamy carries with it:

an unhealthy obsession with having one person to meet the majority of our needs,

a to a lack of if a person’s partner can’t perform adequately or loses their ability to do so,

a lack of variety in possibly resulting in lost over time, and

it makes life after the first person passes away incredibly difficult for the remaining partner.

On a greater level, it condemns a possibly great new gene to extinction if the person that carries it with someone who has a terminal genetic issue, and it reduces the speed at which evolution occurs as there are less genetic combinations being formed… and that is just off the top of my head!

Given this pretty ugly overview of monogamy, the question then becomes why it is that just about everyone is doing it?

The that comes to mind has to be tradition – but without , tradition does not mean much. We have many traditions due to the mental conditioning of people; an example is the stoning of people in some parts of the world who would dare insult “God” by working on the Sabbath.

The has more to do with biology, together with length of infancy and development for our species. Although very few species mate for life, there are many species that mate for the duration in which their offspring are developing only, if even that. Since we take a while to “grow up” or develop, a child with more then one parent has a better chance of surviving to its own propagation than a child with only one. But the same argument is stronger for if we were to embrace each other more freely as a “herd”.

The third thought is love and wanting to be together. Although love is truly a beautiful thing that most (if not all) of us could use more of, let’s discuss for a moment what type of love it is that we are experiencing in most relationships… Is it love of thy partner, or love of thy self?

Here’s an easy question to figure that one out. Let’s say you are with someone who makes you happier than anyone else you’ve ever been with. After some time, you call the feeling towards them love. Some time later you meet someone of your gender that you know 100% for sure would make a better monogamous mate for your partner than you. You have the ability to introduce them, so that the person you love could find higher levels of happiness… or do you not hook them up so that you can continue getting what you want?

Since very few of the people I have polled have answered that they would sacrifice themselves, I would go so far as to say that true love is very different from this selfish concoction that most think it is!

With the exception of the very valid concern about STD transmission, the only real challenges to ‘Open Relationships’ are people’s internal demons (greed and jealousy), and recreating the social infrastructure so that we are not so easily divided and conquered. It seems pretty simple to me that this is the way we should be going, but obviously it’s a lot easier said then done; but man can move mountains, even if its one stone at a time.

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What’s Your Number? Here’s Why I Don’t Care

October 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

385464d6ef787899fb4fb2a1851164d6 What’s Your Number? Here’s Why I Don’t Care

( News / The Frisky) — The previews for the Anna Faris vehicle “What’s Your Number?” couldn’t make me want to see that movie any less if they added “”-style vomiting. The premise, if you have magically managed to miss the media blitz, is that Faris’ character realizes her list of has one more digit than most of her friends’. She spirals into a induced by slut-shaming and spends the rest of the movie trying not to add a new guy to the list. It’s supposed to be funny, but I can’t work up more of a response than a frustrated eye-roll and a long, exasperated sigh.

Here’s the thing about counting sexual partners: context matters. A number is just a number. It gives no background on the who, what, when, where, and why. If we want to judge people’s sexual activity (which I’m not convinced we do), the qualitative matters so much more than the quantitative.

There’s an exercise in middle-school sex education classes that involves passing a piece of clear plastic tape from to until skin cells, hair, and assorted has latched on to form a nasty little mini-carpet. The instructor then describes how being promiscuous means you have to be prepared to face all the gross crap that your partner collected before you were even on the scene. Picture 25 sixth-graders issuing a collective “ewwwwwww.”

I know that there’s one person I’ve slept with who, prior to me, had slept with upwards of 30 women. My eyes bugged out a bit when he first told me, but after the shock value had worn off and we talked about it for a few minutes, I realized it didn’t bother me one bit. He’s in his late twenties and has been sexually active for ten years. There were a couple of relationships in there, and then a whole lot of and hook-ups. I know him to be a respectful, honest, generous, kind-hearted person, and I’d be willing to bet big bucks that those thirty other women would tell you the same thing.

I also know guys whose lists are safely in the single-digits and some of them are assholes. They treat sex like a game that they are desperately trying to win, and women like prizes to be hoodwinked into participating. On paper, they might look like the safer choice than my friend, but in practice I’d tell every woman I know to pass them by and line up to be lady #31 for my Casanova. Of course, there are men with long lists who are douches, and men with short lists who are decent, respectable guys. The point is, you can’t tell from the number.

Remember the rule of three from American Pie? Take the number of people a woman has told you she’s slept with, multiply by three; take the number a man has slept with, divide by three. It’s a stupid rule, but it does nicely encapsulate the differences in the pressures facing straight when revealing their sexual histories. Men are supposed to stud it up, bedding anything that moves; women are supposed to resist all approaches and hold out for the ones that really matter. This isn’t fair to either gender as it makes men out to be sex-fiends whose actions are dictated by hormones, and women as libido-less drones who hold the keys to the bedroom.

We do each other a huge disservice when we hold potential partners to some sort of tiered promiscuity scale based on a single number. I’m not saying you need to ask for an itemized list with age, duration of , level of intoxication, number of positions, and kinky fetishes, but understanding your partner’s toward sex and their behavior towards their partners is going to give you a better picture.

I was talking to a male friend recently who told me he starts to get wary about sleeping with a woman with more than 15 notches on her bedpost.

“How old is she?” I asked.

“What do you mean,” he said, “Does that matter?”

“Well, it’s a different thing, isn’t it? Has she slept with 15 people in six months? Or in 10 years? Fifteen people in 10 years seems pretty reasonable.”

He said it didn’t matter, what mattered was, to put it bluntly, the “number of penises she’d touched.” He applied the same standard to his male friends regarding the number of vaginas they’d been in contact with. He said, “more than fifteen and things start to get ‘icky.’” I personally disagree, but everyone is entitled to setting their own boundaries where they feel comfortable. What we can’t do is penalize people for acting on their desires in safe, consensual ways.

On a last note, there are practical reasons for discussing sexual history, protecting yourself from STDs, and preventing pregnancy chief among them. Discussing is one thing, judging is a different matter. I know how much thought I put into my own sexual decision-making, and how my upbringing, values, health, and emotional state factor into how I think about my own sexual history (and future!). If I told you my number, I’m sure there are people who would say it’s too high, and some who would say it’s too low, and some who would project all sorts of fire and brimstone for reasons I can’t understand. The fact is, none of them know what they’re talking about.

I’ve never slept with a virgin before, and it’s quite likely that I’ve passed the part of my life where that might happen (although you just never know!) It feels like a safe bet to assume that everyone I sleep with from here on out has some sort of sexual history. They will almost definitely have a nice piece of scotch tape all jammed up with other people’s junk. I’m okay with that; it’s not the prettiest of things, but I have my own strip of gunk-y tape, too.

This piece originally appeared on The Good Men Project.

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Mind Of Man: Sure, Monogamy Is Unnatural

September 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

4c290af015823fc9c7d9ffbd72d8d065 Mind Of Man: Sure, Monogamy Is Unnatural

(Phatforums News / The Frisky) – My asked me if I thought it was “absurd” to want to be monogamous with someone and I immediately told her that I did not think it was absurd. It’s absurd to want to be monogamous with a rhinoceros or a pineapple. Especially pineapples, because they are the sluttiest fruit. But I do think that wanting or expecting is unnatural.

When you meet someone, they are either in your head or they are not in your head. They wear you like a glove or they don’t.

Here’s what is natural: ferocious self-interest. Take, eat, rut. Organize in order to take more, eat more, rut more. This is the base line of all existence. All animals are compelled to survive and, if possible, thrive. In this context, monogamy is unnatural. The more a male is exposed to, the that he’ll fulfill the commands of his basic programming. A female also benefits from a variety of potential male . She would get to pick and choose the superior genetic for hot mating. What an unbelievably unsexy verb. “I’m going to mate your out.”

For evidence of man’s (and woman’s!) natural state, I will refer to all of the vice that plagues the world. The isn’t do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That’s more like the golden suggestion. No, the , the immutable law of the jungle, is do unto others before they do unto you. But what’s best about humanity is its for the unnatural. It is what, ultimately, separates us from worms. We can transcend our base cravings. You know what’s unnatural? Mercy. . Art, which is just man vandalizing nature and making it more beautiful. Love is unnatural. Sometimes, I think it’s a . Love, real love, is not concerned with self-interest. Love isn’t a blue star you get for being special. Loving someone is quietly accepting that you are just a humble moon illuminating someone’s else’s night with your shining silver face.

Wanting monogamy doesn’t mean you’re not sexually enlightened. I think there are plenty of people out there who claim to be “progressive” and insist that modern love is open and free and that monogamy has more to do with property rights than a healthy relationship. But I am naturally distrustful of anyone who advertises their socio-political ideologies. I know far too many dudes who slept through their women’s studies class in college yet preach about the evils of heteronormative attitudes. If you’re not into threesomes and he can’t imagine a sophisticated, complex and contemporary relationship without one, you might want to consider that, maybe, he’s a little immature and not “progressive.” I’m not saying that there aren’t totally successful relationships built on threesomes, but the odds are that both members never really needed to negotiate the pros and cons of inviting a third party into their hammock of love. I know a happy couple in a open relationships. I do not know how they work. It is their secret and none of my business.

Ideally, there should be no negotiation when it comes to the rules of engagement in a relationship. Puzzle pieces don’t discuss and bicker. They either fit or they don’t. Human interaction is a roulette wheel where luck dictates whether or not you meet someone with whom you have mental telepathy. I personally think that the “love at first sight” phenomenon is actually a primal form of mental telepathy. When you meet someone, they are either in your head or they are not in your head. They wear you like a glove or they don’t. The only reason we waste time with people who don’t know how to tickle our ganglia is vanity. If you are an erotic pioneer hungry to explore the undiscovered countries of human sexuality, if you are truly in it to win it, then chances are you should seek out someone who you don’t have to explain yourself to. But if you want a monogamous relationship, you should have one standard. That the person you want to be monogamous with is in silent agreement with you. That they are willing to make an uneasy truce that puts them in a permanently vulnerable position.

Monogamy is a form of mutual assured destruction between two romantic partners. It is not some kind of agreement or promise or abstraction. Monogamy is not a contract that guarantees anything nor is it a blissful state of being. There is no handshake or conversation. Exclusive commitments happen because skin insists. The heart demands. Blood commands. Monogamy is a tense pact that simply says “If I see you make out with someone else my guts will melt but if you see me make out with someone else, your eyeballs will deflate.”

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Study: Men value cuddling but women prefer sex

July 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

f417ae2ce8bb437ecc5d1e10048facbb Study: Men value cuddling but women prefer sex

(Phatforums Blog/ Health) – They may act tough, but when it comes right down to it, men may enjoy cuddling just as much as women.

Researchers at Indiana University found that men who reported frequently kissing or cuddling with their partner were more likely to be happy in their than those who did not. Women also experienced a cuddle boost, but the effect was smaller.

The study, published in the August Archives of Sexual Behavior, online now, surveyed over 1,000 living in Japan, Brazil, Spain, Germany and the United States. All of the men who took the were between 40 and 70 years old and had been either married or living with their partner for at least one year. Researchers examined relationship happiness as well as sexual satisfaction.

Men who kissed and cuddled were more likely to be happy in the relationship than men who didn’t. Women who often kissed and cuddled were 1.59 times more likely to be happy in the relationship than those who didn’t, but the difference for women wasn’t considered statistically significant.

When it came to sexual satisfaction, though, both who kissed and cuddled with their partner reported greater sexual satisfaction than those who didn’t. Those who reported touching their partner sexually, regardless of whether occurred, reported higher levels of sexual satisfaction as well.

Previous research hasn’t focused as much on mid- to later life individuals, says the study’s lead author, Julia Heiman, a and director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and at Indiana University, Bloomington. “It’s a different phase of life and a lot of come to bear,” Heiman says.

The study found that the more a man had over the course of his life, the less likely he is to be sexually satisfied in the relationship. On average, men had had 11.9 , while women had had 4.9. Heiman says that some men “could be promiscuous,” but some could be looking for something they haven’t yet found.

While men were more likely to report greater relationship satisfaction the longer the duration of the relationship, women were more likely to report that sexual satisfaction increased with the duration of the relationship.

Relationship satisfaction also varied by country. Japanese couples were happier than American couples and Brazilians and Spaniards were less happy in their relationships than Americans. Japanese men were more likely to be sexually satisfied in their relationships than Americans. Brazilian and Spanish women were more likely to be sexually satisfied than their American counterparts. Reasons for the differences are unclear.

“In terms of relationship satisfaction, the U.S. is not necessarily in the lead in this study,” Heiman says.

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