Why do Men and Women gravitate towards each other if...

August 12, 2015

They know that they will hurt each other and cause pain some time in the future? What is it that makes otherwise sensible people do such stupid things? Would it not be better if men remained bachelors and women remained spinsters and just used escorts/ gigolos to satisfy their lust if any, and carry on with their otherwise normal life? Wouldn't this eliminate cheating/infidelity and the associated hurt and pain that accompanies them? Just a thought! Comments?

August 12, 2015

im unlike you. i run from people who will inflict pain or suffering in my life. I like to be happy and safe and stable. im strongly repelled and will exit at any cost.

August 12, 2015

The thing is men gravitate towards women too much. Most men want a girlfriend alot and have it as a goal in life.

I'm not sure if women feel the same way about men. But men couldn't live with out relationships with women.

August 12, 2015

Sisyphus' choice to engage in a repetitive, fruitless, meaningless task actually gave the task meaning... Sisyphus became the original absurd hero by finding happiness in his suffering. What else is there to know?

August 12, 2015

Blame biology...

You can't stop feeling, desiring, and/or being attracted to another person.

The pain and hurt comes in where people let their basic desires override their brain.

Like me right now, there is attraction, but practically the situation is only going to result in hurt to both parties. You have to be strong and wise enough to use your head and not get with someone out of feeeeelings, hornies, and/or emotions.

Feeeelings, hornies, and/or emotions don't have an IQ.

August 12, 2015

But men couldn't live with out relationships with women.

I'm not a man but find it hard to believe that.

August 12, 2015

Because you can't truly know or appreciate what happiness is without pain.

It's the whole yin yang philosophy. You can't have one without the other.

And if you could, who'd want to live a flatline life? YAWN.

August 12, 2015

Oops duplicate post.

August 12, 2015

When we become adults, we understand that being drawn to someone or having urges toward someone does not mean it is in our best interest to act on them. Adults are not a slave to these emotions or urges. As a result, they can form meaningful, monogamous-by-choice, intimate relationships.

I am very drawn to pretty shoes. However, I know it will cause Macy's and me pain if I do not practice self control and resist the urge to just walk off with a nice pair of 150 dollar strappy sandals. So I choose not to do so. I know it might cause my family pain if I use grocery money to buy them. So I choose not to.

August 12, 2015

I'm not a man but find it hard to believe that.

I am a man and I will say that flat out not true.

Some men want a girlfriend a lot , more men want a lot of girlfriends.

August 12, 2015

I'm not a man but find it hard to believe that.

Maybe not in the literal sense that men would commit mass suicide if relationships with women where off the table. But most men wouldn't be happy if they couldn't have relationships with women.

If you are looking at it from a female perspective I'm sure it is hard to believe. Women tend to be happy on their own and don't desire relationships as much as men.

August 12, 2015

define normal life because everyone has a different meaning to that phrase IMO

I would say society had some thing to do w/ it ( or mostly ) because of the mindset. also depends on how they were raised

August 12, 2015

They know that they will hurt each other and cause pain some time in the future? What is it that makes otherwise sensible people do such stupid things?

could that not apply to everything: children, sports, driving...

hurt/pain is part of life: if you find those are too much it is the situation that is wrong (needs to be corrected) not the premise.

August 12, 2015

Interesting question.

As someone who really enjoys a large amount of “alone time” – and joke that I would be perfectly happy as a “hermit in the woods” I have questioned this a bit (and well, you know my thread).

Also, when I was younger, I never foresaw myself “settling down” with one person…. I was always doing my “own thing’ with some guy on the side.

That said, you know how it goes, you meet someone who changes the way you think…. And why stay with them, get all tangled up and committed?

I remember my dad once saying “I am glad you found someone to share your life with, it makes getting through this world a bit easier”

Its nice to have a “partner” in life, someone on your side as you face the world and all that gets thrown at us. To share your victories and defeats with. Someone that you will fight for, and that in turn has your back.

And then there is that Love thing, and all the crazy chemicals, brain changes etc that comes with it.

Another tidbit I once heard – your heart is like a vessel, the more you love, the bigger it gets, the more it can hold – and in the same notion, the bigger the vessel, means a bigger capacity to hold GRIEF.

We experience this with the loss of a loved one – the greater the love, the greater the loss.

And the hard truth is that EVERY relationship we have will come to an END. Every friendship, every love, parent and child etc. Some will last till death, some will fade away, some may come to a painful break up – but ALL will end. The more love there was, the greater the loss will be felt.

Cheating etc causes pain, because it is an experience of loss and grief. Something we once had is taken away.

So, is it better to NEVER fill that vessel with love, and therefore never have to experience grief? “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” is cliché, but I think fairly true.

All said – I occasionally still consider the hermit in the woods scenario

August 12, 2015

Maybe not in the literal sense that men would commit mass suicide if relationships with women where off the table. But most men wouldn't be happy if they couldn't have relationships with women.

If you are looking at it from a female perspective I'm sure it is hard to believe. Women tend to be happy on their own and don't desire relationships as much as men.

I actually tend to think the opposite is true. Many guys seem to just want a steady rotation of tail, whereas women seem to want "mr. right"

August 12, 2015

There is a good TED Talk "Why we love, why we cheat"

Helen Fisher: Why we love, why we cheat | TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript | TED.com

some snippets:

You become extremely sexually possessive. You know, if you're just sleeping with somebody casually, you don't really care if they're sleeping with somebody else. But the moment you fall in love, you become extremely sexually possessive of them. I think there's a Darwinian purpose to this. The whole point of this is to pull two people together strongly enough to begin to rear babies as a team.

I began to realize that romantic love is not an emotion. In fact, I had always thought it was a series of emotions, from very high to very low. But actually, it's a drive. It comes from the motor of the mind, the wanting part of the mind, the craving part of the mind. The kind of part of the mind when you're reaching for that piece of chocolate, when you want to win that promotion at work. The motor of the brain. It's a drive.

And in fact, I think it's more powerful than the sex drive. You know, if you ask somebody to go to bed with you, and they say, "No, thank you," you certainly don't kill yourself or slip into a clinical depression. But certainly, around the world, people who are rejected in love will kill for it. People live for love. They kill for love. They die for love. They have songs, poems, novels, sculptures, paintings, myths, legends. In over 175 societies, people have left their evidence of this powerful brain system. I have come to think it's one of the most powerful brain systems on Earth for both great joy and great sorrow.

AND:

.....three basically different brain systems that evolved from mating and reproduction. One is the sex drive: the craving for sexual gratification. W.H. Auden called it an "intolerable neural itch," and indeed, that's what it is. It keeps bothering you a little bit, like being hungry. The second of these three brain systems is romantic love: that elation, obsession of early love. And the third brain system is attachment: that sense of calm and security you can feel for a long-term partner.

And I think that the sex drive evolved to get you out there, looking for a whole range of partners. You can feel it when you're just driving along in your car. It can be focused on nobody. I think romantic love evolved to enable you to focus your mating energy on just one individual at a time, thereby conserving mating time and energy. And I think that attachment, the third brain system, evolved to enable you to tolerate this human being at least long enough to raise a child together as a team.

So WHY do we get into these relationships? Some would argue that we are driven by biology to.

And as for generalizing who wants to sleep around more, I think its hard to say.

But in fact, women moving into the job market is having a huge impact on sex and romance and family life. Foremost, women are starting to express their sexuality. I'm always astonished when people come to me and say, "Why is it that men are so adulterous?" "Why do you think more men are adulterous than women?" "Well, men are more adulterous!" And I say, "Who do you think these men are sleeping with?" And -- basic math!

Anyway. In the Western world, women start sooner at sex, have more partners, express less remorse for the partners that they do, marry later, have fewer children, leave bad marriages in order to get good ones. We are seeing the rise of female sexual expression. And, indeed, once again we're moving forward to the kind of sexual expression that we probably saw on the grasslands of Africa a million years ago, because this is the kind of sexual expression that we see in hunting and gathering societies today.

And why do we cheat?

But these three brain systems: lust, romantic love and attachment, aren't always connected to each other. You can feel deep attachment to a long-term partner while you feel intense romantic love for somebody else, while you feel the sex drive for people unrelated to these other partners. In short, we're capable of loving more than one person at a time. In fact, you can lie in bed at night and swing from deep feelings of attachment for one person to deep feelings of romantic love for somebody else.

Edited August 12, 2015 by RecentChange

August 13, 2015

I actually tend to think the opposite is true. Many guys seem to just want a steady rotation of tail, whereas women seem to want "mr. right"

Men are generally the ones who pursue women heavily and focus a large amount of time to get a girlfriend, or sex but even so its still a relationship of sorts. Men generally are always trying to figure out how to get women.

Women on the other hand happily goes about their business and enjoys single life. If a man steps into their life its all good... but if it doesn't happen its all good too. They don't really focus and "obsess" about relationships with the opposite sex the same way men do.

August 13, 2015

Hi Fryingpan, Do you really believe that only men chase women and that women on the other hand are quite self assured and self sufficient, so much so that they do not pursue men?

I am not so sure as what you say may have been the norm some fifty or more years ago but after the advent of the so called sexual revolution or to put it more mildly, the more liberalized generation, I think women are equally in the game of pursuing men as the men are.

Be that as it may I thought I should also add my bit to the comments being generated on this topic.

Firstly, I think that Nature or the Supreme Being if you will, designed males and females of all species, including human beings in such a way as to ensure the propagation of that particular species. Males were designed to spread their genes as far and wide as possible for the simple reason that they were fragile and could be killed in the hostile environment that existed in the wild. Also males were fewer and far between as compared to females as probably, one male was sufficient to mate with and impregnate a number of females. On the other hand females searched for and mated with the strongest and healthiest of males to achieve Nature's objective of survival of the fittest and selection of the best possible genes. Hence both males and females sought each other out.

That said, men and women are two opposite poles as in the north pole and the south pole of a magnet. The two poles attract each other very strongly, hence the attraction of men and women to each other. Men and women being human, need companionship. Two men together will probably run out of patience with each other beyond a certain period of time unless they are gay. Although men bond well they cannot be intimate with each other. The same would be true of women. However a man and woman together will fulfill the need for companionship, meet each other's need for intimacy, sex, love, building a family together, financial goals and fulfill their spiritual goals together. I am mentioning all this in a very general manner as I know that there will be many permutations and combinations of these components in individual cases.

Finally, I think overall, men and women are complementary and so like it or not, they will gravitate towards each other. Hope some of this makes sense.

Edited August 13, 2015 by Just a Guy

August 13, 2015

Men are generally the ones who pursue women heavily and focus a large amount of time to get a girlfriend, or sex but even so its still a relationship of sorts. Men generally are always trying to figure out how to get women.

Women on the other hand happily goes about their business and enjoys single life. If a man steps into their life its all good... but if it doesn't happen its all good too. They don't really focus and "obsess" about relationships with the opposite sex the same way men do.

Do you actually know any women? Especially ones in their teens, 20s and 30s?

Because, trust me, as a woman, I had MANY friends obsessed with getting a boyfriend, keeping a boyfriend, analyzing the crap out of everything he did, said, didn't do, didn't say, that it was a full time job.

Both sexes focus heavily on relationships and how they define them. It is the minority that does not do so.

August 13, 2015

JustaGuy,

Q.

Why do Men and Women gravitate towards each other if...
They know that they will hurt each other and cause pain some time in the future?

A. because they don't know that

And they don't believe it will happen to them because their romance is different, special, unique, they are soulmates, twin flames, kindred spirits, etc etc.

They believe this because at first they are thinking with another part of their anatomy other than their brains . By the time their brains get a look in they are so high on endomorphins they can't think straight.

It may take a couple of years before the rot sets in and any incompatibilities start to surface......

August 14, 2015

To the thread title, "Why do men and women gravitate toward each other" I will answer that with this lol.

As to the cheating, well, those people 1. are weak and selfish and 2. Victims of a society that values things with limited value (I.e. the fast foodizing of I want it now! And consumerism of it isn't the newest, I MUST upgrade.)

August 14, 2015

It's better knowing than wondering.

August 14, 2015

They know that they will hurt each other and cause pain some time in the future? What is it that makes otherwise sensible people do such stupid things? Would it not be better if men remained bachelors and women remained spinsters and just used escorts/ gigolos to satisfy their lust if any, and carry on with their otherwise normal life? Wouldn't this eliminate cheating/infidelity and the associated hurt and pain that accompanies them? Just a thought! Comments?

Older people do act this way.

August 15, 2015

Blame biology...

You can't stop feeling, desiring, and/or being attracted to another person.

The pain and hurt comes in where people let their basic desires override their brain.

Like me right now, there is attraction, but practically the situation is only going to result in hurt to both parties. You have to be strong and wise enough to use your head and not get with someone out of feeeeelings, hornies, and/or emotions.

Feeeelings, hornies, and/or emotions don't have an IQ.

It's not so easy to be wise. The primitive brain is way more powerful and more spontaneously activated than the concsious or "higher" brain, the latter being a relatively recent development in human evolution.

"Humans are irrational beings who are sometimes rational"(Hugh Mackay,social researcher).

August 15, 2015

Men are generally the ones who pursue women heavily and focus a large amount of time to get a girlfriend, or sex but even so its still a relationship of sorts. Men generally are always trying to figure out how to get women.

Women on the other hand happily goes about their business and enjoys single life. If a man steps into their life its all good... but if it doesn't happen its all good too. They don't really focus and "obsess" about relationships with the opposite sex the same way men do.

I tend to agree.

I think when young everyone tends to want to conform to social stereotypes and having a partner is a seen as the norm. There are a similar number of men and women desperate for a partner.

But I think as people age and gain relationship experience good and bad, then there seems to me to be more single/divorced/widowed women happily doing their own thing with interests, creative projects, groups, volunteering, friends etc. with hardly a man in sight, than men. "If it happens it happens and if it doesn't I will cope quite well on my own." is the attitude.

I am generalising here, but in my perception.

Heterosexual men who find themselves suddenly on their own seem to want to be quickly "attached" to women, be that to women friends and relatives, to FWBs, to prostitutes, or to casual hookups, or they seem to NEED to be dating or in LTRs or marriage... They do not want to be seen to be womanless.

If truly on their own, they tend to get lonely, retreat from society, get bitter, depressed or turn to drink, none of which is attractive to women, so they tend to stay stuck in that rut.

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