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Certainly can't argue against the fact that people can be sexually attracted to people we don't even know, and were there is no possibility of sex taking place with them for whatever reason. The whole romance thing seems really all about particular kinds of established or developing emotional bonds that are very difficult to define. There is certainly a difference between the emotional bond between close friends were the words "I love you" may be exchanged when there is no sexual attraction, and something I would say falls in the romantic feeling category were that possibility might develop at some point. I draw this belief from two experiences one with a male friend (without benefits) I have known and been very close to for more than four decades, and another with a woman I met a while back and surprisingly developed romantic feelings for after spending less than two hours talking to in a non social setting. I will probably never see her again, but even after nearly two years have passed she's on my mind frequently. I think that was about the kind of dynamic that developed in our conversation, which perhaps suggested that this is someone I could easily form a lasting intimate relationship with, even though I wasn't aware of any sexual attraction at the time. This stuff is all sort of magic and it certainly keeps romance novelists busy.
4:00 Marriage is tough as it is. In any case, it’s transactional and now the pressure of romance and having kids and making sure said kids turn out ok. So daunting
All healthy relationships are based on mutual attraction. I have found that in the development of romantic affection for the person who triggers my attraction and interest, there is a stage where empathy and compassion grows into ta state in which I cherish the friendship which then produces the impulse to caress...regardless of gender. With the growth of trust we may move on to working on mutual healing through the sharing of intimate thoughts and personal feelings/challenges...perhaps into body work of some kind. Even within this love dynamic which the Greeks called Agape, there is not always a desire for passionate sexual intimacy with the individual. It may surface but it is more often not the focus.
Both sexual and romantic attraction have always been two different things sexual orientations and romantic orientations sexual orientation being sexually attracted to someone romantic orientation being attracted to someone romantically
I love this! It's absolutely true and beautifully stated. Every young person, especially, should hear this message. These concepts may not sound normal but they are as natural as oxygen.
Many gay men have very close heterosexual female friends and share confidences, enjoy each other's company and do many activities together. Their relationship is not sexual, but rather romantic.
I dont think bromance is supposed to be romance. I think men in the west have a "cold" friendship, they can watch sports or play videogame together but they dont know much abouth each other inner thoughts. But when they have this deeper conection, like women usually have, they share their fears and feel vulnerable next to other men, they realize their frienship can be much more than just hang out together. I think that what they call bromance.
Most pair-bonding animals pair-bond with the opposite sex, and usually only pair-bond with same sex foe survival if there is no opposite-sex option. Although there is animals where sometimes males can bond, most of the time there is male-male competition. That's why generally women's sexually is more fluid than men, whereas men's tend to on average be more rigid and aversive. Studies on male heterosexuality shows it likely involves, not just the existence of sexual attraction to the opposite sex, but also the active suppression of brain circuitry serving same-sex attraction(that gay men don't have) This maybe because natural selection exerts different pressures on males and females. Eggs are more costly to produce than sperm; consequently, women release one egg a month while men produce several hundred million sperm a day. Women are very selective about who gets to fertilize that egg, and men need to be competitive in order to get access to this precious resource. Men have evolved to be highly competitive in order to be attractive to the choosiest (and, therefore, highest value) sexual partners. In virtually every mammalian species there is male-male competition. in most mammalian species most males who reach reproductive age never get to copulate even once, while virtually every female that reaches reproductive age will find someone to donate sperm to her. Also in many mammalian species mothers can cooperate in rearing offspring at little cost. Although there's less male-male competition when there is less dimorphism in a species and higher monogamy. Falling in love seems to have existed in humans for as far back as we remember. if monogamy is socially constructed many people claim, it's a big coincidence that it was socially constructed in every society and culture in humans on earth as far as we know. There is no culture we know of where no one falls in love or where nobody gets jealous. Most people in my opinion-based on a variety of convergent forms of evidence- are going to be most interested in monogamy. We see it across all different societies and cultures. If you look at cultures where men are allowed to have multiple wives, they generally don't. Something like 90-95% of men in non-monogamous cultures where they are allowed multiple wives only marry one woman. There's a variety of different form of evidence that the human species strongest tendency is towards serial monogamy pair-bonding relationships. Jealousy a mate-guarding emotion is a very strong psychological signal that we are interested in monogamy, at the very least stopping our mates mating with other people. We are a mostly monogamous species. I'm not saying infidelity is not natural as well, but the fact we have these monogamous unions and pair-bonds is evidence that it's natural. Looking at our species and what they naturally do generally is form relationships. Sexual dimorphism predicts differences in mating strategies and species like humans with less dimorphism tend(at least in primates) be more monogamous. The fact we feel romantic love at all and pair-bonding emotions is not a coincidence, nothing is a coincidence in biology. Humans today express only slight differences in body size by sex compared to closely-related promiscuous and polygynous species. Human females lack obvious visible signals of ovulation, particularly in comparison to the conspicuous sexual swellings of, for example, chimpanzees and baboons. Concealed ovulation and constant sexual receptivity of human females facilitates social monogamy. Limiting information available to males regarding fertility, thereby promoting monogamy through mate guarding and/or paternal care . Specifically, given that humans live in multi male/multi female groups, concealed ovulation is argued to minimize male-male competition and allow for stable, monogamous unions. Penis configurations across primate species are generally much more interesting than the human penis. The penises of other primate species commonly have lumps, ridges, kinks, spines or flanges, whereas the straight and smooth human penis lacks such features (unless you are rather unfortunate!). Bland characters such as the human penis are usually found in monogamous animal species. Also, DNA studies of male to female breeding ratios in Homo sapiens indicate about two women to every procreating man. This ratio is within the range for societies described as monogamous. Humans fall within the range of variation typical of pair-bonded species. The lack of exaggerated sexual dimorphism or testis size seems to rule out a history of elevated reproductive skew typical of highly promiscuous or polygynous mating systems. Instead, biological indicators suggest a mating system where both sexes form a long-term pair-bond with a single partner. And while polygyny was likely present in the human past, as it is across contemporary human societies, the weight of evidence seems to support social monogamy. Monogamy is natural because fathering is natural in the human species and fathering only evolves with sufficient sexual exclusivity to allow for paternity certainty for men and sufficient resource provision certainty for women. The human life history pattern (i.e., short birth intervals, relatively high child survival, and a long period of juvenile dependence) means that mothers are often in the position of supporting multiple dependents of various ages simultaneously. Because infants, juveniles, and adolescents each require different kinds of time and energy investments, mothers are posed with an allocation problem throughout much of their reproductive career: how to care for infants and small children without compromising time spent in activities that provide food and other resources for older children. How mothers resolve this trade-off to support a rapid reproductive pace has long been theoretically tied to monogamy and the cooperation of fathers, siblings, and others to help mothers raise dependents. In all known cultures, men have engaged in fathering their children. A cross-species analysis suggests that fathering only evolves when there is monogamy. Paternity certainty only adds to a male’s reproductive success if he can be reasonably confident that he is raising his own children rather than another male’s children. So, for fathering to evolve at least the females need to be faithful so the males possess paternity certainty. It only pays for females to be monogamous if females possess some certainty that the males will stick around to help nurture and protect the offspring. There’s no benefit for females being sexually exclusive when the males are practicing a mating strategy of "love them and leave them," requiring single mothers to fend for themselves without paternal assistance. Bi-parental care would only evolve if both males and females were willing to practice monogamy. Given the universality of fathering and bi-parental care among humans, it would seem that humans have evolved in a monogamous direction. There is an innate tendency towards monogamy; to engage in sexually exclusive romantic pair-bonding for bi-parental care. Human babies are completely helpless at birth and need parental care for years afterward. Ergo, in the case of Homo sapiens, two parents are better than one. People who are securely attached, authentic, and high in empathy with good communication skills tend to be better at monogamy. Our ancestor Ardipithecus ramidus, who lived 4.4 million years ago. Ardipithecus walked on two legs, freeing the hands, thereby allowing males to carry food to females. One can conjecture that females would favour males who offered them food, indicating how natural selection could introduce monogamy. And monogamy offered an obvious attraction to lower-ranking males. Monogamy is also a much more energetically economical arrangement than polygamy which is wasteful of time and energy as males fight over females. Polygamy tends to cause social problems, leaving many angry men without wives and inclined to behave in risky ways. This increases conflict and lowers productivity. Humans are typically described as cooperative breeders, which in addition to male parental investment, is a key defining aspect of human sociality, cognition, and demographic success Several recent phylogenetic analyses provide compelling evidence that cooperative breeding in bird, insect, and mammalian taxa was preceded by an ancestry of monogamy . Under certain circumstances, monogamy can increase male fitness more than deserting a partner and remating. Once biparental care becomes established, specialization of care tasks by males and females may serve to stabilize the pair-bond. The modal pattern cross-culturally is a life history characterized by specialization in child care by females (i.e., direct investment) and resource provisioning by males (i.e., indirect investment). This specialization can result from and further lead to synergistic fitness benefits tied to offspring success. These payoffs both constrain the behavioral options available to a parent and decrease sex-biased asymmetries in the costs of performing a parental investment task. Thus, task specialization can serve to strengthen biparental care once it emerges against invasion by other strategies. Monogamy ensures relatedness between fathers and their purported children, and permits for both the paternity confidence and relatedness necessary to favor investment by fathers and often care for multiple children at the same time.
Also, DNA studies of male to female breeding ratios in Homo sapiens indicate about two women to every procreating man. This ratio is within the range for societies described as monogamous.Testosterone is an androgenic steroid hormone that supports many aspects of male mating effort, including the development and maintenance of sexually dimorphic musculature and bone structure as well as courtship and male-male aggression. Levels of circulating testosterone in males are thus reasoned to reflect the evolved hormonal regulation of investment in mating vs. parenting effort. Married men have lower testosterone levels than unmarried men, and that married men with children have the lowest levels. These results suggest that partnered men, and in particular fathers, are hormonally primed to invest more time and energy into parenting rather than mating effort.
In all human societies across all cultures, uncivilised tribes and cavemen the vast majority of men and women are heterosexual because of biology. Social influences cannot override biology and the underlining preferences. An organism exists to propagate its genetic material, and this is the sole “meaning” of its existence. The way the brains evolved and structured the primal urges and instincts are going to kick in before the more evolved regions of the brain do and be stronger because it's the biggest part and at the centre of the brain. To survive and procreate are two of our biggest drives. This is all biology is concerned with, and it some species the males die right after they copulate and impregnate a female. Some even develop features on their body for sexual selection that can be detrimental to their own survival, but the positives outweigh the negatives because it makes the male more likely to attract and be chosen by a female to procreate and pass on their genes.
There are bisexual men but they are much more rare than heterosexual or homosexual men. Men typically display significantly greater physiological responses to sexual stimuli depicting members of their preferred gender category and stated sexual orientation. Stimulus features necessary to evoke genital arousal are much less specific in women than in men. physiological sexual arousal and sexual orientation were more strongly linked in men than women. It's hypothesized that males might have evolved to coordinate their sexual arousal and attraction indices more strongly than women because it aids them in building their sexual orientation towards relevant sexual targets That's why paraphilias(unusual sexual interests) are more common in men. Research suggests that paraphilia is maybe akin to a sexual orientation. It's the same idea conceptually as being gay, it's someone's preference and it can't be changed and it's with them from a very early on. With the sexual orientation women tend to be more flexible with their sexual preferences. So if they have a partner who's very kinky they might be into whatever he's into, but then if she's with someone who's less kinky it might not be as much of a problem. Whereas if it's a man who's really into something, if his partner's not into it he's always going to be into it, he's just gonna have to hide it. Men tend to be more thing- orientated and women more people-orientated(and gay men on average share these traits with women.) Gay differences compared to straight people of the same sex are reflected in their psychology and the ways they relate to others. To some extent, homosexuality is part of a package of mental traits, many of which can be considered gender-variant or gender non conformist, whereas heterosexuality is part of a package of gender-typical or gender conformist. The association between sexual orientation and other gendered traits arises because all these traits differentiate under the influence of a common biological process-the sexual differentiation of the brain under the influence of sex hormones. The mind of the average gay individual is a patch work of gendered traits, some indistinguishable from same-sex peers, some shifted past way toward the other sex, and others typical of the other sex. Sexual orientation is an aspect of gender that emerges from the prenatal sexual differentiation of the brain. Whether a person ends up gay or straight depends in large part on how this process of biological differentiation goes forward, with the lead actors being genes, sex hormones and the brain systems that are influenced by them. Sexual orientation(as well as other gender differences) is biologically determined before birth in the utero by prenatal sex hormone exposure. The organisational effects of hormones on the brain prior to birth have permanent effects. It's believed that gay men, during some point in fetal life, were exposed to unusually low levels of androgens, which allowed their hypothalamic circuits to develop in a female-typical direction. If testosterone levels during a critical prenatal period are high , the brain is organized in such a way that the person is predisposed to become typically masculine in a variety of gendered traits, including sexual attraction to females. If testosterone levels are low during that same time period, the brain is organized in such a way that the person is predisposed to become typically feminine in gendered traits, including sexual attraction to males. Gendered interests are predicted by testosterone exposure in utero. Higher levels are associated with male-typical interests and behaviours, regardless of whether the baby is male or female. These include a preference for mechanically interesting objects and systemizing occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people orientated activities and occupations. stemming from evolutionary roots. Women. who are tasked with the role of bearing children, evolved to be more sociable, empathic, and people focused, while men, as hunter-gatherers, were rewarded for strong visuopatial skills and ability to build and use tools. That's why science, technology, engerneering and mathematics fields tend to be dominated by men. Male homosexuality is no just an isolated trait but rather part of a package of gender variant traits, If a man inherits a few of these genes, he will have some feminine characteristics, which might include increased empathy and kindness, decreased aggressivness and the like, These genes increase his attractivness to women, permitting him more sexual access and thus offering him the likelihood of having more offspring. If a man inherits all of these genes, however, he will be feminized to the point of homosexuality, and his reproductive success will drop markedly. Because each feminizing gene is present in many more straight men than gay men(straight men are the vast majority of the males) it only has to raise each straight man's reproductive success by a small amount to compensate for the lowered reproductive success of gay men. In areas of personality, men rank higher than women on measures of assertiveness, competivness, aggressiveness, and independence(these getting things done traits are sometimes referred to collectively as instrumentality). In area of cognition, Men perform better than women at variety of visuospatial tasks such as mental rotation, targeting accuracy, and navigation(especially when navigating by distant landmarks or compass directions rather than by local cues) Women perform better than men at some memory tasks, including episodic memory(memory of events) verbal memory and memory of the locations of objects. They are also better at tests of verbal fluency(quickly coming up with words that match a certain category) and some other verbal skills, face recognition, and behavioral tasks requiring fine hand movements. Women rank higher than men on measures of expressivness, sociability, empathy, openness to feelings, altruism and neuroticism.(the last item includes the tendency to depression, anxiety, self-consciousness, and low self esteem) Men prefer thing-oriented activities and occupations(e.g carpenter) whereas women prefer people-oriented activities and occupations(e.g social worker) Women have better developed aesthetic interests and less developed technological interests than men. Gay men and lesbians are gender shifted in a variety of male favoring-visuospatial traits such as mental rotation, targeting, and navigation, as well as female-favouring tasks such as verbal fluency and object location memory. In studies on occupational preferences that noted that all the masculine occupations were thing-orientated, whereas at least three of the feminine occupations were people orientated. The study showed a major gender shift among gay men and women in the people-thing dimention, with gay mens interests shifted toward people like straight women and gay womens shifted towards things like heterosexual men. At least two studies have reported that gay men score higher than straight men on tests of empathy-a female favoring trait. Gay men and bisexual men also score higher on tests of aesthetic interest, another female favouring trait. Several studies have reported that gay men are less physically aggressive than heterosexual men and one of these found lesbians are more physically aggressive than heterosexual women.
Homosexual people have less fitness to reproduce(for obvious reasons because they are same sex attracted) that is not conducive for reproduction themselves, but science has many good theories on why they have still survived in the gene pool and how it's related to our survival and fitness of relatives to continue on the families genes and linage. for example genes being selected for female fecundity which have a byproduct of causing a certain amount of same sex behaviour among males, a sexually antagonistic effect. Their is also many other great theories and it's believed not all homosexual people are homosexual for the same reasons, but it's always about the survival and fitness of close relatives to carry on the genes and aids their relatives to reproduce more or have more reproductive success, although there is still no definitive answer. It might just be a normal variation( like intersex conditions are a natural biological variation even though most cannot reproduce) or different factors young maternal age, maternal weight gain, genetic conditions, sensitive immune system response to testosterone in women, and hormonal treatment during pregnancy. It could also be an epigenetic reaction to severe pre-natal stress. For example if a woman were to show signs and signals of some illness or health problem during pregnancy she is going to need that child to have more female typical traits to help with her and other offsprings survival.
I didn't understand then why I'm so happy to see my friend who's married with children and spend 8 hours with him at work everyday Monday to Friday. He's very kind, funny, loving, Godfearing, decent, good father & husband, generous, tough if necessary & thoughtful...just the coolest man to be around. Much cooler than my father & brothers. I really love him but never in a romantic or sexual way since we're both straight but I'm closer to him than to my own father & brothers. My father & some of my brothers have said to me that it's gay to have this kind of love for a male friend and they insisted that they don't love their male friends. I can't help but feel so sorry for them because loving a fellow man in a nonsexual way is one of best feelings a man can experience imho.
I would love to hear your thoughts on why almost all bi people end up in straight (opposite sex) relationships in the end. Is it because it's easier that way? Being able to have kids, being perceived as 'normal' by society, just being all around more convenient? My boyfriend is bi, I'm biologically male and I'm afraid one day he'll leave me for someone who is biologically female. I was trans for 10 years, but have slowly began not fully but partially detransitioning over time because I wasn't happy being trans anymore and I wanted to experiment with my gender and discover who I really am. I'm fluid at the moment and it feels like that's my boyfriend's (and probably many bi people's) dream, but I'm also scared that deep down I'm only temporary to him.
Not gonna lie but I feel like a god as an Aroace right now haha! I knew it didn't exist in the first place 😂 Although I think the correct term for me now would be 'oriented Aroace'. I spend so much more time with the same gender compared to the opposite. 😊 Thanks Mark, you really do help us all 🌈
Im confuse about my sexuality an how i have to identify... I'm obsses about labels,i have this obssesiong to figure out all now to put a label and feel "normal" or "not liying myself" I have the fear that,"if this ocurs me how i have to identify" and to be in a wrong label. Please i you se that it would be incredible if you can clarimy this. I just want to be in reality..
To speak with me and many other like-minded people, join us on patreon.com/notdefining.
For 1:1 coaching with me you can book an appointment at www.notdefining.com/coaching-info.
To support my work and get priority replies to comments and more, click the JOIN button.
Certainly can't argue against the fact that people can be sexually attracted to people we don't even know, and were there is no possibility of sex taking place with them for whatever reason.
The whole romance thing seems really all about particular kinds of established or developing emotional bonds that are very difficult to define.
There is certainly a difference between the emotional bond between close friends were the words "I love you" may be exchanged when there is no sexual attraction, and something I would say falls in the romantic feeling category were that possibility might develop at some point.
I draw this belief from two experiences one with a male friend (without benefits) I have known and been very close to for more than four decades, and another with a woman I met a while back and surprisingly developed romantic feelings for after spending less than two hours talking to in a non social setting. I will probably never see her again, but even after nearly two years have passed she's on my mind frequently.
I think that was about the kind of dynamic that developed in our conversation, which perhaps suggested that this is someone I could easily form a lasting intimate relationship with, even though I wasn't aware of any sexual attraction at the time.
This stuff is all sort of magic and it certainly keeps romance novelists busy.
4:00 Marriage is tough as it is. In any case, it’s transactional and now the pressure of romance and having kids and making sure said kids turn out ok. So daunting
All healthy relationships are based on mutual attraction.
I have found that in the development of romantic affection for the person who triggers my attraction and interest, there is a stage where empathy and compassion grows into ta state in which I cherish the friendship which then produces the impulse to caress...regardless of gender.
With the growth of trust we may move on to working on mutual healing through the sharing of intimate thoughts and personal feelings/challenges...perhaps into body work of some kind.
Even within this love dynamic which the Greeks called Agape, there is not always a desire for passionate sexual intimacy with the individual. It may surface but it is more often not the focus.
Both sexual and romantic attraction have always been two different things sexual orientations and romantic orientations sexual orientation being sexually attracted to someone romantic orientation being attracted to someone romantically
I think bromance is romantic attraction, it's close, it's affectionate, it's vulnerable. That should lead to sexual attraction
I love this! It's absolutely true and beautifully stated. Every young person, especially, should hear this message. These concepts may not sound normal but they are as natural as oxygen.
7:14 So refreshing to hear someone say this.
Many gay men have very close heterosexual female friends and share confidences, enjoy each other's company and do many activities together. Their relationship is not sexual, but rather romantic.
I dont think bromance is supposed to be romance. I think men in the west have a "cold" friendship, they can watch sports or play videogame together but they dont know much abouth each other inner thoughts.
But when they have this deeper conection, like women usually have, they share their fears and feel vulnerable next to other men, they realize their frienship can be much more than just hang out together. I think that what they call bromance.
Most pair-bonding animals pair-bond with the opposite sex, and usually only pair-bond with same sex foe survival if there is no opposite-sex option. Although there is animals where sometimes males can bond, most of the time there is male-male competition. That's why generally women's sexually is more fluid than men, whereas men's tend to on average be more rigid and aversive. Studies on male heterosexuality shows it likely involves, not just the existence of sexual attraction to the opposite sex, but also the active suppression of brain circuitry serving same-sex attraction(that gay men don't have) This maybe because natural selection exerts different pressures on males and females. Eggs are more costly to produce than sperm; consequently, women release one egg a month while men produce several hundred million sperm a day. Women are very selective about who gets to fertilize that egg, and men need to be competitive in order to get access to this precious resource. Men have evolved to be highly competitive in order to be attractive to the choosiest (and, therefore, highest value) sexual partners. In virtually every mammalian species there is male-male competition. in most mammalian species most males who reach reproductive age never get to copulate even once, while virtually every female that reaches reproductive age will find someone to donate sperm to her. Also in many mammalian species mothers can cooperate in rearing offspring at little cost. Although there's less male-male competition when there is less dimorphism in a species and higher monogamy.
Falling in love seems to have existed in humans for as far back as we remember. if monogamy is socially constructed many people claim, it's a big coincidence that it was socially constructed in every society and culture in humans on earth as far as we know. There is no culture we know of where no one falls in love or where nobody gets jealous. Most people in my opinion-based on a variety of convergent forms of evidence- are going to be most interested in monogamy. We see it across all different societies and cultures. If you look at cultures where men are allowed to have multiple wives, they generally don't. Something like 90-95% of men in non-monogamous cultures where they are allowed multiple wives only marry one woman. There's a variety of different form of evidence that the human species strongest tendency is towards serial monogamy pair-bonding relationships.
Jealousy a mate-guarding emotion is a very strong psychological signal that we are interested in monogamy, at the very least stopping our mates mating with other people. We are a mostly monogamous species. I'm not saying infidelity is not natural as well, but the fact we have these monogamous unions and pair-bonds is evidence that it's natural. Looking at our species and what they naturally do generally is form relationships.
Sexual dimorphism predicts differences in mating strategies and species like humans with less dimorphism tend(at least in primates) be more monogamous. The fact we feel romantic love at all and pair-bonding emotions is not a coincidence, nothing is a coincidence in biology. Humans today express only slight differences in body size by sex compared to closely-related promiscuous and polygynous species. Human females lack obvious visible signals of ovulation, particularly in comparison to the conspicuous sexual swellings of, for example, chimpanzees and baboons. Concealed ovulation and constant sexual receptivity of human females facilitates social monogamy. Limiting information available to males regarding fertility, thereby promoting monogamy through mate guarding and/or paternal care . Specifically, given that humans live in multi male/multi female groups, concealed ovulation is argued to minimize male-male competition and allow for stable, monogamous unions.
Penis configurations across primate species are generally much more interesting than the human penis. The penises of other primate species commonly have lumps, ridges, kinks, spines or flanges, whereas the straight and smooth human penis lacks such features (unless you are rather unfortunate!). Bland characters such as the human penis are usually found in monogamous animal species. Also, DNA studies of male to female breeding ratios in Homo sapiens indicate about two women to every procreating man. This ratio is within the range for societies described as monogamous. Humans fall within the range of variation typical of pair-bonded species. The lack of exaggerated sexual dimorphism or testis size seems to rule out a history of elevated reproductive skew typical of highly promiscuous or polygynous mating systems. Instead, biological indicators suggest a mating system where both sexes form a long-term pair-bond with a single partner. And while polygyny was likely present in the human past, as it is across contemporary human societies, the weight of evidence seems to support social monogamy.
Monogamy is natural because fathering is natural in the human species and fathering only evolves with sufficient sexual exclusivity to allow for paternity certainty for men and sufficient resource provision certainty for women. The human life history pattern (i.e., short birth intervals, relatively high child survival, and a long period of juvenile dependence) means that mothers are often in the position of supporting multiple dependents of various ages simultaneously. Because infants, juveniles, and adolescents each require different kinds of time and energy investments, mothers are posed with an allocation problem throughout much of their reproductive career: how to care for infants and small children without compromising time spent in activities that provide food and other resources for older children. How mothers resolve this trade-off to support a rapid reproductive pace has long been theoretically tied to monogamy and the cooperation of fathers, siblings, and others to help mothers raise dependents.
In all known cultures, men have engaged in fathering their children. A cross-species analysis suggests that fathering only evolves when there is monogamy. Paternity certainty only adds to a male’s reproductive success if he can be reasonably confident that he is raising his own children rather than another male’s children. So, for fathering to evolve at least the females need to be faithful so the males possess paternity certainty. It only pays for females to be monogamous if females possess some certainty that the males will stick around to help nurture and protect the offspring. There’s no benefit for females being sexually exclusive when the males are practicing a mating strategy of "love them and leave them," requiring single mothers to fend for themselves without paternal assistance. Bi-parental care would only evolve if both males and females were willing to practice monogamy. Given the universality of fathering and bi-parental care among humans, it would seem that humans have evolved in a monogamous direction. There is an innate tendency towards monogamy; to engage in sexually exclusive romantic pair-bonding for bi-parental care. Human babies are completely helpless at birth and need parental care for years afterward. Ergo, in the case of Homo sapiens, two parents are better than one. People who are securely attached, authentic, and high in empathy with good communication skills tend to be better at monogamy.
Our ancestor Ardipithecus ramidus, who lived 4.4 million years ago. Ardipithecus walked on two legs, freeing the hands, thereby allowing males to carry food to females. One can conjecture that females would favour males who offered them food, indicating how natural selection could introduce monogamy. And monogamy offered an obvious attraction to lower-ranking males. Monogamy is also a much more energetically economical arrangement than polygamy which is wasteful of time and energy as males fight over females. Polygamy tends to cause social problems, leaving many angry men without wives and inclined to behave in risky ways. This increases conflict and lowers productivity. Humans are typically described as cooperative breeders, which in addition to male parental investment, is a key defining aspect of human sociality, cognition, and demographic success Several recent phylogenetic analyses provide compelling evidence that cooperative breeding in bird, insect, and mammalian taxa was preceded by an ancestry of monogamy .
Under certain circumstances, monogamy can increase male fitness more than deserting a partner and remating. Once biparental care becomes established, specialization of care tasks by males and females may serve to stabilize the pair-bond. The modal pattern cross-culturally is a life history characterized by specialization in child care by females (i.e., direct investment) and resource provisioning by males (i.e., indirect investment). This specialization can result from and further lead to synergistic fitness benefits tied to offspring success. These payoffs both constrain the behavioral options available to a parent and decrease sex-biased asymmetries in the costs of performing a parental investment task. Thus, task specialization can serve to strengthen biparental care once it emerges against invasion by other strategies. Monogamy ensures relatedness between fathers and their purported children, and permits for both the paternity confidence and relatedness necessary to favor investment by fathers and often care for multiple children at the same time.
Also, DNA studies of male to female breeding ratios in Homo sapiens indicate about two women to every procreating man. This ratio is within the range for societies described as monogamous.Testosterone is an androgenic steroid hormone that supports many aspects of male mating effort, including the development and maintenance of sexually dimorphic musculature and bone structure as well as courtship and male-male aggression. Levels of circulating testosterone in males are thus reasoned to reflect the evolved hormonal regulation of investment in mating vs. parenting effort. Married men have lower testosterone levels than unmarried men, and that married men with children have the lowest levels. These results suggest that partnered men, and in particular fathers, are hormonally primed to invest more time and energy into parenting rather than mating effort.
In all human societies across all cultures, uncivilised tribes and cavemen the vast majority of men and women are heterosexual because of biology. Social influences cannot override biology and the underlining preferences. An organism exists to propagate its genetic material, and this is the sole “meaning” of its existence. The way the brains evolved and structured the primal urges and instincts are going to kick in before the more evolved regions of the brain do and be stronger because it's the biggest part and at the centre of the brain. To survive and procreate are two of our biggest drives. This is all biology is concerned with, and it some species the males die right after they copulate and impregnate a female. Some even develop features on their body for sexual selection that can be detrimental to their own survival, but the positives outweigh the negatives because it makes the male more likely to attract and be chosen by a female to procreate and pass on their genes.
There are bisexual men but they are much more rare than heterosexual or homosexual men. Men typically display significantly greater physiological responses to sexual stimuli depicting members of their preferred gender category and stated sexual orientation. Stimulus features necessary to evoke genital arousal are much less specific in women than in men. physiological sexual arousal and sexual orientation were more strongly linked in men than women. It's hypothesized that males might have evolved to coordinate their sexual arousal and attraction indices more strongly than women because it aids them in building their sexual orientation towards relevant sexual targets
That's why paraphilias(unusual sexual interests) are more common in men. Research suggests that paraphilia is maybe akin to a sexual orientation. It's the same idea conceptually as being gay, it's someone's preference and it can't be changed and it's with them from a very early on. With the sexual orientation women tend to be more flexible with their sexual preferences. So if they have a partner who's very kinky they might be into whatever he's into, but then if she's with someone who's less kinky it might not be as much of a problem. Whereas if it's a man who's really into something, if his partner's not into it he's always going to be into it, he's just gonna have to hide it.
Men tend to be more thing- orientated and women more people-orientated(and gay men on average share these traits with women.) Gay differences compared to straight people of the same sex are reflected in their psychology and the ways they relate to others. To some extent, homosexuality is part of a package of mental traits, many of which can be considered gender-variant or gender non conformist, whereas heterosexuality is part of a package of gender-typical or gender conformist. The association between sexual orientation and other gendered traits arises because all these traits differentiate under the influence of a common biological process-the sexual differentiation of the brain under the influence of sex hormones.
The mind of the average gay individual is a patch work of gendered traits, some indistinguishable from same-sex peers, some shifted past way toward the other sex, and others typical of the other sex. Sexual orientation is an aspect of gender that emerges from the prenatal sexual differentiation of the brain. Whether a person ends up gay or straight depends in large part on how this process of biological differentiation goes forward, with the lead actors being genes, sex hormones and the brain systems that are influenced by them. Sexual orientation(as well as other gender differences) is biologically determined before birth in the utero by prenatal sex hormone exposure. The organisational effects of hormones on the brain prior to birth have permanent effects.
It's believed that gay men, during some point in fetal life, were exposed to unusually low levels of androgens, which allowed their hypothalamic circuits to develop in a female-typical direction. If testosterone levels during a critical prenatal period are high , the brain is organized in such a way that the person is predisposed to become typically masculine in a variety of gendered traits, including sexual attraction to females. If testosterone levels are low during that same time period, the brain is organized in such a way that the person is predisposed to become typically feminine in gendered traits, including sexual attraction to males. Gendered interests are predicted by testosterone exposure in utero. Higher levels are associated with male-typical interests and behaviours, regardless of whether the baby is male or female. These include a preference for mechanically interesting objects and systemizing occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people orientated activities and occupations. stemming from evolutionary roots. Women. who are tasked with the role of bearing children, evolved to be more sociable, empathic, and people focused, while men, as hunter-gatherers, were rewarded for strong visuopatial skills and ability to build and use tools. That's why science, technology, engerneering and mathematics fields tend to be dominated by men.
Male homosexuality is no just an isolated trait but rather part of a package of gender variant traits, If a man inherits a few of these genes, he will have some feminine characteristics, which might include increased empathy and kindness, decreased aggressivness and the like, These genes increase his attractivness to women, permitting him more sexual access and thus offering him the likelihood of having more offspring. If a man inherits all of these genes, however, he will be feminized to the point of homosexuality, and his reproductive success will drop markedly. Because each feminizing gene is present in many more straight men than gay men(straight men are the vast majority of the males) it only has to raise each straight man's reproductive success by a small amount to compensate for the lowered reproductive success of gay men.
In areas of personality, men rank higher than women on measures of assertiveness, competivness, aggressiveness, and independence(these getting things done traits are sometimes referred to collectively as instrumentality). In area of cognition, Men perform better than women at variety of visuospatial tasks such as mental rotation, targeting accuracy, and navigation(especially when navigating by distant landmarks or compass directions rather than by local cues) Women perform better than men at some memory tasks, including episodic memory(memory of events) verbal memory and memory of the locations of objects. They are also better at tests of verbal fluency(quickly coming up with words that match a certain category) and some other verbal skills, face recognition, and behavioral tasks requiring fine hand movements. Women rank higher than men on measures of expressivness, sociability, empathy, openness to feelings, altruism and neuroticism.(the last item includes the tendency to depression, anxiety, self-consciousness, and low self esteem) Men prefer thing-oriented activities and occupations(e.g carpenter) whereas women prefer people-oriented activities and occupations(e.g social worker) Women have better developed aesthetic interests and less developed technological interests than men.
Gay men and lesbians are gender shifted in a variety of male favoring-visuospatial traits such as mental rotation, targeting, and navigation, as well as female-favouring tasks such as verbal fluency and object location memory.
In studies on occupational preferences that noted that all the masculine occupations were thing-orientated, whereas at least three of the feminine occupations were people orientated. The study showed a major gender shift among gay men and women in the people-thing dimention, with gay mens interests shifted toward people like straight women and gay womens shifted towards things like heterosexual men. At least two studies have reported that gay men score higher than straight men on tests of empathy-a female favoring trait. Gay men and bisexual men also score higher on tests of aesthetic interest, another female favouring trait. Several studies have reported that gay men are less physically aggressive than heterosexual men and one of these found lesbians are more physically aggressive than heterosexual women.
Homosexual people have less fitness to reproduce(for obvious reasons because they are same sex attracted) that is not conducive for reproduction themselves, but science has many good theories on why they have still survived in the gene pool and how it's related to our survival and fitness of relatives to continue on the families genes and linage. for example genes being selected for female fecundity which have a byproduct of causing a certain amount of same sex behaviour among males, a sexually antagonistic effect. Their is also many other great theories and it's believed not all homosexual people are homosexual for the same reasons, but it's always about the survival and fitness of close relatives to carry on the genes and aids their relatives to reproduce more or have more reproductive success, although there is still no definitive answer. It might just be a normal variation( like intersex conditions are a natural biological variation even though most cannot reproduce) or different factors young maternal age, maternal weight gain, genetic conditions, sensitive immune system response to testosterone in women, and hormonal treatment during pregnancy. It could also be an epigenetic reaction to severe pre-natal stress. For example if a woman were to show signs and signals of some illness or health problem during pregnancy she is going to need that child to have more female typical traits to help with her and other offsprings survival.
You have stated this beautifully! Thank you❤
I didn't understand then why I'm so happy to see my friend who's married with children and spend 8 hours with him at work everyday Monday to Friday. He's very kind, funny, loving, Godfearing, decent, good father & husband, generous, tough if necessary & thoughtful...just the coolest man to be around. Much cooler than my father & brothers. I really love him but never in a romantic or sexual way since we're both straight but I'm closer to him than to my own father & brothers. My father & some of my brothers have said to me that it's gay to have this kind of love for a male friend and they insisted that they don't love their male friends. I can't help but feel so sorry for them because loving a fellow man in a nonsexual way is one of best feelings a man can experience imho.
I would love to hear your thoughts on why almost all bi people end up in straight (opposite sex) relationships in the end. Is it because it's easier that way? Being able to have kids, being perceived as 'normal' by society, just being all around more convenient? My boyfriend is bi, I'm biologically male and I'm afraid one day he'll leave me for someone who is biologically female. I was trans for 10 years, but have slowly began not fully but partially detransitioning over time because I wasn't happy being trans anymore and I wanted to experiment with my gender and discover who I really am. I'm fluid at the moment and it feels like that's my boyfriend's (and probably many bi people's) dream, but I'm also scared that deep down I'm only temporary to him.
6:46 ‘Bromance’. I have a thesis on this
Not gonna lie but I feel like a god as an Aroace right now haha! I knew it didn't exist in the first place 😂
Although I think the correct term for me now would be 'oriented Aroace'. I spend so much more time with the same gender compared to the opposite. 😊
Thanks Mark, you really do help us all 🌈
Im confuse about my sexuality an how i have to identify...
I'm obsses about labels,i have this obssesiong to figure out all now to put a label and feel "normal" or "not liying myself"
I have the fear that,"if this ocurs me how i have to identify" and to be in a wrong label.
Please i you se that it would be incredible if you can clarimy this.
I just want to be in reality..