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Out of control: you can't help who you love (or lust after)
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Last updated 8-9-07
Love and lust. It may well be that both are usually-- or even always-- beyond our control. We like, love-- or lust after-- those we do, simply because we cannot do otherwise.
Between the combination of our DNA and the effects our environment has on us, we may truly have very little conscious say in what ends up turning us on or off, or pushing our emotional (and hormonal) buttons. Or at least that may be true for those of us who have any appreciable sex drive at all.
Of course, this is only a problem where our love/lust isn't reciprocated, or else is considered 'abnormal' or unwanted by mainstream society-- and someone beyond you and your consenting partner finds out about it.
In other words, you could face a situation much like that of those oppressed due to their ethnic or religious backgrounds in various parts of the world.
My own view of this issue is basically that consenting adults ought to be able to do whatever the hell they want, so long as it doesn't endanger others in a tangible, scientifically provable fashion. The world has far too much war and violence and bloodshed, and far too little love, sex, compassion, and affection. Far too much loneliness and despair, far too little friendship and happiness.
Any limits on love and friendship should be as minimal as the limits on free speech, or the right to defend oneself and one's loved ones.
These days, many in the developed nations seem to bemoan a shortage of sexual passion in their marriages and other relationships.
Unfortunately, there appears to be a direct relationship between sexual passion and sexual crimes. Increase one, and you get more of the other. Reduce one, and you shrink the other. Yikes!
This is because if we're physically healthy enough to have sex at all, we're easily capable of going overboard with it in all manner of ways. The same internal mechanisms which allow a person to stop short of raping another also tend to diminish their libido in general. Or, the more control over your own lust you possess, the less sex you'll likely desire or seek out, or share with others.
So make a society safer rape-wise, and you also get more complaints of too little consensual sex from the populace.
Yes: sex today remains an arena where battles still rage on between the ancient beasts within us, and our relatively young and civilized intellects. The more control we have over ourselves, perhaps the less animal passion we may call upon at any given moment (at least where sex is concerned).
This unfortunate balancing act between animal passions and intellectual apathy would seem to make it all the more important that we place upon acts of love and sex between consenting adults only the most minimal legal constraints deemed necessary by scientific research.
But until such enlightenment blossoms across the world, we're stuck with lots of silly and perhaps even dangerous antiquated laws regarding how and where and who people can love or care for-- even when their genetic code or personal circumstances may give them no such choice in the matter.
If you find yourself in the predicament where your lust/love is at odds with the local majority, or isn't mutual where the object of your affection is concerned, or is just plain dangerous for your circumstances, you may have only a few practical alternatives available to you-- short of suicide-- since you can't change your DNA (as of 2007), or rewrite your personal emotional history:
1: Search for and then migrate to a place where your desires are more accepted.
2: Discreetly find a partner who shares your passion, whom you can love for a lifetime, and do it. And do your best to keep your love secret and sheltered from the world, too (there's several humdingers of challenges here: surmounting just one of them would be considered a mighty feat in most people's books).
3: Proclaim your preference to the world, and become active in making it acceptable to society (this one can require more than one lifetime, folks; plus, some sexual predilections by consenting adults still carry severe punishments in some countries).
4: Do everything you can to minimize your exposure to such temptations, and/or resist them via willpower alone, for the rest of your life (this is a recipe for unrelenting, perhaps ever growing stress, which may not end nicely for you or others).
5: Take up drinking or other drugs to dull the pain and longing (this is a route taken by many in your situation throughout history. It sort of works sometimes. But often might only make things worse). A variation on this theme may be taking up life-threatening recreational sports, such as base-jumping, tackling expert ski runs, mountain-climbing, and the like.
6: Seek professional help. I put this last because in some countries such aid itself may be illegal or otherwise unavailable. But where it is an option, through it some people seem to find relief and escape in prescribed drugs, or even surgeries (men especially sometimes benefit from castration; both men and women may sometimes get some relief via sex change operations and/or hormonal therapies).
Below I offer an unorganized list of references for points made above.
-- This is your brain on love
When you're attracted to someone, is your gray matter talking sense -- or just hooked? Scientists take a rational look. - Los Angeles Times
By Susan Brink;
July 30, 2007
"Even the most stable brain operates just a millimeter from madness."
-- When Worry Hijacks The Brain By JEFFREY KLUGER; Aug. 02, 2007
"...arousal is not necessarily a conscious process."
"Our sexual responsiveness can be activated or enhanced by stimuli we're not even aware of,"
"The results suggest that having a good set of sexual brakes not only dampens the willingness to commit rape or sexual abuse, but the desire as well..."
"...on average, male sexual desire is not only stronger than women's, but also more constant from hour to hour, day to day..."
"Men...are generally fecund all month long, and they are theoretically ever anxious to share that bounty with others, a state of perpetual readiness that Roy F. Baumeister, a psychology professor at Florida State University, described as "the tragedy of the male sex drive."
-- Birds Do It. Bees Do It. People Seek the Keys to It. By NATALIE ANGIER; April 10, 2007
"Human sexual behavior is not a free-form performance, biologists are finding, but is guided at every turn by genetic programs."
"Desire between the sexes is not a matter of choice."
"The most direct evidence comes from a handful of cases, some of them circumcision accidents, in which boy babies have lost their penises and been reared as female. Despite every social inducement to the opposite, they grow up desiring women as partners, not men."
"Sexual orientation, at least for men, seems to be settled before birth."
"Studies of twins show that homosexuality, especially among men, is quite heritable, meaning there is a genetic component to it."
-- Pas de Deux of Sexuality Is Written in the Genes By NICHOLAS WADE; April 10, 2007
-- Homosexual Animals Out of the Closet By Sara Goudarzi; 16 November 2006; livescience.com
-- Homo on the Range Gay Marriage in the Animal Kingdom - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News By Christoph Seidler; October 25, 2006; spiegel.de
-- Mating Game: The Really Wild Kingdom By Jeanna Bryner; 14 November 2006;
livescience.com
-- Birds do it, bees do it...Is homosexuality natural? by Martin Fletcher; January 03, 2007; timesonline.co.uk
-- Your Brain's 'Love Chemicals' may also make you Autistic; March 12, 2007
-- Study demonstrates remarkable power of social norms; 5-Apr-2007; Contact: Catherine West
cwest@psychologicalscience.org
202-783-2077
Association for Psychological Science
-- You've Got to Have ... Genes
A new study says that how we choose our friends is strongly influenced by genetic factors. By Sarah Kliff; Newsweek; Aug. 6, 2007
-- Cat parasite rules our lives; March 11, 2007
-- Homosexuality May Be Based on Biology, Baptist Says - New York Times By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS; March 16, 2007
"We may be taught not to judge a book by its cover, but when we see a new face, our brains decide whether a person is attractive and trustworthy within a tenth of a second, according to recent Princeton research."
-- Snap judgments decide a face's character, psychologist finds
by Chad Boutin; August 22, 2006
-- New Study is First to Link Romantic Relationships to Genes; Contact:
Sean Wagner
(781) 388-8550
journalnews@bos.blackwellpublishing.net; January 29, 2007
"The idea that addiction is somehow a psychological illness is, I think, totally ridiculous. It's as psychological as malaria. It's a matter of exposure."
-- WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
-- WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The Art of Fiction No. 36
Interviewed by Conrad Knickerbocker; Issue 35, Fall 1965
"...the first moves are made before you're even born."
-- The Rules of Attraction in the Game of Love By Bjorn Carey; 13 February 2006
-- 8 Targets in Prison Masturbation Cases By Martha Neil; Jul 27, 2007
-- She was 82, victim was 11, and town still can't believe it
Sex offender - The Dalles woman is sent to prison after she had sex with a boy in her care by AIMEE GREEN and ROBIN FRANZEN; February 16, 2007
-- World-renowned geneticist sentenced for molestation By ROBERT JABLON; February 2, 2007
-- Israel's President to Be Indicted on Rape Charges By Jim Teeple; 23 January 2007
-- The moment a teenage girl was stoned to death for loving the wrong boy | the Daily Mail; 3rd May 2007
-- The girl who was stoned to death for falling in love
by NATALIE CLARKE; 17th May 2007
-- Man with mannequin fetish could face life in prison By Michael P. McConnell; December 29, 2006
-- Sensory organ, not brain, differentiates sexual behavior in some mammals; August 05, 2007
"The enormous difference between male and female sexual behaviour may be explained, in animals at least, by a tiny organ in the nose rather than by any gender difference in brain circuitry."
-- Nose leads way for mouse on prowl; August 06, 2007
"The researchers found that female mice whose vomeronasal organs were genetically disabled behaved like males in the throes of courtship, exhibiting behaviors such as mounting, pelvic thrusts, solicitation and the complex ultrasonic vocalization characteristic of the male mouse. Correspondingly, female traits such as nursing behaviors and maternal aggression were diminished."
-- Disabling a sensory organ prompts female mice to act like male mice; 5-Aug-2007; Contact: Jennifer Michalowski
michalow@hhmi.org
301-215-8576
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
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