Guess What Men In Love Think About Most?


Men in love are men in lust. Women were right all along! Men really do have only one thing on their minds: sex.

When a couple falls in love, no doubt they each think the other feels the exact same way. Science tells us they don't. Using a functional MRI scanner, researchers from Rutgers University in New Jersey analyzed the brain activity of 17 young men and women who claimed to be madly in love. They determined the following, reports Science Daily:

* A woman in love
* is an emotional woman, who isn't particularly focused on sex. The memory regions of the brain are the most active, driven by the attention lavished on her by her new boyfriend.A man in love
is a man in lust. His brain shows extra activity in the visual areas that mediate sexual arousal.

The early stages of a romantic relationship are a lot like eating chocolate--at least as far as our brains are concerned. The dopamine-drenched brain is very focused on planning and the pursuit of a pleasurable reward. The same regions become active when we fall in love as when we enjoy the pleasure of eating chocolate, says lead researcher Helen Fisher. More ominously, the brain in love also shows patterns that resemble aspects of obsessive compulsive disorder.

Romantic love is a developed form of three primary brain networks that evolved so we could reproduce. According to Fisher, these are:

* Sex Drive:
This evolved to motivate individuals to seek sex with any appropriate partner. This is especially active for men.

* Attraction:
This is the precursor of romantic love and evolved to allow individuals to pursue preferred mating partners, which conserved courtship time and energy.

* Attachment:
This evolved to allow men and women to remain with a mate long enough to complete parenting duties. This is especially active for women.

The research findings were published by the Society For Neuroscience.


Any one agree?

<small>[ November 23, 2003, 12:08 PM: Message edited by: FeelinGuilty ]</small>

FG my opinion lies along the lines of Jack218's thread from the recovery forum in which he states the following:

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">3. It was about sex, without sex there is no affair, just friendship. But more specifically, it is about mating behavior. Humans are all biologically wired to mate with other humans. All of the rituals, the flirtations, the coyness, the pursuit, the anticipation, the dance, the winks, the smiles, the flattering, the intimacies and secrets, involve a complex set of emotional feelings and sensations that have been repeated and described throughout our history everywhere from the Bible through Shakespeare to the Jerry Springer show. They are part of us and all of it is supported by a potent reward system fueled by hormones and brain chemicals as powerful as any we know. The fact that they are rooted in our animal natures does not mean they are not highly developed and sophisticated. For some reason our species landed on the middle of the spectrum between the geese that mate for life and the chickens that mate with anyone. Our people, institutions and societies have for the most part chosen monogamy based upon millions of years of experience because its higher value is recognized and appreciated as a means to greater happiness and welfare. But each of us ultimately makes his own choice and some choose the alternative and some are indecisive. To those who believe that it was also God’s choice, I can’t disagree, why wouldn’t it be?

4. It wasn’t love. Love is a decision involving sacrifice and commitment among other things. My all time favorite statistic from this experience is the tiny little smidgen of people who leave their marriages for affair partners and actually stay with them. Nuff said. My second favorite statistic is that almost all affairs are dead ends, the discovered ones usually end with the discovery, and the undiscovered ones end on their own, but few have any shelf life. Must not be so hot I guess, my relationship with the woman I love has lasted 34 years, so there, and it’s the best thing I know on earth. What better evidence is there that most affairs are not love but simply bad mistakes?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">FG please ponder the following scenario. If tomorrow you were involved in a horrible accident in which your face and body were horribly disfigured and confined for life to a wheelchair, do you you think that any of your past OM's would be with you and take care of you until your final days?

<small>[ November 23, 2003, 12:40 PM: Message edited by: T00MuchCoffeeMan ]</small>

[/QUOTE]FG please ponder the following scenario. If tomorrow you were involved in a horrible accident in which your face and body were horribly disfigured and confined for life to a wheelchair, do you you think that any of your past OM's would be with you and take care of you until your final days? [/QB][/QUOTE]


Very scarey scenerio to ponder TMCM... but easy enough to answer.. NO.

Would my H be there??? without a shadow of a doubt...

---

<small>[ November 23, 2003, 04:09 PM: Message edited by: T00MuchCoffeeMan ]</small>

Yes FG it is indeed a very scary scenario but one that happens many times a day, 365 days of the year, to all kinds of people. In a flash of an eye lives can change forever and all of our sexual attractiveness and all of our succesful career achievements and goals vanish into thin air. What do you have afterwards? If you are lucky, the love and caring of a good spouse, but if you are not, the loneliness and regret of a terrible self inflicted loss.

<small>[ November 23, 2003, 04:10 PM: Message edited by: T00MuchCoffeeMan ]</small>

FG

Medical science attempts to explain our behavior based on biological, physiological and psychological research. However, we are not programmed like most animals. We can control our instincts and behavior. There is no excuse for a man or woman to have an affair. We are not totally driven by sex. To say otherwise is just another attempt to justify an affair.

Beau

Absolute poopycock...JMHO

Ultimately men and women are wired very similar. We might process things a little different, but in the end we are very, very similar.

I think women are every bit as likely to engage in lust as men are, but are less likely to be overt about it because lust implies aggressiveness. A lusty woman is more likely to be seen as loose whore. Lusty men...well...we just can't help ourselves, can we? <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" />

I think lust is also about power. Historically, men have had the power, so we engage in overt lust. Women of history who have been in powerful positions are known to have engaged in pretty wanton behavior as well.

We can't excuse our behavior away that easily.