What are the causes of sexual attraction?

M

mayflow

Banned
MBTI
INFP
What causes us to be sexually or Romantically attracted to one another? I personally think there are two main causes which are completely different than one another. One is that you just find someone fun to play and tease with, and mutually learn with. This person is just an embellishment to ones own soul and you to hers (or his). I do really honestly think that it is healthy and right for this to occur because we find others who are different but complementory to ourselves. We find similarities of soul, of inner essence, and in this we take delight, but realize we have each different beauties to share with one another - yes this seems right.

The other reason seems less right to me. I think the other reason is that we didn't get what we wanted from our parents or other while we were young. We didn't get the male or female nurturings or strengths we wanted and are looking for others or relationships with others to provide this. This to me stems from inner weakness and neediness and these relationships cannot fix that.

Real Love seems to me that each person is real and whole within themselves and still different and able to share and complement each other. I differ that from what I see as neediness, because real Love is inner strength personified and not needy at all.
 
Lol....watch the Discovery Channel program The Anatomy of Attraction and the Anatomy of Sex.
 
Jung described homosexuality as “a repressed, undifferentiated element of masculinity in the man . . . which instead of being developed . . . from the depths of his own psyche, is sought on a biological plane through ‘fusion’ with another man.”28(p76)

This brought up thoughts in me about heterosexuality as well.
 
That could hardly be true. I know a gay man who acts just like every other "bloke"... He's hardly repressed, and he is hardly emasculated, he just likes to have sex with guys.
 
Shai Gar said:
That could hardly be true. I know a gay man who acts just like every other "bloke"... He's hardly repressed, and he is hardly emasculated, he just likes to have sex with guys.
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Well, maybe you are a lot smarter than Carl Jung.
 
Or quite probably, I'm party to information that he is not.

I'm not smarter than a great many middle ages and dark ages philosophers and scientists who believed utterly that the world was flat, and yet, due to my education, which is due to the society and the time in which I live, I know that that is wrong.

It generally has very little to do with who is smarter. Carl Jung is dead, has been for decades. If he lived today, imagine which of his ideas might be different.
 
alcyone said:
Lol....watch the Discovery Channel program The Anatomy of Attraction and the Anatomy of Sex.
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I think that's what I watched last night, very fascinating. And according to that, our primal mating choices are based on scent, shape of body/health, walk, levels of estrogen/testosterone which equals attractiveness.

Mayflow, I think you bring up good points in your assessment and I think both #1 and #2 apply to my own relationship, my husband and I have discussed both of these aspects in great detail.
 
Hey I like this tangent.

"I am smarter than Carl Jung -- an exposition on brilliance". Not true, but it was an amusing thought that popped into my head.

Anyways, it was answered fairly well already -- scent has a lot to do with physical/sexual attraction. I recall watching a documentary which stated that scent has to do with your genetic makeup which has to do with other characteristics -- women and men tend to prefer the scent of partners who are 'symmetical' in form as well as scents of those which are different from themselves (in genetic makeup -- ie: so as to contribute to genetic diversity). There's also other aspects which contribute including the other persons own level of sexuality, as well as their masculine and/or feminine traits.
 
Well, I can only go off personal experience here.. since I have no scientific data to contribute..

But there is only one man I've ever been instantly sexually (not just physically) attracted to right on the spot.. to be cliche: lust at first sight. (Maybe his pheremones were pleasing to me?)

Other than that, it takes awhile for me to be turned on by a guy.. and the big factor there is that he has to be intellectual. I like guys who are much more knowledgable than I am because I love to learn. An example of the mutuality in learning would be I gain insight intellectually while the other gains insight emotionally. I'm basing this off my last relationship (that happened to be with an intj..and that was how it went with us.)

But this could also be because like you said, we're looking for something in someone that we didn't really get from a parent. My dad is a very intelligent and knowledgable man, but he wasn't really around much for my childhood as a role model. I tend to look for guys I can look up to.
 
Zero Angel said:
Hey I like this tangent.

"I am smarter than Carl Jung -- an exposition on brilliance". Not true, but it was an amusing thought that popped into my head.

Anyways, it was answered fairly well already -- scent has a lot to do with physical/sexual attraction. I recall watching a documentary which stated that scent has to do with your genetic makeup which has to do with other characteristics -- women and men tend to prefer the scent of partners who are 'symmetical' in form as well as scents of those which are different from themselves (in genetic makeup -- ie: so as to contribute to genetic diversity). There's also other aspects which contribute including the other persons own level of sexuality, as well as their masculine and/or feminine traits.
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The show was called The Science of Sex (google is a wonderful thing)

Actually the attraction is to symmetrical facial features. We are attracted sexually to partners whose scent is different from ours as it indicates that our immune systems are different increasing the chances for stronger immune systems in offspring from a mating.

In one of the experiements Helen Fisher conducted she gave the one of the test subjects a sweaty shirt from a relative. The woman reported an intense dislike of the scent. Similarity in scent turns us off, not on.

The entire show was spectacular and there was so much to learn. I highly recommend it to anyone in the looking process. Might help you narrow in on a target.
 
alcyone said:
In one of the experiements Helen Fisher conducted she gave the one of the test subjects a sweaty shirt from a relative. The woman reported an intense dislike of the scent. Similarity in scent turns us off, not on.
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This is because any similarity in genetics will turn us off. The scents produced by our bodies is unique to our genetic code, but people with similar genetics will naturally dislike a scent close to their own. This is so we don't mate with people too similar to ourselves because of the birth defects and whatnot.

I saw this show too and it is very very interesting. Women are attracted to deeper voices and men are attracted to higher pitch voices. Women's voices become slightly higher during ovulation to attract males and create a higher chance of pregnancy. Women are also more attracted to "masculine" faces during ovulation as well as the "male scent" which I think is created by Androgen. That's just a couple of the things on that show, which I think was 2 hours long.

I also understand women are attracted to the "alpha male", which displays traits of confidence, self acceptance, adaptation, protection and leadership. He also knows what he wants and gains the respect of others. I also think that women are more attracted to personalty than looks, or atleast personalty gains the edge at some point. This is why you may see a not so good looking man with a hot women. If I were to put a ratio on it, I would say 60% personality 40% looks give or take a little. What do you women think of this?

Males are more simpler by nature. Physical attraction is instant and probably gains the edge in most cases. Personailty attraction and it's emphasis varies depending on the guy based upon what he thinks about himself and what he is naturally drawn to subconciously.
 
I think there are even more factors weighing in than personality and looks.

During the experiment where the guys were given fake jobs and income information along with their pictures and girls were asked to rate them, the guys who made most money got higher scores even though when rated by just picture alone (and by that scientific evaluation process) those same guys got the lower scores.

Attractiveness (of a male to a female that is) is also judged based on money and perceived position in society.
 
yea maybe there are different 'levels' of attraction.

i agree with you mayflow that people get attracted to other people a lot b/c they are looking for that parental affection they never received....it makes some sense. you grow up never feeling 'whole,' and you look for someone who will treat you like your parent so that you can re-live the relationship in some way and finish the quest to feel whole. this is a bit of a fools' errand but i think it's more common than people think. i think a lot of the literature surrounding co-dependant relationships makes this point. i think i experienced this with a few relationships in some form or another

but yea there is also that kind of 'primal' attraction which probably comes down to scent....as well as 'social' attraction which takes into account money and status, as alcyone pointed out...

also, race is still definitely a factor. people have preferences for dating their same "race" (which I find silly but maybe that's b/c I am totally mixed race). they've done studies on online dating sites which indicate that if you are a male person of color you have to make something on the order of $100,000 more than a person with fair skin to get the same number of responses, or something ridiculous....let me see if i can find some links very quickly....

here we go (an NY Times article about racial preferences)

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/single-female-seeking-same-race-male/
The researchers, after controlling for all other attributes (height, weight, attractiveness, etc.), calculated how much extra income (relative to the income of the average online male dater, $62,500) a man would need to overcome the racial barrier. Here are some of the estimates (there weren’t enough data to do all the interracial permutations) of how much each extra income a man would need to be equally appealing to a woman as would a man of her own race:
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For equal success with an African-American woman, a Hispanic man needs to earn an extra $184,000; a white man needs to earn an additional $220,000.



For equal success with a white woman, an African-American needs to earn an additional $154,000; a Hispanic man needs $77,000; an Asian needs $247,000.


For equal success with a Hispanic woman, an African-American man needs to earn an additional $30,000; a white man needs to earn an additional $59,000.


For equal success with an Asian woman, an African-American needs no additional income; a white man needs $24,000 less than average; a Hispanic man needs $28,000 more than average.
​
 
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Ya I agree. Status is important as well, and it also ties in with what I was saying. Having money has to do with the protection factor and being able to care for a women.
 
Only for women who believe they need to be cared for by a man.
 
Zanshin said:
Ya I agree. Status is important as well, and it also ties in with what I was saying. Having money has to do with the protection factor and being able to care for a women.
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merrytrees said:
Only for women who believe they need to be cared for by a man.
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My gf has a pretty good job, makes decent money, and I like that about her. It shows she has herself together.

I think she likes the same thing about me. So... it's not that she needs or wants to be taken care of with money, but doing well in that manner can send out other signals or be indicative of other things.

Independent women don't exactly flock to the broke guys either, and I've known several who said they wanted their guy to be making more than them. (I know what you're thinking... lol, they weren't just trying to get rid of me.) The ones that said that were way past needing anyone to take care of them.
 
I would love a concise answer on what causes sexual attraction. I've been looking for years, and I have never been able to find one. Since the undertone of this thread seems to be about homosexuality, I guess I can share my personal experiences...

Since I was a child I have had two different sorts of attractions. One was a strong sort of "companionship" attraction which I felt for other boys and the other was a weaker sort of "nurturing" attraction which I felt mostly with girls. The "companionship" attraction was highly sexual and was also a childish, friendly, playful, happy, free spirited, rough and tumble feeling whereas the "nurturing" attraction always made me feel uncomfortable as was really evident when I played "House" with girls that I liked.

As I grew older, the "companionship" attraction just continued to develop much faster than the "nurturing" attraction. By puberty I realized something was strange. All my male friends were getting into girls and I was more into my male friends. I even refused to have sleepovers at my friends' houses because of how I felt. I tried to force the development of the "nurturing" attraction and had a few girlfriends up until college, but I could never get that "companionship" attraction with them that I needed for there to be sexual attraction.

In high school it became incredibly evident that I was more attracted to guys than girls on just about every level, but I had this aesthetic picture in my mind of having a wife and kids, so I continued desperately trying to ignore the feelings I had for guys and focus on developing feelings for girls. I ended up getting more and more depressed filled with more and more self contempt and homophobia, and entered a really bad place. Finally there just came a point where I broke.

At that point, I was forced to just accept that I was more attracted to guys than girls. Unfortunately, that aesthetic picture of the wife and kids doesn't just go away. For example, the thought of kissing a guy grossed me out even though I felt such a strong sexual attraction to guys. It was a tough time.

If this is confusing to you, imagine how it was for me.
 
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