To encounter erotica designed to appeal to the other is to gaze into the psychological abyss that separates the sexes.

Donald Symons

The vast majority of the differences between the software of male and female minds are all located down in that most intimate and controversial of locales, the sexual brain. But down here the differences are even greater than you think.

As we described previously, we all come wired with a set of sexual cues analogous to our tongue’s taste cues. However, men respond to radically different cues than women. Male cues are primarily visual. Female cues are primarily psychological. Men do have psychological cues, but (with a couple exceptions) these cues are quite different from female psychological cues. A man’s cues are all directed outwards, at his partner. Some of a woman’s cues are directed outwards at her partner, but some of her cues are also directed inwards at herself.

But not only are the male and female cues different, the mind software that processes these cues is different. The male sexual software is what a computer engineer would call an “OR gate.” It is instantly aroused by any single cue. The male brain is turned on by deep décolletage or sashaying hips or the whisper of a sultry voice or two Applebee’s waitresses kissing.

The female sexual brain is what a computer engineer would call an “AND gate.” It requires input from multiple cues simultaneously to surpass a combined threshold of activation before arousal occurs. The female brain may be turned on by a man who is handsome and a cardiologist and pets her beagle and is popular with her lady friends and plays the sensual melodies of Cat Power in the dappled candlelight.

Read in Full:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/billion-wicked-thoughts/201104/men-women-and-the-software-sexual-desire

When Conflict Arises Within A Couple More Intense Emotions Are Experienced By Women

Article Date: 14 Apr 2011 – 2:00 PDT

Women feel their emotions more intensively than men when a conflict arises within the couple. Conversely, it is men – who mostly express “powerful emotions” as wrath or despise – who cause conflicts more frequently.

This is the conclusion described in an article published in the journal Intervención Psicosocial prepared by professors from the Department of Social Psychology of the University of Granada, Inmaculada Valor Segura, Francisca Expósito y Miguel Moya. This study analyzed the type of interpersonal emotions than men and women feel when they face different conflicts within the couple, and the effect that emotions have on the recurrence of conflicts.

A sample of 142 male and female students from the University of Granada participated in the study. They were placed in five different conflictive situations. In general terms, the results showed that men and women have different emotions in conflictive situations.

Thus, when facing a situation where “my partner offends me or treats me disrespectfully”, women felt miserable, while the situation “if my partner is physically aggressive during an argument” women felt more disappointed than men. In the situation “my partner shouts at me with frequency”, women felt more sadness, while men felt guilt. In the situation “if my partner distorts an argument to be right” women feel sadness, while men feel embarrasment.

Read in Full: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/222344.php

Getting the Love You Want, Over and Over Again

By Therese J. Borchard
Associate Editor

In his New York Times bestseller, Getting the Love Your Want, psychologist Harville Hendrix explains why people who grew up in homes — well, a little like the one in the 2006 flick Little Miss Sunshine — without proper emotional nurturing seek dysfunctional relationships as adults. He explains the low brain — our more reptilian thought process that can’t handle anything different than what it already knows and reverts to fear as its primary gear — and the new brain, the cerebral cortex that is conscious, alert, able to reason and think logically. He writes:

What we are doing, I have discovered from years of theoretical research and clinical observation, is looking for someone who has the predominant character traits of the people who raised us. Our old brain, trapped in the eternal now and having only a dim awareness of the outside world, is trying to re-create the environment of childhood. And the reason the old brain is trying to resurrect the past is not a matter of habit or blind compulsion but of a compelling need to heal old childhood wounds.

Some of you undoubtedly are thinking: “Oh puh-leaze, move on from the naval-gazing-it’s-my-mommy’s-fault theory.”

I may have uttered similar opinions had I not fallen into this trap so many times in my adult life, even as a happily married woman. What I failed to recognize until recently is that a healthy marriage doesn’t protect you from attempts to fill in the deep hole left from the earlier years. If you don’t do it in your primary romantic relationship, you get the job done via friendships and family relationships. Try as you may to recover from your past and move on, but I agree with Hendrix that you will always subconsciously seek to heal those wounds by trying to recreate a similar situation and forcing it to be different.

The trick is disassociating the situation from the brain phenomenon.

It’s not about the person, place, or thing you are fixated on. It’s not about the friend who is emotionally unavailable. It’s not about the relative who will never remember your birthday. Or the co-worker who is smarter (or so he thinks) than you. It’s merely the low brain recognizing a possibility to have some fun, a potential sandbox to build the sandcastle of your youth so that this time it can stand forever.

Read in Full:

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/04/10/getting-the-love-you-want-over-and-over-again/