Brain injuries caused by strokes, tumors or head trauma can, on occasion, result in Unusual Changes in Sexuality, as discussed in an earlier blog post. A new case report by Bianchi-Demicheli et al. (2010) describes a unique paraphilia in a married 34 year old man. The authors called it Sleeping Beauty paraphilia:
This [man] felt sexually aroused from seeing sleeping women as well as from taking care of their hands and nails while they were asleep.
The patient came to the attention of the authors when he was brought to the emergency psychiatric unit after assaulting his wife with pepper spray while wearing a latex mask.
It seems you’re more likely to die from a heart attack when having sex while having an affair, than during sex with your regular partner, although this seems largely to apply to men.
A case report in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine reports on the death of a woman who had a heart attack during extra-marital sex, something unusual in women. This is not conclusive evidence for the link between heart attacks and affairs in itself, of course, but the article reviews some suggestive evidence about sex, risk of death, physical and psychological stress.
Social psychologists have long observed that humans have a reliable ability to “read” each other. Now evidence is growing that we accomplish this through social signaling, an ancient system of communication that depends on non-verbal communication rather than speech. Pentland and colleagues have concluded that they can often predict outcomes of interactions between people when they observe and quantify these signals. Recent advances in monitoring technology and in computing capabilities make this data collection and analysis—which Pentland calls “reality mining”—possible.
Mobile Phone Harrassment: An exploration of students’ perceptions of intrusive texting behavior
Limited research has explored the link between mobile phone use and harassment behaviors. This paper details the findings from a preliminary study that examined perceptions of unwanted communication. (…)
Findings indicated that harassment by text is more prevalent than other forms of off-line stalking and, despite recipients reporting being distressed, there was still a higher level of acceptance of this form of harassment than other forms.
Furthermore, responses to text harassment were associated with a high frequency of behaviors perceived as not actively discouraging further texts, therefore having the effect of prolonging unwanted contact.
With social networking sites enabling the romantically inclined to find out more about a potential lover before the first superficial chat than they previously would have in the first month of dating, this is an important question for the future of romance.
A link between romantic love and face recognition and sexual desire and verbal recognition is suggested. When in love, people typically focus on a long-term perspective which enhances global perception, whereas when experiencing sexual encounters they focus on the present which enhances a perception of details. Because people automatically activate these processing styles when in love or sex, subtle reminders of love versus sex should suffice to change ways of perception. Global processing should further enhance face recognition, whereas local processing should enhance recognition of verbal information. In two studies participants were primed with concepts and thoughts of love versus sex. Compared to control groups, recognition of verbal material was enhanced after sex priming, whereas face recognition was enhanced after love priming. In Experiment 2 it was demonstrated that differences in global versus local perception mediated these effects. However, there was no indication for mood as a mediator.
‘Easy things nobody wants, but what is forbidden is tempting.’ –Ovid
Back in the 60s and 70s, before the sexual revolution had really taken hold, the standard dating advice for women was play hard to get. In some quarters it still is.
Like the Roman poet Ovid 2,000 years earlier, social scientists in the 1960s accepted the cultural lore that women could increase their desirability by being coy. When interviewed, men seemed to agree: they said that hard to get women were probably more popular, beautiful and had better personalities.
Unfortunately every time psychologists used an experiment to test the idea that playing hard to get is a good dating strategy, their results didn’t make any sense. At least not until 1973 when Elaine Walster and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin finally hit upon a method that teased out the subtleties. (…)
So this experiment suggests that playing hard to get only works in the sense that it signals selectivity. But for the person you are after, you should be easy to get because otherwise they’ll assume you’re hard work.
In the light of this experiment we can remix Ovid’s quote to: “Easy things are tempting, but only if they are forbidden to others.”
Is the happy life characterized by shallow, happy-go-lucky moments and trivial small talk, or by reflection and profound social encounters? Both notions—the happy ignoramus and the fulfilled deep thinker—exist, but little is known about which interaction style is actually associated with greater happiness (King & Napa, 1998). In this article, we report findings from a naturalistic observation study that investigated whether happy and unhappy people differ in the amount of small talk and substantive conversations they have. (…)
Naturally, our correlational findings are causally ambiguous. On the one hand, well-being may be causally antecedent to having substantive interactions; happy people may be “social attractors” who facilitate deep social encounters (Lucas & Dyrenforth, 2006). On the other hand, deep conversations may actually make people happier. (…)
Remarking on Socrates’ dictum that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” Dennett (1984) wrote, “The overly examined life is nothing to write home about either” (p. 87). Although we hesitate to enter such delicate philosophical disputes, our findings suggest that people find their lives more worth living when examined―at least when examined together.
I’m writing to you to settle a dispute between my husband and me. We have been married for six years. We’re not terribly adventurous, but we’re not totally vanilla, either. However, there is one issue that is driving me insane: My husband constantly pesters me to have anal sex. We have tried it in the past, and it is NOT my bag. I don’t enjoy it AT ALL. But my husband will not stop pestering me. He thinks if we just keep trying, eventually I’ll come around to liking it. I’m pretty GGG [good giving and game] , Dan, but this is one thing where I draw the line. He thinks I’m being unreasonable; I think he is. Do I need to give in, or does he need to get off my back? Needing Expert Advice!
What distinguishes women with unusually high numbers of sex partners?
We recruited two groups of women who differed in their number of lifetime sex partners in order to investigate several hypotheses related to female sociosexuality. Specifically, we explored whether women who engage in casual sex have low mate value, are especially likely to have come from stressful family environments, or are masculine in other respects besides their interest in casual sex.
Women with many partners were not lower than other women on direct or indirect indicators of mate value. Nor were they more likely to recall adverse family environments during childhood.
On several measures related to masculinity, women with many sex partners were elevated compared with other women.
What to do if cracks appear in a marriage—from seeking counseling to calling it quits. (…)
Many couples work out what to do on their own.
But what should clashing couples do? Marriage counseling became a popular answer to that question after marital referees first appeared in the U.S. in the 1930s. (…) Counseling for couples gradually grew to be an entrenched social phenomenon. (…)
It is all going reasonably well— until Chris decides that he wants to leave. She never quite figures out what went wrong, numbering each possibility as it occurs to her. (There are more then 300 by book’s end.) Even a decent marriage, Ms. Morrison learns, can turn heartbreaking.
Men with wider faces are not only perceived as untrustworthy, they may deserve the reputation, according to a new study published in the journal Psychological Science. (…)
A growing body of science is showing that facial configuration — placement of the eyes, width of the cheekbones and so on — provides clues to a person’s personality, including likelihood to be extroverted, conscientious and, now, trustworthy. While this analysis is not unfailing, it works slightly more often than not.
Research by Masocco et al. (2009), has confirmed what we already knew: marriage is a protective factor for suicide. I would argue, for suicide in men. Marriage tends to be detrimental to women’s emotional health and well-being.
My boyfriend and I have been together for nine months. We are gay. We live in a college town. We both found jobs here after we graduated, so we stayed.
Since his sophomore year, my boyfriend has had an “arrangement” with an older man, a professor at the university. Did I say older? I meant old. We are in our mid-20s; this man is in his late 60s. The old man comes to my boyfriend’s apartment once a week and cleans it. Does his laundry. Washes his dishes. He actually pays my boyfriend for the privilege. (…)
He’s particularly pervy about how he cleans my boyfriend’s bathroom. Dan, the old perv cleans my boyfriend’s toilet bowl with his own toothbrush, which he then uses to brush his teeth the rest of the week!
There is no sex. (Presumably, the old perv goes home and beats off after cleaning my boyfriend’s apartment.) None of this would matter if my boyfriend and I weren’t talking about moving in together. I want this “arrangement” to stop. I don’t feel comfortable using a toilet that a man old enough to be my grandfather cleaned with his toothbrush.
Tired out,
not a miracle in days
oh yeah
Deciders for the lonely
Whispering tears
You try out for nothing then you drop dead
Not a miracle in years
Leisure for the lonely
Whispering [this this this] unecessary, unless [this this this] you’re in.
Die and succeed
I say it out loud but you just don’t care
Farewell well well well well well well, til you know me well
Farewell well well well well well well, til you know me well
Girlfriend
We are far from home, I am with you now
I am longing you, I am longing us two
Who bought a miracle sells these fortune tears
December’s death or glory how you want it?
No not a miracle in years
Deciders for the lonely
Wishing death death death, wishes death death death unless
Die and succeed
I say it out loud but she just don’t care
Farewell well well well well well well, til you know me well
Farewell well well well well well well, til you know me well
Girlfriend
Die and succeed
I say it out loud but you just don’t care
Well well well well well well…
Girlfriend
A phoenix is a mythical bird with a colorful plumage and a tail of gold and scarlet (or purple, blue, and green according to some legends).
It has a 500 to 1,000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again. The new phoenix is destined to live as long as its old self.
