dragoongfa said:
My exes all said that I had a very high sex drive, when I was with them it was ordinary for us to have sex every day, many days more than once. The weird thing is that I don't have any problem with very long dry spells and during these dry spells my sex drive takes a nose dive (currently I am approaching the 9 month mark, my longest is 13 months). Spoke to a couple of psychologists who specialize in this particular field and they said that what drives my sexual appetite when I am with someone ain't the sex but a deeply ingrained psychological need for intimacy.
In the words of the one shrink I liked better:
Sex isn't just about the act itself but also the intimate fact that you are doing it with someone that shares romantic feelings with you.
I love that idea, and I think it has become a factor, but I think it all boils down to biochemistry.
Two biggest factors to sex drive (for men and women) is testosterone and physical capability. Almost anything that gets your body to send out signals to be ready for activity increases testosterone, waking up after a good night's rest that coordinates with biological night/day cycle (kreb?), working out, many stimulants, feeling an active sense of attraction. The physical capability, for lack of a better term atm, ties in as if you are in a state that is going to prevent your body from triggering the 'get up and go' signals then none of those things are going to work, the body will ignore or deactivate the free testosterone, and/or have trouble delivering it throughout the body. Factors for that are cardio-vascular health, the balance of other hormones and neuro-transmitters, energy available throughout the system (muscle glycogen levels, ATP in various cells, blood oxygen levels, metabolic rate, etc). The other side of physical capability is making sure you have all the raw ingredients necessary to produce more testosterone and the various other components that tie in. So consuming a diet that provides decent amount of fats (saturated ie non-hydrogenated fats that are solid at room temperature like meat/animal products, or poly-unsaturated like your omega-n's, avoid hydrogenated and vegetable oils that do not have high omega 3,6,7,9) cholesterols, good availability of essential amino acids, but in far less quantity than the fats, vitamins/minerals particularly Zinc, and some sterols/hormone analogues (Ginseng) while avoiding eating too much protein, carboyhydrates, the mono-unsaturated and hydrogenated fats, and the wrong sterols (Soy). The probably order of importance is cardio health, energy, testosterone, diet.
Factors that reduce the positive factors: exhaustion, stress, inactivity, living out of sync with natural cycle (sleeping during the day, wake/active during the night), estrogen analogues like the sterols in soy beans, high blood sugar, abnormal blood pressure, restricted blood vessels, impaired breathing, etc.
Crazy things that tie in with intimacy (why I quoted the post): Kissing, and to a lesser extent being really close to someone physically (where you can smell them without having many other smells getting in the way, lets our bodies evaluate how good a genetic pairing we would make with the other person by evaluating pheromones and such. If the pairing is really bad we will get turned off, and possibly even feel disgusted by that person or at least their closeness. A little bad to neutral, no effect/boredom/disinterest, good, attraction, increased heart rate, happy/energetic neurotransmitters/hormones, and lastly a REALLY good match can trigger intense release of hormones/neurotransmitters to the point of euphoria, fun point these are essentially the same reactions that make some things (Heroin, Nicotine, etc) so addictive, and why some break ups can be so devastating, your are pretty much going through withdrawal from a physical addiction.
Now it gets really weird, so when our body finds a good mate it generates chemicals that prime us for sexual activity and chemicals that pretty much make us addicted to the person which further increases the chances of successful mating (through future attempts and the want to stay together even after mating and raising the children), and we cognitively recognize these feelings as attraction, desire, intimacy, love, etc. Since those feelings/thoughts are directly connected to the physical reaction, triggering the feeling/thought can then trigger the physical events. So thinking about how much you romantically love someone, experiencing something we associate with someone we have felt a strong attraction to, seeing pictures that resemble the traits commonly had by people we are attracted to and/or traits common among highly sexually primed individuals (prominent/large sex organs, fitness, etc), really anything that triggers feeling or strongly remember feeling desire, can trigger the same reactions as being physically near them. This is how people may start feeling legit aberrant desires with all the reinforcement that comes with a powerful addiction that makes getting rid of those desires all but impossible (children -don't produce enough of the hormones/pheromones, family -produce our own pheromones, inanimate objects, etc -just a note, etc doesn't include homosexual attractions, the pheromones are more about what is in our chromosomes and not which chromosomes are in our genetics, males/females produce the same things so homosexual attractions are pretty much as likely to naturally occur as heterosexual ones).
I dunno it is kind of awesome, we basically are just reacting to our biochemistry, but because we didn't know that and came up with all of these explanations and rationalizations for these feelings, those explanations (like romantic love) actually became true and can increase the effects of the biochem. The crappy side of this is that the absolute best situation is when we have an innate physical reaction to a person and develop the feelings of romantic love (yay double the dopamine!), but because what we think and emotionally feel can create the same reaction it can make it really difficult to find a good match because we may learn that someone matches the physical, social, mental, and/or emotional traits of what we "should" find attractive and relying on that fall in love with someone who we don't have that primal connection to (which increases likelihood of infidelity or just stagnation of desire), it also means that through knowing what we "should" find attractive, we may not even consider someone who, if we had made out with, would have found an amazingly powerful biological compatibility and desire for. Studies have shown that relationships that have that pheromone/genetic compatibility are more likely to feel the same way about their significant others for their whole lives no matter how much time is spent with or apart from each other), and the implication is without that our mental support for what we want in a partner can change over time, so being with someone we "should" be attracted to vs someone we actually are is kind of tragic. Though to be clear, I'm not saying the biological desire trumps the mental/emotional desire, being self aware, we are super complex, what we want/need in a partner is probably as, if not more, important than what our genes want in a partner.
(For reference, the studies/articles that tend to consider the biological nature of attraction tend to be from the fields of Biology, Chemistry, Bio-Chemistry, Neurology, and Cognitive Science, with Cog-Sci probably having the best chance of considering the non-biological parts as well).
