Sexual relationships. I don't get them.

[Sad Robot]

Basically, I mean that it's just a long way outside of my experience and I just can't sympathize with or understand it.

Oh, alright then, that's quite understandable, not everybody can. There are quite a few things in this world I can't understand either.

It doesn't make sense to me that someone can sit down and have a chat with someone that they find beautiful and interesting and without some sort of apparently major defect and just not find them attractive.

Like I implied in my original post, I may indeed have some sort of defect, at least that's how I feel like. However, I'm not sure if it's genetic, I'm more inclined to believe that it's something I've been conditioned to, it's an effect of the impact our prevalent culture had on me when I was too young to fully rationalise these things and it may be impossible to undo that damage. It's also possible that it's a fault in my cognitive programming, that I'm too self-aware and too introspective by nature to be able to relate to what I perceive to be the common human experience. I may be wrong, but those are the kinds of deductions I've made.

Do you not know anybody like that? How do you feel when you meet someone like that?

I have met several people who I've considered aesthetically pleasing and whose opinions and intellect I've appreciated in one way or another. The trouble is, that seems to be the extent to which I can develop my feelings towards those people. More often than not I seem to be using these people to get an ego boost out of it, which I feel is deconstructive and unfair to both parties involved.

The more important part to me, however, is what you were originally trying to express. Maybe you could rephrase it?

I can certainly try. English isn't my first language, and while I do consider myself fairly fluent in it, something can sometimes get lost in translation, so to speak.

What I mean is that I have two theories as to why I feel the way I do.

Perhaps romantic love as well as sexual attraction has been twisted in our society, particularly in the media, in a way that it has, I feel, developed into this kind of self perpetuating myth that adults realise to be false.

Firstly, there's pornography. People always go about saying how it is damaging to children as it gives an unrealistic notion of sex. For me, this isn't because of how sex is depicted in it, as demeaning to women or whatever but because it's a video. It's aesthetically very different from real life. It's lit in a certain way, it doesn't smell like anything, it doesn't physically feel like anything. It's like if someone had only heard guns go off in movies for their entire life and then heard a gun go off in real life for the first time in their twenties, they'd think "wow, that doesn't sound real at all". Notwithstanding how the idea of how a gun works might have been falsely presented -- that's beside the point. It's about how you'd've grown up to think guns look and sound and feel a certain way that didn't reflect reality at all. Now, that's not such a big deal when it's guns, but when it's something as fundamental to our biology as sex... it can be very damaging to a person who's growing up. You base your sexual fantasies on porn and if you end up having sex for the first time as a fully developed adult, by that time an encounter with real sex feels wrong, smells wrong and looks wrong. You've been conditioned to get aroused by an unrealistic notion that has overridden your biology.

This same logic, I think, applies to romantic love. We grow up being subjected to this Hollywood aesthetic of love and while as an adult, as with sex, you can rationalize that real love isn't like that but the damage has already been done. You've already been conditioned to a certain feeling of love that isn't equivalent to the real thing, the one that you've been genetically programmed to feel in certain situations.

The other theory being that it isn't so much a case of social conditioning as it is an individual's tendency to be so introspective, so self aware and over-analytical that they essentially reason themselves out of certain feelings and instincts that are commonly considered essential to the human experience, such as sex and romantic love.

 

[Good morning blues]

Chopped on down

All right, I think I understand a bit better. Just to clarify, when I said "without some sort of apparently major defect," I was referring to the person you're chatting with, not you - I have met a bunch of people that I think are foxy and interesting and did not have any interest in them whatsoever because they were clearly psychotic or they had a bad reputation or they had slept with Joe Paling or whatever.

As regards the rest of your post, while I totally get and agree with your porn/Hollywood analysis, based on my armchair pop-psychology analysis of some posts you have made on the Internet, I think your real problem is the latter one. If you feel like you're using people as an ego-boost, you need to figure out how you are relating to them any differently then you are to your best friend. Just because you're getting an ego boost out of having a good time with someone you find attractive doesn't mean that you're exploiting them; healthy relationships with anyone - family, friend, sexual partner, relationship partner - have that effect. Humans are fundamentally self-interested; we don't love people, we love how people make us feel, because how we feel represents the entirety of our understanding of the universe. As long as both people are happy, that distinction is completely inconsequential.

The other explanation is that you're just not meeting people that you feel challenged by and just need to keep looking, which seems like a fair enough issue to me, but either way you should keep in mind that nobody needs to feel guilty about feeling good.

 

[Sad Robot]

If you feel like you're using people as an ego-boost, you need to figure out how you are relating to them any differently then you are to your best friend.

I guess the difference is that I don't use my friends for an ego boost. But yes, it may be an inconsequential definition in general. I guess it just matters to me.

Just because you're getting an ego boost out of having a good time with someone you find attractive doesn't mean that you're exploiting them;

No, not necessarily, it's just that I don't really tend to have a good time with them. I simply get an ego bost out of the notion that they're attracted to me or that I make them feel good, or indeed give them an ego boost.

healthy relationships with anyone - family, friend, sexual partner, relationship partner - have that effect. Humans are fundamentally self-interested;

I agree, but there's a difference to a healthy relationship and using someone.

we don't love people, we love how people make us feel, because how we feel represents the entirety of our understanding of the universe. As long as both people are happy, that distinction is completely inconsequential.

I suppose, it's just that I'm not happy in those kinds of situations. Because, as I explained, I don't really get the whole situation or how I assume I should feel. Like I'm missing out on something.

The other explanation is that you're just not meeting people that you feel challenged by and just need to keep looking, which seems like a fair enough issue to me, but either way you should keep in mind that nobody needs to feel guilty about feeling good.

I agree with the sentiment. Maybe I haven't met the "right" person. It's a theory I had all but given up on.

 

[BonsaiK]

So. Sexual relationships. I don't get them.

I mean, I understand them. At least I think I do. From a biochemical and social point of view, I think I understand them. It may be that I have deep psychological issues, I'm not expecting anyone to address them on an internet forum but I do feel there is room for intellectual discourse here.

I think society is not only over-sexualized but over-romantisized too. Since a little kid I've been subjected not only pornography (nobody forced it on me, my parents were very protective of me, I took it upon myself to discover it) but this to this Hollywood version of love that I, in restrospect, find perhaps even more damaging to a young person's mind than porn.

For a long time, virtually all my teen years, I was a bit fat, quite geeky, and very self-conscious about it all. I grew up fantasizing about the perfect relationship and all that. Basically, in today's terms, I was one of these 13 year old girls that have a Twilight fetish. Only I was a guy and my drug of choice was Buffy. I never really had any chance of approaching a real girl, I never even realised it could've been an option. I didn't even have any female friends.

Now before this all starts to sound like pathetic emo whining, I assure you, I realise I wasn't the only one and I'm not quite like that anymore. Anyway.

I hit 19. I was living in a dorm, I took it upon me to lose the weight. I did. All of it. I hit the gym, got a better haircut, got some new clothes and a slightly improved self esteem. Suddenly I was the hottest thing in college. I kid you not. At parties I was very reluctant to go to in the first place, I had these models and exotic dancer types asking me if they could "spend the night". I was baffled, got a massive egoboost and got quite cocky. For the first time in my life I realised I could go and ask out virtually any girl I fancied and there was a good chance they'd go out with me. Being the faux intellectual type I am, not many of them could hold my interest. So I had a couple of brief things with girls but it never felt right. I realised how all those fantasies and idealised notions I'd grown up on had corrupted me, I guess, every time I had a thing for someone, I realised I didn't have a thing for them but that I'd automatically begun to twist them into some perfect ideal in my head. I couldn't relate to the concept of a relationship, not even real sex.

Now, before you go "yeah, so? You don't want a relationship. Big deal. On to the next topic." I'd like to point out that I feel like I'm missing out on something, as if it's this essential part of the human experience and I don't know how to go about it.

As I'm typing this, I realise that someone may interpret this as being a case of a closet homosexual not realising they're gay. Well, I wish that were the case, I really do. In all honesty, I'm probably slightly bisexual, I think most people are, I've just never really had any noticeable sexual interest towards men. Although, perhaps it is not quite right to say I've had interest in women either, since what I've grown up thinking women are and feel like is far removed from reality, making my notions of what is sexually arousing and romantic incredibly unrealistic and something that doesn't have a relatable equivalent in the real world.

I think a lot of people have problems with relationships and sexuality because of how unrealistic the expectations are, how much of the whole concept seems to be a self perpetuating myth rather than a natural part of human behaviour. I mean, of course sexual relationships are natural, just not this bastardized version of it seemingly everyone has bought into. Now, I do believe there are other people who feel the same way, so feel free to share your thoughts and feelings on the matter.

I have discussed this issue in the Relationship Problem Thread, which is at the following link: ---> http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.117161?page=14#3887188