Male loneliness, sex and prostitution...

[IgnoredOne]

Something vaguely interesting that I saw on a documentary on prostitution that other day was that quite a few men paid enormous sums to prostitutes(in the order of over a thousand a hour) not for the sex, but for the sense of company and the "feeling of having a girlfriend."

I think it says something about men of my age in the twenties - sex is important to us, but its not as much the act itself as the belief that we could get to it with a girl if we wanted to. A large part otherwise is just the general desire to be, yes, loved, even if it is an ultimately hollow and negotiable love. We're willing to pay enormous sums just to have this sense of company and control over sex.

Why do we need control over sex? I think that the idea that we're good enough to be able to have a girl of our own is a large part of our identity, perhaps even a genetic need. I find that for women, sex is often the result of emotional fulfillment For men, it is the opposite - emotional fulfillment is the result of sex (even casual sex), or perhaps it is just the confidence that we could have sex if we wanted to.

Without that confidence or belief in ourselves, we have a tendancy to just fall apart in some way or another. Our masculinity is threatened by the fact that we can't seem to succeed; we often feel worthless at times, angry and frustrated at others. This anger and frustration could be directed at otherselves or at women, but it is doubtlessly there. It is the sum result of not understanding why we are failing, of some innate belief of, "Hey,we're not all that bad," so we either rip ourselves apart in search of the bad to try to fix others" or lash out at others for not seeing the good in us.

Understanding and rationality help, but ultimately, those drives within us are subconsious and incredibly powerful.

Regards,
IO

 

[Luna]

Wooow! I had a fight with a friend of mine yesterday, cause of that. I told him he should get a girl cause if he did that when he was younger, maybe he would be different. Its just cause in my country its an ugly thing to do but we have tolerance when guys do that. I said he would be more secure about himself, not so shy, if he did that when he was younger. He is 28 years old, tall, strong, not bad looking (he is pretty ok) and still virgin and i dont get that. And he said what you said, that he wants to do that with someone he loves and its really new, to me, to see a man saying this and feeling like this.

 

[IgnoredOne]

Wooow! I had a fight with a friend of mine yesterday, cause of that. I told him he should get a girl cause if he did that when he was younger, maybe he would be different. Its just cause in my country its an ugly thing to do but we have tolerance when guys do that. I said he would be more secure about himself, not so shy, if he did that when he was younger. He is 28 years old, tall, strong, not bad looking (he is pretty ok) and still virgin and i dont get that. And he said what you said, that he wants to do that with someone he loves and its really new, to me, to see a man saying this and feeling like this.

We're really quite simple creatures that want to love and be loved

Regards,
IO

 

[Luna]

Lol you guys are simple in a way and pretty complicated in another. I dont get any of you, neither my father, neither my best male friend and even less my ex bfs. If someday i have a son, i will not understand him either. lol Maybe a man that reads it will say the same about women, dunno. But after see 2 guys, in less than 12 hours, saying the same thing, something changed... just a litlle tinny bit... You said "Hey,we're not all that bad" but maybe you are not many (it would be nice if you were all that good lol). I wish him good luck cause he will need!

 

[sloth4urluv]

Love is way more important to me than sex.
I want to be wanted by someone.

 

[Hijacc]

Love is way more important to me than sex.
I want to be wanted by someone.

Aye I agree

 

[IgnoredOne]

Lol you guys are simple in a way and pretty complicated in another. I dont get any of you, neither my father, neither my best male friend and even less my ex bfs. If someday i have a son, i will not understand him either. lol Maybe a man that reads it will say the same about women, dunno. But after see 2 guys, in less than 12 hours, saying the same thing, something changed... just a litlle tinny bit... You said "Hey,we're not all that bad" but maybe you are not many (it would be nice if you were all that good lol). I wish him good luck cause he will need!

Oh, trust me that we don't understand women.

But I do find it interesting that you took my post as a comment that guys are only looking for love when a significant part of it was talking about the emotional benefits of casual sex(or more importantly, the perception in us that we could have casual sex if we wanted to) for men.

For me personally, for example, I do everything with passion and greatly cherish a girl that I can appreciate on every level: the physical as much as the spiritual and the emotional. But just knowing that I /could/ have access to casual sex is an enormous confidence booster to me, whereas during the time when I did not have that option at all, I honestly felt less of a man and a human being.

Regard,
IO

 

[Robin]

Oh, trust me that we don't understand women.

I'll second that!

 

[Luna]

But I do find it interesting that you took my post as a comment that guys are only looking for love
------------
Lol it was cause i had the fight lol and i was like "no way!!! its not just him?" So i started talking about it. Yes... i agree that guys can have casual sex if they wanted to and that was/is my point of view that started all the fight but now i read that its not exactly what is wanted. Guys dont like to talk about feelings/relationship. If you want to scare your bf, tell him: "We need to talk" and keep doing that and you will scare him away, even if you were doing that to help him. Alex, my best friend from the military school, used to call me and ask what to say for a girl to get what he wanted or asking if he was doing good with the "lies". I used to help him *shame on me* and just stoped it when he started just leaving the girls after make them fall in love by him. I saw guys making bets that would get a girl and it was in the college, we were not kids. Well, thats why i was so with your post, cause its different from what i saw my whole life.
Blah!!!! so much to talk and ask about! (like i said, guys dont like to explain things too much lol). All i know is that he said i was talking like a tipical? (dunno the word he used) man and i thought: and you are sounding like a girl... but just said that he was thinking, like me, when i was younger (and i smiled ^.^).
"I'll second that! Wink"
I desagree. :] We are pretty easy to understand and deal with lol.

 

[IgnoredOne]

I would be very reluctant to talk about my feelings if I had my real name associated with anything on this site as well. Talking about what we feel shows weakness, and its one of the things that for better or worse, we can't do.

From what I've seen, everytime I talk to a girl about how I actually feel, I will be quickly relegated to the status of a best friend and nothing more. The only way that I can actually hope to be considered as a sexual prospect is to not discuss anything that displays weakness. I think that the fact is, whether we want to admit it or not, any man who admits to weakness on any consistent basic will be trod on and overrun.

So, in many ways, women are as responsible for creating men as the way we are as men are.

Regards,
IO

PS: Also, we don't all have the option of casual sex. The fact that many of us seem to be cut off from all sexuality complete is probably one of the major reasons why quite a few guys are here. Your virgin friend, for example, has a state of mental self-abuse and possibly self-hate, not to mention incredible insecurity that's almost impossible to comprehend.

 

[sloth4urluv]

Your virgin friend, for example, has a state of mental self-abuse and possibly self-hate, not to mention incredible insecurity that's almost impossible to comprehend.

wait were you talking about me?

 

[Luna]

So, in many ways, women are as responsible for creating men as the way we are as men are.
----------------
I agree! But its not just the girls fault, its the moms fault too. At least here, girls and boys are treated different by their parentes (more the mother).

Talking about what we feel shows weakness, and its one of the things that for better or worse, we can't do.
-----------------
Yes, maybe you are right. Probably... I like to know what the guy feels but he needs to wait me to like him. If he tells me how he feels and when its way too much, i get worried. Im sure that guys can talk all they feel for the girl but they need to wait until she feels something too. So it will not be weakness, it will be cuuuuute.

Your virgin friend, for example, has a state of mental self-abuse and possibly self-hate, not to mention incredible insecurity that's almost impossible to comprehend.
----------------
I agree again. I dont understand him. He says he wanted to save this moment for someone that he would love and he says that when he was 22, he was totally in love by a girl and told her how he was feeling and told her he was virgin. He says she acted like if it was cool but , later, she told many friends about his secret and they went to ask him if it was true and all of them were laughing. And he is so weird that after 6 years, he says things like: she is happy with the guys that treat her like a s*** lol i really feel the anger on him, you know? So after her, he stoped looking for girls until he met me, in a war game , playing. And since we started talking i saw he was a trap, a big trap. I just see him as friend and thats why i told him to go get a girl but not just cause "I will be quickly relegated to the status of a best friend and nothing more" like you said. No!!!! Its cause he is too much responsibility. He is alone for too long, nobody never liked him, he scares me cause everything he feels is too much intense. Just to let it easier to understand... when i met him, i had a bf and everybody that used to play that game knew that. And even knowing i was not single, he used to follow me wherever i went to play. I could choose any server of any country of any clan and 5 minutes later, there was him, connecting. I stoped using my nick so i could play in peace. Soooo he is a trap, anyone can see it and thats why i relegated him to his status of friend, not cause he told me his feelings but because he is weird (hope this is the word)

 

[jales]

So, in many ways, women are as responsible for creating men as the way we are as men are.


i disagree. the same could be said for men.
-- you'll complain that we dont go out and hit on you'll, in the main when women do this we are rejected. at least this has been my experience and as for expression of feeling making you no longer a possible sex parthner... that's not true... i've seen guys used feelings they dont even have to get sex tons and tons of times.


Males might be quite lonely no-a-days though. thousands for company..i guess they are quite rich as well.

 

[Skorian]

What game Luna?

 

[IgnoredOne]

i disagree. the same could be said for men.

Same could be said of anyone. Identity is as much a shared construct as it is innate.

-- you'll complain that we dont go out and hit on you'll, in the main when women do this we are rejected. at least this has been my experience

You may notice that I never mentioned that women should go out and hit on men. That's because I've never said that they should. I know that I would have been incredibly uncomfortable with it, no matter how lonely I was, simply because it feels such strange and unusually aggressive behavior coming from a woman.

and as for expression of feeling making you no longer a possible sex parthner... that's not true... i've seen guys used feelings they dont even have to get sex tons and tons of times.

I have to disagree once and completely with you here. And the evidence clearly is on my side.

As I, almost all of the men on the board, and no small number of women here mentioning their "best friends" here have demonstrated - genuine feelings from the guy, no matter how intense, mean very little insofar as actually getting the girl.

Almost everything in my personal experience bears this out. Its not universally true that it will fail, but asking any girl to help you almost never elicits feelings of attraction from her: pity, guilty and sympathy at times, and perhaps even enough to get pity sex from her. But spectacularly few women will return affections unless she was already attracted to the guy in question. Typically it ends us in the cycle of hearing from the girl that, "you're a good person and you deserve so much better, but not me."

This topic is too complicated for a 100 word blurb, but the short of it is simply yes, men who demonstrate feeling will for all practical purposes be seen as weak and even less attractive than before.

As for the guys you mentioned, more than likely they had already been seen as attractive(social credit from having girlfriends in the first place), and by actually showing feelings as a vulnerability, they are able to become "safer" and more women are willing trust them to their own peril.

I've had women actually tell me before that they knew that I would be good for them, rationally, but nonetheless they wanted to wait on someone else who didn't and wouldn't treat them as well. It simply seems that female attraction in their early twenties has no real relation to how healthy it is for them.

Women rationalize, trying to justify what they did after the fact or why they were in the situation in the first place. But in an objective light, most women I've known don't use actual logic to compute their relationships at all before deciding to enter into one.

This is sounding sexist, so I'll amend the direction of my post and possibly justify why women feel the way they do. Perhaps my favorite explanation came from L, who is just excellent at such pithy wisdom:

"What use is a man if he behaves like a woman?" and "The first is that as women, subjectively, part of the process of being made beautiful is being breakable. Vulnerability and being a fragile creature are what make us uniquely feminine in the first place."

And she's right. If we behave like women, showing weakness and emotion, then what does that say about us as men? Not anything much good, that's for certain. We remove ourselves from the realm of romantic interest and move into the realm of being a nurtured child to her. She takes on a kind of mother role to us - which is why we are the "best friend."

Males might be quite lonely no-a-days though. thousands for company..i guess they are quite rich as well.

Well, the power of women to withhold sex and the power of men to control women in response(or is it vice versa?) is a dance as old as time.

Regards,
IO

PS: Last of all, I should discourage people from drawing any absolutes from this. While showing feeling usually didn't work for me, there were exceptions with certain women brought up in unusual circumstances. The only absolute I can and will say is that a man cannot ever be passive - no matter how badly he pursues a woman and how many times he falls on his face, just by doing so, he's already given himself better chances on than by being totally passive and waiting. If he can learn from his mistakes and not repeat them, then his chances are very good.

PPS: The dynamics mentioned above tends to fade into much more rationality by the time women hit their thirties. It does make me suspect hormones.

 

[midnightlamp]

The most relevant question involving sex is its relevance in the grand sense of life: What does physical affection, relayed in its utmost intensity and shared between two people, offer to self-actualization and contentedness before death?

Without that confidence or belief in ourselves, we have a tendancy to just fall apart in some way or another. Our masculinity is threatened by the fact that we can't seem to succeed; we often feel worthless at times, angry and frustrated at others. This anger and frustration could be directed at otherselves or at women, but it is doubtlessly there. It is the sum result of not understanding why we are failing, of some innate belief of, "Hey,we're not all that bad," so we either rip ourselves apart in search of the bad to try to fix others" or lash out at others for not seeing the good in us.

Understanding and rationality help, but ultimately, those drives within us are subconsious and incredibly powerful.

Regards,
IO

From my point of view this is how I see the foregoing statement: Without the confidence and belief in the purpose of life, everyone is susceptible -- and likely -- to falling apart and having the power of their ambition and imagination demolished at once. Our humanity is threatened by our failure to establish genuine connectivity and as a result intense frustration, anger, hopelessness, helplessness, and, when it worsens to such a point, indifference all arise. All of those feelings furthermore signify a frustration with ourselves, asking "Is it really true that everyone else is right and it's me that's all wrong?" or a frustration with others, asking "Why can't they relate to me; are they failing to care or try or do they simply lack the experience or thinking time required to give me what I want and what I see us all as needing?" There is, additionally, that innate sense of belonging and affection that humans embody; and without that connectivity, irritability and animosity become full blown. I couldn't possibly agree more with that last statement you made, and that segues into my next thought.

Sex is an extension of the branch of physical affection, and I like to think that anything involving sensual actions is an innate desire; most of the time, at least in my experience, the thought of holding someone or simply lying side by side is infinitely more appealing than any lustful fantasy and sometimes moderately more appealing than any consummating fantasy. But why? Why do these thoughts arise, and why is the passion for their fulfillment so strong?

The mind and the body must work in confluence, and in the act of sex or any physical affection they do. Is this true for everyone? I honestly have no idea, but I should shudder to think that anyone could truly have sex with complete mental detachment; not letting go and seizing the moment to revel in mutual joy, but to focus on self-satisfaction and the use of another person's anatomy to satiate some primal appetite. Following in that vein, should not the act of sex be a combination of physical and mental wants? All of you have stated this point either implicitly or explicitly thus far such an idea, and it brings to light that grander sense I mentioned earlier.

Sex in and of itself seems to be a catharsis, be it of primal or intellectual or confluent nature, and as such is it needed? Thinking of intimacy produces much torment that kills much time, but to what avail does the actualization of that desire lead? The desire for such actions seems to signify a yearning for a type of completion that is beyond human comprehension: The completion of the confluence of the mind, observed and understood, and the body, innately instilled in all of humanity and observed yet to no comprehensive conclusion.

So where is that confluence? Casual sex fulfills physical desire but does nothing for the emaciation of the soul, but is it also true that strictly understanding another's ideas and perspectives whilst bereft of that physical satiation is equally unsatisfying in light of the fact that the body is kept out of the connection? Is it possible for the mind, lastly, to annul all physical desire with rationality and higher understanding? In any case, the one absolute conclusion that perhaps may be drawn from the entirety of this thread is as follows: Humanity has two appetites, and should either be left unsatisfied the individual will remain unfledged, forever trapped as a starveling forsaken by the totality of what the world has to offer.

 

[Skorian]

As far as I am concerned any guy that goes to a prostitute should be shot. Any guy that pressures a woman to be a prostitute should be shot. If you look at women as some tool to make you feel better about yourself. You should be shot. I can hardly tolerate people who look at others as tools.

Any who think women exist for their self-gratification should try walking in their shoes for a while. So many women actually hate men it's frightening. Many by the time they reach their 40's would just as soon cut our balls off and one can hardly blame them.

The kind of women you seem to talk about has been debased and demoralized to the point that emotions no longer matter. What you talk about is an inferiority complex fed by wanting to believe that men are superior. All it really amounts to is every time you tell women they are irrational, your basically slitting their throats and bleeding out the best part of who they are. All out of jealousy. In doing so you demoralize and debase each other. You believe there is a such thing as perfect logic and rationality. All that really exists are opinions, observations, and a few scant facts that even themselves often can be open to speculation. No one is a perfectly rational or logical being. To believe so is one of the ultimate states of arrogance and self-delusion. Since most thing's in reality are just delusions. We see things for what we believe they are, not for what they really are. We aren't even a fraction as smart as some would really like to believe. We are the exact same beings today that used to believe the sun, moon, and the stars were gods. Only today we have new illusions that we choose as individuals to believe.

It's a strange thing this mirror we all look into when we look at the world. Usually all things we believe we see in others really is just a reflection of ourselves. When we believe we are more rational and others are less so. Usually it means just the opposite.

I find it strange that my father used to always talk of how logical he was. Only in reality he was the most emotionally out of control and irrational person I have every known. He could never figure it out. No one could even point it out to him. He was completely blind to himself. If you actually tried to outright tell him he would lose control of himself.

It is funny how so many guys think of themselves as rational, but lose their temper and are so angry they are constantly out of control. What’s more in complete and total denial of that anger. Since reality really is what you believe it is. If you believe you are rational and in control, then you most surely are, in your own mind. Allowing for complete denial of that which is real.

 

[Luna]

What game Luna?
--------
Enemy Territory *.* I used to skip college to play *.* My ex bf, that i met in college, used to skip it too lol. Dont try cause, if you try and like it, you will start getting sick a lot, you know? Calling your friends and saying: tell the boss im too sick today, cant work! lol

I know that I would have been incredibly uncomfortable with it, no matter how lonely I was, simply because it feels such strange and unusually aggressive behavior coming from a woman.
----------
I agree but the new generation doesnt lol. Things are changing at least here. Now doesnt matter who is "hunting"
anymore.

"you're a good person and you deserve so much better, but not me."
---------
=X
lol just kidding, im not making fun, tho. The guy is weird and im not into the "internet bf"... sooner or later i would want to meet and, if he follows me in a game, i cant imagine how it would be if we start a relationship ^.^ He deserves somone that will love him and follow him and so on...
OUCH! theres a lot to read

be seen as weak and even less attractive than before.
----------
Nope, just if he is weird and scary.

midnightlamp, duuuude, i tried to read what you said but my english is like... too weak lol

Humm ok... we will never agree here cause its really each ones opinion and we are all talking about our own experience s. But, anyway, its really cool to know that guys (not all) think different from what i always knew they used to think about making love.