Saturday, 31 August 2013

What I Learned: 10 Things Your Spouse Needs to Hear You Say

Words have creative power.

The universe was created with words.

In marriage and when life gets busier – kids, career commitments e.t.c – the small things tend to suffer first.

Affirming, building, creative words are usually forgotten, replaced by practical, ‘real’, unexciting often uncreative vocabulary.

Once exuberantly expressed and deeply felt, our creative powerful words lie unused.

I am a working progress in every area I’ve listed below and I think most of us are. (Please feel free to add to the list in the Comments section). Here are the 10 things that your spouse needs to hear you say:

1. I need you

We first see vulnerability in our relationship with God. He says we must become as little children in order to inherit His kingdom.

Sweetness and intimacy in marriage is often found in brokenness. We must never stop needing each other. And showing each other that we need each other.

2. I am praying for you

Prayer is powerful. And most people appreciate being lifted up in prayer. When going through a rough patch, your spouse will feel affirmed and cared for. Letting your spouse know that you are praying for them deepens intimacy.

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3. Please, Thank you

Joyce Meyer shares the story of this couple friend of theirs who were incredibly courteous with each other. The words ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ filled their every day vocabulary. It drove Joyce crazy.

“Who in that world does that any more, you are married for goodness sakes!” she thought.

Later on, she began to see and appreciate the value and beauty of a life filled with courtesy, gratitude and humility. Such words reflect our attitude of love, respect, appreciation, honor and awe.

4. I love you because…

I think most of us want to know why we are loved.

When my husband tells me that he loves the way I handled a particular situation or appreciates the way I made a certain meal, I am over the moon.

Being specific, (“I love you because…”) instead of being general, (“I love you”) often builds up our spouses in a deeper way.

5. You are beautiful/handsome

Your husband/wife needs to know that you still find them attractive.Life has a way of altering our physical landscape. We need to hear that we are beautiful in each others eyes.

6. I believe in you

I love hearing these words from Tommy. I feel affirmed and strengthened. I think most men agree that a wife who stands by them (through thick, thin and loony) is a treasure and a gift. We are made to be affirmed.

7. No

Marriages need boundaries. And it’s not just a matter of creating boundaries – the harder work is in observing them. I love it when Tommy puts his foot down. I am
~~pushy~~ persuasive and sometimes the most loving thing Tommy can tell me is “No babe”

Most couples are opposites in terms of personality. We bring different strengths into the relationship and balance each other out.

8. I am sorry, forgive me

So often we say “am sorry” because we want a battle to end. Real repentance means acknowledging your faults and making a turn to become better. It means dealing with yourself first.

When you are open and honest and mean what you say, your spouse will often sense that. And your true repentance maybe the only thing needed to resolve whatever issue is on the table.

9. What do you think?

We need to involve each other in our decision making processes. Involving your spouse communicate that you value them, their thoughts and insights.

For women, it’s one of the ways they feel loved. It affirms your partnership and often helps manage expectations.

10. You are my hero

“Love is the thing that enables a woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across it in his barn boots.” Hoosier farmer

Your spouse may not act “heroic” all the time. But being a hero has nothing to do with perfection. It’s about the things that they do well (there must be something they do well since you married them).

The world already tells your spouse what they can’t do or can’t be. There’s so much pressure to perform and shine. Your spouse needs to refuel from your faucet of love. If you don’t refuel them, who will?

Question – What other things do you think spouses need to hear?

View the original article here

Other articles of interest:

Why Looking for a Low-Maintenance Wife is a Mistake

“Make a list of qualities that you are looking for in a wife.” That was the advice that many people gave me as a single person – in magazines, conferences, and as personal advice. So I started making my list: beautiful, intelligent, fun, adventurous, and low-maintenance.

As I compared my list to my other guy friends, I noticed that “low-maintenance” was on many people’s lists. We all wanted to avoid “high-maintenance” girls, i.e., the girl that takes forever to get ready for a date and is picky about everything. This seemed reasonable and practical. As a contributor for askmen.com said in a recent article, “If you can find a Miss Low Maintenance, hang on to her for dear life!” So I kept my eyes open for that beautiful, low-maintenance girl.

After being married for four years, I realize that looking for a low-maintenance wife was a mistake.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There was nothing wrong with a low-maintenance girl. It was not the act of dating or marrying a low-maintenance girl that was a mistake. It’s the fact that the reason I wanted to find a low-maintenance girl was because low maintenance = easy work. The motivation behind looking for someone low-maintenance was that I didn't want to work very hard to make the relationship work.

This mentality was harmful because there is no such thing as a good relationship that doesn’t require hard work.

Sydney J. Harris insightfully says,

“Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity; yet almost everyone believes that he automatically deserves success in marriage.”

(Girls looking for faithful partners Fish 2 Fish Dating here<<)

To have any successful relationship, including a dating relationship or marriage, it requires both people to work at it. Many people believe that the perfect relationship should happen naturally – that love should come without effort. That is a myth. It takes hard work to make a relationship work.

Don’t make the mistake of looking for a low-maintenance person to date because it will make things easy. If you want a good, satisfying, and healthy relationship, be prepared to put in the time, effort, sacrifice, and hard work to make it happen.

View the original article here

Other articles of interest:
4 Reasons You Shouldn’t Chase a Man
How To Break Up
Buyer Beware: Relationship Warning Signs
Bachelor Pad or Fortress of Solitude?
What WILL Your Soulmate Look Like?
Humor Versus Reality – Talking Too Much on First Date

Friday, 30 August 2013

10 Easy Ways to Gain More Confidence

BUCK UP, SISTER!

10 Easy Ways to Gain More Confidence

SIT WITH YOUR THOUGHTS

Andrew Appel, creative director for Beyond Success Consulting, says it's easy to gain confidence. Sometimes it's as simple as daily silence and meditation. "Find a technique that works for you," he says. "Take some time each day to quiet your mind and senses so that you can develop more control over your thoughts and interactions." Sitting with your thoughts will help you gain clarity -- that way, you won't be so stir-crazed and your self-esteem will rise.

FIND YOURSELF

Knowing who you are and what you stand for can also help give you more confidence. "Identify your unique creative expression," Appel suggests. "Ask yourself, are you working in a job that truly represents what you feel you are here to do in this world?" If not, perhaps it's time to start thinking about how you could move towards your true passions in life, Appel points out.

DON'T COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHERS

As you focus on the passion in your life -- the things that inspire you and give you happiness -- it's also important to stay focused on you, says Lloyd Princeton, a motivational speaker, business coach and author of Marketing Interior Design. "Do not compare yourself to other people," he adds. "Set the bar for yourself based on your abilities and desires and constantly strive to improve based on that bar."

ROLE PLAY

"One can also literally work on non-verbal behaviors, such as body posturing, facial expression and eye contact in order to improve the feeling of confidence," Rego says. He often instructs his patients to take a confident walk around town, using the non-verbal behaviors mentioned, and see how they feel and how people respond to them, compared to how they normally would walk around. "I also have them imagine someone they already see as confident, and act like that person for an hour or so, and then see the results." It's like practice!

STAND TALL

"Stand straight. Shoulders back. Head up," instructs Pamela Gilchrist, author, speaker and president of Gilchrist Group, an international award-winning business and communications firm. "This immediately increases your presence in any setting." Gilchrist also reminds people not to shuffle or slouch. "Walk and sit with authority. If others think you have it, you do."

NEVER LOOK DOWN ON YOURSELF

"Eliminate negative self-talk," Gilchrist stresses. "Replace with themes such as, 'I am good enough, I am successful, I am loved.' Gilchrist recommends reading Melody Beattie's book, The Language of Letting Go. If you believe in yourself, others will, too.

CALM YOURSELF

UCLA psychiatrist and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Judith Orloff stresses you should calm down your stress hormones in order to stay confident. "Eliminate or avoid people and situations that induce the stress response in your body, which speeds up your pulse and mimics the feeling of fear, lowering your confidence," she suggests. "These include caffeine, sugar and other stimulants, as well as emotional vampires or people who drain your energy and make you tense to be around, traffic jams and arguments." Keep the negativity out of the way and your positive energy will radiate.

HYPNOTIZE YOURSELF

OK, that sounds a little strange, but Michael Ellner, a certified medical hypnotherapist, believes it will work. "Self-hypnosis is easily learned, rapidly effective, and, once learned, is always available for use," Ellner says. "Imagine a slice of lemon; see it, smell it and imagine picking it up and hearing yourself tasting it -- I bet your imaginings produced a sour taste and digestive juices. In the same way you can easily learn how to use your memories of soothing sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touches to signal your mind and brain to produce a sense of ease and confidence." All you have to do is imagine and/or remember the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touches that are associated with a past experience in which you were feeling at ease and very self-assured. "Apply those feelings of ease and confidence to new social situations by simply thinking, 'This is going to be fun,'" Ellner instructs.

Feeling free

LET GO

"After all this is said and done, let go and trust life's process," Appel advises. "Life is what is happening while you are making other plans. Things will never unfold exactly as you intend, so be willing to be flexible and adapt to changes and circumstances as they come about." Your ability to go with the flow and be comfortable with changes will give you more confidence, too.

LOVE YOURSELF

It's as easy as that. Gilchrist urges, confidence comes from within -- loving yourself will give your personality the wow factor. Okay, so don't be overly confident and love yourself so much that you become a narcissist. Keep it to a healthy minimum. "Know that you are worthy, special and one of a kind," she concludes.

View the original article here

Puma Kevin, and Life in the Jungle Universe...

By Colin J Robertson

The Clock Starts

The counter starts as the red button and the play button are pressed to start the recording of what is Kevin's life. Of course there were things happening before then but they were on a recorded on a different tape. So 0.00 from this tape starts at Gerardine Road Chiswick.

Geraldine Road, Chiswick, West London.

Early Puma Love

Kevin had what he thought a unique upbringing which cultivated a unique view of his universe. Though of course he never thought it at the time but as he began to grow from the skinny knobbly kneed cheeky playful puma into an adolescent knobbly kneed cheeky playful puma he felt he could assimilate thoughts and the shapes of thoughts concepts. A bit like understanding what a cat or dog is thinking but not knowing necessarily what he should be doing next for them until they'd absolutely asked for it.

This was really in reference to the girls and women in his life. You see he'd always focused on them for as early as he could remember. Yes, really early. I'm talking before he could tie his own shoelace early, before he could even count early. His earliest memory (apart from spitting out that yukki runny egg his father had tried to feed him at the tender age of 3...he'd never touch any eggy stuff for another 25 years. Such a harrowing experience at such a young age, though eggs in his favourite supermarket brand of Angel Cake was okay!) was explaining with plain and simple conviction that the white girl with the long dark straight hair in his kindergarten class photo was his girlfriend. His Dad the powerful Jeff Puma was astonished. Pleased but astonished too.

Truth was he probably had never even said "goo" to her much less made the bold stride across the reading carpet to ask her to be his gal and if she'd like to come round to meet the parents or listen to his T-Rex records (he was an avid T-Rex and Marc Bolan fan). No, it was all hope and wishful thinking.

But why? Why did He think that this was what he wanted more than just a best mate? Why a Girl?!

Get Out to the Country

Years passed (well actually it was probably only a few weeks but that time in relation to his time on earth it felt like large fractions of his lifetime on earth) and he found himself in a new village out from the city life in Geraldine Road, West London, where there was a particular smell to the streets in the city and the climate a hazy sunshine. In London you had to go to see green, here in Kessingland it consisted of some houses in the close and out back a jungle of green. Kevin couldn't work out why he was here. Just a big removal van that he and his older brother Kelvin had sat for hours got them there. The big mother cat wasn't with them but he didn't miss her. Turns out the she was too wild and couldn't be caught in time for the kick off but her daughter Susie was in a cardboard box on the ground in front of me. "Susie" funnily enough was the name he'd given and was also the name of his fantasy girlfriend in the photo!

Kessingland Beach

In Kessingland-on-sea, Suffolk it was the countryside. He never knew it at the time but it truly was. (It was the dimmest point from the centre of the universe or that's what he thought 13 years later). It wasn't so big either. Kevin's mother apparently thought the move was a big mistake. She like his father were from Jamaica and west London is where most had ended up when they came over in the 60s. Eventual she was to grow to love it though. It was peaceful and the challenges and certain blips on the oscilloscope were minor but felt important at the time. Life ticked along.

To give you some idea what life was like for a west Indian family in this East Anglian village in comparison to London, they were the only family in the street to have their own telephone inside their house. Kevin can remember when the neighbours discovered their luxury communicator they would knock on the door and ask to use it. "We've popped some pennies in your money box", they'd say on leaving, a reference to a small wooden money box that sat next to the phone. He could never workout why they did that after all it's inside the house and not a pay phone like the one inside the big red box at the top of the next road!

School Begins

Often you see kid, usually boys howling and holding onto the mothers when it comes the time for their first day at school. Again that time on earth for them was a life time with mummy at their every whim. Not too sure how it was for Kalvin the older one of the two brothers but for Kevin it was now the breaks were off. No sooner than he was inside the school gate and he could release his mum's hand he was off, found some kids playing tag, and he now had the chance to show his speed. After those early years being chased up the road in London by Kalvin being squirted with a Fairy liquid full of water was just the training he needed to get away from these country bumpkins now. Kevin would find any excuse to run every time he could.

Road to Lower School

He quickly mapped out his friends over the coming days and had also got to know the girls too. They were far more interesting to him than the guys. There was something smooth and interesting. They were all princesses in his eyes and ears. They weren't bragful or boasting and to him if they were he found that fascinating and interesting too, like watching a little bird flexing it's muscle in readiness for the day it will fly. He had little thought of what his friends thought of him that he would spend so much time with the girls. In reality he had fallen in love with all of them. As the song says, "when you're in love you know you're in love, no matter what you try to do!" Kevin though felt his place and like a martial artist dropped his weight to stop him getting knocked over if there was a kickback from his interests. He worshipped closely from afar.

Soon the school had gotten too small for him. The 20 or so children there he'd scoped and mapped out. He knew them all and there was no excitement. Like a chewing gum you look forward to everyday but know that after a few hours know that it's flavour will soon be wanting. Kalvin had paved the way and had gone from Kessingland Lower School to Kessingland Upper School within a year of our arrival. This new school would change everything. New kids, being a bigger school. Soon he was on his way on his bicycle now to the big school.

It was a bit of a strange arrangement in that they had a nursery section of kids younger than his own mob that had come up from the Lower school. These little urchins had there own area and playground separate to the one used by the rest of the school. Kalvin had already moved on to the Middle school by the time Kevin arrived on the scene here. He scoped everyone quickly had like a Carl Segan had soon mapped every child as point of light in his broadening universe.

Tracey the Zebra

Starting at the bottom tier of the school (ignoring the Urchins) he was now had massive area to run and like cheetah on the plans of Africa he there was fascinating creatures all around him and girls. Yes, girls like beautiful gazelles, unicorns, horses and young lionesses, zebras and meerkats. They existed in beautiful constellations of friends, mostly older than he was and truly heavenly.

Somehow he had plucked one from the herd and in what seemed like a dream actually was friends with her. There was really know where for them to go in a "relationship" sense we were different animals, but he was happy to hang around. She lived up near the street end of the village, close to the main A12 road that came through the village from London on its way to Great Yarmouth. Tracey was a young Zebra, warm, live and real. She had a Raleigh Chopper bicycle too, which was the coolest bike to have at the time. Her hair was long dark and she had a netball player physique (she was on the netball team). There was just something warm feminine and beautifully mystical about about her. He knew that he liked what she was and honoured everything she was, the balance she brought to the universe. She was an incredible princess but again all he could do was just be. She said fairly early on that one day he could find another girl his age to love. There was nothing physical of course. But it was a tiny dagger to his heart but he had already dropped his weight and there wasn't so much further to fall. He felt that time away from her would have been time wasted. On reflection it seems madness to hear those words from her, he was only a year younger. 1 year though at the age of 7 is like 5 years to an adult and her it must have looked and felt that way too.

Nothing else to do lads?

He had no thought of what others boys of his age would think with his hanging round and being with this older zebra when they were climbing trees or throwing rocks at each other, or playing football or making a nuisance of themselves somewhere. This was a chapter and period not long after starting at her school so the nights were getting longer and the daylight shorter.

Kessingland winters were particularly biting to a young cub like Kevin with his skinny build. To the others it meant nothing and they would go out to play as before. Kevin would effectively hibernate. As for Tracey eventually she grew up it seems but maybe just a single forensic strand of his puma fur might have found its way on to her or something she has and he wouldn't have been forgotten. A girl-friend I think she was...

Thursday, 29 August 2013

What Turns You On? 10 Fascinating Facts About Sexual Attraction

Your brain is reacting to stimuli and sending out signals that you may not even be aware of.

Those were the stated turn-ons and turn-offs for Linda Gamble, Playboy’s Playmate of the Year, 1961. Oh, how we love turn-ons and turn-offs -- as much a must-read as the centerfold was a must-see. It was fun to wonder how you would answer the question, and to wonder what constitutes a turn-on or a turn-off, anyway? People’s likes and dislikes are marvelously capricious, but when it comes to actual sexual turn-ons or attractions, your brain is reacting to stimuli and sending out signals that you might not be aware of, shaping your reactions and choices. From certain sounds to actual physical changes that could alter your sexual self in bizarre ways, here are 10 ways your brain might be controlling the on/off switch for your attractions.

1. Get your motor running.

“You and that car. It was like Love Story. You got it and you loved it and it died.”

That’s what my friend Bob said about the used Mercedes I bought for a song in the '90s, a car that spent more time with the mechanic than with me. The car’s engine had a distinctive sound, and to this day when I hear one like it my entire system perks up.

That’s why I’m not terrifically surprised by the stereotype-confirming study by Hiscox (no joke), a British insurance company reporting that the testosterone in women’s saliva rises when they hear the sound of a sports car. (Testosterone is an important hormone for female sexual arousal, although most of us associate it with men, who produce 20 times more of it.)

Keith Barry of Wired reported in 2008 that psychologist David Moxon had men and women listen to the sounds of four cars -- a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, a Maserati, and an economical compact, a Volkswagon Polo -- and then tested their saliva afterward. Testosterone went up in both men and women after listening to the sports cars, “but the amount women had was off the charts,” Barry wrote. Even women who weren’t into cars had the same reaction.

By contrast, after listening to the Polo testosterone in all groups dropped.

What? Vroom-vroom is sexier than a down-to-earth consideration of fuel economy? Make of it what you will. I’m going to take a moment to listen to this Mercedes engine and dream of what might have been.

>>Learn the secret of simultaneous orgasms here

2. Right on the left.

We probably listen to the sound of sports cars with both ears, but when it comes to whispering sweet somethings it might be advantageous to lovers to try to get around to one ear specifically: the left one. A study from Sam Houston University found that the left ear is better at picking up emotional words than the right. Sixty-two men and women listened to some emotional words (“loving”) and some neutral words (“combine”) read in a voice devoid of emotion, with the words presented to the left or right ear. In an abstract on MITCogNet, study authors T.C. Sim and Carolyn Martinez write, “When emotion stimuli appeared on the left ear, the accuracy of recall was higher, with a mean of 64.43% and 58.15% for the right ear. Our study shows that in the face of competing verbal information, emotional words compete more strongly when they are presented through the left ear.”

An NIH abstract on the study notes that the “findings are consistent with the role of the right hemisphere in the perception of emotional information.”

So, “I love you,” might have stronger impact whispered in the left ear. Anyone else trying to remember which side of the bed you sleep on and wondering how to sneakily switch places?

3. Why the piece of pie in the glass case looks better than the one you’re eating.

Whichever ear your partner whispers those words of love into, the fact is, he does it. He's attentive, attractive (play along here) and always there for you. You’re a lucky duck…and yet…there’s a particular co-worker, one you’d swear is flirting with you, whose shirt is just tight enough to present the outline of a little fantasy, who only pops into your part of the office occasionally. You know it’s not right, but your mind wanders off to that person time and time again, like someone on Silver Alert who can’t remember where home is.

Cheer up, dummy! There might be a reasonable explanation that someone barely there has your rapt attention. Richard A. Friedman wrote in the New York Timesabout a brain scan study from 2001 by psychiatrist Gregory Berns that may explain why some people respond to elusive promise rather than constancy. Subjects getting MRI brain scans were given fruit juice and water, but in one part of the study those rewards came every 10 seconds while in the other they came randomly. Berns found the rewards centers of the brain were more highly activated when the rewards came at unpredictable times than when they came on schedule. This reaction was the same for both rewards, juice or water, even if a patient said she preferred one or the other.

Friedman writes that these reward circuits, when activated, “tells the brain something like 'Pay attention and remember this experience because it’s important.' This circuit releases dopamine when stimulated, which, if it reaches a critical level, conveys a sense of pleasure.” Our reward circuits, Friedman writes, "have evolved over millions of years to aid our survival; new stimuli hold the promise of telling us things we don’t know from which we could benefit.”

From my purely observational standpoint it makes sense that the novel experience would excite the brain to pay attention because it might not come back, whereas something that is always there can always be attended to…kind of the way you listen to breaking news but when you’re watching something that’s been sitting in your DVR since July you know you can get up and wash the dishes because it's not going anywhere.

4. Show us your tips!

Wanting something elusive that you can’t necessarily have is the essence of many types of entertainment, and the lap dancer is right up there; there’s a reason it's called a strip tease.

In their book, The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex and the Science of Attraction, authors Brian Alexander and Larry Young detail the work of psychologist Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico who “tracked stripper income across ovulatory cycles.” The results show that our drawing power is highest when we’re fertile. The strippers who got the most tips were the ones at or near ovulation. From the book:

The effect Miller discovered wasn't small or subtle; he calls it "shocking...." When the strippers Miller chronicled were in estrus, they made about $354 per five-hour shift. Anestrous women made about $264 -- a difference of $90. Menstruation cut dancers' earnings in half. The difference can't be attributed to one woman's attractiveness over another's, or to fashion choices, because the research took place over two months. The estrous and anestrous women are the same women, documented at different points in time….”

But how would the men know the women were ovulating? They didn’t -- consciously.

“When men have been exposed to odor samples taken from women at or near ovulation, they, like their monkey cousins, show a spike in testosterone, compared with men who sample odors taken from women who aren't ovulating. The close contact required for conversation in a noisy club might be giving the men olfactory hints.”

Alexander and Young go on to say that Miller thinks other factors enter this hotter-in-heat picture, including subtle changes in women’s voices, body shape and facial attractiveness as well as her body confidence and even “higher verbal fluency and creativity."

Anyone else just think of an ad pitch for ovulation predictor kits?

>>10 steps to more confidence with women? Click here<<

5. Whither boobies?

Okay, that doesn’t sound terrifically attractive, but since we’re talking strippers, it’s a good question: why are many straight men breast-obsessed?

A good enough answer would seem to be, why not? Breasts are beautiful, often fairly visible (depending on the outfit) and more fun than a room full of puppies, right? But it’s that “fun” part one researcher thinks might hold a chemical key to men’s fixation on breasts in a sexual context.

Larry Young, whom we met in the previous item, spoke to Natalie Wolchover atLife’s Little Mysteries about why women are forever having to say, “Hey, my eyes are up here." When women breastfeed they release the hormone oxytocin, helping them to bond with their babies. Also, nipple stimulation has been shown to be a serious source of sexual stimulation. Wolchover writes, “When a sexual partner touches, massages or nibbles a woman’s breasts, Young said, this triggers the release of oxytocin in the woman’s brain, just like what happens when a baby nurses. But in this context, the oxytocin focuses the woman’s attention on her sexual partner, strengthening her desire to bond with this person.”

Young told Wolchover, “Evolution has selected for this brain organization in men that makes them attracted to the breasts in a sexual context, because the outcome is that it activates the female bonding circuit, making women feel more bonded with him. It’s a behavior that males have evolved in order to stimulate the female’s maternal bonding circuitry.”

It makes an intuitive kind of sense: men like breasts because breast stimulation makes women feel hot and bonded. Breasts make most men happy, because the fact that breasts make most men happy, makes most women happy. Happy?

Read - "10 Weird Facts about Womens Breasts" here<<

6. Sniffin’ the tears.

So we know a few things that turn men on. What turns men off? Crying. It’s a weiner wilter.

Researchers at the Weizman Institute in Israel set out to study the effect of tears on people, expecting to find empathy and sadness. Nope! The New York Times reports that the scent of women’s tears -- applied to pads under men's noses to “approximate a hug with a teary woman” -- didn’t effect male empathy, but it made them decidedly less horny. The effect was observable through lowered testosterone levels, skin responses, self-reporting and brain images. It didn’t happen when men sniffed saline that had been dribbled down a woman’s face instead of real tears.

Why crying has this effect on men is uncertain, but it would seem to work out fairly well, since if you’re crying you’re probably not in the mood for sex -- unless you’re crying about the fact that you never have sex anymore.

7. The things we smell for love.

To further explore the area of scent, consider our grooming process, which is essentially an exercise in body odor eradication: scented soaps, deodorants, shampoos, conditioners, lotions, perfumes and colognes serve to make sure Eau de You will never come to anyone’s attention.

That’s a lot of money spent covering up something that could be the key to romance.

We may think that only animals sniff around one another, but humans sense by scent, too, sending and receive subtle chemical signals and possibly finding ourselves a good biological match in the process. Our nose for MHC -- major histocompatability complex, or the “sequence of more than 100 immune system genes” writes Elizabeth Svoboda in Psychology Today -- could lead us to, or away from, a potential mate, even more quickly than getting a look at their DVD collection.

Svoboda writes about a study by Claus Wedekind of the University of Laussane in Switzerland in which 49 women were asked to sample sniff clean T-shirts that had been worn by men two nights in a row, thus imbuing them with the men’s distinctive odor (the men were supplied with unscented soap and aftershave). Asked to rate the scent of the T-shirts, the women far and away preferred the T-shirts of men who were “immunologically disimilar” to them, which makes sense as the combination of two different MHC profiles would produce more resistant offspring.

See? You spend all kinds of time and money on gyms, clothing and hair color and all you really needed was already seeping out of your pores.

The upside is there’s no one out there setting a standard, or, “There’s no Brad Pitt of smell,” as psychologist Rachel Herz put it, so if you can stink you’re in with a chance. And everyone can stink.

8. Melodies of love.

It’s not exactly news that music and love go together -- or music and any emotion, for that matter. But only recently has science pinpointed exactly what it is about music that makes it soothe the savage breast…or at least makes you frisky.

ABC News reports that researchers at McGill University in Toronto did PET scans and MRIs on eight participants, age 19-24, while they were listening to self-chosen “chill-inducing” music, and found that while dopamine was present in the brain during the music it spiked up to 9% around the “chilling” passages. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter directly associated with pleasures like eating...and sex.

So while it’s long been obvious that a little well-placed music is as good as a little well-placed smooch, now we know just what chemical it is that makes it so. In fact, in a study commissioned by Spotify on 18- to 91-year-olds in the UK on the relationship between music and romance, 40% said the background music would be a more likely turn-on than their partner’s touch.

If any of their partners knew they responded that way you have to wonder how long it would be before the respondents were alone with their music (at last!).

9. You know how you like to masturbate in public?

Well, of course you don’t, for God’s sake. Your social skills aren’t that bad. But people with the rare impairment Kluver-Bucy syndrome suddenly find themselves doing things like that and much worse. Kluver-Bucy is the result of damage to both anterior temporal lobes of the brain.

Altered sexual behavior is not the only symptom, as science journalist Jesse Bering writes in Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? Kluver-Bucy sufferers experience all kinds of alterations including appetite changes, diminished fear responses, memory loss, dementia, and inability to recognize objects. But the sexual change can be pretty severe and scary; Bering describes one female sufferer as masturbating in public and soliciting family members for sex. So while we’ve talked about the normal brain’s response to stimuli -- releasing testosterone or dopamine, etc. -- this is a case of a physical change in the brain making a behavioral change in the person.

If this story doesn’t get you to wear a helmet, wear your seatbelt or otherwise protect your coconut, I don’t know what will.

10. Whatcha gonna do?

Finally, your brain does a lot of things in the present associated with sex, but can it actually predict anything about your sexual future?

Actually it can.

Holly Parker, a lecturer on psychology at Harvard University notes in an email that a study at Dartmouth "found that the extent to which a person’s brain (specifically the nucleus accumbens) perceives sexual pictures as rewarding predicts their sexual behavior six months later.”

Dartmouth Now reports that researchers in the 2012 study got a pretty novel thing going in using brain scans to predict actual behavior. Female participants viewed various images while researchers targeted the nucleus accumbens, part of the brain’s rewards center. The images included food, erotic imagery, environmental scenes, people and animals. Six months later the subjects responded to questionnaires and their responses were compared to earlier responses and brain scan data.

Sure enough, those who had responded strongly in the brain scans to food images had gained weight, and, says Kathryn Demos, “Just as cue reactivity to food images was investigated as potential predictors of weight gain, cue reactivity to sexual images was used to predict sexual desire.” The people who responded to food images gained weight, but didn’t engage in more sex and vice versa.

This research may help people trying to curb compulsive or impulsive behaviors in the future, Parker writes, because as the Dartmouth researchers explain, “when we are exposed to images, situations, people, or objects that are related to something we find rewarding (e.g., food, sex, smoking, alcohol, etc.), this activates the representation of the reward and stimulates our brain to envision how to obtain that reward. The challenge is that sometimes we encounter something that reminds us of a reward and we don’t even consciously realize it, but our brain is thinking of the reward and subconsciously figuring out how to work to get it.”

So the whole time you’re thinking about resisting that cookie, your brain is thinking about how to get the cookie. Replace “cookie” with “nookie” for our purposes in this story.

To let the doctor continue…

“This is why people sometimes feel a craving or urge that comes on suddenly, seemingly out of nowehere. The authors also noted that although the prefontal cortex does a good job of controlling behavior and helping people to resist these cravings, the prefrontal cortex does not do as good a job helping people regulate their behavior when they’re stressed.”

If the sex you’re having when you’re stressed is safe and emotionally healthy, no worries, but if not, Parker says it’s a good idea to “create a stress management plan. On second thought, create a stress management plan regardless -- it’s good for everyone.”

View the original article here