What do men and women really want from each other?

[popeye1945]

Biology does not follow the fashions of the times, so what was true a thousand years ago is still true today. Women are more materialistic mainly because they have much more invested in the bearing and raising of children, they marry on the same economic level or up never down, the male does not have the option of marrying up generally speaking. A little skit from Chris Rock the comedian: Fellows, when you get a new girlfriend what do your friends ask you about her first ----- WHAT DOES SHE LOOK LIKE? Ladies when you get a new boyfriend what is the first thing your girlfriends ask,----- WHAT DOES HE DO? The male is just as unromantic in that it is all looks for him but looks are important, young, healthy, and well put together means she's up to motherhood and raising a family. It really is the will of the species isn't it, kind of unromantic but there it is. Chris Rock again, only women, children and dogs are loved unconditionally, a man has to provide and protect, same old same old as the eons roll on.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Biology does not follow the fashions of the times, so what was true a thousand years ago is still true today. Women are more materialistic mainly because they have much more invested in the bearing and raising of children, they marry on the same economic level or up never down, the male does not have the option of marrying up generally speaking. A little skit from Chris Rock the comedian: Fellows, when you get a new girlfriend what do your friends ask you about her first ----- WHAT DOES SHE LOOK LIKE? Ladies when you get a new boyfriend what is the first thing your girlfriends ask,----- WHAT DOES HE DO? The male is just as unromantic in that it is all looks for him but looks are important, young, healthy, and well put together means she's up to motherhood and raising a family. It really is the will of the species isn't it, kind of unromantic but there it is. Chris Rock again, only women, children and dogs are loved unconditionally, a man has to provide and protect, same old same old as the eons roll on.

Shallow rubbish. Women want a man that they are attracted to. If you have two men who look about the same but one has a good job and is confident and the other one is a layabout with no confidence and no job who do you think is going to be more attractive to women? That's hardly about 'gold digging'. It's about not being attracted to a hopeless lump.

[Iwannaplato]

The answer to the OP's question seems obvious, but they say one must always be on guard when one encounters the word "obvious".

As some have said it depends on the individuals involved. Further, as far as I can tell, most people want a few different things from the opposite sex (perhaps even if they are homosexual but certainly if they are heterosexual).

Then we have the Darwinian answers, which are confused. They want to procreate. That's confusing the reason we might be the way we are with our motivations. Even from a Darwinian perspective, if we have been naturally selected (long before our species arose) to be motivated to procreate, HOW this happens is not determined by the function. If it ends up creating babies if our strongest reason for wanting the other person is emotional intimacy, then that stands a great chance of being selected for. People are confusing the cart for the horse.

IOW our motivation may well be to be near THAT, so the other sex, for most of us, will tend to have qualities we want to be around (in their non-toxic forms). We want to be around THAT. And to experience all sorts of things with THAT: sure, sex, emotional closeness, someone we can be open with, someone who receives us, someone who is rooting for us, someone we find very interesting even after enormous amounts of time togetherx, a best friend, a partner, someone to have kids with, someone with that THATNESS we can experience when we want, someone to talk through shit with, and so on.

But we can't underestimate the desire to experience the specific THATNESS of that person. I mean, that sure seems to be what romantic love is and if you're lucky and it becomes mature love, well, THATNESS is what you are after and what you grieve if it goes away. That particular person who is so central.

Well, at the very least, you get points for attempting to be thorough!

Thank you. I'm going to hallucinate your response as near tacit agreement.

[Agent Smith]

As some have said it depends on the individuals involved. Further, as far as I can tell, most people want a few different things from the opposite sex (perhaps even if they are homosexual but certainly if they are heterosexual).

Then we have the Darwinian answers, which are confused. They want to procreate. That's confusing the reason we might be the way we are with our motivations. Even from a Darwinian perspective, if we have been naturally selected (long before our species arose) to be motivated to procreate, HOW this happens is not determined by the function. If it ends up creating babies if our strongest reason for wanting the other person is emotional intimacy, then that stands a great chance of being selected for. People are confusing the cart for the horse.

IOW our motivation may well be to be near THAT, so the other sex, for most of us, will tend to have qualities we want to be around (in their non-toxic forms). We want to be around THAT. And to experience all sorts of things with THAT: sure, sex, emotional closeness, someone we can be open with, someone who receives us, someone who is rooting for us, someone we find very interesting even after enormous amounts of time togetherx, a best friend, a partner, someone to have kids with, someone with that THATNESS we can experience when we want, someone to talk through shit with, and so on.

But we can't underestimate the desire to experience the specific THATNESS of that person. I mean, that sure seems to be what romantic love is and if you're lucky and it becomes mature love, well, THATNESS is what you are after and what you grieve if it goes away. That particular person who is so central.

Well, at the very least, you get points for attempting to be thorough!

Thank you. I'm going to hallucinate your response as near tacit agreement.

I would've responded but you seem to have figured out what men and women want from each other.

[Iwannaplato]

I would've responded but you seem to have figured out what men and women want from each other.

Well, as I said, it depends on the individuals. What I wrote about was in response to the people who seem to think it always boils down to one thing (whatever thing they think that one thing is) for everyone. So, it's not like I think everyone is yearning for the same thing, but rather that the reductionists may be satisfied with a very limited answer.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

I would've responded but you seem to have figured out what men and women want from each other.

Well, as I said, it depends on the individuals. What I wrote about was in response to the people who seem to think it always boils down to one thing (whatever thing they think that one thing is) for everyone. So, it's not like I think everyone is yearning for the same thing, but rather that the reductionists may be satisfied with a very limited answer.

I agree. Misogynists like to paint all women as 'gold diggers' because it makes them feel better about their own inadequacies.

[Agent Smith]

I would've responded but you seem to have figured out what men and women want from each other.

Well, as I said, it depends on the individuals. What I wrote about was in response to the people who seem to think it always boils down to one thing (whatever thing they think that one thing is) for everyone. So, it's not like I think everyone is yearning for the same thing, but rather that the reductionists may be satisfied with a very limited answer.

On target! So you don't detect an overarching leitmotif that spans relationships between the opposite sexes?

[Iwannaplato]

I would've responded but you seem to have figured out what men and women want from each other.

Well, as I said, it depends on the individuals. What I wrote about was in response to the people who seem to think it always boils down to one thing (whatever thing they think that one thing is) for everyone. So, it's not like I think everyone is yearning for the same thing, but rather that the reductionists may be satisfied with a very limited answer.

On target! So you don't detect an overarching leitmotif that spans relationships between the opposite sexes?

Yes. I detect leimotifs. Tendencies, trends. But the darwinians that I read in this threadd don't seem to understand natural selection. And the women and manhaters like to keep their targets simple. And there seems to be something that makes it easier to be smug in having a reductionists oversimplification. The great joy in dismissing everything else as a one trick pony.

[Agent Smith]

Well, as I said, it depends on the individuals. What I wrote about was in response to the people who seem to think it always boils down to one thing (whatever thing they think that one thing is) for everyone. So, it's not like I think everyone is yearning for the same thing, but rather that the reductionists may be satisfied with a very limited answer.

On target! So you don't detect an overarching leitmotif that spans relationships between the opposite sexes?

Yes. I detect leimotifs. Tendencies, trends. But the darwinians that I read in this threadd don't seem to understand natural selection. And the women and manhaters like to keep their targets simple. And there seems to be something that makes it easier to be smug in having a reductionists oversimplification. The great joy in dismissing everything else as a one trick pony.

Natural selection, to me, is quite simple - there's no way it can be misunderstood. How exactly do some Darwinians fail to grasp evolution? Perhaps you refer to an oversimplification of the theory of evolution. What's that and how does it bear on the issue of human relationships in general and those between men and women in particular? Please keep your replies short as I have ADHD.

[Iwannaplato]

On target! So you don't detect an overarching leitmotif that spans relationships between the opposite sexes?

Yes. I detect leimotifs. Tendencies, trends. But the darwinians that I read in this threadd don't seem to understand natural selection. And the women and manhaters like to keep their targets simple. And there seems to be something that makes it easier to be smug in having a reductionists oversimplification. The great joy in dismissing everything else as a one trick pony.

Natural selection, to me, is quite simple - there's no way it can be misunderstood. How exactly do some Darwinians fail to grasp evolution? Perhaps you refer to an oversimplification of the theory of evolution. What's that and how does it bear on the issue of human relationships in general and those between men and women in particular? Please keep your replies short as I have ADHD.

It may be simple to you, and I haven't noticed you make an error around NS, though I also haven't read all posts here. I noticed it early on in some posts of others. It's not a simple issue, so I suggest you read what you can and leave the rest.

The question was what do men and women want from each other. Some people responded TO PROCREATE. That's confusing two quite different things. Let's assume that neo-Darwinism is correct and that ultimately WHAT WE WANT leads to more babies. Notice that sentence, what we want leads to more babies and viable babies and also viable parenting and whatever supports that. Whoops, suddenly it is more complicated. But the core error is that what we want need not be procreation at the top. What we want needs to have, perhaps as a side effect that we have more babies or more well treated and surviving ones. So WHAT WE WANT need not be theses effects later on down the line. What we want could be to be intimate with the opposite sex, those of us who are hetero. A broad intimacy and connnection. This will lead to babies, but the babies are not necessarily the core thing we want when we see that opposite sex other and feel our yearning. They are conflating what our yearning in part will lead to with what we want. It's a category error. (and I will bet they also make teleological projections on genes also if they babble long enough). Natural selection will lead to individuals who want things that lead to certain effects, and one of these will be making babies. What they want that leads to this could be a number of things.

Further, natural selection does not necessarily lead to perfect alignments and heuristics. We haven't been around that long. Natural selection may have led to us having priorities and wants that in the long run don't work perfectly. We may die out. Perhaps it will turn out that our wants, yes, have as side effects, some effects that gave us an advantage for a while, but ultimately natural selection led to a creature whose wants led to problems with procreation, because our wants are vastly more complicated or even deprioritize that side effect or effect.

[Agent Smith]

Yes. I detect leimotifs. Tendencies, trends. But the darwinians that I read in this threadd don't seem to understand natural selection. And the women and manhaters like to keep their targets simple. And there seems to be something that makes it easier to be smug in having a reductionists oversimplification. The great joy in dismissing everything else as a one trick pony.

Natural selection, to me, is quite simple - there's no way it can be misunderstood. How exactly do some Darwinians fail to grasp evolution? Perhaps you refer to an oversimplification of the theory of evolution. What's that and how does it bear on the issue of human relationships in general and those between men and women in particular? Please keep your replies short as I have ADHD.

It may be simple to you, and I haven't noticed you make an error around NS, though I also haven't read all posts here. I noticed it early on in some posts of others. It's not a simple issue, so I suggest you read what you can and leave the rest.

The question was what do men and women want from each other. Some people responded TO PROCREATE. That's confusing two quite different things. Let's assume that neo-Darwinism is correct and that ultimately WHAT WE WANT leads to more babies. Notice that sentence, what we want leads to more babies and viable babies and also viable parenting and whatever supports that. Whoops, suddenly it is more complicated. But the core error is that what we want need not be procreation at the top. What we want needs to have, perhaps as a side effect that we have more babies or more well treated and surviving ones. So WHAT WE WANT need not be theses effects later on down the line. What we want could be to be intimate with the opposite sex, those of us who are hetero. A broad intimacy and connnection. This will lead to babies, but the babies are not necessarily the core thing we want when we see that opposite sex other and feel our yearning. They are conflating what our yearning in part will lead to with what we want. It's a category error. (and I will bet they also make teleological projections on genes also if they babble long enough). Natural selection will lead to individuals who want things that lead to certain effects, and one of these will be making babies. What they want that leads to this could be a number of things.

Further, natural selection does not necessarily lead to perfect alignments and heuristics. We haven't been around that long. Natural selection may have led to us having priorities and wants that in the long run don't work perfectly. We may die out. Perhaps it will turn out that our wants, yes, have as side effects, some effects that gave us an advantage for a while, but ultimately natural selection led to a creature whose wants led to problems with procreation, because our wants are vastly more complicated or even deprioritize that side effect or effect.

You do have a point and I see it. I believe you mentioned reductionism already and it's quite obvious that you ain't a fan of that way of looking at life. I would've loved to be on your side of the debate but it appears that I'm kinda sorta pro-reductionism given what I know and what I've seen. Perhaps I'm being over-scientific in my approach. It's just that it all hangs together if you catch me drift mon ami.

[Iwannaplato]

You do have a point and I see it. I believe you mentioned reductionism already and it's quite obvious that you ain't a fan of that way of looking at life. I would've loved to be on your side of the debate but it appears that I'm kinda sorta pro-reductionism given what I know and what I've seen. Perhaps I'm being over-scientific in my approach. It's just that it all hangs together if you catch me drift mon ami.

Reductionism is a wonderful tool. I don't want to throw it out. I want it in a diverse toolbox.

[Walker]

I'm fucked if I know.

Men and women actually really need dignity from one another, but disguise the need. Ceremonial bowing to the superior king and the superior queen displays the civilized essence of willfully surrendering personal dignity, in ceremonial form. It symbolizes fidelity to the group, e.g., first God, then country, then self.

Surrendering the body to the instincts of pure sex displays the primal essence of actually surrendering dignity.

The bane of the ego is that it cannot surrender. The joy of sex is that the body suspends ego, ego surrenders the need for dignity, and the soul expands when released from ego's crushing weight, by surrendering one's need to another's need.

Another angle: Charity work dignifies those who need dignity the most. Call a man Sir when you offer him soup.

[Agent Smith]

You do have a point and I see it. I believe you mentioned reductionism already and it's quite obvious that you ain't a fan of that way of looking at life. I would've loved to be on your side of the debate but it appears that I'm kinda sorta pro-reductionism given what I know and what I've seen. Perhaps I'm being over-scientific in my approach. It's just that it all hangs together if you catch me drift mon ami.

Reductionism is a wonderful tool. I don't want to throw it out. I want it in a diverse toolbox.

That's a good move!

If you wanna get an idea of the heights of reductionism, you should google 5 minute lectures on "what is life?" I'm sorry for such a vague suggestion but that's all I can remember at the moment.

[popeye1945]

Biology does not follow the fashions of the times, so what was true a thousand years ago is still true today. Women are more materialistic mainly because they have much more invested in the bearing and raising of children, they marry on the same economic level or up never down, the male does not have the option of marrying up generally speaking. A little skit from Chris Rock the comedian: Fellows, when you get a new girlfriend what do your friends ask you about her first ----- WHAT DOES SHE LOOK LIKE? Ladies when you get a new boyfriend what is the first thing your girlfriends ask,----- WHAT DOES HE DO? The male is just as unromantic in that it is all looks for him but looks are important, young, healthy, and well put together means she's up to motherhood and raising a family. It really is the will of the species isn't it, kind of unromantic but there it is. Chris Rock again, only women, children and dogs are loved unconditionally, a man has to provide and protect, same old same old as the eons roll on.

Shallow rubbish. Women want a man that they are attracted to. If you have two men who look about the same but one has a good job and is confident and the other one is a layabout with no confidence and no job who do you think is going to be more attractive to women? That's hardly about 'gold digging'. It's about not being attracted to a hopeless lump.

You do realize you're not disagreeing with me----lol!!