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[socialobscenity]

i have been in an absolutely manic state of creativity lately and, while on the one hand it is really cool and interesting, on the other hand it is a lot to handle. i don't know where this came from, but it has literally been keeping me up at night, to the point where i get 5 or so hours of sleep and then have to wake up and go to work. today at ak

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[sweetkaya]

Okay...So I was talking about this with some friends last night. I rememember reading in my neuro class that biologically speaking women tend to look for mates that offer them protection and security. The reason being, we are mothers and with less physical strength (even though this can be modified ) and must take care of the children. Also, physically we are built is can be modified. Thus, in the hostile world, primitive or modern, women search for protectors. So, when a man is off with another woman, he is not around protecting her, and her protection is furthermore threatened.

My other friend said she read somewhere that a woman is more likely to forgive a man for having a one-night stand with another woman, but falling in love with another woman is hardly ever acceptable. Whereas a man has a harder time forgiving a woman for a one night stand than if she fell in love with someone else. If this is true, it helps explain a couple of things. Because we search for protectors, our protection is less threatened if a man simply has sex with another woman. Falling in love, means the possibility of leaving and therefore abandonment. For men...maleness tends to be definied by sex ( major social construct but also biological need to ?spread his seed?)...thus a woman seeking sexual gratification from another man basically says that her partner does not satisfy her sexually thus making him ?less of a man?, whereas as falling in love doesnt necessarily imply sex.

So maybe these are reasons for natural tendency towards jelousy??

let me know what you think.

[socialobscenity]

yeah these are all really good thoughts, and i wish i could come up with/be given some sort of satisfactory explanation of 'human nature', but i truly don't think its possible to make any claim to know what that is at this point in the existence of humans as a species. civilization fucks with natural processes, and makes it really difficult, i think, to draw a distinction between 'nature' and social construct.
i also somewhat inherently distrust science to some extent, especially when it comes to analyzing human behavior. remember the days when little girls who masturbated had their clitorises cut off and race was biological and queers were mentally unsound? yeah.
that is not at all to say that a lot (or even most) of it can't be right, or isn't, just that i hesitate to fully believe anything i read in a biology book. the points you made from your neuro class do seem to make sense tho, and are certainly observable truths on some level, whether biological or not. and what your friend said makes total sense too, assuming it's true.
admittedly i don't know much of anything about neurobiology, but i'm still waiting for a convincing argument concerning anything about 'human nature', and that's not sarcasm, i really would be interested to hear one.
either way, those things definitely make sense. i guess i'm still struggling with the nature vs. nurture debate myself, because the answer to that would make a big difference in how i think of and deal with things. even tho jealousy would still be undesirable, it would be a lot easier to live with if it were biologically hardwired. on the other hand, if i somehow found out that it was mostly a social construct, i think i'd have to force myself to work a lot harder in dealing with it and be much more openly critical of people who weren't.

either way, it fuckin sucks. i wish someone could just give me an answer about this, but it seems as tho for every argument made in favor of one side, another one pops up supporting the other side.
life is hard. ha.

p.s.

[socialobscenity]

about what your friend was saying, i know i feel that way from personal experience. even when i've been with a partner who i know was not actually (read: physically) cheating, i felt a lot more threatened by the prospect of him connecting to another woman emotionally than i did by the idea of him kissing her (even tho both were upsetting). this is something i feel especially shitty about, even if i don't think it's completely unjustified. i mean, it makes sense why i would feel that way, but i also think it's not very fair or positive in any way to stifle someone i love and not allow them to exercise their full range of potential emotions and interactions with anyone they want to.