When you finally got first experience?

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Neurotypicals don't have dibs on forming connections through sex, you know. Even then, physical intimacy is very rarely the only part of forming that connection. It is one aspect among a few as a means of forming and maintaing a connection.

And of course, there are plenty of people for whom it is simply a pleasure to be had, with no intention or interest of forming a connection beyond getting themselves and the partner(s) off, let alone securing a - to use your term - 'mate'.

And on that note.

I don't have an interest in football. Nor sport in general really, but I'll use football, as it marks me out as peculiar among someone of my demographic. Anyway, I have no interest in watching 22 people chase and kick a ball around, trying to score goals. I can kind of understand why people like it, why they get so wrapped up in it, but it's from a very theoretical perspective. I do not have the experience of being interested in football, and so cannot really appreciate what it is to be a football fan.

Similarly, I think your having no interest in sex, no experience of sexual attraction, hampers your understanding of it, and the subtle complexities that go into romantic attraction with a sexual element.

to use another analogy, I can ride in cars, read driving instruction manuals and watch driving instruction videos, but none of them is a substitute for actually driving a car, for actually having that experience. And while I may be able to offer advice drawn from any number of sources, there will be something missing due to my lack of driving.

back to my point:


this is a generalization right there

"physical attractiveness" and "sexual attractiveness" can be conceptualized separately, but they aren't naturally separate. if you ask a question to actual people, who will most likely interpret it in a natural and instinctive way, and you expect a response based on a theoretical construct that they're probably not even aware of, you'll inevitably misinterpret the results

What do you mean by 'physical attractivity'? Do you mean 'good looking'? For me to call someone attractive, I have to be attracted to them. I understand the wider social/cultural ideas of 'attractive' and so can sort of agree that someone meets those standards, even if I don't find them attractive in the least.

But I think a better term here would be 'good looking'. It suggests that sort of cultural model of 'this is a person whose appearance is considered pleasing' without getting mixed up with the word 'attractive'. I think we should avoid 'attractive' unless we're saying 'I am attracted to this person'.

to go back to those photos I found - I think each of the women was 'good looking', in that they had a certain pleasantness about them, and they seemed to meet what is presently presented as 'good looking', but I did not feel any attraction toward them. If I do not feel an attraction to someone, I cannot in good faith (and clarity) call them 'attractive'.

it's interesting to see the subtle differences in the interpretation of words. to me it's the opposite as it is to you. here's my inner reasoning:

"good looking" evokes "good". it means to me that the person's appearance is "good". to me, good is something that i judge, not something determined by anyone or anything else. therefore it feels like a more subjective term to me. it's about my opinion, rather than anything akin to an inherent quality or anything as it may be judged by others

on the other hand, the suffix "-ive" in "attractive" denotes that it's either a quality that the person has, or something that they generally do, detached from time and place and circumstances unless specified in context. it's not about me or my individual judgement. it simply means that "the person attracts [someone]". if i believe that a person attracts more people more readily, then i'll be inclined to say that "they're attractive", regardless of my own personal judgement/impression/opinion

It doesn't need to be the only part. It's sufficient that it is one aspect of it.



And then there are plenty of examples of FWBs going all wrong, which actually is the proof that NTs cannot escape this completely even if they think they can. There is always the risk it will develop into something they didn't anticipate.



Absolutely. I want to understand this, but when people mix up this stuff with ordinary terms like attraction, I will completely miss that and assume you are talking about something I can relate to.

That is the major problem with much of the literature and written accounts about sex, attraction and relationships: It all assumes sexual attraction applies to everybody, and that sex and romantic relationships are the same things. Some even talk about sex when they mean relationship issues. You cannot have it like that on a forum with many asexual people, and most importantly, YOU will never understand the position of asexuals unless you separate those concepts.

anagram - that's interesting, and I do see where you're coming from with 'good'. I understand the wider use of 'attractive', but it just feels too confusing to throw it around without a personal approval of the useage. I'm trying to find a term that's sufficiently removed from personal taste.

The film critic Mark Kermode uses the term 'glamorous' to refer to such women when they crop up in films, and I'm starting to think he's onto something (particularly if we consider old ideas of 'glamour').

It's the physical component of somebody's appearance, devoid of any cultural influences.



Physical attractivity has nothing to do with cultural norms. That's part of your sexual attractiveness dimension, like when social information is weighted into the consideration.



Absolutely not. Good looking to me suggests you are using social norms and information, which is not physical attractiveness.



I judge all of them as physically attractive, none of them as sexually attractive, and I wouldn't know if I'd like them or not for a relationship since I haven't met them IRL.

i agree. i try to avoid using the word without clarifying what i'm talking about


"widely attractive", maybe? i think it's hard or maybe impossible to find a term that you can safely use with that meaning without getting a little technical with your language

"glamour" sounds to me like a kind of flamboyant appearance that displays overt concern with matters of social status. more related to particular situations, less related to something perceived as an enduring quality. overlapping with "socially-defined attractiveness", but still a different thing

Yes, but what does that mean? Can you give me a concrete example of what you mean by 'physically attactive'? I think it is impossible to parse 'physically attractive' from cultural norms and social currents.

I mean, I presume you're trying to speak from some sort of 'evolutionary' perspective. Which I think is a fool's errand, largely composed of begging questions and avoiding facts.

And then, I still don't know what the point of it would be.

anagram - it's tricky. I mean, to my own satisfaction in terms of making sense of my own preferences, I've spent some of the many hours of naval gazing on clarifying to myself what I experience as attractive or good-looking or pretty or beautiful or sexy, as well as my own experience of attraction.

But it's quite another thing to try and come to an agreement on what to call the sort of person who seems to have a sort of aesthetic pleasantness/correctness but to whom one feels no draw whatsoever.

And I do think a lot of these qualities are being misplaced. I'm kind of allergic to monistic reductionist thinking.

yes. i think it's very common for people to believe that they are "ugly" or, interchangeably, "unloveable" or something else to that effect, when those things simply cannot be inherent attributes. they're states, and they depend on context. they're more about an effect (not being appreciated, not being loved. or the perception of not being appreciated or loved) than about a cause

not that there aren't real causes for the issue of not being loved or appreciated the way someone would want to be. but then it turns into senseless helplessness, because it's as if it's an immutable fact, when there are actually are causes, and they can generally be addressed one way or another, as long as they are known and acknowledged

There are things like hip-to-waist ratio that has been proved to be related to attractiveness ratings. Same for symmetry. For me, long nice hair is also a strong attribute of being attractive. Other than that, I think specific features in the face contributes to it too. I find it really odd when people cannot separate attractivity from social norms, as I can't even imagine how attractivity could be connected to personality traits and social markers. Things like jewelry and high heels does not affect attractivity scoring for me.

Aaaaah. Well, that goes some way to clearing all this up.

Jewellery and high heels very much affect attractivity for me, because I'm no fan of the former beyond minimal ornamentation and can't stand the latter. Ditto day-to-day make-up (I like some make-up where it's almost at cosplay level, but I don't like the texture or smell of it).

By 'social/cultural norms' I meant differences in weight, build, skin tone, hairstyle, etc - the many variations we see through time within cultures as to what is held up as 'attractive', let alone the variation we see between cultures.

By personality traits, I find open-mindedness, quick-wittedness, kindness, knowledge, aesthetic apprectiation all very attractive. I could not be attracted to someone who didn't have these qualities. I could find them pleasant to look at and so be drawn in, but upon learning how dull their interior life was, how uncurious their mind, they would become of minimal interest to me.

The only social markers I look for are ones that may suggest the woman is in some way weird, neurodiverse or what have you. It has to be someone who rejects mainstream social workings (be they bourgeois or proletarian). I can't be doing with the conventional sort.

So for you, 'attractiveness' is when someone - here a woman - matches with what majority of (in this case) men deem attractive, combined with some gesture toward an evolutionary-based theorising on just why they might be so. And for you this 'biological' component is something like 'objective'. I don't think you're wrong as such, it's just I wouldn't approach it that way, though I can see what you're saying.

With evolution and biology and its role in human behaviour, I take what I see as a broader, deeper perspective (which often getsme accused of 'denying Darwin'). Which is to say that, evolution and biology have to be such that they allow for all the variety we see in human behaviour. We are ruling out anything supernatural, such a 'soul', and we should either rule out cultural/social pressures that can 'pervert' biology, or accept that the biological influence is not all that strong, as it can be overcome.

The man who perpetually chases young women is as much a product of these forces and influences as the one who spends a lifetime in a happily childless relationship with a woman some, say, ten years his senior, or the man who takes a vow of chastity for religious purposes, or the homosexual man. All of these men are products of the same evolutionary pressures, and whatever marks these have left on their inherited biology. And, as all of them exist in nature, all of them are equally natural, though some may or may not be more common.

This is the perspective I start from. I take the world of human behaviour and experience as my facts, and I only accept theories that allow for every single instance of such behaviour, that don't privilege one behaviour over another (that would be question-begging), that don't suggest an explanation for one particular behaviour (say, to use your example, a large number of men finding young women the most attractive because [supposedly] they can get the most kids out of them) but then have nothing to say about non or anti instances of that.

For me, attractiveness is when I (or someone else) finds someone attractive. That's what I start with. Then I bring in an analysis. Attractiveness is both cause and effect of attraction. It's a bundle of experience and influences. I cannot agree that someone who matches with a certain reified reductionist idea of 'attractive as evolutionary fitness', looking at hip ratio or facial symmetry, is somehow more 'real' in their attractiveness than someone who doesn't.

Unless a girl is clearly overweight, I won't put any importance to weight. As for skin tone, I think I prefer the same tone as I have myself (which could be biological). Hairstyling doesn't matter a lot, but different types of hair does. I prefer brown, red or dark hair that is long and wavy.



This is not an initial factor for me, and I wouldn't call it attractiveness. I'd call it for what it is: Good personality traits that I would appreciate that might affect the outcome of the observation game.



I identify this nonverbally, not through social markers, conversation or what have you.



The preferences for certain hip-to-waist ratios and symmetries are not conscious. These are unconsciously biasing the attractivity rating, and are not deliberate considerations. It's only by studying yourself that you can conclude that this makes a difference.



IMHO, this can only be done if we view the ND traits as part of another species. There is normally not any variation in courtship behavior within a species, and this indicates the species is a hybrid species.



That's not how it happens. Older men will typically not chase younger women, but if they get a chance with one, they are unlikely to pass it.

Older men FREQUENTLY chase younger women. Sometimes, their ideals are quite superficial, enough for it to be ridiculous. Sometimes, it goes as far as what's exhibited in the stereotypical "mid-life crisis."

My father got married to somebody 25 years his junior. He had some superficial ideals in his mind--but he liked her for her practicality, too.

When I was younger, I used to chase OLDER women.

My first experience was with somebody younger than me. The woman I made love with for my second experience, though, was 10 years my senior.

While you gave me a micro-panic attack with the word "made love" (too relationshippy), I can relate to your attraction to younger women. I'm going through that right now. It wasn't triggered by a midlife crisis, but by seeing my friends' 30-something girlfriends turning them into elderly married couples. My friends do very little to keep that in check. A girl I was interested in until recently is 22. When I met and her talked to her, I became drawn to her youthful, simple outlook on life, as well as her cute face and playful personality.

The reason I lost romantic interest is that I learned she wasn't as much a party type as the impression of her I originally got. (Thankfully, I haven't done anything sexual with her, so no hurt feelings.) She also doesn't drink. I, by contrast, like to get drunk, dance the night away, and laugh at the pictures on my phone next morning. I still like her as a friend, and intend to continue being strictly friends with her, even if we still flirt around a little bit.

For those who may find this surprising, I met my GF when we were in grade school. We attended the same grade school together and when we began MS in 2001, we thought we would never see each other again, given that she moved with her family to another area of Portland.

That was until one day in late 2011. I was sitting at a table in the dining hall of the college I was attending classes at {I am now enrolled at Portland State University.} and she approached me out of nowhere. At first, I obviously didn't recognize her given that we were ten years older and I never had any previous relationships. I also thought I was hallucinating, given that all I wanted was not only to succeed in my studies, but also finding myself work and my first relationship. She told me she was in a relationship at the time, but the stress we both were experiencing {me more than her} were a reason to rekindle our relationship as platonic in nature.

She broke up with her now-ex-boyfriend about one month later. We sought out a motel for a day where I had my "first-go-around" {as she called it} at the age of 21. She had her "first-go-around" at the age of 17.

She works as a waitress at an upscale restaurant close to PSU but I avoid her place of work because I don't want her to feel that I am invading her sense of privacy. She lost her father about two years ago and I lost my father when I was 12, so sometimes I wonder if we have more in common now than we were as kids.

Question: Can having intercourse be therapeutic? What I mean is that can having intercourse help ease feelings such as fear, anxiety, nervousness, stress, and anything of the sort?