Allan - Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love

Thank you to those who contributed to this book, whether they knew it or not:

Kelly Bradtke, Andrew and Joanne Parish, Decima McAuley, Rebecca Schell, Melissa Stewart, Jasmine Pease, Cameron Pease, Brandon Pease, Bella Pease, Michael Pease, Adam Sellars, John MacIntosh, Norman Leonard, Ken Wright, Amanda Gore, Daniel Clarke, Dr Janet Hall, Col and Jill Haste, Kirsty and Scott Gooderham, Phil Gray, Shirley Neale and Danny Redman, Des Wilmore, Bernie de Souza, Dr James Moir, Helen and Ian Belcher, Roger Loughnan, Ivanna Fugalot, Dr Gennady Polonsky, Christine Walding, Jeff Turner, John Lanesmith, Sally Berghofer, Rob and Sue Keam, Dave Stewart, David C. Smith, Dr John Tickel, Professor Graeme Jackson, Nicole Kilpatrick, Josephine and Rick, Glen Fraser, Tony Rich, Dr Michael Walsh, Angus Woodhead, Fiona Hedger, Gary Crick, Anthony Gorman, Brian Tracy, Jenny Cooper, Ivor Ashfield, Trevor Velt, Jo Abbott, Alan Holliday, Graeme Shiels, Shorty Tully, Kerri-Anne Kennerley, Sue Williams, Janine Good, Bert Newton, Graham Smith, Kevin Fraser, Dr Phillip Stricker, Emma and Graham Steele and Glenda Leonard.

And special thanks to
Dorie Simmonds
and
Ray and Ruth Pease.

Sue was furious. Admittedly, she had asked them for a male baby with dark features, a strong nose and movie-star looks, but this was ridiculous.

T oday we are confronted with sexual situations and circumstances that our ancestors never encountered. We can alter our fertility with hormones, artificial insemination and IVF; we can meet new partners through dating agencies and the Internet; we can improve our appearance with cosmetics or surgery; and we can create new life in a dish. No other species can do any of these things.

As humans, we are experts at studying the mating behaviours of other species. We can predict their actions, even modify them, and we can genetically alter them to change their appearance. When it comes to choosing a mate for ourselves, however, few humans seem to have much success, let alone any real understanding of the process through which it happens. Most animal species seem to have little problem when choosing mates and dealing with relationships. For them, the female goes on heat, the male mates with her, and its all over.

Humans are the only species that are confused about the mating game.

The state of our relationships with our partners or our lack of partners is a constant source of human discussion and one of the prime topics of female conversation everywhere. Few things can give us such joy and elation yet, at the same time, can produce so much pain and despair. Love has always been the most common theme in music, soap operas, romance books, literature, movies and poetry. People in every culture experience love, and every culture has words to describe it.

So what is love? Its a question that has been asked for thousands of years. Researchers from almost all disciplines have tried to discover the nature of love and to convince others of their findings, but none of the answers ever proposed are conclusive. Because of its elusiveness, love constantly calls for definitions and interpretation.

Why do we even have sex? What drives men to constantly search for sex? What compels women to demand commitment from men? We will answer many of these questions in this book. We will show you why sex, love and romance began, reveal the science that says where love sits in the brain and, importantly, tell you what to do about it all. We have used scientific studies, surveys, case studies and humour to make it easy to remember.

Most of us are raised with the belief that one day we will find the One that special person with whom we are meant to spend eternity. For the majority of people, however, real life fails to live up to that expectation. Most people who get married believe that it will be till death do us part, but divorce rates in many countries are now in excess of 50%, and the rate of extramarital affairs is estimated to be 3060%, with women being in the lower range and men in the top range.

Divorce rates among those who have lived together and then married range from 25%, in Canada and Spain, to over 50%, in Sweden, Norway and France.

The failure to make a relationship work is seen as a personal failure by most people and sends millions of us to therapists, but conflict in relationships is the norm for almost all species, including humans.

Sex is like air: its not important unless you arent getting any.

In the 1980s, it was generally believed that much of human behaviour was learned and could be changed, but we now know that most of it is hardwired into us. In fact, since the end of the 20th century, researchers studying human behaviour have uncovered a mountain of scientific knowledge to demonstrate that we are born with circuitry hardwired into the brain that influences how we act. We also know that cultural factors and myriad environmental forces, such as our teachers, friends, parents and employers, influence how we may think or act. The result is that nature and nurture are inextricably entwined. Imagine that your brain has an operating system like a computer. Youre born with it and it has default positions that it retreats to when its under stress thats the nature part of us. The nurture part is our environment, and our environment is the software that runs on our hardware.

Nature = our brains hardware
Nurture = our environment

This is not to say that we are all at the mercy of our DNA. The human brain developed frontal lobes to allow us to choose our actions, but it is important to understand that we come with baggage from our ancestral past. The development of the cerebral cortex the bit of the brain that collates information from all of the sensory organs, holds memory and thought processes has allowed us to think, to make choices and to rise above our inherited nature in most things. When it comes to sex, love and romance, however, our ancient hardwiring still compels us to have the same preferences and choices our ancestors did. And, as you will see, theres no escaping it. Your brain has an operating system with default positions. If your computer is stressed or crashes, it operates from its built-in defaults and so does your brain. The artificial environment of so-called equality that we have created, in which we are expected to pretend to each other that we all desire the same things, is nothing more than politically correct software.

As men and women, we still want different things from sex and love not better or worse, different and these are largely dictated by our hardware. We can make conscious choices about what we think we want, but our hardwiring will still urge us to go where it wants us to go.

This book will show you how women are just as interested in sex as men are or making love, as women describe it and will explain how mens and womens sexual urges are triggered by different circumstances, conditions and priorities. Well examine what men and women really want and will look at casual sex and affairs, and reveal things about sex and love that most people dont know. Well also give you strategies to increase your market value in the mating game.