sex brain 101 continued

Sex Brain Feature #3: What your sex brain actually thinks is that orgasms lead to pregnancy.

Yes, Sex Brain Feature #3 is true. Anything that leads to an orgasm, it thinks is a really really good sign. You may have noticed this, your sex brain's favorable reaction to orgasm. When you have an orgasm, your sex brain thinks to itself - 'whoah hoh, I got us really pregnant that time, oh boy, yes siree, that was a good one, we're talking some serious pregnancy here, damn I'm good!' And it's very pleased with itself. You could be tying your shoelaces with your teeth and if it gave you an orgasm, your sex brain would be thinking, 'damn! I'm good. You can count on me to deliver the pregnancy goods, yes siree, I'm your man.' It does not know that the only thing that could possibly get pregnant in this case is your shoelaces. Yes - that is how stupid your sex brain is.

Procedural Note: Some of you may be thinking that I am talking about men and why they are so stupid - a popular topic of conversation in some circles. Including among men who have had to spend a fair amount of time in close proximity to their sex brains, an exciting but sometimes harrowing state of affairs. I am not talking about men, however. I am talking about everybody. Males, females, everybody. And although I am calling your sex brain stupid, it is a term of affectionate insult, rather than exasperation and contempt.

Because it's not really so stupid after all. It's just adaptable. The mechanics and timing of fertilization may vary among species but orgasms of some sort have proved pretty darn reliable in persuading animals of all kinds to swap that DNA.

And as far as your sex brain is concerned, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. What does it care how reproduction actually happens or whether or not your shoelaces can get pregnant, seeking orgasms has led to more human reproduction than most of us know what to do with, and seeking orgasms is exactly what your sex brain intends to continue doing. Not necessarily a bad deal for most of us.

Besides, orgasms really are pretty helpful in that whole fertilization process - as some of you may have noticed. Which brings us to The Intensity Factor.

Sex Brain Feature #4: Orgasms are good but really intense ones are even better!

Your sex brain believes that intensity of orgasm correlates to chances of pregnancy. And since pregnancy is what your sex brain really lives for, it strives for those really intense ones that are going to up its chances of success and make it dance around high-fiving itself. This Intensity Factor has a whole bunch of chemical and other consequences, including Accidental Falling in Love, but we'll deal with those later.

Now an intense orgasm obviously doesn't guarantee pregnancy, particularly if you are having it by yourself. And a mediocre unintense orgasm, or a lack of orgasm doesn't necessarily mean pregnancy won't occur. But why the fuck should your sex brain care about trivial details like that? As far as it is concerned, the correlation is good enough to make those super-duper wow that was intense ones the Olympic Gold Medal of your sex brain's daydreams. This Intensity Factor in some ways accounts for the nature of your sex brain's daydreams by the way, but we'll get to the later. Now we'll just talk about why your sex brain is on the right track to prize intensity of sensation.

A really intense orgasm produces more sperm and gives them that extra jolt of enthusiastic push to speed them as they wing their way toward DNA heaven. And if the woman your sex brain is trying to get pregnant has a really intense orgasm, her whole body starts cooperating with the pregnancy process by initiating contractions to help the sperm on their way, and changing the chemical balance of the relevant parts of her body to facilitate the DNA swapping process. In fact, in some women, a really intense orgasm can trigger ovulation itself.

Women's sex brains work the same way men's do (I know some of you don't believe that, but they do) and a woman's sex brain associates intense orgasm with pregnancy just like everybody else's. To the extent that sometimes the sex brain will be enjoying itself so much that it will start panting 'God damn! this is too good a Pregnancy Opportunity to pass up, give me a fucking egg! Oh god, oh god give me that DNA to swap, yes, oh yes...' And so on. This doesn't happen nearly as often as some of us might like, but it does happen.

To summarize, your sex brain doesn't just want you to have a good time, it wants you to have a really good time. And a lot of human sexual behavior, strange and otherwise, is driven by this underlying Intensity Correlation Factor. Furthermore, because orgasm in both sexes is helpful in Pregnancy Facilitation, your Sex Brain is motivated by Feature #5.

Sex Brain Feature #5: Your sex brain doesn't just want you to have a really good time - it really really wants your partner to have a really good time.

In fact, it wants this so much, it cares more about your partner than you. I know some of you don't believe this because you have been with people you fucking swear could really give a shit about you, your orgasms, or anything else. There are two main reasons for this.

Their sex brain didn't want to get pregnant. Or...

They didn't listen to their sex brains and therefore fucked things up for it.

Either of these things can happen fairly easily. It's a common misconception that just because the sex brain is interested in pregnancy that it wants to create it 24 fucking 7. It doesn't. Your sex brain does not spend your whole life trying to get you pregnant. There are many many times when your sex brain has no desire whatsoever to get you or anyone else pregnant. We'll deal with this in more detail in another Feature. For now, we'll just suffice it to say that people frequently have sex that their sex brain didn't vote for. For lots of reasons. And when this happens, as it often does, the sex brain doesn't participate that fully in the exercise, and it loses its keen interest in the other person's Orgasm Intensity Indicators. Which can lead to the 'Oh were you interested in an orgasm too, I didn't really notice' sexual experience.

Another thing that causes this dismaying lack of interest is that people stop listening to their sex brains. Most people don't have a very good understanding of their sex brains to begin with, the thing frequently roars into action without asking anyone's permission, often leaving a trail of confusion and angst in its wake. Since most people don't really know how the darn thing works, it's not uncommon to experience Sex Brain Disappointment, and to get really tired of disappointing sexual experiences and just stop listening to the damn thing because it only makes them miserable. This does not make them stop having sex necessarily, it just encourages them to ignore one of their sex brain's basic desires - the other person's delirious fucking blow-out oh my god amazing fucking orgasm. That's what your sex brain really wants.

Because your sex brain reasons like this - 'oh shit, he/she is really turned on. Oh my god, this just upped my pregnancy chances by a thousand percent! Look at that. Oh Jesus, I am so delirious with excitement -fuck I can hardly stand it!! Oh shit, I am putting every fucking thing I can into this Spectacular Pregnancy Opportunity!!! Jesus, it doesn't get any better than this, goddamn, this person is so ready to get pregnant, fuck I need to have the most intense orgasm of my existence right now, right when they are, oh god, don't blow it, yes, just a few seconds, pregnancy now, now, now. Oh God, oh god, oh god.... ....aaah jesus if that didn't get us pregnant I don't know what will. Either we are pregnant or I am dead because I don't have anything left. Oh God.' And so on.

When your sex brain feels desire in the other person's eyes (and anywhere else it is looking or touching or tasting), its own eyes go all wide. Everything stops for a second as it realizes it is looking at one of the best pregnancy opportunities it'll ever see in its life. Your sex brain doesn't take for granted that sex is freely available and it definitely doesn't take for granted that fertility is freely available and it really really doesn't take for granted that sex and fertility are going to be combined all that often in a single human being willing to have a spectacular pregnancy-causing orgasm with you! The whole scenario just blows its circuits. And sexual circuit-blowing can be a pretty worthwhile endeavor every now and again.

It doesn't happen as often as most people would like by a long shot, but what a woman's sex brain really really really wants is to be wanted, to be wanted to so much, to be so fucking desirable, to be staring at a potentially pregnancy-causing other person who is so fucking ecstatic with desire they're going to have an orgasm that could cause pregnancy in 7 states, including Alaska, which is a long way away.

And what a man's sex brain wants is exactly the same thing. Anything that looks, sounds, smells, tastes, or even vaguely resembles a woman having an intense orgasm and the sex brain perks up so fast it gets whiplash. It can spot a pregnancy opportunity at a hundred yards easy, and nothing gets its attention more thoroughly. It spends its whole life wanting desperately to make someone else go out of their minds with ecstasy.

Sadly, again, this doesn't happen as often as hoped for. But people respond to the underlying imperatives anyway. Men learn to say 'You're so beautiful' and 'I love you' and so on, to make a plausible attempt at arousing the other person and sustaining a relationship and women learn to fake orgasms for the same reason.

And women often experience an idea that goes something like 'I don't even really want an orgasm that bad anyway, it's not that important to me.' But god they would be mortified and hurt if the guy doesn't get an erection or if he doesn't get off. That really hurts their sex brain's feelings a lot.

And guys often say things like 'I just really want to please you' and then sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but deep down they really really wish it did because when it doesn't their sex brain's feelings get really hurt. Because their sex brains weren't kidding, they really meant it, it's more important to the sex brain assessment of success to cause an orgasm than to experience one.

And since things don't always go the way people or their sex brains hope they would, sometimes people's sex brains get dejected and don't even feel like trying any more. And so they just stop acting like the other person is as important to them as they are, which fucks things up because it makes the sex brain not care very much about their own experience either.

And this applies gay or straight, whether there is realistically a bat's chance in hell of pregnancy or not - the sex brain still believes, reliably and stubbornly - that the other person's orgasm is more important than its own.

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Sex Brain 101 continued...