Penis Facts, OKC, Defining Relationships

Links, links, links!

Last week was vagina facts, this week it’s time for: Penis facts!

OKCupid has been running experiments on all of us sorry online daters

I’m in love with this website for a documentary made on couples’ relationships; check out the poly/mono clip, cheating clip, best sex clip, and take a look at the activity they provide for couples. I love that they have hetero couples, gay couples, mono couples, poly couples, young and older people, wealthy and poor people: TheAnd

And, totally: This Is What Happens When You Ask A Bunch Of Gay Men To Draw Vaginas

Some research suggests that believing one’s relationship is a journey, and not destiny, make the relationship more resilient to challenges

Let’s redefine our relationships- is monogamy really that common?

And, explaining bisexuality to Larry King

 

Nonmonogamy research, gender, self care, and HIV

Links to share:

This is a pretty fascinating summary of research done on the perception of different types of nonmonogamy; spoiler alert, poly folks were perceived to be more moral while swingers were perceived to be more adventurous.

A pretty awesome piece written on the lessons to be gained from dating someone in an open relationship

A fun compilation of vagina facts

Ginny on using language to be more gender-inclusive

The Gottman blog on self care, autonomy, closeness, and relationship interdependence

Interesting ideas on why childfree couples seem to cheat less than their counterparts with children

I love this infographic from The Lancet on HIV and sex workers:

Lancet-sex-work-infographic_930px (1)

Kindness, Beauty, Poly

The importance of kindness and “turning toward” in maintaining healthy and positive long-term relationships: Masters of Love

Conversation-starter and thought-provoking ad campaign to address the messages we send about what “beautiful” is: the review on HuffPost and the website itself- Stop the Beauty Madness Ad Campaign

Fearless self-love: My “Naked” Truth

Older article, but well written and articulated; on how polyamory is bigger than coupledom: Polyamorous Relationships Are About More Than Just Couples

 

Polyamory Interview

Polyamory Research Flyer

I recently did an interview with Aubrey and it was really fun! If you fit her criteria (live in Portland, 18-29 years old, identify as nonmonogamous or polyamorous) definitely consider participating. She is especially needing some men-identified folks. It’s a confidential interview- while you print and sign the informed consent with your real name, you get to choose a fake name to use for the interview and the two are not connected.

The questions were comprehensive: demographics, sexual/gender/relationship identity, and community identification. I even got to draw my very own polycule and talk about the significant relationship dynamics that I have experienced. It was really gratifying to contribute to the body of ethically nonmonogamous/polyamorous knowledge and satisfying to talk about my experiences.

Thanks for including me Aubrey! Can’t wait to read your final product 🙂

Links to Share

Want a sexy Wednesday pick-me-up?

See photos of exotic dancers from the 1890s here

See this for descriptions (with awesome cartoons!) of different animal mating rituals here

(I don’t know how accurate all the information is, but it’s entertaining and interesting nonetheless!)

If you want something more dense, this article is definitely worth reading: The Scientific Quest to Prove Bisexuality Exists

There are a ton of passages in this article that I liked, but I like this one in particular:

To their credit, both Rieger and Savin-Williams were thoughtful in their conversations with me about the challenges of studying bisexuality. Savin-Williams, in particular, said he was mostly interested in understanding the “incredible diversity” among bisexuals. He told me about one young man he interviewed whose arousal looked “extraordinarily gay” in the lab. But he was romantically interested in only women. “He falls madly in love with girls all over the place,” Savin-Williams said, “and it’s not because he hates the ‘gay’ part of himself. He just connects romantically and emotionally with women in a way he doesn’t with men. Will that change? Perhaps. But right now he’s not 50-50 interested in men and women — it’s almost like he’s 100 percent and 100 percent, but in two different ways. Most of the time sexual attraction and romantic attraction will overlap, but for some bisexual people, there’s a discrepancy between the two.”

Rieger nodded. “People constantly surprise you,” he said, recalling one young man who announced that he was “50-50 bisexual” but who only showed arousal to women in the lab. “His arousal was like a perfect straight guy,” Rieger told me.

“Sounds like he’s romantically attracted to guys but sexually attracted to women,” Savin-Williams said. “I think there’s a lot more sexual complexity and nuance among men than researchers have assumed for years.””

Any fun links to share with me?

Kissing & Hook-ups

In the March issue of Psychology Today, there are two pieces that I wanted to discuss here. One is a short snippet on kissing. Interestingly, a study published in Evolutionary Psychology found that far more men than women would have sex with someone without kissing that person first (53% of men versus 14% of women). Would you have sex without kissing them first? (I know I wouldn’t. Well, for the most part 🙂 )

Another interesting finding from a study published in Western Journal of Communication found that couples who increased their kissing time (variable unknown- how long did couples increase their kissing time to?) experienced lower stress over time. The piece mentions that “just 15 minutes worth of kissing…can reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol”- but I don’t know if that is 15 minutes per week or what. (J and I have been joking that it must be 15 minutes a day! Go get it!)

Another, longer piece discussed casual sex and hook-ups, and recent studies indicating that many young people who have casual sex later regret it. Gender-based differences were found in these studies: in “a collection of studies in the Archives of Sexual Behavior… [demonstrated that] On average, women most regretted the sex that they had; men were more likely to regret the sex they didn’t.” Women tended to be more regretful of losing their virginity to the “wrong person” while men tended to regret not being more “sexually intrepid.”

Have you ever regretted a casual sex encounter? Why? What happened?

I think this gets into a larger question about regret and the meaning of sex. If you learned something, do you necessarily need to regret it? Is your regret based on the meaning you ascribe to sex? What do you all think?