Expert: Dr. Dennis W. Neder - 4/7/2009

Question
QUESTION: Hey Doc ,  i have a question that im been thinking about for a long time ,why are women attracted to men (and not to each other)  ,  i mean i know what attracts me to women , women are  so beautiful and soft ,   but i wonder whats in women brain  that makes them see men more attractive than women..........  i mean i cant imagine my self kissing another man   but why women see it so enjoyable ....  i asked this question to few girls before  and seems they are very offended by they idea of being attracted to another female    can you explain doc  thanks

ANSWER: Hello Moh!

Some of the questions I get on this board are more of the same and I answer them. Some of them (like yours) are excellent and I can hardly wait to get to them. Thanks!

Yes, this is a great question. Let me see if I can shed some light on this.

There are many things to admire about women. Their looks, the softness of their skin and bodies, their smell, their hair and their nurturing, giving qualities. We both agree on all of these.

Most women however see these things not as sexual attractiveness, but as weakness. Therein lies your answer.

There's a lot of evolutionary sociology behind all of this and I'll try not to bore you with much science, but consider this: you evolved to admire primarily sexual characteristics of women; things that make her look young, healthy and vibrant primarily because these are the types of characteristics that produce healthy offspring able to reproduce. Characteristics that produce unhealthy offspring died off with them because they weren't around to reproduce!

Women did the same thing, but in a different way, with a different motivation.

Women; being burdened with doing most of the child raising had to naturally look for others to protect them, help them gather food and help them raise their young. They too want offspring that will be healthy and to survive into sexual adulthood.

In effect, this means strength and power. Those are the most attractive qualities that women see in men. You see, just as you want healthy offspring, so do women, but we go about creating them from different motivations.

Now, just as some men prefer brunettes and some prefer blonds, women have physical and emotional choices too, but they define "attractiveness" differently than you do based on this programming.

To a woman, the thought of being with a powerful man creates security and safety. Women need this security in order to feel love - and loved by the way. Part of this is sexual attraction too.

Women are motivated by their own genes to find men who can produce strong healthy children as sexually attractive. Aspects like kissing, cuddling, having sex, etc., are all things that build positive physical and emotional sensations in us because we are pre-wired that way. Women get emotional, physical and sexual arousal from those things that they equate with basic sexual characteristics - just like we guys do. The difference is that we need different things.

You run into some confusion here however. How come women simply don't go for the biggest, brutish types of men they can find? Simple: these guys also consume the most resources! (There are some other reasons behind this too but again, it gets pretty complicated pretty quickly!)

Women view other things as "powerful" too: someone with attitude, someone with confidence, high-income earners, intelligence, men with social status, etc. These are guys that CREATE the greatest resources. Today, it's fundamentally within the home and the culture. With our ancestors, it was the guys that went out on the hunt to bring back protein for the family at great personal risk to themselves.

By the way consider that a group of individuals - even if they are all women - are "strong" too. This is why women also developed much keener communication and social skills than men did. By creating a community, women were able to provide better for their own offspring. Of course they also competed together for limited resources - food, shelter, protection - and men.

This explains why so many women can be catty towards each other too. It comes from a basis of competition with each other.

Now, these things are highly over-simplified, but if you consider them, you'll get a very good idea not only of what women are looking for in men, but why they find someone you don't think is attractive, so appealing.

Best regards...

Dr. Dennis W. Neder
President
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
Remington Publications
BAM! TV
818.334.8826
http://beingaman.com
http://beingaman.tv
Publishers of "Being a Man in a Woman's World I & II"
Producers of "BAM! TV"

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Doc, thanks for answering my question i really appreciate your answer  but there are some points i really want to clarify ,  you said the things that attract us (men) to women  (Their looks, the softness of their skin and bodies, their smell, their hair and their nurturing)  women see it as weakness ,why?? can you clarify this to me? .. i guess women also appreciate the looks and beauty because women (atleast alot of them) they prefer good looking guys , secondly i understood from your answer  that women seek security and safety but  when i think about it  there alot of men who in no way (atleast in my view)  can provide any sense security and safety but still attract women (maybe coz other characteristics like looks  or being funny or being rich)

Answer
Hello again Moh!

The reason why women see this as weakness is through their own feelings of weakness. They equate their need for support, safety and security with their physical beings. Thus, others that have those same physical attributes must also be weak.

Now, keep in mind that you're dealing with some very deep-seated (almost primal) responses here. Culture continues to condition people to deal with these basic issues in different ways. For instance, if you ask a woman if she feels "weak" she'll tell you "no". This is a perspective. Now, if you ask her if she feels "weaker than a man", she'll probably agree that she does, unless she's to invested in the current fashion of "independence" and "self reliance" that the media is thrusting on women these days that she can't bring herself to accept it. The point is that this is a relative thing.

This is what women get from men: a sense of connection, status, security, etc. These things flip the switch in women to actually BE connected to that man. All of this happens deep under the surface however as there are many layers of conditioning, experience, psychology and even pure media-marketing above this.

Just like you can't really say why these things in women flip your switches, neither can women. In fact, even my descriptions are extremely over-generalized. Culture, conditioning, family, expectations and many other factors all come into play here. It gets very complicated very quickly! Further, we're only talking about heterosexual women here too. Bisexual and homosexual women have an entirely different set of responses based on an entirely different set of pre-programmed rules.

Here's another confusing aspect that will answer your second question: it has been discovered that women will be attracted to different types of men at different times in their monthly cycle!

When women are ovulating (that is, they are fertile and can get pregnant) they tend to find men that have exaggerated masculine features (size, strong chin, strong jaw, heavy brow, etc.) more attractive than when they aren't fertile! During this non-fertile time, they prefer men that less masculine secondary sexual characteristics. In fact, these men appear (to women) to be better nurturers; thus being better choices to raise children.

Interestingly, in westernized cultures, it is believed that as many as 1/3 of all children are being raised by someone OTHER THAN the man that actually got the woman pregnant!

Think about that. It's a fascinating statistic - even scary for some!

What does it mean? That women's sexual choices tend toward more masculine features when they are able to get pregnant and more nurturing features when they need help bearing and raising these young.

There are a ton of different secondary signals that people use to express their sexualities. Humor is quite different from being wealthy, but they have the same, basic origins. In order to be successful, you have to take risks. These risk-takers tend to have greater masculine appeal to women because of the perceived strength.

Likewise, someone that is funny has the same thing - you have to risk ridicule from those you are trying to entertain in order to learn the skills to be funny.

According to women, the #1 most attractive trait in men is self confidence. No surprise there, considering what I've already told you, right?

The #2 most attractive quality is a sense of humor. Now that you understand that these come from the same place you also see that they are really the same things!

No wonder women find these traits in men attractive!

Best regards...

Dr. Dennis W. Neder
President
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
Remington Publications
BAM! TV
818.334.8826
http://beingaman.com
http://beingaman.tv
Publishers of "Being a Man in a Woman's World I & II"
Producers of "BAM! TV"