Hey Doc,

I have a question: why are women attracted to men (and not to each other)?

I know what attracts me to women, women are beautiful and soft but I wonder what’s in women's brains that make them see men as more attractive than women? I can’t imagine my self kissing another man but why do women see it as enjoyable?

I asked this question to few girls before and they don't seem to know the answer.

Can you explain this? Thanks!

==============================

Hello!

Some of the questions I get 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...

Have a love, dating, sex or relationship question? You can write to me or get more information about “Being a Man in a Woman’s World tm” by going to: http://BeingAMan.com. Be sure to check out the new BAM! TV at http://BeingAMan.tv.

Copyright (c) 2009, Dr. Dennis W. Neder
All rights reserved.

Author's Bio: 

Dr. Neder is known around the world as a tough, but fair relationship expert, dealing with all sorts of dating, sex and relationship issues from a man's perspective. He has written 14 books ("Being a Man in a Woman's World™" series) and is working on 2 others. He's also written hundreds of articles, answered over 26,000 reader/viewer questions and has been on over a thousand radio and TV shows. "Dr. Dennis" is funny, direct and intuitive and has a unique ability to get right to the heart of the issue.

Do you have a burning question that needs an answer? Are you a man that wants to better experiences with women, or a woman that wants to better understand men? To learn more, go to beingaman.com and beingaman.tv. You can also follow his micro-blog at: twitter.com/dwneder.