Land Of Sheep

I am only attracted to woman who are in good shape and don’t have a lot of fat on them. I’m not talking about unhealthy anorexic models. If I had a girlfriend who started to gain weight, I would feel less attracted to her. I think I should be able to tell her that in a polite way. (Obviously there are exceptions. eg. she has to take medicine with weight gain as a side effect). I feel she should be able to tell me the same thing about changes in my physique. I’d want her to be physically attracted to me too.

I feel proud to be with an attractive girl. I feel embarrassed sitting beside a chubby girl.

I’ve told many people this and noticed their reactions. Not surprisingly, guys are generally more likely to be in agreement, especially when there are no females in earshot of our conversation. Some girls get quite angry with me when I tell them my true feelings. They call me shallow and other nasty things.

One woman in particular got furious with me when I told her all of this. She thought my true feelings made me a bad person. After she calmed down, she reminder her husband to go outside and re-paint the garage door. He obediently nodded and went out to paint. I asked her why she wanted it repainted. She looked at me like I was either kidding or just plain stupid. She said, “look at it! The old paint is chipping away and it makes the house look terrible. It’s embarrassing to be living in a place like this; especially in this neighborhood”. I told her that I personally couldn’t care less about paint falling off the garage. She said, “You are just like my husband. He doesn’t care either”.

I pointed out to her what I thought was incredibly obvious. I said that we are both shallow, but in different ways. I care about the aesthetic appeal of a woman’s body, and for whatever reason, attach importance to it. She does the same thing with the aesthetic appeal of her house. She got incredibly upset again at my comparison and totally disagreed. I asked her what exactly she disagreed with and she just said, “they are totally different. You can’t compare the two”.

She felt she won with that comment. I felt I was arguing with a fool.

What are your thoughts?

Let’s forget my personal opinion on the subject and just have fun exploring the question.

It’s not at all uncommon to hear a comment like, “You can’t love two woman at the same time”. Our society, and most others, find dating and sleeping with several woman, or men, as at least somewhat wrong.

We don’t however, hold this same opinion with friends. It’s considered totally fine, and even a good thing, to have several close friends. I can play basketball with one friend on Tuesday, then go for a beer with a different friend on a Wednesday, talk politics on Thursday with yet another friend, and then all get together on a Friday evening for a game of poker. None of this is secret and no one feels hurt.

We can say, “I find it boring to hang out with the same friend all the time”. Our society has no problem with that concept.

Try saying, “I find it boring to sleep with the same woman all the time”. The reaction is vastly different yet the reasons are the same.

We enjoy different things about different people. We enjoy the mix. Variety is the spice of life. You are apparantly just a jerk if you apply it to your love life.

Now just to avoid people coming back with a simple answer like “we want to avoid STD’s or unwanted pregnancy” let me just change the question to “what’s wrong with just “fooling around” with different people”? Let’s say you’d hang out with a girl on a Tuesday, watch a movie, then manually bring each other to orgasm before parting ways. No physical risk in doing that. Then the next day, you tell this girl, “Sorry, I’ve got plans with a different girl. We’re going bowling. You hate bowling anyway. We’ll hang out another night”. Of course it is implied that you will be just as intimate with this other girl.

Assuming you aren’t lying and being totally out in the open with what you do, then what is the big problem?

The jealousy factor is the one thing that pops into my head. We don’t like imagining our partners enjoying themselves with someone else. It’s hardwired into our brains to feel jealous. Humans don’t like to admit feeling jealous so they come up with other excuses to explain their feelings.

I’d love to get your opinions on this.

“A couple thousand years ago, a woman named Mary became pregnant. She was still a virgin though because God, a higher power who created the earth, miraculously impregnated her with a son; Jesus. Jesus, who was really God Himself, died from a painful execution on a cross, but came back to life a few days later.”

I admit I’m having a bit of fun with that story and am by no means a biblical scholar, but nonetheless it’s fascinating that millions of people would agree with the above story, or at least a very close version of it.

Why would anyone believe any story even remotely resembling this?

Interestingly enough, the very same people who believe this kind of story wouldn’t believe it if it happened today.

Imagine someone’s teenage daughter came home and said, “Dad, I’m pregnant. I know what you are thinking but it’s really not like that. God is the father. I didn’t do anything”.

Very few people would even consider that as a possibility; whereas they feel certain the story with Mary is true. Interesting…..

On the surface, both stories are equally eyebrow raising. No one living today actually witnessed either conception. Why believe the first story to be absolutely true, while giving the second story no merit whatsoever?

Let’s look at some possible factors:

1. We know that millions of other people believe the story of the virgin Mary. Even some extremely intelligent people believe this. In many circles, you’ll be accepted and respected by believing the Mary story. You’ll be outcast as a gullible fool if you believe the tale of the teenage daughter. It’s a well-known fact that people are more likely to believe what people around them believe.

2. The Bible also uses an impressive advertising tactic. Heaven and Hell are the ultimate pain and pleasure motivators.

We are told, as impressionable infants, that believing in God and following the Bible will bring us to the coolest place we can imagine after we die. The place is called Heaven and it is amazing. It’s better than anything on earth and better than anything we can even imagine. You will be there for an eternity as well.
Oh yeah, and if you don’t believe in this story than you will go to a place worse than you could imagine for eternity. It’s called Hell and you’ll burn and be tortured there for eternity.

That’s even more motivating than saying, “[Santa] knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake”.

3. We are also told that God is so much better than us in every way. It’s impossible for us to even start to imagine how great He is so there is really no point in trying. He’s beyond science and beyond us. We’ll never be able to understand Him. It’s better to just have faith in Him and forget about your own logical ideas, which are just pathetic anyway in comparison.

Although impressively shocking, these factors may very well explain why so many people believe in this story. There is so much to gain from believing in it and so much to lose from not believing in it. We hear it when we are young and the fear stays with us. When our logical minds try to tell us not to be gullible, we can remind ourselves that our own logical minds are relatively useless tools anyways.