Love & Sex: Anthropological and Mathematical Perspective

(A very intense discussion with my wife on the alleged capacity (or the lack of it) of males to love resurrected my own analysis on love as a behavioral response following a mathematical formulation. I had ruminated on this topic extensively in my own heydays when I used to consider myself as a thinker and roam around bearded in University. If anybody questioned my intellect, I used to point towards my beard and spectacles as a conclusive proof of intelligence. I request the indulgence of the fellow bloggers to read this piece and offer their sincere critique.)

Anthropologically and from evolutionary perspective, mating is the most basic and important activity since time immemorial. And hence you find ‘the male of the species being more beautiful/attractive than the females’- be it the flowing mane of a majestic lion or a riot of colours of a dancing peacock’s with his feathers all aglow! A cock dances around a hen or a mast elephant fights his competitor and establishes his supremacy to win ‘his ladies’. Anthropologically, it has always been the job of the strong male who would fight and win. Only then his chances for mating were good. Or else he might as well kiss his chances good bye. The preferential treatment of a successful male has geneticised to such an extent that males are wired to think of ‘sex/mating’ and we have now come to an evolutionary perspective which seems allergic or anathema to some women. In my opinion mating is an issue which is still being reflected in the instincts of males as a reminder of their anthropological and evolutionary bequeath. Period.

However, sociologically, we are getting better and better. (I hope!) This in turn has made certain instinctive activities and impulses questionable. Afterall, a gorilla never gives any diamond rings to a female gorilla before making his instinctive behavior clear. Nor does a lion take a prospective mate to a Taj for seven course dinner before making that amorous move. This animalistic uncouthness and lack of subtlety of animal kingdom, even though bequeathed to us, would not go down well with the society these days where even an ‘Aati Kya Khandala’ can land people in jail! Afterall, it is all about marching ahead and hiding your basic instincts. Bloggers would be aware that when Lady Diana was killed in that car accident in Paris, neither Prince Charles nor her two kids were seen crying by media. Because it is all about hiding and masking your feelings in the changing social mores where betrayal of one’s own emotion is seen as a sign of weakness and crying at other’s misfortune as a sign of compassion and humaneness (remember the then President of USA, Bill Clinton when he famously cried hugging one of the relatives of the deceased in Okhalama bombing.). With socialization and humanization, an unwritten socially acceptable code of behavior (and written legal behavior) has emerged which seems to regulate our behavior to a great extent by replacing ‘might is right’ to ‘rule of law’. Hence socialization has taught us to be subtle, circumspect and use graded rather than abrupt behavior. But the basic (or baser, if one may!) instincts though pushed to the hinterlands of ones’ minds, have not been fully extirpated. They still exist.

Love, the most difficult thing (?) to define takes its entry here. Even though Plato defined Love 'as an enemy of reason', I would like to define it in my own mathematical way. As per my definition, love is not an emotion but it is a behavioral response equivalent to the output of a multi-variable function of many emotions. Love is the determinant of relationship between/among individuals. It is not that love did not exist among the animals. It is just that there were fewer shades of emotions in animalistic love- to count a few: sex, hunger, thirst, fear, pain, anger, joy, togetherness. The preponderance of these basic emotions largely defined how they related to each other. But with evolution, many more shades of emotions have come in between. One more important surmise is that love is also a function of time and the context. Love doesnot operate in vacuum but it is the response to various stimuli at that particular time.

Hence I will say that

l= f(t, x 1 ,x 2 ,x 3 ,x 4 ,x 5 ,…………..,x n, )

where l= Love, f is a function of variables t = Time, x1=sex, x2= anger, x3= jealousy, x4= hate, x5= possessiveness, x6= care, x7= responsibility, x8=comfort level, x9= interests, x10= adoration,x11= fatherly, x12= motherly, x13= siblingual, x14= hunger, x15= thirst, x16= fear, x17= pain etc upto the variable x n .

Let us take the case about a guy thinking about sex on the very first meeting and see how this formula explains it here. As guys are evolutionarily wired towards mating and sex, the initial value pertaining to x1= sex might be maximum amount whereas the value of the other variables from x2 to xn in function would be less at time t=t1. But at time t= 9 days after marriage (as per Kamalji) the overall impact of x1=sex might not be as much in l=Love due to which the sexual component of love would be less. (Also remember the Laws of Diminishing Marginal Returns which might explain the 9-day phenomenon!)

Now reverse the situation. First time when the girl meets the guy, at time t=t1, x1 =0 for the girl (this is what many girls would like us to believe) and maybe x9= interests is maximum. So the girl might not feel anything sexually, though she might be attracted due to commonality of interests. Hence, the same formulae would explain the love as felt, perceived and understood by them at the same time but in different range of emotions and intensity.

The above formulae will explain every kind of love. Where ever the value of x1=0, in common parlance it is supposed to be platonic, parental or siblingual love having no sexual component. Even a deviant’s love having sexual component can be explained. So there is no exception to this formula.

Love doesnot mean always being on the best behavior. Because, it is a response to stimuli, hence the response would also depend upon the stimuli. One might be very much in love with one’s girl, but when at time= t, one is not able to meet office deadlines, the factor x i = frustration will change the tone and tenor of his love and he might answer abruptly to an otherwise innocent question of his girl. After a few days of business outing and abstemious behaviour, maybe variable x1= sex would again be raising its head (no pun!) and the love would have a higher component of it.

So, love is not unidimensional. And it changes in context of time as per the raging emotion of the time. Sex is just one of the variables of the function defined as love. It is equally applicable to men and women as per the time. And there would be a time when the component of sex in the love of both males and females would be the same. And this will dispel certain peoples’ implicit suggestion (preposterous to me!) that only men like sex, women endure it. I think, the graph of sexual craving is largely a decreasing graph for males and an increasing graph for females upto a certain age. And where they intersect, the equilibrium has been reached. Hence sexual compatibility would be attained when the difference between these two graph should not be too much as that will leave one of the partners unsatisfied leading to strain in relationship which would be reflected in some other ways of negative emotion.

Various bloggers have talked about recent social movements and their effect on sexual liberation of women. That feature is also explained by above formula, if one considers time as one of the variables. This ‘time’ component explains the changing social mores. And what I am trying to say is that a time will come when the social dynamics will completely reverse and what seems only relevant to male behavior today will also be reflected by female behavior. Hence, may be in next 100 years, a girl who looks at a guy for the first time, she will think of sex whereas the guy will think if she would be emotionally compatible and intellectually capable or not. She might even ask him “ Have you got a pistol in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

One of the comments of my wife doubted this supposition of mine about girl thinking about sex on the very first meeting under the pretext that she was ‘evolved’ and matured. However, if the past few decades are any indications, the assertive female behavior and liberated sexual winds blowing through the femaledom are indicators that the best (or the worst, depending upon which side of sexual revolution you are on!) is yet to come. And in those times to come, I can almost visualize men hiding under the beds from the prying eyes of their female counterparts. Time, the greatest master of human drama, would then move again like a pendulum from one extreme to another extreme.

Both men and women love with the same intensity. The component of love changes in both of them as per time and context. So we should never try to look for the same feelings and reciprocation as individuals are made differently. Different strokes for different folks, isnt it? Love exists, but it need not exist in the manner which Mills & Boon would like us to believe. It can exist in the irritation of a housewife, an exasperation of a husband, the disgust of a father at his wayward children, adoration of a daughter for her father, neglect of a husband towards his wife for some innocuous domestic issue as well as animalistic passion of a husband and wife or delightful idleness of a couple in the serene and pristine mountainous terrain.

Let us not look at love from some preconceived notion. But liberate it from our own mental boundaries so that it can take the infinite shape it is capable of taking and light our lives the way it has been doing till now.

PrideOfMatchingham

A Maelstrom into Marriage

Since the time I read the email, I was sweating like a pig. One of the best kept secrets seems to have got out. However the mode of the leak was beyond comprehension. How could something like this go out in the public domain? In my opinion, nobody even had an inkling of this. Earlier I was feeling safe in my own make and believe world. But the safety cocoon seems to have suddenly given way to palpable frustration. Hysteria of Doom was imminent. Apart from making me ashamed beyond words, this exposure had also made me vulnerable, open to infinite ridicule and undue overtures. And I knew of no way to thwart all these unwanted attention. My marriage of just a few days seemed crumbling.

I tried talking to my wife, rather confiding in her. Like a nervous sheep about to get a heart attack, I bleated out something like having got an email. Waving aside all the niceties the difficult situation demanded, my wife’s response was one of cold rebuke, considering that we were newly married. She told me that I got hundreds of emails everyday so what was so special about this? ‘If at all you get a female, it might be unusual,’ she retorted. I was sure that she was hitting below the belts. I am sure somebody has sent her the same mail and she is already in the know of the things. That’s why she is being so combative and full of vengeance. I started correlating things. Just a few days back she had told me that somebody had stolen and changed the password of her yahoo email id because of which she was not able to log into her yahoo mail. Now, in retrospect, I think she was lying about identity theft. She must have changed it herself to prevent me from knowing that she already knew! I am positive, certain!

Anyway, what to do? My overtures to confess and decide the best course of action had been stonewalled. I thought I will try again in the night and offer her the freedom to walk out of the marriage, if the issue was so important. Or may be do whatever was suggested in the mail. My male ego was taking a terrible beating and dark clouds were there everywhere without a trace of the proverbial silver lining.

Having effectively shut me up, my wife asked me to accompany her to market. I don’t know if it is true or I was just imagining but I noticed a growing stridency in her voice which certainly was because of her new knowledge. Knowledge is certainly power, I thought cynically. The moment I stepped out of the house, the watchman gave a nice salute with a smile and I was taken aback with this spontaneous display of service-with-a-smile motto. “My God, he is laughing at me. Look at those smiles.” I think there was also twinkle in his eyes. I was ashen faced, embarrassed to the core. Trying to hide my hurt I turned my head and was met by a very chirpy young fellow who shook my hand a bit too warmly.

“Uncle, where are you going?” asked the hideous fellow.

“Why?” I retorted.

“No, you are going with aunty. I thought I will come over and learn painting from aunty. But now I guess I have to come afterwards.” He carried on in his nonchalant way.

I put him at considerable ease by firmly telling him that he did not need to come over and learn blasted paintings. I clarified that I had not opened a painting school at home. I am sure it would have driven the point home as the guy seemed suitably chastised and my ego shot up a few notches.

On our way to exit, we were met by the milkman who quite patronizingly told me not to worry about paying the accumulated bills in a hurry or the newspaper vendor who said he will take it all at one go! I was growing more and more uneasy by the second.

Shopping at Big Bazaar seemed to be the nightmarish experience. Almost everybody was looking at my wife, I am sure. And certainly at me with that knowing smile. I was sweating even in the aircon mall. A lot of salesmen were talking to her and I knew that they were frequenting my place in my absence as wife was asking about the status of the Big Bazaar smart card which she had applied for during the visit of one of those salesmen.

“So she must have got that mail quite sometime back. Or maybe as a wedding gift from one of her jilted lovers who had unearthed my secrets and had forwarded it to my wife.” I reasoned.

We got back home in silence. My mind in a quandary. What to do? Either do as suggested in the mail which meant a gaping hole in my purse. But that was the minimum one would pay for some respectability and buying the silence of those blackmailers who were masquerading as salesmen. Another was to try and confront my wife about all those furtive glances from the watchmen, milkmen and others of their ilk which might be a figment of my imagination or might be truth itself. The third and the most respectable, from my point of view, was to acknowledge, confess and ask her if she wanted an honourable and speedy divorce with future silence as one of the clauses.

I decided on the third. Having finished her household chores in which I was giving more help today than any other day, I accompanied her to the bedroom. She went to the washroom to change and I stood guard at the gate. She asked from inside if I wanted to help her change! I think I could make out the sarcasm in her voice. She was mocking me, I am sure.

Anyway, I had to bite the bullet. I asked her to sit and listen to me. I told her that if she wanted a speedy and honorable divorce, that would not be a problem. "But please don’t make fun of me. And don’t let out this secret to anybody else." I pleaded. Now I must tell you that her reaction could have made any budding actress proud of the histrionics skills. She bore the mien of somebody who could have been knocked down with a feather. ‘Oh, what a waste these acting skills.’ I thought and came to the res immediately.

“So you already know it.” This was more of a statement of fact than a question.

“What?” She was still trying to play with me.

“This email thing which I got today. So you are already aware.” I tried to correlate what I was saying to her in the morning.

“Which email are you talking about?” So stubborn, I thought. Why does she want to hurt my ego all the more by asking me to spell out the thing.

“See, I would much rather that this thing did not get out. As a wife either you can guide me about the future course of action or if you want a divorce with ‘gag order’ I would be OK with it.”

Now it was her turn to be wide eyed. Or was she acting again? You never know. She did not have a clue or acted as if she did not. I asked her again if she also had got the same email and clearly told her that I was not aware of my own insufficiency. I had not wished to mislead her into this marriage with any false notions. It is just that this kind of thing was not discussed earlier hence I had no idea about what is normal or abnormal.

“What email are you taking about? What did it say?” my concerned wife asked me.

“The one from Kirk Davis of Laos Pharmaceuticals. I got it today.” I replied.

“What did it say.” Asked my wife concerned that I might have contracted the worst possible disease.

“Increase Your Penis Size by 4 Inches in $500.” I quoted the subject of the mail verbatim.

The comforting ring of her laughter set the tone for the most passionate honeymoon after marriage!

PrideOfMatchingham