The Philogynist's Fulfillment: Reverse Gratification
For the love and respect of women
If you go back to your childhood (if you were fortunate to have one), and if, like me, appropriate adults and guardians told you not to touch anything on the shelves in the shops, you’ll be familiar with the ruly reprimand “don’t touch.” Side note: sometimes, the imposing eyes of the shopkeeper were enough to thwart my urges and keep my hands in my pockets.
By way of analogy, the Philogynist, we can’t deny, often has the lustful urge to touch. The Philogynist, certainly the Philogynists of the more sensual type and persuasion are desirous of physical touch, coupled with the need for physical proximity aka “the urge to merge.”
Becoming a teen, I recall the phrase “you can look, but you can’t [and have no right to] touch” about the opposite sex. Not one for tradition, this phrase might stand the test of time, but with a progressive update: “you can look but you can’t touch without asking for ongoing consent.”
I liken this approach to what we lust after to the way we experience clouds, they’re seen but not felt. They are just there. Like frequenting a strip club (it’s been a while, so forgive me if these no longer apply) where the policy is “no touching.” The dynamics in traditional strip clubs between male customers and female performers are, in a way, a microcosm of dating between men and women.
Now of course one can touch without consent or permission but that’s a potential boundary violation and there will likely be both negative and positive consequences. And yet, as long there is an awareness of the consequences that proffers agency to make choices. I’m not suggesting we can’t touch anyone eg strangers we’ve just met, acquaintances or friends ever, or that we always need to ask for consent. That’s mutually subjective and consensual and depends on where eg one can sometimes intuit if one can touch if one’s already been touched, however, tread very carefully as this may considered implicit consent (which isn’t consent at all)1 This intuition relates to the previous post, Philogynist’s Posture, on being receptive (and discerning) of a woman’s wants, needs and agency. But out of respect, I’m proposing that the Philogynist center women and women’s wants here. To avoid harm at all costs, unless explicit, one must not touch a woman unless invited to do so by the woman or meet a woman halfway eg on an invitation to touch eg handshake, hug, pat, and so on.
But why? Where’s the reward in not touching? More sexual and romantic frustration and unfulfilment? Well, yes and no! The reward is in experiencing more sexual and romantic… tension. I’m not proposing that we remove sexual and romantic desire, instead i’m proposing we find satisfaction in the desire’s longing, not in the desire’s fulfillment. Satisfaction isn’t always and solely in the fulfillment of the desire. Fulfillment can be felt in the longing, in the wanting.
I’m proposing a meditation in wanting. In feeling the longing, the fullness of the longing, and embodying it. In feeling it more and more, in experiencing the feeling without acting on it, in wanting without having we find greater satisfaction. As the relationship and dating coach, David Chambers2, put it to me: How can you reconcile wanting without having? Exactly that, we want without having: we remove the having, without removing the wanting.
The connection between sexual and romantic desire and fulfillment from another is in the longing. The desirous longing, I believe, offers a fulfilling taste in and of itself. The constant fulfillment-seeking of our sexual desires can often lead to desire atrophy, which in basic neuroscientific (terms looking at the dopamine reinforcement system can) lead to dopamine downregulation and a subsequent dopamine baseline adjustment that can drive cravings.3
Simply put, dopamine can be considered a motivator to resolve some gap between how we feel and want to feel. As Andrew Huberman puts it, dopamine “is a universal currency of pursuit, of craving and wanting as opposed to having”4. So when we engage in low-effort pursuits eg casual sex5 or pornography consumption and have those things, we create a big inflection in dopamine. This trains our dopamine reinforcement system for fast reinforcement ie the more repeat of the behavior that initiates the dopamine peak will occur, causing us to crave and want more of the thing. However, the bigger the rise in dopamine, the bigger the crash. “You want something, you want it now and you get it,” but over time you get less and less of the dopamine peak ie pleasure, and get more of the dopamine trough ie misery and drop below baseline. So when the object of your desire no longer becomes enough to provide the fulfilling feeling, is no longer sufficient to turn you on or you’re unable to feel the desire, you can find yourself experiencing the Coolidge effect6 and chasing the dragon of orgasm bliss. The pleasure-seeking can turn us into dopamine junkies, and it can become a never-ending cycle of sex “addiction" or extreme habit formation. Potentially leading us to view “potential partners as distant foreign objects that [we] don’t understand.”
"You want something, you want it now and you get it”
- Huberman
So to come back to “don’t touch,” just notice her (with cultural awareness, as ogling may or may not be inappropriate). The real pleasure, excitement, and ecstasy are in deepening the desire, going deeper into the desire, and not always seeking to fulfill the longing. Consider lust a longing without fulfillment. It’s an exercise that coach, Jordan Luke Collier calls “The want function.” And what the old school of chivalry calls “delayed gratification” and what can be updated to “reverse gratification.” I’m not suggesting that we remove desire completely nor am I suggesting we fulfill it completely. I’m suggesting we look without touching (that could include no fap, that is, not masturbating to pornography, after all, it’s #No Nut November7).
“Consider lust a longing without a fulfillment”
To send home this point, the practice here is to build sexual tension and find gratification in the tension. It’s gratification in reverse. Women might experience a man’s sexual tension towards and around her without his sexual interests being explicit. I suspect this is what big dick energy (BDE) means in reality ie and it doesn’t correlate with size. It’s not so much the size that’s sensed as it is a matched libido.
To look at other cultures we find the beautiful word “saudade” which is a Portuguese word that can be translated as a deep emotional state of longing, melancholy, and/or nostalgia for an absent something or someone, or a longing for longing itself. It’s a sense that you long to long. The focus is on the longing itself not just the thing you long for. It’s the old adage “the journey, not the destination”8.
A practice in reverse gratification
Imagine a world where we go on dates with people we are limerent9 for and fantasize about, even if you’re both unavailable. Consider them sexual tension-building dates, where there is freedom to be totally oneself. “Edging”10 ethically close and closer, right up to but without crossing the line of no return, moving closer and closer to the waters of infidelity without as much as getting splashed.
The Philogynist plays with fire without getting burnt. How far can one go? What can one do without cheating? It’s “too hot to handle”11 in real life. One can’t do anything - beyond building an emotional connection, but even that may be off limits to someone, say who is emotionally unavailable as is often the case with people we fantasize about.
Back to reverse gratification, a metaphor that comes to mind to help embody it, is turning something reversible inside out. Try and turn that desire inside out.
Fulfillment is now,
A Philogynist
Implied or implicit consent also known as “indirect consent” is a blurred line. It broadly means consenting without explicitly saying so. In the context of sexual activity, implied consent is the idea that someone has consented to sexual activity if they appeared to consent at the time of the act. However, consent for sexual activity cannot be implied, assumed, or ambiguous. The statutory definition of consent defines consent as “if [the person] agrees by choice, and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice.” It’s about capacity and agency. “Sexual Offences Act 2003, Section 74” The National Archives, UK Government, last modified 17 May 2024, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/74#:~:text=74%E2%80%9CConsent%E2%80%9D&text=For%20the%20purposes%20of%20this,capacity%20to%20make%20that%20choice.
David Chambers put out compelling content on social media (@theauthenticman_), as well as offering courses, event days + more with his partner and fellow coach @coachwithasa.
“Dopamine levels below baseline drive craving. Craving translates into purposeful activity to obtain the drug,” Dr Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation (New York, Penguin, 2021).
Dr. Jonathan Haidt: How Smartphones & Social Media Impact Mental Health & the Realistic Solutions. Chapter: Boys Sexual Development, Dopamine Reinforcement & Pornography. www.youtube.com/watch?v=csubiPlvFWk&t=2507s
When I say “casual sex” I am referring to meeting someone specifically for the purpose of sexual gratification.
“The Coolidge effect is a biological phenomenon seen in animals, whereby males exhibit renewed sexual interest whenever a new female is introduced, even after sex with prior but still available sexual partners. To a lesser extent, the effect is also seen among females with regard to their mates,” “The Coolidge effect” Wikimedia Foundation, last modified 15 August 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolidge_effect.
Not something I advocate. “No Nut November, also known as and abbreviated to NNN, is an annual internet challenge of sexual abstinence and not masturbating during the month of November. It originated in 2011 and grew in popularity among male users of social media during and after 2017.” “No Nut November” Wikimedia Foundation, last modified 1 November 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Nut_November.
“The journey, not the destination” is a quote attributed to American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. It conveys the idea that the journey itself is just as important as the final destination
“Limerence is a state of involuntary obsession with another person. The experience of limerence is different from love or lust in that it is based on the uncertainty that the person you desire, called the “limerent object” in the literature, also desires you. Since limerence is the desire to be desired, it is a cognitive, as well as physical, and emotional experience. As the focus of limerence is whether or not the object of desire reciprocates the feelings, rather than actually falling in love with the person, it is almost always one-sided.” “Limerence” Psychology Today, last modified 13 October 2023, https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/limerence.
“Edging is a method of stretching out how long it takes to reach orgasm during sex [not just sex].” “What is Edging Sex?” WedMD, last modified 7 July 2023, https://www.webmd.com/sex/what-is-edging-sex.
Too Hot To Handle, an unscripted reality dating show (filmed in multiple locations) where contestants are not allowed to kiss, take part in any sexual activities, or self-gratify themselves at any point in the process so that they can form deeper, non-physical connections first, otherwise money will be taken away from the massive prize pot that the winner will get.