One of the tragedies of society's hostility to gayness is that straight men are afraid to get "too close" to other straight men. After all, loving another man is gay, right? And being gay is a very dreadful thing, God wot. I don't need to point out that you can love another man very deeply without wanting to have sex with him. I adored my father, and I love my sons more than I can say. But because of these absurd and horrible taboos against being close to another man, too many men never really bond with other man.
A Finnish study, reported in The Guardian, shows how being stroked in a non-sexual way bonds people closer.
Researchers have shed light on the chemistry that bonds one person to another by taking brain scans of men being stroked while in their underpants.
The Finnish study found that gentle stroking – which was not in sexually arousing areas – changed levels of opioid brain chemicals which work behind the scenes to form lasting bonds in animals.
The findings suggest that opioids might be the critical chemicals that enables human brains to distinguish between strangers and people who are closer to us, such as friends, families and lovers.
"We know this is hugely important for humans because we have these strong, lasting bondings with friends and relatives and so on. But what kind of system maintains these bonds, and makes them last?" said Lauri Nummenmaa who studies the neural circuitry of emotions at Aalto University in Finland.
Studies in animals have shown that opioids can play a crucial role in pairing up. Prairie voles are monogamous in the wild, but when given a drug that blocks opioid in their brains, they seek out other partners. If opioids are blocked in monkeys, they groom others less and neglect their babies.
To see whether opioids were important in human bonding, the researchers invited nine couples into the lab. The men stripped off to their underpants and lay under a blanket in a PET scanner. The first scan was taken while the men were alone. For the second, their partners touched them gently all over, but avoided anywhere likely to arouse them sexually.
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