Sleeping with power is the closest some women can get to acquiring it themselves. That may explain why men like Silvio Berlusconi become sexual magnets for younger women
If a powerful man exists, there’s got to be a woman somewhere waiting to sleep with him. Power is surely the most potent aphrodisiac in the world, as is evident from the numbers of beautiful women who gravitate towards powerful men.
Apart from Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, many other high-flying men are also famous for dallying around with young, beautiful women. Eighty-four-year-old Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy, has had a succession of younger girlfriends and now plans to marry a 24-year-old. Mick Jagger, the 60-something Rolling Stones icon, always has a young woman hanging onto his arm, and Donald Trump, the portly American business mogul, has a wife 24 years his junior. It’s easy to understand why women are drawn to powerful men.
After all, thousands of years of evolution have led us to seek out whoever offers us the best deal in life, even when it comes to mating. Charles Darwin was the first to make this connection by suggesting that our mating characteristics evolved and spread through populations depending on how much they improved our ability to reproduce.
This process of “sexual selection” doomed the lesser males to an evolutionary dead end even as their powerful rivals passed their genes to posterity — so powerful men of high status throughout human history have attained very high reproductive success, leaving a large number of offspring, legitimate and otherwise. Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty, the last Sharifian emperor of Morocco, stands out quantitatively, having left more offspring — 1,042 — than anyone else on record.
In any case, which woman wouldn’t want the benefits bestowed by social, economic and political power? Let’s face it, explicit power is still more or less a male prerogative, which is why the reverse situation — men being attracted to powerful women — just isn’t as commonplace.
Many believe that women who gravitate towards men who have power do so because they’re held back by society from getting any of their own. Sleeping with power is the closest some women can get to acquiring it themselves; basking in reflected glory is not such a bad option after all. LIAISONS with famous and powerful men are a form of currency, providing women an entry point into public life.
They can earn woman publicity; provide a lift to her pet causes (Jim Carrey girlfriend Jenny McCarthy’s battle against childhood vaccination certainly gained impetus); and act as a business opportunity: Seinfeld’s ex-girlfriend Shoshanna Lonstein had her own line of lingerie that was popular in large part because of her association with Jerry. This situation is perpetuated by all of us, who can’t help but give weight to the association. Apart from the huge high certain women get from luring a powerful man, females drawn to powerful males are on the lookout for safety.
Psychologists say that this sort of relationship is virtually sado-masochistic in nature, both at the interpersonal and sexual level. Being under the influence of a strong, controlling presence may evoke the feeling of safety and protection associated with childhood. In bed too, a submissive female partner enables the powerful male to live out his fantasies of dominance.
This sexual submissiveness, say experts, is a psychological phenomenon referred to as “identification with the aggressor”. “This is a way used by such women to psychologically diminish their own sense of powerlessness, helplessness and sense of dependency that often has its roots in early life experiences and reflects fantasies connected to caretaking experiences that may have been traumatic,” says Madhu Sarin, a Delhi-based psychoanalyst in private practice. Those who can’t resist the lure of a rich, powerful man rubbish this notion.
They insist that money acts like an aphrodisiac, that a rich man is successful, confident and goes for what he wants, which translates to being fantastic in bed. This is supported by a new scientific discovery about human sexuality — that the number and frequency of a woman’s orgasms is directly related to her partner’s wealth. So those of us who may have taken consolation in the notion that the beautiful women involved in relationships with powerful men were doing it for the lifestyle, and simply enduring the sex, are going to be disappointed. In this case, the honey truly lies with the money.
WHY POWERFUL MEN INDUCE MORE ORGASMS
Women’s ability to have powerful orgasms must have an evolutionary basis, say psychologists Thomas Pollet and Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle, UK. They believe everything about the way we flirt, court, have sex and bring up our children is strongly influenced by our genetic history. Powerful orgasms among women, they say, must have evolved for a reason. It could be an evolutionary adaptation that serves to discriminate between males on the basis of their quality. If so, then it should be more frequent in females paired with high-quality males.
Written By : Ritu Bhatia (Yahoo News)
