OK, the boys are exaggerating in their emotional responses, but I think they do have a point: "obsession" as the name of a perfume shouldn't make us think of stalkers and restraining orders, it should make us think of crushes, of thinking all the time about someone we're infatuated with and just can't get out of our system. It's part of the love-is-an-obsession-with-someone idea in our culture. It's harmless.

By the way, bigguns, thanks for the link. That was indeed an interesting article.

I think MPDPeople are a fantasy of those who think love will save us from ourselves. It can happen -- love can do even that. But it's not the most frequent way...

Movies made by men? Maybe, Laurel962. But I must admit that the movies with MPDBoys -- to which I would add Proof, with Gwynneth Paltrow playing the troubled mathematician with a depressive personality, doubts about her sanity and problems with her father (Anthony Hopkins, of all people) and Jake Gyllenhaal playing the mature, good-looking, interested math student whose only goal in the film seems to be to cheer her up and make her smile.

Movies with MPDP touch me because they talk about the fantasy of not being simply let to rot by oneself when one is in trouble -- not simply staying in the trash can waiting for the rats to start biting your shoes and the miasma-driven mildew to grow on your skin, but actually having someone who feels the pain and tries to save you. "I needed you... and you were there..." -- this kind of thing. Since we all seem to have moments in which we'd love someone to save us, it's an understandable fantasy.

The bad thing about it is that it usually doesn't happen, the rats do bite your shoes and the mildew does grow profusely. So you'd better learn to take care of yourself. But are we really bad for dreaming?...

There's something in modern society -- especially in America -- about wanting other people to prove to us that they deserve our time. Don't trust your heart; ask first what you'll get out of it. I'm not saying you shouldn't get out of bad relationships; as I_will_not_tell_you said, if you see the person you're trying to help simply won't make any effort, then it's obvious there's a point at which you have to realize you're not going to have any good effects, and then it's time to leave. But if you ever feel the urge to save a drowning soul, do give it a try. You may be surprised by the results.

I forgot to mention, Laurel962, that the point about the movie Proof was that it had a MPDBoy helping a girl get out of her depression, and still the director was a man. Men are, all in all, quite complicated creatures.

of a male pill. For all the reasons other LWs have already pointed out, among which: men would certainly want to know they have nothing to fear, regardless of whether or not their sexual partners had any birth control.

I don't like the argument, though, that pharma companies were only looking at males who have ED when they were doing their research on Viagra. They certainly knew many -- most -- customers would want to get it for purely recreational purposes, and I'm sure they calculated their profit margins accordingly.

Besides, it would be more equalitarian. Why should only women decide on conception? :-)

By the way, I agree that the religious right is more interested in keeping consequence-free sex impossible than in protecting unborn babies (many surely do care about these babies, but they -- and others -- also don't want consequence-free sex). I even wonder if wanting to avoid opening this Pandora box of discussions is not one of the reasons behind the pharma industry's lack of interest in research for a male pill.