Steroids and Dating and Attraction

I like how people say they are so dangerous and unhealthy, next time a new medicine commercial comes on TV actually pay attention to the side effects at the end, someone then are pretty scarey.... yet our kids grow up watching this, they don't think anything of it.

True to a small extent but control group analysis is extremely dificult to complete with steroids as the (a)-testosterone levels can vary greatly ( 4 times at the higher end) so counter-parting hormones are almost never in a similar concentration, thus causing a varying difference per person in the unwanted effects they receive.

I like how people say they are so dangerous and unhealthy, next time a new medicine commercial comes on TV actually pay attention to the side effects at the end, someone then are pretty scarey.... yet our kids grow up watching this, they don't think anything of it.

I assure you that the FDA is the biggest enemy we have. I refer to 99% of medications as nothing but bandaids that the government gets rich off of. Let's treat a headache with medication that will cause high blood pressure that we will treat with blood pressure medication that will cause....you get the pattern here. If medical professionals would use more logic we would find the CAUSE of the headache and treat that instead of the symptoms. While there is a time and place where medication is necessary, I will forever believe that anything made in a lab is by far worse for you than anything you can grow naturally.

I've never pushed milk on my children for calcium, instead I push broccoli.

So...while I do believe steroids can be dangerous and unhealthy, I also think medications are! It all goes into the same category in my world and I teach it to my children as well. Just an FYI.

I don't like big muscles so no probably not.

I'm attracted to lean skinny guys and thankfully they don't need steroids for that.

My bf is 6'2" 148lbs. That should give you an idea of how skinny he is.

Have you seen "Natural" Body Builders? They look fabulous! I would much rather see a man who does natural body building than that unnatural, vein popping, ..... eugh... gross. XP

Natural bodybuilders have popping veins too. Just sayin'.

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I actually think he looks great and have serious respect for anyone with that level of dedication to their craft or sport. I think he looks way better than this guy:



Yes, I know guys who juice still have to work hard at it, but I just think the natural bodybuilders look better.

I don't think either of them are attractive nor would I ever even look twice at someone like that in terms of wanting to get to know them or date them. I couldn't get turned on by rubbing someone and feeling mass amounts of veins. Sorry guys lol!

Not quite based on the actual question (I answered that earlier) but it's in relation to steroids so I thought I'd mention here:

A family member of a friend used to work out at the same gym as my bf and I. She was very "anti-lifting" as she didn't want to build huge man muscles, and would warn me about that on a few occasions
One time, this woman got a chest infection and got prescribed steroids from her doctor to help build herself up again to health. She refused, and I remember her mentioning it to me in the gym before, along the lines of "I'm not taking steroids!" etc etc It made me think WTF?? They're completely different to anabolics!

I don't like big muscles so no probably not.

Not all steroid users have big muscles.

A.C.E. Certified Personal & Group FitnessTrainer
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Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

I actually think he looks great and have serious respect for anyone with that level of dedication to their craft or sport. I think he looks way better than this guy:



Yes, I know guys who juice still have to work hard at it, but I just think the natural bodybuilders look better.

I've seen this pic on getbig.com. It's a photoshop.

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Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Women might find muscles attractive, I find broad shoulders & a thick neck a great turn on but very few women find aggression & loss of control attractive. Roid rage is not sexy. It is not a turn on. So I would not date or even socialise with someone who took steroids, equally if he is happy to "cheat" at getting fit or even more important at sport I would not trust him.
Vain men are not attractive & men who are so vain they would be willing to be impotent, violent & suffer osteoporosis in later life are not for me. Give me a nice builder/ truck driver/ biker who is strong and fit naturally any day!

More pics please. Idc if Manu is natty or not, he's worked his *kitten* off for his body.

Having grown up around athletes (specifically baseball players) from Little League to the Majors and having been an athlete myself most of my life, this has become a question in my world many, many times. I can even speak to both sides of your question. So I'll just tell my story in a Faulkner sort of way and hope I stumble on an answer you like.

As a woman, I HAVE dated guys who took supplements to keep up with the competition, from the legal kind to the illegal kind. With that, I can't say empirically that I would or would not date someone if I knew they were a juicer. I certainly don't seek it out, but I also believe in taking each case on an individual level, so instead, let me just share my experiences and thoughts on the PED phenomenon.

Let's start with the gateway stuff, the "legal" crap. It started in high school, but at that level, the guys who WERE doing it were my teammates rather than potential partners. I remember the moral, ethical, and confidence struggles my teammates went through when entertaining the idea of "using." Most of the ones who did, as it were, didn't go very far after high school, having spent more time getting jacked than getting skilled. The relationship is more correlation than causation, but I find it worth noting nonetheless.

A couple of the guys DID play college baseball and an even smaller number went on to play professional ball for a while (I'm not naming names to avoid speculation), and at that point, they were being provided "supplements" by their coaching staff (this was quite a few years back), so their questions became "answered," so to speak, by the perceived approval of their decision. Most of the guys didn't use anything serious but definitely lived on protein shakes and energy supplements. I did that myself in high school and college, to be honest, but that can become a problem as any supplement use comes with risks. The players in college are under a LOT of pressure to either get drafted or make the decision that this is the end of the line for them, neither being an easy task. If their decision is "draft or die" and they get their way, the pressure doesn't go away in the minors. No way. It only gets worse, and the supplements become stronger. It's not hard to see how PEDs can enter the picture quickly with a combination of that pressure, the media coverage of All Star use, and the hard sell marketing utilized by so many companies. To an athlete, it almost becomes a question of, "Am I the only one NOT doing this?"

I've had the discussion with former teammates and former boyfriends so many times (from the afore-mentioned high school teammates through my current lot of professional and collegiate level buddies), and the story always comes back to two overarching themes: 1. "I just got it from <fill in quirky teammate nickname here> and he's hitting BOMBS this year!" or 2. "I don't see why it's a big deal; I'm not doing steroids." Like I said, I've tried a lot of stuff myself with mixed results, so if the question is supplements, most athletes can probably tell you they've done something at some time.

Now, this is, of course, in reference to the legal stuff that's available in any GNC or Vitamin Shoppe. The story greatly changes when you add anabolics and prohormones to the equation. This is a scarier, darker path that MAY or MAY NOT be more dangerous. The stuff you get at GNC is by no means an apple, but the classic steroid, good lord, look out! I've had some experience here, too, and I've ended relationships over the side effects of these substances. I've also watched teammates, friends, and friends' boyfriends go down this path. It may sound like I've just spent forever around meatheads, but I really haven't. Athletes have greater access to this stuff than a lot of people think.

Couple stories to add personal credibility:

1. A good friend of mine was dating another good friend of mine. She was a local news anchor, and he was a minor league ballplayer. They were GREAT their first "season" together, and they even somehow made it work over the off season. Granted, they didn't see each other much, so the transition he underwent was both less obvious and way more shocking to both of us. When they started dating, he was a AA All Star, power hitting outfielder with a good glove and notable speed. He was no five-tool guy, but he had a shot at moving up. He was also a genuinely nice guy, and he adored her. Baseball players aren't known for romance, especially in the minors when they usually have no designs on permanence and they keep weird hours. He was the exception here--albeit gracelessly, but he tried.

So after the first really great season, he went home. She went to California to see him once, and they met in Dallas another time. When she came back from the Texas rendezvous, she said she noticed he was a little different but we decided it was likely related to frustration over off season training. She also said he looked a lot bigger, but she said it could have been that she hadn't seen him in forever.

However, when he came back, he was completely different. He didn't have as much time for her; he'd rather spend it in the gym. He was eating weird crap; two whole chickens a day was just the beginning. Most disturbingly, though, was his personality. Never one to have a temper, he was suddenly breaking bats and throwing helmets when things didn't go his way. His home run numbers were up, but his speed seemed off. His fuse was short, and he picked a couple fights in bars (a HUGE no-no in minor league ball; this can end in outright release). She told me he was just upset about his season and under a lot of pressure from the club. I disagreed.

In a weird drunken rampage one night (because steroids and alcohol is DUUUUMB), I called him out on it, and he caved. There WAS pressure from the club to keep up the power numbers, so he gave in to a shady personal trainer's suggestion that he just use "until I get my head on straight." I told him he was a different person both on and off the field and that it wasn't worth five extra jacks a season to end up alone, walking down the road hitchhiking like the Hulk. Of course, he flew off the handle and ended up getting in a fight with a random guy who looked at him funny. Soon thereafter, he and my friend broke up, and the team sent him back to A ball to get his act together. Where he is now, I don't know, but it's obviously not the Show or we'd see his name somewhere.

2. A guy I dated thought about it seriously, as he was under a great deal of pressure from the club, too. I listened to him weigh the pros and cons out loud over and over, weighing in only when he asked me at first. However, when he started to lean toward sticking a needle in his butt, I stepped in more forcefully. Another teammate knew what he was considering as well and ended up involving a trainer whose ability to keep things confidential is still commendable to this day. He ended up not doing it, but he's still playing AA ball for the same team he was five years ago, but he's happy with it. He's doing what he loves to do.

3. My cousin started taking anabolics to keep his edge in college ball, and he was RIPPED UP for a while. He didn't go overboard in how big he got, but you could tell he had something working for him. Now, years after he's finished playing, he still goes to the gym and works out hard, but he looks like a giant ball of dough that someone hasn't quite worked into anything. The moment he stopped using, no matter how much he still trained, he simply fell apart. Seeing him now is like seeing a deflated balloon still trying to float. You may say, "Yeah, but who cares when you're older and not playing anymore?" Uh, well, he's only 26, and he has the body of a 55-year-old man who never spent much time in a gym. It's sad, really.

The moral here is that, while the "edge" seems obvious to some guys, it isn't worth it to others. I guess all of this is to say that any way you look at it, steroids, prohormones, and a number of other PEDs are dangerous and can be detrimental rather than helpful. I wouldn't go out of my way to date someone who does any of this stuff because I'm attracted to athletes, not Atlas. The "look" that goes with these drugs is both overblown and short-lived. Yes, women are attracted to muscles, but most of us are NOT Snooki and are, therefore, not looking for you to be shiny, bulging, and veiny. What we like is health, and health does not include drugs that make you look like the Situation (who has an odd body). Plus, there is a distinct look that comes out of steroid use that is absolutely NOT attractive; it's the weirdly barrel-shaped belly, arms so big you can't scratch your own ear, and weirdly disproportionate and tiny legs.

Don't fool yourselves, guys, we want you to look like you hit a gym or a trail regularly, but we don't want you to be useless. There is such a difference between a healthy, athletic guy who's in shape and can hang with us on a good run, walk the links with us on a nice day, or "accidentally" tackle us in a pick up flag football game and a guy who's a steroid-using powerlifting juicehead who would run out of energy by the end of the block or couldn't play on your beer league softball team with you because he can't swing a bat all the way around due to too much random muscle mass. While I don't have research to back up this claim, I think it's safe to say that the majority of women probably don't want to deal with you all 'roided out, whether it's because you're mean, vain, or pathetic. We want you to be able to keep up and be fun to be around, and it sure as hell doesn't hurt if you've got a nice, hard fought six-pack to go with that smile.

I've yet to hear anyone address the ethical part of it within sports. I don't discount hard work people put into it their sport/craft. However, where is the line drawn with what is okay to aid an athlete? I admire the hell out of Konstantinovs (world class powerlifter), but if I found out he was using steroids in order to aid his training, as the corny ad campaign says, it would kind of put an asterisk next to his name. It makes it hard to aspire to be like someone when you know this.

I've even read on other sites where people ask "Where does the natural competitor come into play?" and the response tends to be "They don't." That's the biggest issue I take with steroid use. That if you want to truly compete in strength sports, the mentality is that you have to use steroids to do so.

woops double post

I wouldn't.

My boyfriend took creatine for awhile and it made him act really touchy and angry. I couldn't handle that so I can only imagine how awful steroids would be on behavior.

I've yet to hear anyone address the ethical part of it within sports. I don't discount hard work people put into it their sport/craft. However, where is the line drawn with what is okay to aid an athlete? I admire the hell out of Konstantinovs (world class powerlifter), but if I found out he was using steroids in order to aid his training, as the corny ad campaign says, it would kind of put an asterisk next to his name. It makes it hard to aspire to be like someone when you know this.

I've even read on other sites where people ask "Where does the natural competitor come into play?" and the response tends to be "They don't." That's the biggest issue I take with steroid use. That if you want to truly compete in strength sports, the mentality is that you have to use steroids to do so.

If they were to take steroids out of pro sports and Olympics, there would never ever be a new record. The athletes who are on the number one level are already at their genetic limit of performance, and are using steroids to surpass that human limit.