Cupid's Poisoned Arrow

As usual, you ask interesting questions. But it's unclear whether you're talking about males or females here. Maybe both, although their physiology of orgasm is very different. What about all the evidence suggesting that infrequent orgasm leads to higher rates of prostate cancer in men and a whole host of maladies in women (depression, insomnia, irritability, and so on)? You seem to start from the assumption, like the authors of Mean Genes, that our evolved tendencies are our internal enemies, that we've got to overcome. Cupid's arrow is "poisoned," our genes are "mean." I think the conflict between modern societies and our evolved tendencies creates problems, but it's far from clear that the latter is the culprit.

Over the next posts I'll share a very different model of sexuality. It doesn't fit neatly into existing assumptions, and it will take me time to lay it out. It is pro-intercourse, but has nothing to do with guilt, sin, repression or other damaging nonsense. It is based on the idea that by using our rational brain to choose behaviors that alter the tone of our limbic system we can protect our free will and steer for whatever relationship results we want. Otherwise, we’re vulnerable to having the more primitive mechanisms of the brain (instincts) override our judgment, and even determine the duration of our relationships without our awareness.

So, “choosing instinct” is great—-especially if you clearly understand your genes’ agenda of “more offspring and more partner turnover to improve diversity.” However, having instinct make your choices, and having instinctual choices made for you by your brain’s reward circuitry, because you have inadvertently starved it of the dopamine necessary for feelings of well-being, actually curtail free will.

In writing my book, I was amazed to learn that some of the assumptions in the popular wisdom on sexuality are not all that well supported by the research. I’ll share a couple of the surprises, because they respond to points raised above.

For example, there is an assumption that frequent orgasm improves prostate health. Much research has been done on many factors potentially affecting prostate heath (number of partners, STDs, marital status, etc.). On nearly every point research has gone both ways, which means those factors do not increase risk or protection.

The same is true of orgasm frequency. In one of the studies released a few years back, men who remembered orgasming more frequently in their 20s had slightly lower rates of prostate cancer. (Other age categories of ejaculation frequency were unrelated to risk of prostate cancer.) However, in a more recent study, the trend was reversed. That is, those who were most sexually active when younger had slightly higher rates of prostate cancer later in life. See “Sex drive link to prostate cancer”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7850666.stm In other words, it looks like frequent orgasm is not the key to better prostate health, even though intercourse is very beneficial for all of us (for reasons unrelated to orgasm, such as affectionate touch and close, trusted companionship).

Second, orgasm is not an isolated event of good feelings for either sex. It’s the beginning of a longer cycle, and the return to homeostasis is apparently at least a week, and probably two weeks. During that lingering return to homeostasis, neurochemicals appear to fluctuate in both men and women, and those shifts result in subtle changes in perception…some of which tend to make us irritable, hornier or more apathetic, and often less attractive to each other. (In a future post I’ll also be talking about which subconscious signals help to improve perception of our partners and thus strengthen emotional bonds, should we desire to do so.)

Since the time of Kinsey, it has been widely believed that more orgasms for women would lead to stronger marriages (and the many benefits that accrue from close, trusted companionship). In fact, Kinsey’s own research contradicted this finding. Also, consider this excerpt from my book about a recent study:

“Recently a psychologist did research on women engaging in various kinds of sexual activity. At the end of thirty days he tested them to see how attractive and friendly they found (unknown) men’s pictures. He was trying to prove that women engaging in PVI (penile-vaginal intercourse) would find pictures of strange men less attractive than the other women did, because they would be more bonded with their mates.

To his surprise, what he found supports our suggestion that sexual satiation shifts women’s perception for the worse. The more orgasms the study participants had (by all methods), the more unattractive and aggressive they ranked the men in the pictures. Sorry, guys—all that hard work in the sack, and see what you get?

The women who only masturbated during that time ranked the men the lowest. Women who engaged in oral sex with their male partners didn’t much like the look of the men either. The PVI women ranked the men the friendliest and most attractive, which may mean that intercourse (deep connection with a partner) best protects women’s outlooks from postorgasmic fallout. Incidentally, more was not better: The fewer their orgasms, the friendlier the men looked.” See “Sexual Activity Is Inversely Related to Women’s Perceptions of the Facial Attractiveness of Unknown Men” http://www.psychophysiolab.com/uhess/pubs/HBSF07.pdf

Again, I would be the first to advocate the benefits of intercourse and affection for everyone’s state of mind. Indeed, there may even be helpful hormonal stimulation in naturally produced lubricant fluid (sperm are probably irrelevant as mood elevators). It’s just not clear that orgasm is what’s doing the job, despite widespread beliefs to the contrary -- especially once couples learn a way to make love that soothes sexual frustration without relying on orgasm. The fact that orgasm, and the sudden drop in dopamine after intense sexual stimulation, feel “good,” doesn’t mean that there’s a net gain to our well-being when the entire cycle of orgasm and return to homeostasis are taken into account.

Our evolved tendencies are certainly not our enemies. They do their job (gene proliferation) very well, but if, for example, our agenda happens to be lasting harmonious union, then we need to know how to steer our instincts in that direction. Otherwise Cupid (our primitive limbic system) is likely to call the shots.

Now, for some reason, many assume that a hankering for a sexually exclusive relationship is a moral issue. For some of us, however, it is not at all a moral issue. Personally, I just got tired of the merry-go-round of changing partners constantly. So much energy and focus were going into chasing my instincts around that I couldn’t accomplish many of the other things I wanted to. Others may prefer lasting union because they want to raise their kids together. (After all, two caregivers are an advantage for human babies.) These groups want to know how to steer for the results they freely choose, quite apart from any cultural considerations. To plan a strategy, we need to know Cupid’s agenda and how to “talk” to Cupid. Some courses of action speed relationship deterioration and some retard it. If all of us become more knowledgeable about these cues, then we can all go wherever we please.

I might add that the information I’ll be sharing on this blog is just as relevant for those who like casual sex and hooking up with multiple partners. For example, they can learn more about how to avoid the subconscious signals that strengthen emotional bonds if they don’t want a relationship.

Sometimes I sense an unspoken assumption that free will means the freedom only to yield to our instinctual impulses. What about the free will to outsmart our genes, if we freely reach the point that we don’t share their goals of lots of offspring with the greatest possible diversity? It sometimes seems that the latter is assumed to be a product of dangerous repression, while the risks of the former are often downplayed. Don’t get me wrong, repression can do damage, but so can the compulsion that can innocently arise when we constantly over-stimulate our reward circuitry. Surely we need to understand both risks better.

Choosing a stable relationship instead of promiscuity doesn’t have to be “living a lie.” Both the Coolidge Effect (tiring of a partner with whom one sexually satiates oneself) and pair-bonding are instinctual, in that they are governed by the centers below the neo-cortex. I believe there's a way to side-step the Coolidge Effect and enhance the instinctual desire to pair-bond, should we so desire.

Having read a load of articles on this blog, I was today shopping for clothes for my loving partner who I have recently admitted my Porn Addiction (PA) to, which incidentally lead me to this wonderful and almost therapeutic blog.

Anyway, appreciation aside, I was in the cheap store, Primark. And, I saw an obese, extremely unsatisfied looking woman in front of me buying 10 pairs of identical clothes for (one of, I presume) children. I usually would have gone "dumb *****" and then gone on a tirade to the next person I saw about "American culture" invading the UK. But, today I realised what this person had really fallen to; Superabundance. This woman had the typical signs of someone over-consuming. Obesity, over-spending and a face that you can tell spend more time frowning and upset than fully and completely content internally. It is a pitiful sight, and I am only myself getting over my PA now. I remember the years I spent in my room alone just orgasming over and over...

I already saw a comment here trying to proclaim the benefits of masturbating. But, I see it as a balance. Prostate cancer, or happiness? For me, I'd rather have prostate cancer at 75 and live the rest of my life without my addiction ruining it! Not everyone gets an addiction, but I've decided to forgo the benefits for the better, and certain, more long term, benefits.

Yes, many of us are suffering from the same fundamental problem. A professor who co-authored a brilliant, funny book on this subject called "Mean Genes: From Sex to Money to Food, Taming our Primal Instincts," explains it this way:

"The idea that all excessive stimulations of the reward circuitry of the brain that are not tied to the behaviors for which the circuitry originally evolved are problematic is so important. And while this has become appreciated for drug addiction such as cocaine (and for issues relating to food), it is not yet appreciated for porn [or over-consuming in general].

You are in the forefront of those changing the way the world thinks about who we are as a species and why we have self-control problems. It is essential that people come to appreciate that this is another manifestation of "mismatch," the phenomenon of our modern world deviating from the world to which we became adapted over evolutionary time."

Thanks for your post, and for your determination to become part of the solution!