Sex at Dawn

Hi Christopher,
I really enjoy your blog. It's always engaging and thoughtful.

I still have a problem, though, with your hypothesis that men crave variety and women don't. I understand your reasoning (based on evolutionary psychology) as to why this would be the case. But if you talk to real women about it (and can get them to be honest) I think you'll find it's not so.

What women do have is a lower sex drive (on average) than men. Since the average woman is not as compelled by sex itself, they don't appear to have the drive for variety. But there is a lot of variance within the sexes. Some women have a higher sex drive than some men.

Have you ever considered using a continuous variable (sex drive) instead of a categorical variable (gender) to examine the phenomenon of a need for sexual variety? I propose that you'd find that the need for variety is explained much more fully by differences in sex drive between individuals than by gender.
Cindy

Christopher,
I also really enjoy your blog, and I think it's great that you are taking the time to address what your readers wrote in their comments.

Having said that, I find the Coolidge story sad, and also not quite convincing. Firstly, it is a joke, playing on an old couple insulting each other ("you are impotent" - "no, you are ugly and unattractive", and of course, the guy gets the last laugh). But secondly, it's not like one rooster and one hen live together as a couple and tend to their offspring together which takes a long time to mature. Just choosing other bird species would already provide a very different picture. So why should we take a random species of domestic animals, and declare their mating behavior in captivity to be the norm for humans?

Secondly, to quote Scarlett J., a high-profile Hollywood actress with changing lovers, as an authority on the evolutionary biology of our sex lives is funny. Not only because I think her ideas are not built on research or reading, she is just stating norms that are accepted in her own social circle. But specially because she seemed to be saying that no man should expect HER to be faithful in the long-term, not to acknowledge men's philandering ways.

I'm interested to see your next installments!

Hey Chris, as usual your take on human sexuality is quite provocative.... But the notion our wants are anything but manufactured is a stretch. I realize the guteral nature of our most primordial selves however I think there is the case to be made for a contemporary philosophy that reflects our disconnection with respect to nature as is evidenced in so many areas of modern society as simply put as our climate contolled domicile. Our divorce from "nature" is so complete that our immune systems suffer from lack of proper stimulation just as our libidos. I see your point and the obvious "explanation" for the wandering man makes a great deal of sense but I believe we can craft a preference to suit our particular array of wants and desires which we weigh and trade off in most cases where we have the abiliy to choose. I have always held that variety is the spice of life and never believed there was one woman for me untill a couple of years ago I met this woman that made me question my atheism. I was the guy that would grow tired of the same girl as though it were like eating the same meal every day but this particular woman and the particular circumstances and the particular weight of all factors has proven to be at least what seems to be a monogamous and mutually satisfying relationship I'd never experienced before. Where the sound of the same woman's voice after two weeks would grate my nerves like so much Parmesan this current woman has lasted an astonishing two and a half years and my sexual desire has waxed not waned... I am stunned to say I have had no other sexual encounter in that time. I'll keep you posted.

Sex from an evolutionary perspective is helpful. I agree that men and women profit little from moral standards that misrepresent the reality of their behavior (much like previous prohibitions from masturbating). On the other hand, couples' sex lives can be characterized as play as well as a drive to share genetic material. Sexual play consists of mutual pleasuring and emotional connection.

Your response to Christopher is correct, their sexual relationship will change over time, as will their relationship in general. Couples often neglect to nurture the playful aspects of their relationship and lose emotional connection as they nurture children, careers, and other forces in their lives.

From my clinical experience, individuals are much more likely to seek emotional connection in an affair than they are better sex. Yet, I'm sure men's attraction to nurturing women can also be traced to evolutionary forces - the search for a nurturing mother figure.

Hi Christopher.

I enjoy your blog. But I wonder- it's clear from your comments that you are either an adulterer or you and your wife are swingers. And I was just wondering if that doesn't lend a sort of bias to your research.

After all, we question the validity of health studies by the tobacco industry regarding the dangers of smoking. My wife and I also practice an open marriage, and that's why I'd like to see you present more of the other side. Just to provide more integrity to your work, which we agree with, by the way.

Keep it up!!! We need more folks like you at the NASCA meetings!!

Thanks.

In some ways, the Coolidge effect made sense for human evolution. A man and a woman find each other, they have sex, and get attached emotionally. Without birth control, they have a kid or two. Then the man and woman stop being turned on by each other, and by then, the kids have already grown up. Both the man and the woman could find other partners and pass on their genetics further. No jealousy required.

So why then do we feel so jealous when our lifelong partner cheats on us? It must be because of what society teaches us. We think that love and sex are equal, when clearly that isn't true. So maybe it shouldn't be such taboo for two people who love each other to each find sexual satisfaction elsewhere. But then again, how many couples could actually be comfortable with this?

Either way, sometimes it takes the threat of cheating for lifelong couples to want to have sex again. Whatever it takes to keep the fire burning!

Yes, it was Scarlett that got me to click over here. What an amazing looking woman. Of course she will not want to be monogomous when she most likely has many options. Women who are not as appealing as S.J. do not get many options for varied partners and therefore find it much easier to be monogomous, in fact, depend on it with the hopes of keeping the one mate. When this group find it difficult to be monogomous, maybe then we should question it. Also, in a long term marriage (a good, and caring marriage), the sex usually improves to an extent that no other mate might be able to match it anyways; why would those partners not want to be monogomous. I also want to point out that a long term monogomous marriage in no way is synonomous with a dull sex life as is the stereotype. One more point on this subject: in young married couples lives there are usually children afoot and this can disrupt the normal sexual routines of the couple and often causes infidelity.

Your title suggested a slightly different topic, are you building up to it for your next article because I didn't catch it here. It seems the main point in this article about monogomy was switched to love versus sex in a marriage and didn't even really cover the question of incest.
The sub title that started "when partners feel like siblings," I am not familiar with this group of married people. My husband and I are best friends but I certainly do not feel like a sibling. Please expand on this group, who are they, were they a part of a study, how was it discovered they feel like siblings.

let me say first that I agree with the groundwork of your research, and I'm not typically one to buy into evolutionary psychology as an explanation of our vices. but there are a few other variables that (having not read your book) I wonder about:

first, the role of hormones, rather than simply gender, in promiscuity and desire for sexual variance. the rates of estrogen and testosterone vary greatly between individuals, and likely influence the extent to which women crave sexual variety and men commitment. I have had several female friends who have been, whether it be due to a hormonal imbalance or an underlying disorder, been diagnosed with high levels of testosterone. most of these women have been, if not promiscuous, highly noncommital. recognizing, of course, that such cases are biological outliers, it still makes me wonder to what extent the typical hormonal flux affects promiscuity? its been recognized for a while that a woman's hormonal cycle affects her libido, but what about men? surely the amount of estrogen in their blood stream must ebb and flow and make them act more "female" at times. I know that personal anecdotes are highly unscientific, but I have known just as many (long-term) commitment-minded males as I have noncommital females.

my other point is more cultural in nature. researchers have been reporting for a while now that individuals tend to develop a degree of complacency about their appearance when they are married or in live-in relationships. it makes sense that a male, being visually-oriented, would be more attracted to a single woman who has tailored her appearance to attract a mate than to his own partner, who has since directed her energies elsewhere. this makes me wonder how this variable would affect your data. a man who is married to a woman who has "let herself go" over the course of a relationship must differ from a man who married a bombshell who has continued to keep up appearances. do men simply seek genetic variance or do they seek mates more attractive than their own? if a man's wife or girlfriend is the hottest girl in the bar (I hate using this kind of terminology, really) will he still flirt with the bartender when she's not looking?

just curious, I find your research very intriguing!

To state that mens' desire for variety is necessary to ensure biodiversity misses an important point about society. Men are in power and motivated by power. To achieve power, one can conquer things; land, valuables, and people i.e. women. Women are unquestionably objectified by men in American society. The porn industry, strip clubs, brothels are in no danger of going bankrupt. The idea of seeing male strippers is unsettling to me, women don't want their men to appear powerless. Yet women as powerless objects arouse men who, when they engage in any of these activities or have casual sex, not only have something more interesting than their hand to masturbate with, but have conquered an object and therefore increase their power. High profile power seekers (politicians, evangelists) are notorious for these behaviors.
This explains why mens' desire in monogomaous relationships wanes over time despite the attractiveness of the mate. It is much more difficult for men to get off with a thinking, feelings, human being than an object.
This is why men feel "confused and shamed" in long term relationships. Men can no longer objectify the women they love. They seek unknown, unconquered, objects to fulfill their lust for power.
But monogamous relationships are far from doomed. A modern, thinking, human man can have insight into his destructive motivations and seek power in more personally valuable ways. And communicate with his mate to keep the sexual attraction alive.

I find this to be in err, "as if we choose what to find erotically stimulating," I seem to believe we can choose, it's actually rather simple if one were so inclined. Retraining the brain using simple pavlovian techniques, it is possible to find obscure and random things arousing, for instance, celophane fetishes, shoe fetishes, leather, furries, food fetishes...it goes on, but these all stem from generally subconscious rewiring of people's brains over the course of time...but it seems to me that if you truly wanted to, you could retrain your brain, the same way one might train their brain to be a wine conossieur, after so many glasses, the bitterness becomes a sought-after ordeal, the negative effects lessen, and it becomes a nice experience, the same could be true of sex; however people don't tend to be so dedicated to reforming their sexuality, hacking their lusts, as they are to so many other trained behaviors. Personally, I don't think sexuality is at all as cemented and fixed as most would have us believe, I think it is a flowing, evolving continuum.

Thank you for this interesting blog. I think you are right on target with your examination of why the sex drive wanes. However, I don't think this is something that only happens to men. I truly believe that most women lose sexual interest in long term relationships as well. As you become more and more familiar with your partner the excitement of a new lover just disappears. And once it's gone there is not much you can do to get it back.

I don't know why people have such a problem with the idea that sex and love might not always go together. Some of the happiest couples I know are those in the Lifestyle (Swingers) who would be appalled if anyone suggested they were "in love" while engaged "in sex."

Either, as a mature adult, you learn to separate the two or you agree to forever forego carnal passion after the first few years of marriage.

One wonders why, after observing their parents, so many kids think they can have it any other way?

I’m not one to go after Evolutionary Psychology (EP), quite the contrary actually: I believe it’s a dimension that must be taken into account in analyzing human behaviors. However it’s not the only element; there are many others that according to the subject observed will have more or less relevance: geographic environment, local social norms, religion, economy, political ideologies, individual character…

Monogamy is not a women’s invention; it has been instituted as the legal norm in societies that were dominated by males long before women started to show any hint of feminist awareness. I think it’s very important to try to understand why men would want to instate a norm that is in contradiction with their “best” possible reproductive strategy (trying to fertilize a maximum number of women’s eggs to ensure their genes are spread).
I think there is a big practical reason to this: If monogamy was not the norm, a small proportion of men (the stronger and/or most powerful ones) would share the majority of women as their wives, while the weaker majority of men would have to compete against each other to get the minority of women left that were not chosen by the powerful men’s group. Moreover; arguably, those few women left would likely be the less attractive ones.
In other words, monogamy can be viewed as a male’s alternate reproductive strategy, which possibly goes against their “nature” but allows the majority of them to have a chance of procreating at all.

Another point is that seeking for multiple sexual partners is not motivated by reproduction purposes at a conscious level. It seems to me that this behavior responds to definite emotional “needs” that call to be fulfilled. Most typically, it’s something along the lines of “wanting to feel desired”, which exists for both women and men but might be more critical to resolve for men, in my opinion: while most women can observe at various degrees but arguably on a daily basis that they are sexually attractive (men ogling at them, trying to make contact and so on…), men rarely experience such situations and even when they happen, they don’t necessarily notice the signs. As a consequence, I think it’s fair to say that most men can’t assess their desirability unless they effectively achieve some kind of sexual interaction with the women who desire them.

The incest part is obscure to me. Incest in general is a taboo, but in a particular way that’s different from other taboos: it’s not necessarily a repulsive taboo like, for instance, the image of gay sex for people who are strongly straight. It’s more something like the “forbidden fruit” taboo (I’m not talking here about non-consensual, abusive incest): While straight people don’t commonly fantasize about having same-sex intercourse, it seems to me that fantasizing sex with a close-family member happens quite often. Browsing an erotica stories website (literotica.com) I was very surprised to discover that incest fictions rate quite high in the most-read stories ranking. Not that this has any scientific value for a statistic: the readers of the site are probably not a representative sample but still, it’s something striking… And I suspect that if it weren’t for the degenerative character of consanguine reproduction, incest would be much less taboo, and particularly between siblings.

Not only do I really fail to see how likely it would be for a married couple to start feeling like siblings, but even so, I’m not convinced that it would necessarily create sexual distance.