Is Monogamy Harder for Men or Women?
- Dating, Sex, Sex
The confirmation bias is a tendency to prefer information that confirms whatever you already believe. It’s dangerous, because under the influence of the confirmation bias, you cherry-pick only facts that reinforce your arguments. The first thing I think of when I hear “confirmation bias” is Fox News, but that is, admittedly, my own bias. And I work very hard not to fall into the trap of having a fixed mindset on things.
It’s with this framing that I want to present to you this article, which contradicts a previously held belief of mine: that belief that men are more likely to prefer a variety of sexual partners. So, why would I hold this belief if it may not be true?
Are there some women who want to sleep with hundreds of men? Sure. But there are more men who want to sleep around.
Well, it’s hard to say. Thinking about it critically, it’s somewhere between experience, society and faith. I was a promiscuous guy. I know men who are a lot worse than I was. There’s an entire industry around pick-up artists. Prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. Porn for men dominates the internet. I’m a dating coach for women who complain that men are commitmentphobes and cheaters. So yeah, there is a LOT of evidence that men have sex on the brain, at least more than women do.
Then some studies came out that women get bored with monogamy faster than men, and suddenly everything I wrote above has been called into question.
Amanda Marcotte, writing for Slate XX Factor, sees this as a sea change. But I don’t. And while it may be my own confirmation bias speaking, here’s the reason:
Marcotte harps on studies that show that women respond to novelty in porn (duh) and fantasize about sex with strangers (double duh). All that proves is that, yes, women can get bored with routine sex as well. I don’t think there’s any right-minded person who ever thought otherwise. What this doesn’t prove, however, is that women are MORE driven by sex than men. While it’s useful to recognize that women and men are similar in many ways, I think it’s shortsighted to suggest that we are the SAME, as if gender was simply a societal construct and not somewhat tied to biology.
Are there some women who want to sleep with hundreds of men? Sure. But there are more men who want to sleep around.
Are there some women who can separate love and sex and have no emotional attachment after physical contact? You bet. But there are more men who do.
Are there more women who give up on sex within a marriage? Apparently. But that might just mean that she’s married to a jerk for 20 years and can’t summon any more amorous feelings for him. It doesn’t mean that she’s more likely to cheat or that she values sexual variety as much as he does.
So, to me (and my confirmation bias), this study is much ado about nothing, in that it’s verifying something we already know. The reason that Marcotte is jumping on it is because it confirms what she wants to believe (women and men have the same take on sex), not because it represents a true shift.
Because for every study that says (rightfully!) that women get bored with monogamy, there’s another one that confirms what most of us already know: men are more driven by sexual variety than women. One highly publicized study doesn’t negate that.
Read the article here and please share your thoughts below.
Uri says
This reminds me of the joke about a couple who’s been married for a while having sex. After a minute of intense thrusting, the husband suddenly stops and rolls off his wife. The wife turns to him and says, “What’s the matter? You ran out of people to fantasize about too?”
I think the takeaway from the Slate piece and the NY Times piece it was based on is that though women may feel as bored with their partners as men, men are more likely to act upon it. And perhaps the greater takeaway is that Slate wanted a piece that said basically nothing to go viral because of a headline like “Women Struggle with Monogamy More Than Men.”
Rose says
This report does not go into enough information about how the research was conducted. There is not enough scientic data to examine and be able to make an informed educated scientific comment about it.
All it tells me is one persons conclusion on her individual research based on fantasy sex. What has that got to do with real life monogomy? Or is fantasising and porn classes as not being monogomous now
Three is nothing for me to examine.
Jackie H. says
In one boring but effective word: Agreed.
Dina Strange says
Agree. U don’t see as many males prostitutes for women, as u see for men. One can argue that if women had more economical power, that would have been the case…so we just have to wait, and see.
Tiffany says
Diana, are you kidding me? We’re girls. We can go to a bar and get laid no matter what we look like lmfao
Sass says
Young women today make more money than young men. Not sure it’s about economic resources as much as it’s about the fact that it’s easier for women to find men willing to have casual sex than vice versa. So there’s no need for male prostitutes. Plus, we are socialized to see such a thing as highly immoral.
farah says
maybe because women can get sex when they want
Karl R says
Uri said: (#1)
“the greater takeaway is that Slate wanted a piece that said basically nothing to go viral because of a headline”
That seems accurate. The two scientific studies that were cited didn’t support the statement in the headline.
Study 1:
Men and women become equally bored watching the same porn repeatedly.
Study 2:
Heterosexual women become sexually aroused by listening to audio narratives describing sexual encounters with long-term partners or strangers, but not platonic friends. (The sex of the friends/strangers was not a factor.)
Heterosexual men become sexually aroused by listening to audio narratives describing sexual encounters with women, but not men. (The relationship to the men/women was not a factor.)
The studies indicate that men and women are equally aroused by novelty under certain conditions.
Angie says
I think something that is probably true is that women more than men stay in a relationship with a person they are not that into for whatever reasons… urgency to settle down, not realizing there is no attraction but liking the guy (in a platonic, etc, sense) than guys. I think guys that stay in bad relationships tend to do so b/c they are obsessed with their girlfriend.
This article didn’t specifically say “marriage.”
I don’t think women get bored of monogamy quicker. I’d guess women get into relationships with people they aren’t that into more frequently than men do, b/c they are less interested in “friends with benefits” or one-night stands, etc. Evan, I think you and the article can both be right! 🙂
Valery North says
There’s a few straw man arguments or non sequiturs in the OP.
Firstly, “men are more likely to prefer a variety of sexual partners” is not the same as “men have sex on the brain, at least more than women do.”
Secondly, things that are explained as biology can also be explained as “gender [is] simply a societal construct”, and in fact “But there are more men who want to sleep around” is one of the prime examples of this.
Interesting fact: women who want to sleep around report that it is men, and not women, who are unable to “separate love and sex and have no emotional attachment after physical contact”. This is the bias of relative position.
The problem is, the evidence doesnt really allow us to choose one theory over another, but people like you who are (or were) “promiscuous guys” are the people who have the mos power in terms of shaping the debate and setting the terms of how things are understood. And people like you have a vested interest in having it turn out the way it does: thus, you have your confirmation bias and, crucially, you confirmation bias is what produces and shapes the debate and causes the evidence that you point to. Your position isn’t just confirmation bias. It’s a classic “begging the question” fallacy.
Evan Marc Katz says
Yeah, Valery, I don’t agree with you.
I have no vested interest in any of this. I do my best to be an objective reporter of facts. This does not mean I have no beliefs; on the contrary, I try to have my beliefs formed by facts, rather than feelings. And I have seen little to no evidence than men and women (as larger groups) view sex the same way. Many individuals do. But just because there is variance within a group does not mean that there are never any conclusions that can be drawn from groups.
For example, Ashkenazi Jews have higher IQs than the general population. Is it nature? Is it nurture? In my book, it doesn’t matter very much. It’s true. It’s confirmed by study and confirmed by anecdotal evidence as well. Stating this doesn’t mean that everyone else is stupid. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t some low IQ Jews out there. It just means what it means: Ashkenazi Jews have high IQs. You may feel affronted by this information if it doesn’t suit your narrative; it doesn’t change the truth of the matter, however.
My belief is that – in general – men look for sex and, in the process, find love. My believe is that – in general – women look for love and, in the process, find sex. My female clients confirm this every single day when they share stories of men who text photos of their penis, or expect sex on the first date, or engage in dirty talk after the second email. I would be genuinely shocked to see that women act in a similar fashion. I would be equally shocked to learn that women’s consumption of porn was as high. I would be floored if you could produce a study that illustrates that women choose sexual variety as much as men do. The aforementioned article hasn’t produced that study, and until you do, I’m gonna stick with what I believe – not because I’m trying to dictate anything as a tastemaker, but because I have this strange pull towards truth and facts. Make a better argument as to why I’m wrong and I’ll be glad to reconsider.
Sass says
I’m still stuck on why it matters. Unless you’re offering advice or a solution for women frustrated by cheating men. Which you’re not. So….
Elizabeth says
Exactly, I think you’re seeking validation, Evan.
And if there aren’t studies that show that women watch as much porn as men, it’s because the antiquated notion that women are less attractive if they are promiscuous (again, related to male’s egos?) still exists. It’s only within the last century that it’s become acceptable for women to even own their sexuality (and hold jobs in the workplace, for that matter). You are naive to think women want sex less than men. Same goes for porn.
Heather K says
Eh – I don’t freak out too much over studies toting that one gender wants more sex of a certain type than the other. While it’s true that men’s and women’s brains are wired chemically differently, I’m not really sure what the purpose of any studies are. To sensationalize? To make people get all huffy and puffy? While I think that in today’s society there are still more men than women who fantasize about a non-monogamous lifestyle, I am not sure if it’s nature vs. nurture.
There is so much programing to men’s brains these days that it’s cool to want to be casual and it’s cool to keep women at bay and play the field that many boys who as men might actually like being monogamous do not have the opportunity to grow up into such men. A lot of men are programmed to believe that they are losing out on something if they ‘settle’ with one woman and if they stop chasing the newer, hotter model all the time.
And I think women – while more liberated – are still so afraid of being called a ‘slut’ or something like that. Young women who are sexually active may become fearful of being deemed a ‘slut’ or just a sexually active girl because many recent rape cases among young adults have had the male side in question say that the girl was sexually active anyway or loose as some sort of way to shirk responsibility. Also, women have many more dangers when choosing to pursue a non-monogamous lifestyle. Women contract STDs easier than men. Women also might be afraid of starting something with a random stranger because they might not be able to control the pace of the sexual encounter – men are more often date rapists than women are. Men can pursue casual encounters with women without worrying that the woman they are seeing will push them further than what they want or date-rape them. If a man is only feeling like making out or going to third base or whatever – it is very rare for the woman he is on a date with to physically force him to go further. Not so for a woman. As a woman, I have had to jump out of moving cars on two separate occasions – waiting till a red light or waiting for a slowdown at a turn to get out of situations that became physically scary. And then there is the additional risk of pregnancy – which even in today’s times of contraceptives still exists. So while mentally or emotionally women might be ‘advanced’ enough to want non-monogamous lifestyles, it is just not always appealing as a woman to pursue that avenue.
And then as a final thought, does it really matter who wants or doesn’t want monogamous lifestyles? We should be thinking – both men and women – what we actually want to build as a society and what we want our legacy to be. Sometimes I feel that focusing on some gender back-and-forth of who can care the least or which gender is out more for their personal satisfaction is so petty and small and misses our purpose as human beings.
MG says
Wow. I can’t imagine I read the whole comment, I must admit your comment was a thriller that kept me going, but like any hollywood some things appear to be fictions and just like you being a woman do no understand some things (like you said we are chemically wired differently), I as a man fail to understand. I actually had a great girlfriend when I was in college and I could not think about any other woman while I was dating her, she dumped me then I settled down and I still think about her and quite often feel unhappy in my current relationship. Now I wonder had my first girlfriend whom I was all about had not dumped me would I have not been promiscuous ? I doubt it, I think it’s just the nature of darn testosterone, I too wish if it was not like that, I hate having sexual thoughts always. I hope they find drugs for men to reduce the desire LOL. See I am for equal opportunity.
Rose says
Evan from what I have read about the Ashenazi Jews having higher IQ it is states that is is based on scientific contaversy and theory not fact.
How many studies were done on this that makes it truth and fact?
Studies and research need to be examined with a fine tooth comb in my opinion.
Sass says
Curious as to why it bothers you though to the point you have to try and refute it.
LC says
It’s easier for a woman to get laid by many different guys, so we don’t put as much value on variety b/c it’s readily available if we’re willing to have sex with many different men. People always want what they can’t easily have. If men were constantly hit on by women and treated to nasty pictures and pick up lines all of the time, they would start to feel more like we do about “variety.” Plus, it’s not like most women are having orgasms from one night stands; they’re faking it b/c the guy has no idea how their body works, nor does he care. Most of the time when people are bored with monogamy it’s because they’re BORING. They do the same things over and over again, then they point fingers at each other saying they’re tired of the boring sex. Ridiculous.
Roxie says
Spot on!!
MG says
I hardly agreed with your comment except for the first part, which goes to the fact that men have high sexual desire and they make advances and women do have less desire hence they always crawl under their rock (pun intended). The amount of testosterone in your body determines how much sex you want to have and UNFORTUNATELY men have a tons and I as a man hate thinking about sex so much when it is not reciprocal.
Val says
MG, you are totaly crazy !! “women do have less desire hence they always crawl under their rock ” …totaly crazy if you really think this…..I wish I were a bad witch to turn you into a woman, so that you experience “less desire “‘ in women …But I wouldn’t turn you into a woman who has a guy ..but into a woman who has difficulty finding a guy,,,,so that you see how it is to be a woman ….
Btw…i think about sex all the time…since the early morning when I come to work with all those men around me and ambiance full of testosteron till the late evening when I am in bed with a guy or without one. 🙂 Honey, don’t get mislead by TESTOSTERON 🙂
Elizabeth says
Exactly. We are not desperate for it so we don’t have to pay for it. We can get it for free within 5 min.
BigLee says
Do you ever stop and think about why women can get it so much easier. Men want it more it’s how we are designed. Women have moments of heightened sexual desire. Like cats in heat. Men are more or less in this state constantly.
Jenny says
I’ve been a long time reader and I’ve enjoyed a lot of the blog posts and discussions, but this is the first time that I’ve felt compelled to comment. I read the article that you posted about Ashkenazi Jews and while there is some very thought-provoking information in there, the bias and exaggeration of claims makes me, as a social scientist, very skeptical and frankly suspicious of ulterior motives (perhaps even untintentional political/ethnic/cultural bias) of the author.
The first statement is : ‘Ashkenazi Jews are smart. Shockingly brilliant, in general. Impressive in brain power. How did they get that way?’ This statement is a generalization, and, if you read through the article, you’ll see that it’s a false claim. If Ashkenazi Jews as a group were ‘Shockingly brilliant, in general’, you’d expect to see ‘Shockingly brilliant IQs, in general’, if you’re using IQ as a measure of brilliance. In general, the Ashkenazi Jew IQ reported in this piece is “probably around 110.” This still puts Ashkenazi Jews, as a group, solidly within ‘Average’, as measured by standard deviations. Within the realm of IQ scores, 130 is usually considered a cut-off for ‘significantly above average’. So, when I read that article, I see that Ashkenazi Jews as a group have a higher, but not significantly higher, average IQ than the non-Ashkenazi Jew population. That’s not terribly meaningful information in the scientific community. There is also quite a bit of misinterpretation of correlations and cause/effect relationships in the article, which weakens its strength.
I offer this feedback because I think that for the most part you do offer sound dating advice, Evan, and I enjoy that. I also enjoy reading the comments and discussions among the readers. But remember that you’re dealing with a pretty smart bunch here and we’re going to keep you on your toes and question you when we see inconsistencies or strong claims that aren’t backed up by the facts. I think we all need to keep ourselves accountable.
Cat says
I agree with the study (based on my own life experiences). I have my own unscientific theory about it though. I think women get bored quicker than men in a monogamous relationship because they don’t fantasize or use porn as much as men do. I think the fact that men fantasize & use porn more than women (in general) gives them some sort of release to make them feel like they’ve had that variety (if even for a second) & then they don’t get as bored with their wife. Women on the other hand don’t get that feeling of variety/release because they don’t seek it out as much (in general) by fantasizing/watching porn so they get bored with their husband quicker. Being with the same person for decades gets boring, no matter what you try – it’s the same person. In the long run what sustains a marriage is the true love/connection between two people that is much more than just physical attraction & sexual chemistry.
Bridgettweeter says
Be honest porn is made by men for men. EVEN girl on girl porn is produced for men. If the porn industry would start to make porn TRULY for women with what women find sexy in it then women may NOT get as bored as quickly.
AG says
I REALLY like porn, just as it is. The more grafic, dirty, raw, the better. I like the view, that as a woman, I don’t have the angle to see during the actual act. .. & to Evan, I watch porn multiple times a day. Does this surprise you ? In this great big world, can’t be alone in this desire. I think about sex constantly, and will devour my man every chance I get. My sexual interest and creativity in such acts is probably more intense than any man I know, even those who desire to play the field. I have yet to meet a man who can keep up with my sexual needs. That said, I still would prefer to have the freakiest of experiences with one partner, as common sense dictates the more secure and comfortable you are, the more freedom you have to express and expand your desires. That is not gender specific, nor sexually specific. It’s a factor in many avenues of life. I think most men look for an explanation to excuse their shitty behavior. But I call bs. I see many men daily who I would love to have relations with while in a relationship, & as a woman would be much better at NOT getting caught – We’re smart like that. It’s called self discipline and respect. You men discipline yourself in many other avenues, so it’s very possible to do so sexually as well. I believe as another poster said, the main issue is that men are programmed to see women soley as objects/property. They claim its biology, yet are the the first to cry foul if their woman desires another. Just stay single if you’re not satisfied. It’s really very simple.
Karl T says
LC#11,
How do you make the assumption that most women don’t have orgasms from one night stands? Most of the women friends I have who have had several one night stands certainly have orgasms. While I’m sure some don’t have orgasms in ONS, I’d comfortably say that most do according to what I hear from personal accounts from females. I know a few who have had many ONS’s. Do ya think they would continue to do that if they were not getting off having them?? I also bet many times guys don’t get off due to being impaired by alcohol.
Sass says
It’s not an assumption. We are women. We are speaking from experience. You are a man. You are not. Don’t take it personally, it’s an aggregate experience.
val says
Karl T , having orgasm in a ONS is not a rule !! It depends on both woman and man involved. In my case I have to be sure in ONS situation that I really like the man and that there are some sparks between us. Also I can only have an ONS orgasm if a man is “big down there ” so he can satisfy me. Although this is valid in my case also for regular sex. I am lets say a bit “bigger down there” myself so I only can get real sex from a man that has “hard and long erection”. I used to be in a relationship with a guy who could only have sex once in 2 days, and he could not have sex 2x consequently. As women can have sex multiple times a day, most of guys can’t. That is “male biology”. So it didn’t work out for me. Of course I never told him the real reason for leaving him. Now I am with a fantastically attractive guy who is great in bed. Never before felt like this. So no problem with ONS if the guy is good. But this also is valid for relationships. That is why I think women don’t like ONS at least not of them, because it is a too short time to sped witha guy so that she can satisfy her urges. Again, its a biology issue.
Evan Marc Katz says
I didn’t want the post to get hijacked by the Ashkenazi Jews thing, Jenny, but you have a very selective reading of the post. An average IQ of 110 is one standard deviation higher as a general population. And you conveniently ignore stats like “Ashkenazim are enrolled in the Ivies by a proportion ten times greater than their numbers, and “the proportion of Jews with IQs of 140 or higher is somewhere around six times the proportion of everyone else.” Harpending, Hardy and Cochran sport roughly the same equation; “4 out of every 1,000 Northern European is 140+ IQ, but 23 out of every 1,000 Jew is 140+.
As I said, I don’t really have a horse in the race. But if studies show it and anecdotal evidence shows it, why don’t we want to believe it? That’s the way I feel about men being more promiscuous. I don’t care WHY they are; I just believe that they ARE. This isn’t a good thing. But it is a thing. And you have to be some sort of ostrich to deny it.
Michelle says
Yes, women get bored with monogamy faster, which is why so many married men complain about not getting enough sex. Which brings me to my next point. Women like variety, but I think one reason women don’t usually find themselves with quite the same incessant need for it as men is simply because men on average as a group aren’t hot enough for women to continually lust after.
Women on average are more sexually attractive than men. In any given room of people, the men are likely to find a bigger number of sexually attractive women than the women are going to find in the men, but give a woman a room of great looking guys all to herself and I think more women than not would want to indulge that variety.
The one time I found myself in a social environment where I had a small handful of really handsome men as sexual options, I slept with 3/4 ths of them. I would have gone for the 4/4 ths, but backed off because I didn’t want to sleep with too many guys who knew each other from that small social environment. So that was me being beaten back by the classic fear of having too much of a “reputation”. I never wanted to walk into that place and see all the guys I banged sitting at the same table. haha. Did NOT want that to happen. No guy has to fear that because that is not a fear society conditions men to have.
The real reason women fight this idea that men need more sex than women is because so many men want to take that idea as reason to tell women they should be fine with men not being faithful to them. Men use it to justify their lack of loyalty. It would be better for women to start advancing the argument that monogamy ensures that most average men have AT LEAST one women. If it weren’t for monogamy, most hum-drum men wouldn’t even have THAT, or would have to contend with being cuckolded every other night since women can get sex easier and are so often more sexually attractive than their partner so will automatically have a higher number of sexual options for that reason as well.
Guys should start thinking a bit less about how they can shirk monogamy and start being thankful that it’s the reason many of them get ANYTHING.
ria says
This is the truest thing I have ever read.
Antonia says
Great comment Michelle! I fully agree with you . Just give women a pool of hot guys . I wouldn’t have any problem with that.
But I am afraid that is something for men very difficult to accept. It has to do with their ego and lack of knowledge about women.
Emily, to says
Michelle and Antonia,
Michelle wrote: “Women like variety, but I think one reason women don’t usually find themselves with quite the same incessant need for it as men is simply because men on average as a group aren’t hot enough for women to continually lust after. Women on average are more sexually attractive than men. In any given room of people, the men are likely to find a bigger number of sexually attractive women than the women are going to find in the men, but give a woman a room of great looking guys all to herself and I think more women than not would want to indulge that variety.”
Totally agree. Some women (I’M NOT SAYING ALL) would be a lot sluttier if they had a ton of great options. 🙂
Antonia wrote:”But I am afraid that is something for men very difficult to accept.”
I think it makes them feel more comfortable to think that women don’t want variety and don’t lust after other men but it’s simply not true.
AG says
Real talk ! Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Excuses excuses excuses lol
January says
lol this post deserves a slow clap.
Michelle says
another thing I’ve considered as to why women don’t eagerly pursue the same variety as men is because women have more standards and criteria for their sex partners than men have for theirs. For a man, all a woman needs to be is physically attractive enough for him to want her sexually, for a woman to want a man, he needs to be physically attractive and meet other criteria specific to that woman’s masculine ideal. That ideal varies slightly from woman to woman. The business man and the surfer dude might be equally attractive by objective measures – height, facial proportions, musculature- but those two men represent two very different masculine ideals that some women prize while others are neutral towards or turned off by. Some women might not care that the business guy is a hottie, they’re more turned on by the surfer guys style and identity, and vice versa.
Karl T says
Michelle #16,
“Women on average are more sexually attractive than men. In any given room of people, the men are likely to find a bigger number of sexually attractive women than the women are going to find in the men…”
What kind of a joke statement is that?? That is one of the most whacked posts I have ever read. Unless we’re talking about lesbians, who wouldn’t find men attractive period.
Michelle says
That’s what I thought. I’m not attracted to super good looking men (i.e. model types). I do find a confident and masculine man attractive, however. It’s just biology that men want a variety of sexual partners more than women. It’s true that I like variety in the act of sex, but in a loving and committed relationship where I feel comfortable expressing my sexual self. One night stand sex is terrible and boring, so that’s why I’d prefer monogamy.
Antonia says
Karl, the comment of Michelle is credible. Only I would put it in a different way.: men have lower criteria. Very often I am really not jelous at all when I see what kind of women my husband ogles. Because they are just not better than me. On the other hand women don;t want an average looking man (as they have that at home most probably). They want something more like a real hunk, musculine and hot .
Michelle says
Don’t Asians outnumber all other ethnic groups in the ivies? Also, it’s worth noting that verbal IQ and spatial/numerical IQ is usually judged separately.
It is generally accepted that Ashkenazi jews have an average verbal IQ around 20 points higher than whites, with a spatial/numerical IQ of about the same as whites.(East) Asians seem to outperform whites on spatial/numerical tests by about 10 IQ points, but have a verbal IQ about the same as whites.
Michelle says
Ill let this study do the explaining for me:
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/yo…online-dating/
Michelle says
even Evan wrote about this in another post.
https://www.evanmarckatz.com/blog/youre-probably-passing-up-your-soulmate-and-dont-know-it/
Jenny says
Evan, I don’t want to detract from your original post by the Ashkenazi Jew data, but I stand by my original points. A standard deviation for most IQ tests is 15, so with 100 as the ‘average’, most (95%) of the population should fall within two standard deviations on either side; therefore the normal range is 70-130. It’s only when scores are higher or lower than this that they are considered significantly different. The author of the article you linked to ‘cherry-picked’ one figure on Ashkenazi intelligence (despite the previous figures that didn’t support the claim) to construct the problematic bell curve argument.
Enrollment in the Ivies should not be used as an indicator of intelligence, that’s more a measure of realized potential (depending on how you define potential and success). That’s why I mentioned the misinterpretations of correlations (higher enrollment of Ashkenazi Jews in Ivies relative to other groups) and causes-effect relationships (more Asheknazi Jews are enrolled in Ivies because they are smarter than other groups). To prove the latter, you’d have to give convincing evidence via an experiment that ruled out other factors that contribute to achieving an Ivy education (distribution of wealth, internal and external motivations, etc.).
Like I said, I enjoy your blog and I think you offer great dating advice. To go back to the original point of your post, there are also other recent studies pointing towards more symmetry in number of sexual partners (if you take number of partners to be a measure of sexual variety, which you seem to do) between the sexes, but subscription to gender roles leads people to report their promiscuous acts differently. So it’s hard to come up with good data to answer these questions.
Amy says
I think women want sexual variety as much as men do. We’re all descended from the same hunter-gatherers, who anthropologists believe lived in groups of 50-100 individuals, where all the adults had sex with all the other adults. Darwin’s theory that humans are natural pair bonders is starting to be debunked. I think women are the victims of centuries of cultural and societal conditioning. There are still places in the world where a woman can be stoned to death for committing adultery or having sex before marriage. This is an extreme example, but it makes a point. Women are taught in subtle and not so subtle ways from the time we are very young that we are not sexual creatures, that we should not want variety, that being sexually free and adventurous is shameful, sinful, dirty, etc. Perhaps this is less so today than in previous generations, but it still persists in many places. So I think women’s desire for non-monogamy and sexual variety is filtered through our collective conditioning from religion (always the culprit standing in the way of freedom and self-expression), parents, education, whatever… we think we don’t want it because that is what we were taught. Really tragic when you think about it. How many sexually repressed and unfulfilled women are there in the world? Billions no doubt.
Oh, and one other tiny problem, there are a lot of guys who are just plain lousy lovers and don’t know their way around a woman’s body! C’mon guys, get a little education and make us feel like women and we won’t get bored with you!
david says
I agree with Amy’s post 1000%. Anyone who has strong primal instincts should naturally know this. Anyone who doesn’t, should do some studying. I feel men and women have a lot in common and that women in todays society cant be themselves and free or else they will be judged. Who wants to be judged. Man and religion introduced MARRIAGE. Marriage is more something we do because others do it. Its not natural to be monogamous, even though many of us want that. Trying to cheat mother nature creates problems of its own. The commitment part is the key part in marriage. Basically it means, I SHOULDNT cheat on you even though the act itself with multiple partners is a natural act. We are trying to be successful in something that isn’t meant to be, and with that comes many arguments that affect children in most cases. Our bodies and mind are created and built to MATE. That’s our main purpose. Marriage and or monogamy is a CHOICE we make. We ALL, (both men and women) get into this predicament without understanding what really is going on. Later on down the line problems start and so does the blame game and fingerpointing, when all that really is going on is BIOLOGICAL. Why do our parents no fill us in on this????
Sass says
“Man and religion introduced MARRIAGE. Marriage is more something we do because others do it. Its not natural to be monogamous, even though many of us want that.”
Agreed. Man and religion introduced monogamy for the good of society at a time when nuclear family structures were critical and screwing around with people outside the tribe could bring harm to the whole tribe. (Hence why we are programmed to stick with our own kind when marrying and having children even though there’s no genetic benefit, you might even say there is a genetic benefit to diversifying your offspring’a genes in terms of survival.)
Monogamy is man made. Who adheres to it more in any given society is dictated by what each gender gains or loses from it. Just MO.
Elizabeth says
Exactly.
“women in todays society can’t be themselves and free….”
kkalissha says
Someone give this man a Nobel prize…
Kyth says
Pardon me, but i fail to see how the – men are more attracted to varieties claim – can be up for debate.
Women fantasize and only want to bang tall hot studs.
On the flip side, men desire to bang tall, short, skinny, bbw and skinny women. Porn sites do show that bbw and milf even gets lots of views.
I think nature designed men to be attracted to varieties as to enable every woman secure a mate irrespective of your physical features.
The reason people struggle to secure a relationship is because most women don’t find most men attractive just as michelle alluded in her post #16.
Androgynous says
Do you find women slumming it with old, fat, balding, smelly, ugly, penniless men because they really really need sex and there is no other options available at that moment ? No ? Enough said.
Ruby says
Heather K #9 and Amy #23
Your post are pretty much spot on. A promiscuous man is still considered a “stud”, while a promiscuous woman is labeled a “slut”. So men are much more encouraged to have “sex on the brain”, while women get a double message – be sexy, but don’t be too sexy or you’ll be considered “slutty”.
I’m always hearing that men can sleep with women they don’t find at all attractive, while women are much less likely to do so. From what I hear from my long-time married friends, long-term monogamy is tough, even if you love the other person. And that”s true for both genders. As one of my married friends put it, you can love your partner deeply, but simply not feel sexually attracted to them. So I’d guess that even if a man lost attraction for his wife, he’d still be more likely to continue to have sex with her, than vice versa.
Karl T #18
“Unless we’re talking about lesbians, who wouldn’t find men attractive period. ”
If you think you can always spot a lesbian because you assume they all look butch, guess again. There are lots of beautiful, feminine-looking lesbians out there who don’t fit that stereotype at all.
Tomas Woodbridge says
Any woman can be a slut. Fat ugly women can be sluts. You’ll never meed a fat ugly stud. That’s why studs inspire admiration in men. But sluts aren’t held in high esteem by women.
Selena says
I don’t believe gender is a social construct, but I find it plausible the idea human females are biologically monogamous is a social construct.
Like a previous commenter, I’ve read the theory that early humans were non-monagamous. Doesn’t seem ‘out there’ to me. If there are small bands of humans roaming the landscape their basic needs are to find enough calories to exist and shelter from the elements – like all other animals. Less time to ponder questions such as who belongs to who. The advantages of non-monogamy in such a situation would be not only to provide sexual variety, but as a way of “keeping the peace” amongst such a small group. And of allowing new members to join, merging with other small tribes to increase genetic diversity. Biologically there may be more incentive for the males to provide for and protect the youngest members because they had no way of knowing which were genetically their offspring and which were not.
When humans developed to ability to cultivate crops and raise animals for food the groundwork was laid to form families, communities, to become much more territorial. And monogamy is a territorial concept.
In some cultures the punishment for female non-monogamy can be severe. Ostracism, public shaming, public stoning. The scarlet letter A anyone? How about the practice of some African tribes of removing a girl’s clitoris as a preventive measure against her being tempted to stray from her future husband? If human females were biologically driven to be monogamous, why would these extreme cultural measures to promote it even be thought up?
It’s possible females may crave variety as much as their male counterparts, but, it has been highly discouraged in many cultures for many millenia. Heather K in #9 gave a number of practical reasons a woman may choose to be monogamous. Along with that, I’d add historically a woman who was not monogamous could have alot to lose – her home, her children, her means to support herself. Some pretty compelling reasons for women to convince themselves and try to convince others that females are ‘hard wired’ to be monogamous.
As far as the article goes, I don’t believe women get bored with monogamy more easily or sooner than men. I think that’s more often a case when a women chooses for a partner a man she is less sexually excited about to begin with. He looks “good on paper”. She doesn’t want to “be alone”. But sexually he’s a less than ideal match and that manifests in her lack of desire for him in due course.
Are men really more sexually driven than women? I’m not sure. I tend to believe men might just be less picky than women when it comes to who they want to have sex with. I agree with the observations Michelle wrote in #17.
Men do seem to enjoy looking at porn more than women do generally speaking. But long before the internet there existed a booming busines in novels with sexually explicit passages. Who bought those? Women. So it would seem the human brain, both male and female – does enjoy experiencing sexual variety vicariously through images that create fantasy. A safer outlet than infidelity which can have very unpleasant reprisals.
Paula says
I did learn in an anthropology class back in the day that there are societies where a woman is allowed multiple husbands. This culture has it right in my eyes. A woman needs more then 1 man to keep her satisfied.
Everyone needs variety, they just lie to themselves about how they get it. How many men and women have friendships with the opposite sex and claim to be monogamous? There is such a thing as an emotional affair. Variety isn’t just in the realm of physicality.
Karl S says
It makes sense that men are more likely to seek variety if you look at it in Darwinian terms.
Males feel the “pull” of a genetic imperative to spread their seed as widely as possible in order to be successful. Females experience the reverse because their success comes securing the best male in the vicinity and ensuring that his genes are passed on only through her offspring. That’s not to say that men never desire monogamy. Monogamy is a trait that proves advantageous for child rearing, and as far as I can recollect without looking it up (it’s 2:30am here and I’m sleepy), is probably something that became an innate desire in more men further along in our evolution.
However, our brains still retain much of the instinctual behavior of our distant ancestors. I think men tend to experience conflict with their “reptilian brain”, which simply wants to mate and move on, and that impulse can be a strong one.
pat says
It’s these kinds of comments that make me wonder why females bother with males in the first place. Why would a woman commit to starting a family with a dude that has such strong “reptilian” brain impulses… just seems easier to find another good woman and enjoy a loving, monogamous relationship without men.
Selena says
@ Karl S. -” Males feel the “pull” of a genetic imperative to spread their seed as widely as possible in order to be successful. Females experience the reverse because their success comes securing the best male in the vicinity and ensuring that his genes are passed on only through her offspring.”
If we examine this theory, the *best* male in the vincinity may vary from year to year, season to season, week to week. The *strongest* male may get killed. Or be suplanted when a stronger (or smarter) male comes along. A younger male may be perceived as the best in comparison to an aging male who was once considered to be the best.
If we are going to entertain the idea that human females are biologically programmed to mate with *the best* male in their vicinity, then logic follows that females are not by nature monogamous. They must be – in contemporary parlance – always willing to “trade up”.
What I find interesting in commenters who promote the hard-wired/ biologically programmed/lizard brain theories of human sexuality is that so few take that line of thought further and make the obvious connections. If we examine the “men are biologically programmed to spread their seed” theory are we also to believe that males are willing to spread their seed in females who are diseased, mentally or otherwise incapcitated, dying? From a biological impertative perspective this wouldn’t make much sense. What would make better sense is males choosing healthy and sane females to procreate with thus hopefully ensuring that their seed would result in a continuation of the species. The logical conclusion to this is that males may in fact be more selective than they are sometimes given credit for being.
If we surmise monogamy is actually a social construct, then perhaps we should look deeper into why so many humans choose it. Could it be that it has a biological basis in that some humans instincively choose to only mate with those they perceive to have the smartest, strongest genes they want to pass on? And avoid spending sperm and egg cells with those procreation outcome could have a less desireable result?
Just some ideas to ponder.
Taylor says
A bit off topic, but it’s Evan’s theory and he mentions it here: Men look for sex and find love. Women look for love and find sex. Does that mean women are getting the short end of the stick and have to pick a sex partner in the hopes of eventually getting some love out of it?
I speak from some experience about this. I am single, professional with a kid. I get hit on quite often, primarily by married men in my age range (40s) who say their wives are boring, let themselves go, and don’t put out. These men are in crisis, I’d say. I’ve met married men who TAKE THEIR RINGS OFF and then play single. I turn these men down, of course.
I occasionally get asked out by single men, usually much younger. I turn these men down too, and as a result have been celibate for a year now.
So do I have to just randomly pick one of these men who want to have sex with me and hope I get some love out of it? Or do men just label some women as only good for sex, for whatever, usually superficial, reason? Keep in mind I meet these men mostly via work, some online.
Is this part of the variety part? Some women are just the variety some are the meal deal?
Karl S says
@ Selena – “What I find interesting in commenters who promote the hard-wired/ biologically programmed/lizard brain theories of human sexuality is that so few take that line of thought further and make the obvious connections. If we examine the “men are biologically programmed to spread their seed” theory are we also to believe that males are willing to spread their seed in females who are diseased, mentally or otherwise incapcitated, dying? From a biological impertative perspective this wouldn’t make much sense.”
It makes perfect sense though. A man can potentially inseminate a new women every few hours. Investing in a single female, even the “best” female does not take advantage of that ability. They are more likely to succeed in a biological sense if they impregnate a variety of women, even if some of them are diseased or what have you, in order to cover all bases.
A woman can only have one child every nine months, and the prolonged state of infancy experienced in humans would encourage a woman to keep the father around as a helper and protector instead of “trading up”. A new man might simply want to kill off the child of the previous father, which is what happens in the animal kingdom.
You are right in that men still compete over the healthiest, most attractive women. But I think the difference is, even once they have secured a relationship, a man still experiences the urge to sleep around.
Karl S says
I feel I should add an addendum though, because why own argument does not yet explain men who are monogamous.
As far as I have learned, Natural Selection is not really about survival of the fittest, so much as it is about survival of the fit enough. Mutually exclusive traits can be passed on through the genetic pool if both are still successful to a greater or lesser degree. Men who stick around to rear their young help to guarantee their survival, and thus monogamy is a useful trait to have. However, men can also be fooled into raising children who do not share their genetic code. It is much harder to reverse that trick on a woman, because whatever you give birth to is definitely yours.
Karl T says
Michelle you’ve gotta be kidding me. OkCupid has the most ugliest women I have ever seen in my life. Other dating sites have far more attractive women. I would say that 1 out of every 10 women viewed is attractive lookinbg on OKC while the other 9 are not just unattractive, they are repulsive!!!!! And the women on OKC rank the men as ugly? Hahahahaa what a joke. I speak from personal experience, but here is a link where others found the same thing.
Selena says
@ Karl S.
I tend to think at base the biological imperative is simply concerned with keeping the species going. Sperm meets egg. Doesn’t care who’s sperm or who’s egg or the genetic quality of said eggs and sperm. Just keep producing the species period.
Yet, if males are programmed to spread their seed as much and to as many as possible…why do many males elect not to mate with females who are mentally deficient? Addicts? Have degenerative diseases that will prove fatal? Are they truly going against their biology? Allowing sociological, cultural, psychological factors over-ride biology? Or is there perhaps other biological factors at play that we don’t yet understand?
“A woman can only have one child every nine months, and the prolonged state of infancy experienced in humans would encourage a woman to keep the father around as a helper and protector instead of “trading up”. A new man might simply want to kill off the child of the previous father, which is what happens in the animal kingdom.”
Not only in the animal kingdom. I see this also in the news from time to time: “Boyfriend kills mother’s child”. If women are biologically programmed to be monogamous to the father of their children, why do so many end up with partners who are NOT the father of their children? Almost all of whom are obviously NOT child murderers. And what about young widows? If they lose the partner they were presumably were monogamous to, are they permanently “off the shelf” biologically speaking if they have children? Aren’t they still of interest to males who have a need to spread their side far and wide? The biological imperitive doesn’t seem to have a *stop* mechanism in the sense that after 2, 6, 10 offspring it automatically turns off.
If all males are programmed to spread their seed as far and wide as possible, but females are programmed to be monogamous to one male…and there are roughly the same number of males and females…well where is all this seed going? I’m not a biologist, but it appears to me these two positions: females are programmed to be monogamous, males are programmed to be non-monogamous are biologically opposed. From a survival of the species perspective, non-monogamy in both genders would better accomplish the goal of creating as many pregnancies as possible throughout the human reproductive cycle.
Are we over-riding our biology with our social contructs? Or is biology much more complex beyond the ideas we pick and choose from because they fit the way we want to see our world? That’s what interests me.
Paula says
This debate to me is somewhat interesting but we are forgetting that men do not live in a vacuum and they tended to live in tribes (groups). A man’s survival is very dependent on his social ties. All these theories are bunk in my eyes because they tend to ignore the very obvious fact that humans are social creatures. So while technically a man can spread his seed, that doesn’t mean he should and he does have to be able to ‘play nice’ with other people if he is to survive.
The other point is that just because something has potential i.e. a man has potential to make hundreds and thousands of children, doesn’t mean that potential was actually designed to be fulfilled. How many animals lay eggs and only one of them develops? How many human females have eggs in their system and actually have children? We need to realize that nature is very abundant but she is abundant because it’s better to be abundant then deficit. Can you imagine if men didn’t have the capacity to make thousands of children? Can you imagine how pathetic nature would be if she limited man to producing only 4 children? It’s in Mother Nature’s best nature to endow animals (and we humans are animals) with potential so that it ensures their survival. This potential however will never need to be fulfilled.
This is really the paradigm shift that is needed.
Karl S says
I agree with both your points. I only talk in terms of urges and predispositions that are often overcome by use of empathy, reason and consideration of risk – the potential to lose more than you gain, by following those urges.
But the fact remains, as Evan said, that men in general want to sleep around more than women. Men, in general, can separate sex from emotional attachment.
I’m sure there was another article where Evan explained that a good man, a monogamous married man will desire to sleep with the pretty women he meets who is not his wife, but does not act on those urges. This does not make him a bad person. Subsequently, there was quite a debate that revealed a big difference in the way women thought about that statement.
It makes sense to me, because even though I am in a committed monogamous relationship, I feel those urges too.
ria says
So many men say “A man *can* separate sex and emotion”, like it’s a good thing. But in most women’s eyes, separating sex and emotion is not a worthy goal — it’s just a gross, devolved, less-than-human thing to do. Of course, many women *can* do that too, but don’t want to.
Karl S says
edit – who *are* not his wife.
Sparkling Emerald says
Michelle #20 ( http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/yo )
Thanks for posting this, I take any OKC “study” with a grain of salt, I’ll explain later.
As for the 4 guys they showed that were considered signifiigantly less than attractive here’s my opinion. I think they should all be considered attractive enough to enough women to be able to find love, if that is what they want to find (or a booty call for that matter if that is what they want)
From left to right Guy #1 – Attractive, but not my type, Guy #2 – I think he’s hot, and out of my league. I am not sure on what planet he could be considered unattractive. Guy #3 – About average in my estimation, but I can see how other women would find him attractive Guy #4 – Has a similar look to a young version of one of my husbands. (So I’ll leave it to you to guess how I would rate his attractiveness) 🙂
I don’t know how a man earned a rating of “signifigantly less than average” COLLECTIVELY. Did the vote have to be unanimous ? What percentage of women had to rate a man as being unattractive to be considered unattractive ? Was it an average of all scores ? Averaging all the women’s scores together really doesn’t tell you anything. (not sure if that’s how they did it, I didn’t find it in that article). After all, if 50% think you’re hot, and 50% think your not, just look amoungst that 50% that thinks you’re hot. Also, if the “study” included a small number of women, results won’t yield much signifigant info. Also, since I’ve been participating in dating blogs, people freely admit to putting false info on their profile, to try and proove some sort of point. So, I wouldn’t put it past anyone to bullshit on a “study” on OKC.
Here’s why I am skeptical of OKC’s “studies” I was on OKC very briefly. I was on another blog and an ad came up to have your picture rated free of charge. When I went to have my match.com photo rated, it turned out to be a way to recruit people to OKCupid. The only way I could get my photo rated was to JOIN (which is free) and to rate 50 photos of men. So I decided to go along with it. Well the “rating” system consisted of being shown 2 pictures side by side of 2 different men (no other profile info available) and then I had to pick out of the 2, which one I would go out with. Well most of the pairs, my answer was niether. And I would say that 80% of the pictures randomly selected from available profiles were TERRIBLE quality. Some I couldn’t even see the face. So how the hell am I supposed to choose between 2 photos, when one is a far away picture of a guy on the ski slopes where you can’t see his face, and one is taken in front of a foggy bathroom mirror where the flash obliterates half his face ? Or a blurry far away photo of a guy in his ball cap & glasses side by side of a picture of somone’s pet ? I ended up going through 50 sets of mostly terrible pairs of pictures, and then I got the results of how my picture was rated a few days later. Well, I actually got pretty good ratings, but I went and looked at women’s photos, and saw a high percentage of poor quality photos, and pet photo’s etc. So really, I couldn’t get excited about a good rating when my clear close up smiling photo was being compared side by side to a blurry mirror shot or a pictures of some one’s pet. (Whoopy Frickin’ Do, 9 out 10 guys would rather date me than a gerbil !)
Anyway my first e-mail was from a pretty hot 40 year old (If that was really his picture) who wrote to ask me if I was “open to the idea of a younger MARRIED man” My time on OKC was very short lived, for that, and a few other reasons as well, but I won’t go into the other reasons, because this post is already too long 🙂
Rose says
http://www.livescience.com/16594-busted-gender-myths-bedroom.html
Evan Marc Katz says
Rose, I know you think you’re making a scientific point, but if you read the article you posted, you’d see:
1. The fact that men and women want one sex partner just means that men also want to fall in love. It does not mean that they aren’t, by nature, more promiscuous. It means that they have more to overcome in choosing monogamy.
2. The fact that men and women have the same number of sex partners doesn’t mean that men don’t want more. It may mean there are many men who are incapable of getting more sexual partners. Most women know that if they hang out until last call at a bar that they can get laid. The same doesn’t apply to all men.
3. Men liking one-night stands is still more true – even though there’s a bullet that refutes it with hypothetical offers. Ask ten of your single male friends and ten of your single female friends if they’re up for a one-night stand now, and I’m guessing more men are open to one-nighters. Asking a woman if she’s sleep with Clooney for one night is a silly point, irrelevant to real life.
4. The fact that men think about sex more (which is somewhat irrelevant, but the article cites it) still holds true. Men think about sex nearly twice as much. And this, in an article designed to debunk such myths.
Rose, my dear – I know you don’t want it to be true that men are more promiscuous, but pretty much all real world evidence – from prostitution, to big sex scandals, to infidelity rates, to membership on sex sites, to anecdotal evidence – seems to suggest they are. It’s okay. Let it go.
Jenna says
“Men think about sex nearly twice as much. And this, in an article designed to debunk such myths.”
That study included thoughts-about-sex that arose after seeing visual stimuli.
Guess how many more sexualized women are in the media than men?
…About twice as many.
http://newyorksociologist.org/11/Berberick2011.pdf
Selena says
Karl S.
My observation also has been that it seems men generally are able to separate sex from emotion more easily than women. And by extension, express the desire to have more sexual partners than women generally claim to want for themselves.
What I question is the idea that this is determined by biology rather than intense social conditioning. If females are naturally monogamous, then why have so many cultures across human history put restrictions and reprisals on the expression of female sexuality? If females were naturally monogamous, why would there be any need for it?
Selena says
@ Rose #40: Interesting article. Thank you for sharing the link. I especially enjoyed the last paragraph:
Psychologists — including me — always have to be looking beyond their own biases. They need to avoid getting so attached to a particular theory or perspective that they go out of their way to protect the theory,” Conley said. “Data should be the guide, and you have to look at data in every way you can think of to see if the story you are telling is really the best one.”
Jeannie says
Evan, how can men as a group be more promiscuous than women as a group? Who are all these promiscuous guys having sex with? Each other? If not, then numerically it all averages out between the genders.
Let’s say you’re on an island with 10 men and 10 women who have 1 sex partner each. That means 10 men have sex with 10 women. The genders are equal on the promiscuity scale. But if 1 man has sex with 10 women, 9 men do not have sex. In which case 1 man would be more promiscuous than the women, but 9 men would be less promiscuous. If all 10 men have sex with 1 woman, 9 women do not have sex. In which case 1 woman would be more promiscuous than all the men and 9 would be less promiscuous. But in any of these cases, the average promiscuity between the genders does not change.
So how can men as a group be more promiscuous than women as a group? This isn’t a logical statement at all unless the men are having sex with each other. Explain, please.
Evan Marc Katz says
Glad to explain, Jeannie. This isn’t about a number of sexual conquests. This is about desire. Who is more likely to desire a one-night stand? Who is more likely to join a sex site? Who is more likely to cheat? Who is more likely to be dissatisfied with sleeping with one person forever? The answer: the gender that is more driven by testosterone. From the linked Wikipedia page:
Men producing more testosterone are also more likely to engage in extramarital sex.[35]
When testosterone-deprived rats were given medium levels of testosterone, their sexual behaviors (copulation, partner preference, etc.) resumed, but not when given low amounts of the same hormone. Therefore, these mammals may provide a model for studying clinical populations among humans suffering from sexual arousal deficits such as hypoactive sexual desire disorder.[44]
In one study, almost every mammalian species examined demonstrated a marked increase in a male’s testosterone level upon encountering a novel female.
When females have a higher baseline level of testosterone, they have higher increases in sexual arousal levels but smaller increases in testosterone, indicating a ceiling effect on testosterone levels in females
Jeannie says
Evan, promiscuity does mean that the people are having sex, not just thinking about it or having sexual feelings. So men are not more promiscuous than women are. Men and women are equally promiscuous if what we are talking about is consensual heterosexual sex. If you want to say that men think about sex more or join sex sites more, those are different statements. The first is pretty hard to measure–what people think about, and who cares, really. The second is measurable, so I’ll take that on your word. Maybe that would be different if they had better sex sites for women. I mean, really, it’s hard to find a decent porn site, and by decent I mean that the woman seems to be present and not doing some fake thing she thinks turn men on, she is having a good time and has a real orgasm, and the people having sex might actually kiss or touch each other. And coming on someone’s face or boobs is just not about her having a good time at all, and I would not believe any woman who said that she gets off by having a guy come on her face or her boobs. That kind of thing is quite distracting from the woman’s pleasure, actually, and it takes a little bit more on the guy’s part to please a woman. So why would any woman want to watch that boring stuff? If that’s what having testosterone leads to–random ejaculation onto a listless female body–well, nothing to be so proud of there. I’d keep that thought to myself if I were a guy.
Karl T says
Jeannie #46,
I can;’t tell ya how many women I know actually like watching gangbang or rough style porn. Maybe not the majority, but still a good deal. Even average typical everyday women. Some like it even more than I do!! They might not watch it all the time, but sometimes they like watching it. I have known personally several women who actually get off on giving a guy oral sex and loved doing it so much they pretty much demanded it. I’m not entirely huge on receiving it (I’m very sensitive and find it painful sometimes) and that was actually a big let down for them! Wow, bet that surprised ya, huh Jeannie??!!!!!!! Again, I’m quite shocked at the discrepancy there appears to be between what women on this blog proclaim and my actual real life experiences of talking and interacting with women. Again, perhaps it’s the age group on here?? I talk to 25-35 year olds. Most on here seem to be 50 plus.
angel says
Wow Karl, I bet every one of those women that wanted to give you a BJ really, really meant it. Unfortunately most women feel that they need to act this way in order to gain a man’s trust and to hook a guy. They are brought up feeling lesser important than a man and need to be submissive, do what a guy wants. I’ve been there so what about your study now.
Your comment – Oh, and surprised Jeannie? Karl……really these are your real life experiences. Anyone that ‘has to give a guy a bj or it’s a big let down for them….. those folks have some serious issues.
Karmic Equation says
I think another way to answer this question is to switch up the question to: Is polyamory harder for women than men?
In another post a while back, I said that once I was out of my then current relationship, I would try to start my own male harem. To some extent I’ve been trying to do this but it’s very very difficult to do–as a woman.
I didn’t count on a couple of things:
1) Logistics – Even though I would LIKE to try to see/date a different guy every day of the week or even try to put men on a schedule, e.g., Guy A Monday, Guy B Tuesday, Guy C Wednesday, etc. — it’s simply not possible because initiating contact with men who are not my bf for a date goes against my basic instincts. I suppose if I were simply initiating booty calls, it would go quite well, but that would definitely make me feel slutty and give off the impression of desperation. So no-go on initiating booty calls on a schedule. Nor even calling for dates on a schedule. Both leave bad impressions.
2) Weirdness – by a twist of fate, I had sex with two different men four days apart. I’ve NEVER done this before. EVER. Or since. And while I didn’t feel slutty, per se, I felt naughty, in a good way. But also weird in a not so good way. To some extent I felt like I was being disloyal to both men even though I owed neither any loyalty. I’m sure if I were a man, I’d be high-fiving myself for a week and bragging to my friends. I didn’t do either, but I did mona-lisa smile quite often for a while for no reason.
I think due to the combination of social programming as well as innate biological hunter/prey programming, it’s just really really difficult for women to build male harems, e.g., guy monday/guy tuesday, etc., whereas I know for a fact that my reformed player ex-bf definitely had that kind of arrangement with his women.
And since women, in general, can have sex any time they want; the supply and demand nature of the universe dictates that women don’t need to think about sex as often as men since it’s there for the asking. Not so for men. Therefore, men think about sex more often because there is no guarantee they can get it when they want it.
Polyamory (if harem = polyamory) for women is just not easy — on a logistics level and on some biological level (hunter/prey programming) with a big dose of social programming (feeling of disloyalty) — at least for me. I actually WANT to be promiscuous, but DISCREETLY so (because my reputation matters to me), and I can’t do it. Culturally, logistically, biological-programming-ly…all conspire to prevent me from being as promiscuous as men.
So is monogamy harder for men than women? I’d say yes. Simply because the converse of that – polyamory for women – is not easy to pull off without a woman’s reputation or self-esteem taking a hit. You add oxytocin effects to that, and there’s just a low-to-no ROI for women to indulge in it.
Jeannie says
Karl T–not buying it. And no, nothing surprises me much about sex.
Sparkling Emerald says
I also think the reverse of what KE said could also be true. Whereas she WANTS to be a free spirited sexual adventurer with many partners, but it’s just not working out for her, many women WANT to be in a monogamous relationship, but that’s not working out for them. It could be due to sleeping with someone HOPING or THINKING that it’s a relationship, and it’s not. It could be sleeping with someone who has declared themselves to be a boyfriend, and it just either legitimately didn’t work out or the guy lied or mislead about his intentions to get a booty call. After a sexual encounter that turns out disappointingly to be not a relationship, it’s try, try, again. I’ve been out of the loop so long I don’t know what constitutes a lack of monogamy, promiscuity, polyamory, or whatever you want to call it, but I think more women than men DESIRE monogamy, even if they end up with many partners before they attain monogamy. And I think more men desire to sow their wild oats before they settle down with just one woman, although they may not fullfill that desire either. It could be because they go looking for sex and find love early on in life, or it could be that they look for sex and have little success finding it, and then decide that looking for love may be a better way to go. Please, before anyone jumps on me for making sexist generalizations, notice I did not say ALL of any gender ALWAYS does anything. These are just my observations, your results may vary 🙂
antonia says
It is a sexist generalization. But you are not doing this because you are a sexist, but because you are brain washed too by society. The greatest myth of all is “spreding the seed” myth. But now probably I will be “jumped on” 🙂 by men on this blog by saying this. It is yet another myth that men use to be promiscuous. Nothing else. How on earth is it possible that only men seeds are of importance, and not the wombs of women??!! Those need to be fertilized too!! So if we can’t say that women are less monogamous because their womb is less important than seed of a men. I think this is fundamentaly wrong. Remember the lions back in history..the alpha males….They would put their seeds into the lioness, but the liones would also be copulated by many different alpha males. She definatelly did not say “”Oh but this new alpha male that is going to fertilize me now is not my husband, so I am not going to have sex with him!!!!??? For sure not….But it is not fault that there are soooo many stereotypes out there making people think like this. Even the official science supports these kind of nonsences….still….Luckuly for me I am not a “mass thinker” . I think with my own head, independently and without taking anything as set in stone. Spreading of seed is yet another try to even teh men with God, and state that only men are important and women are there as objects to satisfy men’s needs.
Evan Marc Katz says
If, by “not a mass thinker,” you mean a poor critical thinker who doesn’t understand biology, you’ve nailed it.
Sparkling Emerald says
Jeanie #44 – In your example you said:
“If all 10 men have sex with 1 woman, 9 women do not have sex. In which case 1 woman would be more promiscuous than all the men and 9 would be less promiscuous. But in any of these cases, the average promiscuity between the genders does not change.
So how can men as a group be more promiscuous than women as a group? This isn’t a logical statement at all unless the men are having sex with each other. Explain, please.”
_______________________________________________________________
Jeanie – There are times when “averages” are meaningless for statistical analysis. For example if you have a roomful of great-grandmas, and each great-grandma is there with one of her infant grandchildren, that might give you an average age of 25, which is a meaningless number as there isn’t a single person in the room that is 25.
In your example, I wouldn’t call men having sex with one woman promiscuous at all, that would be 10 monogamous men. Let’s say that all ten men are having sex with 4 of the women. That makes makes 10 men “promiscuous” and 4 women “promiscuous”. So you have more than twice as many promiscuous men as women. The fact that the 4 women are “more” promiscuous has no bearing on the 6 celibate women, what four members of their group are doing does not “average” into their behavior. And the fact those 4 women are “more promiscuous” than those 10 men, because they each have 10 partners, whereas the men only have four, has no bearing on the men as a group, because 100% of the men in the group are still “promiscuous”. I am putting the word “promiscuous” in quotes, because it is one of those words that different people define differently, and it’s also a loaded & judgemental word. Feel free to substitute a phrase such as “person with multiple simultaneous sex partners” if you wish.
Also, even as someone who came of age during the so called sexual revolution, I never thought I would see the day when women would be clamoring to proclaim female promiscuity for their gender, as if it is some sort of girl scout merit badge.
Not judging the free spirited women in the group, just a little surprised to make the observation.
Joe says
@ Karmic Equation #48:
It’s hard for all but a handful of men to have a harem, too.
Maybe I could have one, but it would be more work than I am willing to do, and take more out of my life than I am willing to take. From what I’ve read about PUAs, the activity often seems to take over their lives. I have so many other things I want to do with my life, other than working to bed a different woman every night.
Karl T says
How old are you Jeannie???
marymary says
promiscuous = someone who has had more sex than you
Jeannie says
Emerald: We’re talking about the veracity of Evan’s claim that men are more promiscuous than are women. Promiscuous was his word, not mine. Given this statement, it certainly does matter if even a few women are more promiscuous than the men. If female behavior skews to either end of the spectrum and male behavior clusters in the middle it doesn’t change the average or the median for either gender. In the perfectly binary system that sex is (one erection/one vagina or vagina-equivalent), they would both be the same. So again, if the men are having sex with women, how can they be having more sex than are the women these men are having it with? No matter how you slice and dice the numbers, there is still no way that you can say that men as a group are having more sex/are more promiscuous than women as a group, unless these men are having sex with children, animals, or other men.
Karl T: I’m not going to go out with you, so stop fishing.
Sparkling Emerald says
Jeannie –
Evan said “But there are more men who want to sleep around.” What part of that don’t you understand ?
Rose says
Evan, I know you think and believe you know what I am thinking and what i believe from the link I posted.. And I understand why you came to that educated guess, Your educated guess on my thoughts and beliefs on that link in this case in incorrect.
Karl T says
Jeannie #55,
Please, don’t flatter yourself. Plus your math is bad. What if there is an island with 100 men and 100 women on it and 20 of the women had sex with 80 of the men, and the remaining 80 women had sex with just one of 90 of the men. The remaing 10 men had sex with no one. In the end we have 80 women who had sex with one guy, 80 men who had sex with at least 20 women, 10 guys who had sex with 1 or 2 women, and 20 women who had sex with over 80-90 guys. So we have 80 guys who were very promiscuous, 20 women who were extremely promiscuous, 20 women who were not very promiscuous, 10 guys who were not very promiscuous, and 10 guys who wished to hell they could have been more promiscuous, but couldn’t get laid. Therefore, your law of medians and averages fizzles out here.
marymary#54,
LOL. I like your response!
Paula says
Karl, that’s nonsense. If there was an island of 100 men and 100 women. Half of those people will couple off. The other half will most likely sleep with 2-3 men/women. There will probably be a handful of slutty men and probably 1-2 slutty women. There will be 1 loner man and probably 4 loner women.
Good observation of facts preceeds mathematical skill
Karl T says
#59,
You don’t get it Paula. My example was not showing what people would actually do. It was to show Jeannie that things don’t have to AVERAGE OUT as she stated. It was purely a mathematical EXAMPLE and nothing more!!! I don’t care if you swapped men with monkeys and women with giraffes. Get it now?
Good observation of reading carefully before commenting.
Karl S says
I have a few gay friends who have told me that it is really, very easy to get casual sex but difficult to find people willing to commit to a relationship in their community. To me, that appears to be another indicator of how men are naturally more inclined towards variety if they can get it.
antonia says
Karl, not true! I have a gay friends too. Do not mistaken this with women, do not transpose this fact that you mentioned either to women or to heterosexual man !! The difference is huge . Women and hetero-men experience the “call of nature”…they have to commit at certain point. Thats why we have 80% of failed marriages (the rest of 20% is by chance good because the two found to be very good friends with each other) . There are many, many statements everywhere on the net stating that women are less sexual which is absolutely not true. Everybody needs variety.
Sparkling Emerald says
Just another un-scientific observation from moi –
When I was in grade school I noticed that girls generally tended to be “monogamous” in their same sex friendships. Girls walked to school in pairs with their best friend. Boys tended to roam around in packs. Girl best friends tended to become inseparable, jealousy would ensue if a new girl moved into the neighborhood threatening the girl best friend pairing. Usually when you saw groups of girls, they were actually clusters of girl pairs. I am still friends with my BFF from my childhood. (We met when I was 6) Of course there were exceptions, but that was the general trend I noticed with early childhood same sex friendships.
John says
Nature vs nurture? The most children a woman has ever given birth to is 69. The most children a man has ever sired is over 800. Hmmm…I think nature wins. There’s no way women are equal to or more promiscuous than men. Men are just made to keep seeding to keep the human species from dieing out. Mother Nature makes women much more selective as they have a lot more at risk.
Sass says
69???? Is that a typo? How is that even possible?
Jeannie says
Emerald: The part I don’t understand is where “wanting to sleep around” is synonymous with “promiscuous.” Most sane people are able to make a distinction between thinking about something and doing something. Promiscuous people are doing something, not just thinking about doing something. I’m sure that all paupers want to be millionaires, too.
Karl T: You are speaking nonsense indeed. The denominator in this math discussion is total number of sex acts, not total number of people. If you are talking about hetero sex in a population with an equal number of males and females (which is true, roughly, in the US), the average number of sex acts for men v. women would be the same. In places like China, where men outnumber the women (because of gender-selective abortions) women on average will have far more sex than the men on average. As far as I know there are no societies where the women outnumber the men in significant numbers. So, speaking globally, on average women in toto are having more sex than are men in toto. That’s pretty funny to think about–that misogyny in extreme actually leads to women having more power over sex. Ha!!!
Karl T says
Who cares about how many sex acts there are Jeannie. This is about how many different people the person has sex with and my example proves it. You seem to be quite mixed up. Promiscuity is not how many times you have sex, it’s with how many different people you have sex with. You’re law of averages is massively flawed.
Sparkling Emerald says
Jeannie #64 –
“Emerald: The part I don’t understand is where “wanting to sleep around” is synonymous with “promiscuous.” “
_____________________
The title of this post is “Is monogamy harder for men or women”. Monogamy is harder for someone who for whatever reason would prefer to have multiple sex partners. Since more women would prefer monogamy over a multiplicity of partners, then for more women monogamy is easier, because it is in line with what they want. So in terms of what one desires, I think it easier to live a life that is line with your desires, instead of a life that is not in line with your desires.
___________________
Jeannie
Karl T: You are speaking nonsense indeed. The denominator in this math discussion is total number of sex acts, not total number of people.
__________________
Um no, promiscuity is defined according to the number of sex partners, not the number of sex acts. Monogamy is defined as having one partner, nothing to do with how often this monogomos pair has sex. A person who marries the only person that they ever had sex with is not considered promisicuous because they have sex perhaps 150 times a year, and the person who has a ONS with 12 different people in a year is not considered unpromiscuous because of the low number of sex acts.
Maybe that is why you and I aren’t seeing eye to eye on this. You are defining monogamy vs polygamy based on the total # of sex acts, and Karl and I are defining it based on the # of sex partners.
In both of our examples, the male group had more more members having multiple sex partners. The female group contained more monogamous members.
I don’t care what’s considered politically correct, since more men make it a goal to have as many sex partners as possible, and more women make it a goal to seek out one partner, I still say the total number of men who have had several partners is greater than the total number of women who have done so. Even if the men have not been as successful in their quest for bedding huge numbers of women, even tho’ many women have had to go through a few partners before finding one to settle down with.
Even when (most) men finally settle down with one woman, they still look at their commitment to monogamy as a loss of freedom. That seems to be the biggest stumbling block for men when it comes to settling down, is the thought of having to give up the freedom to sleep around. I don’t think as many women consider it the promise of monogamy to be a loss of anything.
Selena says
@ John #63
–Men are just made to keep seeding to keep the human species from dieing out. Mother Nature makes women much more selective as they have a lot more at risk.
Well this might explain the phenomena of monogamy. Since females are unwilling to accept any old seed, it’s in a male’s best interest to stick with the one who selects him. A bird in the hand is worth…not getting any? LOL. 🙂
Selena says
@Karl S. #61
Good point about gay males. From a survival of the species perspective though, all that seed spent on the same gender isn’t contributing. How to explain that?
This is why I feel when biological/hard-wired/lizard brain explanations are applied to human behavior they so often come up short. They fail to explain all the variables and variations we actually see in human sexual behavior. So perhaps there is more to biology and it’s interplay with environment, socialization, enculturation than we can unequiviocally state so far.
K says
Selena @68, interesting thoughts. I have thought that before too. I recently went to a lecture by a cultural anthropologist. She did note that a significant percentage of gay and lesbian couples are raising children. Often those children have the genetic material of one of the parents. I work with a lesbian woman and one child was carried by her while their other child was carried by her partner. She also noted that often when gay/lesbian couples do not have children they tend to be highly involved in the raising of kin. This did add to my understanding because I think they are passing on their traits more than you would think. She also pointed out if being non-hetero was such a disadvantage to the species it wouldn’t have continued to last (albeit for a long time many of these people stayed in hetero couples). I’m not an expert in any of these topics, but found it interesting and thought I’d add it to your point.
Peter says
@Jeanni 44. Excellent point. The one recent large scale study of sexual behaviour in the US was the Centre for Disease Control’s 1996 study on risky behaviour by students. The was the study that produced the famous idea that the “average” count of sexual partners was 9. Focusing on whites under 23, about half of both sexes had none or 1 sexual partners in their life time. The difference between sexes was small. About a quarter had has 2, 3 or 4 sexual partners in their lives again equal between the sexes. The remaining group had 5 or more partners. At a time when heterosexual Aids was still a serious concern, this was considered risky (others might say promiscuous) behaviour. Both sexes were again about equal in this group, although the highest scoring men were around 250 partners and the highest scoring women about 600, confirming the idea that women find it easier to find sexual partners than men. Commercial sex was excluded. To make the average 9, the promiscuous group had to “average” about 50 partners each. Interestingly, for those older than 23, although the overall average went up, only the promiscuous group increased their partner count. The other three quarters of the population had not added new partners. Hispanics were slightly more promiscuous (despite Catholicism?) and blacks were slightly more promiscuous than Hispanics but not much in either case. So, desire coupled with opportunity would seem to be about the same for both sexes, except at the very top of the scale where a few women find opportunities for promiscuous sex with men who on average have a lower partner count.
Other biology does not suggest very promiscuous men. The ratio of male gonad weight to body weight suggests that human males are built for a modest harem. 1.6 females per male to be precise (indeed it is usually just one other woman not another 5 – Tiger Woods apart). Variation in the human genome suggests that 80% of all women have left descendants but only 40% of all men, another suggestion of moderate harem size. Half a good man is better than all of a failed man is a choice women do seem to make – confirmation bias here no doubt. Finally, human males are larger than human females. This happens in harem species when males compete for mates (so no everybody mating with everybody which would be a genetic disaster for small populations. Aborigines, the first Out of Africa population, for example, have very strict rules about skin groups. Male and female Bonobos are about the same size). Humans do not have such obvious distortions as large antlers or gaudy tails that occur in harem species, except, perhaps, intelligence or at least intellectual display.
So, statistics about behaviour suggest that men and women are promiscuous at about the same level (commercial sex – wife withdraws from marriage?- excepted?). Some biology suggests that free from modern cultural constraints, the more able half of men would be contentedly faithful with their two wives. English surname studies of Y chromosones suggest a rate of unfaithfulness with non relatives of the husband of 0.5% per generation over the last 600 years in the monogamous culture of early modern England. Perhaps a culture that accepted small harems would extinguish even that level of unfaithfulness. On the other hand that may reflect female promiscuity as the men’s infidelity would not show in the surname.
Most of the studies above have been on men of European descent. In some African communities successful males have considerably larger harems than two women but the extra women are generally chosen by the existing wives so harem size is not necessarily a sexual issue. Rulers outside Africa, have demonstrated their power by holding very large harems of concubines who usually volunteered. Christian Circassian girls from the Caucus regularly opted to be sold into wealth in Istanbul than to live in poverty at home. Various Sultans from the Ottoman Sultan to the modern Sultan of Brunei come to mind. However, the Islamic harem of 3 or 4 is in general a social security system for widows of male relatives not a route of greater sexual access for men. It does not show greater male desire for sexual novelty. Men’s apparent greater interest in sex is the search for the other 0.6 of a wife.
Peter says
@Karmic 58. Humans females who have male harems live in extremely harsh, dangerous places (Tibet, the Artic) where the risk of the man dying is particularly high. In these cases, the men are usually brothers and several brothers may share several unrelated women, usually pairing most of the time.
Jeannie says
Thank you, Peter!!!!
Jeannie says
The problem with this discussion starts with the statement “Men are more promiscuous than women.” In logic, when you use “men” in this way it means “all men” and “women” means “all women.” The accurate statement, as Peter’s contribution points out, would be that “some men are more promiscuous than some women.” Unfortunately for the initial argument, as Peter’s example also points out, if this is true, the flip of that statement is also true, and “some women are more promiscuous than some men.”
Because each hetero sex act involves one man and one woman, the total number of sex acts will be divided evenly between the genders. (Meaning, every time a man has sex you put a jelly bean in the “man sex” jar–but at the same time a woman is also having sex, so you have to put a jelly bean in the “woman sex” jar. Two jars, same number of jelly beans at the end of all the day.) Therefore, all men cannot have more sex than all women if both genders are required for each sex act. The next question is, how is the total number of sex acts divvied up within each gender group? On average, both men and women will have the same number of sex partners because the total number of sex acts can only be divided evenly between the genders (two jars, same number of jelly beans, always). Whether you have one man who has sex with 500 women or 250 women who have sex with 250 men, the average number of sex partners remains the same within a gender-balanced population (which the US is, basically). If you change the distribution of sex partners on the male side, you necessarily change the distribution of sex partners on the female side, but the two sides will still balance out (those jelly bean jars). E.g., in the situation where one man gets all the women, you also have to factor into the calculation the 499 men who did not have a sex partner and the 500 women who did. In this scenario, 500 women have had more partners than those 499 celibate men. Who here do you label as more promiscuous gender? Men, because one Don Juan got all the women, or women, because all of the women had more partners than most of the men? Which takes us back to the two truthful statements: In considering only hetero sex, some men are more promiscuous than some women, and at the same time, some women are more promiscuous than some men. But it is not statistically possible for all men to be more promiscuous than all women (unless you take into account male sex with children, animals, and other men, which is a topic for another discussion).
Karl T says
Jeannie,
Nobody ever said ALL men were more promiscuous than ALL women. It was said that if you compare men as a group to women as a group, there are a higher percentage of men who are promiscuous than women. You don;t sound very well versed in mathematics to me. Why do you have such difficulty understanding what is being said???? Of course in the 2 groups you find some men that are not promiscuous and some women who are very promiscuous. You might want to brush up on your math before you post anymore comments.
Sparkling Emerald says
Jeanie #73 – You said
The problem with this discussion starts with the statement “Men are more promiscuous than women.” In logic, when you use “men” in this way it means “all men” and “women” means “all women.” The accurate statement, as Peter’s contribution points out, would be that “some men are more promiscuous than some women.”. . .But it is not statistically possible for all men to be more promiscuous than all women . . .
_________
Actually, the problem is, you are inaccuragely re-framing the discussion. The discussion started with “Is Monogamy Harder for Men than Women ?” In fact, I searched the OP and did not find the sentence “Men are more promiscuous than women” However, later in the OP I found
——————-
“Are there some women who want to sleep with hundreds of men? Sure. But there are more men who want to sleep around.”
Are there some women who can separate love and sex and have no emotional attachment after physical contact? You bet. But there are more men who do.
——————–
EMK never said in his original article that ALL men are more promiscuous than ALL women. That is a strawman argument you are putting up.
Divving up the number of sex acts and then averaging it out tells us nothing useful. You could do the same thing with height, IQ, or any other factor to try and prove that the entire population is all the same height, or has the same IQ. But the average would be meaningless, because you can’t give your IQ points to someone else, or take inches from someone else’s height in order to be taller. And you can’t assign some of your sex partners to someone else in order to make an equal opportunity observation. By your logic, virgins still have “x” number of sexual partners, because in the interest of equal opportunity, you are adding up the total number of sex acts and dividing them evenly to try and prove that men and women are exactly alike in our sexual experiences and attitudes. Also by your logic, a person who has had 50 sex partners, loses many of those partners, because once again, in the interest of “proving” that men and women have identical sexual experiences, you are “spreading the wealth” and re-assigning their sexual experience to others. It doesn’t work that way. Individuals own their sexual history. They can’t average it out among the rest of the gender group, to up their number or lower their number. I still believe there are MORE total men who have had several sexual partners than there are total number of women who have had several sexual partners.
So if you want to continue this discussion, focus on what EMK, and a few other poster have ACTUALLY said, instead of the strawman argument.
Evan Marc Katz says
Completely agree, Sparkling Emerald. Jeannie is clinging to a phrase that I didn’t use at all and rests her entire argument on it. She’s hell bent on proving that some women are more promiscuous than men (which, of course, they are) and that the number of partners for men and women have to add up congruently (fine by me – I’m no mathemetician).
But if you read what I wrote, this was not about success in getting a bunch of notches on your bedpost. This was about desire for variety. And as someone previously pointed out, it seems pretty clear that men (in general! not ALL of them) want to sow their oats for a long time before settling down, whereas women (in general! not ALL of them) sow their oats merely until they can settle down.
Nothing that Jeannie said has effectively contradicted what I wrote, nor any of the observations I’ve made in ten years as a dating coach, listening to women complain about men who sleep with them without commitment. Sorry.
Sparkling Emerald says
Karl T 74 (to Jeannie) “You might want to brush up on your math before you post anymore comments.”
Personally, I don’t think it’s a math problem, I think Jeannie has a hard time with the notion that men and women aren’t identical, save for a few body parts. She is merely using bad math to try and prove that women are merely men minus a penis, or that men are merely women minus a uterus. Generally speaking,* men and women have difference that go beyond external body parts. I have a love/hate relationship with those differences, but I would much rather learn how to understand and live with those differences, than to create a society, where men and women are exactly the same. I don’t want to live in that androgynous pile of slop. I enjoy (and am frustrated by) those differences. I enjoy my femininity and hope to find a masculine (but not super macho) man who enjoys my femininity as well. Oh, and I don’t give a rat’s patoot, if my love of the differences is socially ingrained or hardwired. I think nature and nurture are so tightly intertwined, that we will never have a definitive answer to that question.
*From now on, when I use the terms “men” or “women” I am speaking in generalities. Most people can use context and understand that, but for those (cough, cough, Jeannie) who logically think that “men” ALWAYS means “ALL MEN” and “women” ALWAYS means ALL WOMEN, I am putting in this general disclaimer. If I mean ALL MEN, I will say ALL MEN, although I can’t think of many instances where something would apply to ALL of any group.
Peter says
The CDC data said that about equal proportions of college students of both sexes are equally promiscuous, except at the very top, a tiny number of women students outrun the men. Half were by no definition promiscuous. There was a link between promiscuity and alcohol. I assert that it is likely that the non college educated are less promiscuous because they live in a more socially controlled setting.
There is gene for novelty seeking behaviour. It is associated with risk taking, impulsivity, higher IQ and a liking for loud music and noisy environments as places to do mentally demanding work, oh, and more sex drive in both sexes. BBC Horizon did a programme on it years ago, featuring Vanessa May the violinist, as an example of a carrier. So no. Men do not have more need for sexual variety. They perhaps have different needs but at the nexus of sex and relationships they do not have more needs.
There is a vast amount of porn for women on public display. Much more than for men. It takes the form of soap operas and talk shows dealing with relationships.
Sass says
Lol at your last comment.
Mine is lifetime movies… TMI?
Sparkling Emerald says
Peter 78
________________________
There is a vast amount of porn for women on public display. Much more than for men. It takes the form of soap operas and talk shows dealing with relationships.
________________________
I would hardly equate women on a talk show asking for advice on how to repair their marriage after their husband cheated on them, or how to get a man to commit to them as being comparable to graphic online videos of fuster clucks. Classic example of false equivalence. Do you consider this blog, for women who want to fall in love to be porn ?
The majority of relationship advice that women seek is how to build relationships with men. (With some so called feminist site promoting sex positivism or some such thing, which I think basicially is femnistspeak for promiscuity) The majority of relationship advice for men on the internet is on how to build harems of women, how to hump & dump, etc. Go to return of Kings for but ONE example. There a man can find advice on how to build a “soft harem” (multiple women for sex, but they also have sex with other men) or a “royal harem”, multiple women who have sex with only the one man. Also find lots of advice for how to have fun with “sluts”. And I think this particular website considers all American women sluts and advise men to go out of the country to fine a “quality woman” when they are ready to settle down.
Now, it’s really hard to judge an entire gender strictly by what’s on the internet. However, since there are more websites devoted to advising men how NOT to commit to women, and there are more websites advising women how to get men to fall in love and commit to them, I believe there are more men who WANT multiple sexual partners (but aren’t necessarily succesful at it ) and more women who WANT to find just one man to give her heart to (although she might end up having to kiss a lot of frogs before finding her one prince)
And I don’t put much stock in a “study” that only examines such a small subset of the population; ie: college students.
Here’s a small sampling of “relationship” advice to men.
Jeannie says
Evan said in 43: “Rose, my dear — I know you don’t want it to be true that men are more promiscuous, but pretty much all real world evidence — from prostitution, to big sex scandals, to infidelity rates, to membership on sex sites, to anecdotal evidence — seems to suggest they are.” I assumed that by this statement Evan meant that men are more promiscuous than women, but perhaps he meant that men are more promiscuous than…what? I don’t know what he was referrring to, if not to women.
Again, in logic, when you say “men” without a qualifier, the “all” is assumed. If you mean “some men,” you have to add the qualifier “some.” That’s just the way it is. Don’t know what to tell you other than that. But if you’re even in a real-life situation where this distinction comes up, you might help yourself but remaining silent and thinking before speaking. For instance, when you are on trial for something and the lawyer asks, “Did you eat the jelly beans?” If you say yes you are admitting that you ate all of the jelly beans. If you did not eat all of the jelly beans, you say, “No, I ate some of the jelly beans, but not all of the jelly beans.”
I have advanced credentials in economics and understand math very well. But you all need to understand better how distribution works in order to continue the discussion in an informed manner. It’s really beyond the scope of a blog to explain it to you. I can tell from what you are writing and the way that you are writing it that none of you are schooled in statistics, and that’s OK. But you do need to think a little bit more about things.
Karl T says
Jeannie,
I have advanced credentials in engineering and understand math very well. When we make a statement “Men are more promiscuous than women”. It does NOT mean that all men are more promiscuous than all women or in other words every man is more promiscuous than every woman. It means that there is a greater percentage of men that are promiscuous than there are a percentage of women who are promiscuous. Again you are incorrect. Perhaps before you make a statement assuming that none of use are schooled in statistics, you should take a course in probability. If you had, you would then realize such a statement might be incorrect.
Sparkling Emerald says
Jeannie @ 80-“Again, in logic, when you say “men” without a qualifier, the “all” is assumed.
Are you saying that ALL people assume that the “all” is assumed ? You didn’t qualify by whom the all is assumed, so did you mean all of human kind ? If so, you are wrong, because I didn’t assume that, given the context of that remark, it was part of a discussion of the original post where EMK made several “qualifying” statements such as
“. . .men are more likely to prefer a variety of sexual partners.” (different from saying men UNANIMOUSLY prefer a variety . . .)
“Are there some women who want to sleep with hundreds of men? Sure. But there are more men who want to sleep around.”
“Are there some women who can separate love and sex and have no emotional attachment after physical contact? You bet. But there are more men who do.”
Given that this is a blog, not a court of law, it is important to put things into context. Given that EMK made several qualifying statement in his opening article, he should not have to continuously repeat the qualifiers over and over. Don’t assume that because YOU assumed the word “men” meant “all men” that everyone shares your assumption. Men is the plural of man. It could mean two men, it could mean some men, it COULD be all men, but given the context, I knew what he meant. And i suspect you know what he meant, but wanted a strawman argument, so you could put forth your men and women are exactly alike if you add up all of their sexual experiences and then distribute them evenly among everyone.
Peter says
First the CDC data which is the most relevant to this study. This is a summary. I read more detailed information in the past. I can’t find it anymore and its 1995 not 1996. There was a preliminary sample of over 2000 students and a final sample of over 7000 so it is regarded as definitive. It was big and expensive and hasn’t been repeated. About half of Americans attend college so it represents about half the population at some point in their lives. In this cut of the data, the promiscuity cut off is 6 lifetime partners. By 24 that figure was reached by 23.9% of females and 27.8% of males. It’s along time since I looked at this. Post 24 (about 40% of US college 44% of the women had reached 6 partners and 58% of men. However, it has been shown in lie detector tests that women report the number of sex partners accurately and men exaggerate the number of partners. The movement of the next 25% into the promiscuous band is not something I remember from the detailed figures. They still underscored the top 25% substantially and the monogamous largely stayed that way.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00049859.htm
This data does not suggest that men, allowing for the lie detector effect, are more promiscuous than women when it comes to practice. Men do not have any control of access to sex so perhaps men seek out porn and have fantasies about less restricted sex with harems, as Emerald points out. Women don’t need to. Two hours in a city centre bar or dance club and they are on their way. (By the way, its the woman in the first example who is the sex cheat not the man. Haven’t read the rest).
@Karl. Since we are bragging, I have advanced engineering and business degrees with patents to match. I am a Member of this and a Fellow of that. I am now sitting in the middle of Eurasia designing questions for a marketing survey to be conducted in five languages across three cultures. (My long term, exclusive, mistress is visiting her half sister who has returned from hospital with a 2 week old baby. So I am on my own. Men don’t get a look at babies for the first month).
“Men are more promiscuous than women”
These are clearly the sets of men (i.e. All men) and women (i.e. All women). Read Bertrand Russel if you doubt it. “Are men more promiscuous than women” is clearly all men against all women and is going to lead to the arithmetical answer No, as Jeannie points out. The actual data from the CDC which represents a life stage of a large fraction of the US population (and perhaps most Euro cultures, certainly Anglo ones) suggests that men and men are equally promiscuous or not within 5%. The welfare class may well be different and the aristocracy have never shown much restraint.
From the dating perspective, the advice is probably pick someone at about the same level of promiscuity. My wife had been significantly more promiscuous than me. It never troubled me but it troubled her.
Do Hollywood scriptwriters who use the “average” partner count of 9 as a plot device (I’ve seen it twice) actually know the statistics and are being cynically manipulative in stimulating feelings of sexual inadequacy amongst the viewers to improve emotional connection with the plot or are they innumerate? As Jeannie says, a grasp of how distribution works is a requirement to understand statistics.
My view. As above. Men in general spend more time on sex substitutes because they are less able to have access on demand than women. There are of course marriages with non performing men.
janon says
Again, none of that has anything to do with EM’s original point. The CDC study once again is arguing findings *in practice*
Evan is arguing *desire*.
Forget sex as maybe its too loaded of an issue.
Take two people. One LOVES sweets. The other always HATED sweets. Both become diabetic. They now have an equal need to AVOID sweets.
The first one who always LOVED them has a much harder time avoiding them. The second one never really liked them anyway so it’s easier.
The first one has no real expendable income and lives in a place where there is very limited food variety. As a result, they never really eat sweets anymore. They still find it hard to avoid WANTING too though.
The second one lives in a big city down the block from a Michelin star bakery. Occasionally they will indulge in a pastry because, while they’ve never been big on sweets and now have to watch the sugar count, those particular pastries are fantastic and worth a “special occasion” splurge. The second person has no real DESIRE to eat any more than that though.
So here we have one person who has MASSIVE access to something, and even occasionally indulges, but has no problem controlling the desire to over indulge.
The other person has ZERO access to something, to the point where they NEVER really indulge, but they ALWAYS want to.
That’s the point EM is making wrt to the ease of monogamy. It isnt about math or averages or horny college students or observed ACTUAL behavior in a control group. It’s not about what people ultimately CAN do, it’s about what people WISH they could do.
The poor guy who LOVES sweets will always find it hard to be a diabetic even though they have no real access because they always WANT those sweets
The person who never really liked sweets will find it much easier to be a diabetic, even if OCCASIONALLY they have a special treat, because sweets were never something they strongly desired anyway.
In college, all kids are young and horny. Most of the guys wish they could have sex with 100% of the women at school, but they settle for anything they can get. For some guys this will be near that 100%, for MANY (most) guys it will be 0. This is why averages are massively useless.
With women, very few (if any) would in their worst nightmare want 100% of the guys on campus. What they do want is the guys that they think “are hot”. And most likely, they’ll get them. Some women (few) will have 0 partners. Some women (few) will sleep with a ton. Most women will sleep with the number of guys they think “are hot”.
So in the CDC study (college kids no less… a really bad sample IMO) it turned out that the #s lined up about right. Big deal. The averages were almost certainly derived completely differently.
a 2 foot tall person and a 6 foot tall person produce an average height of 4 feet. So do 2 4 feet people. With the college kids, lots and lots (and lots) of girls probably slept with a much smaller set of guys. So the average of “9” (or whatever) for women was because most girls had 9. The average of “8” (or whatever) for guys was because a some guys had 25 and a bunch of guys had 0.
In all of that, though, a MUCH larger percentage of the guys was almost certainly wishing their number could be 1000 (not even caring what the girls would look like) whereas for women, this is just really really unlikely. They would almost certainly not be about a general # but rather focused on the specific guys they “find hot”
Karmic Equation says
Agreed.
Twinkle says
Lol r u saying that most college guys wanna shag every female they see? I knew most of them had high sex drives but that’s so over the top.
If so, what’s the rough age that this superhigh sex drive starts slowing down significantly for most guys? (I know that sounds vague, just try to help us ladies out here..) is it like 24? 30? 40?
Karmic Equation says
Biologically, supposedly anytime after 18. Males peak in their teens! haha
Anecdotally, I would say around early- to mid-30’s, just about when guys start thinking about starting a family.
Most men at 50 aren’t as horny as men in their 20’s. And if they were, most don’t have the same stamina. Maybe instead of thinking about sex “every 7 seconds”, it might be about every minute or so 😉
Just what I’ve observed/heard. There’s probably scientific studies out there that document this.
Twinkle says
Thanks for the info, Karmic Equation. 🙂 it’s nice to know they get more, uh, sane in their 30s. Lol. Ahh well, we ladies need to understand it’s necessary to get men–esp young ones–to propagate the species. Part of life, gotta make our peace with that and thank heavens at least it lessens over time.
Julia says
KE I think your stamina observation is interesting. Having slept with men from 18-42 and currently sleeping with a man is 40 several times a week. Older men by far have much more stamina than young men.
Karmic Equation says
@Julia,
Hmmm… Maybe “stamina” is the wrong word. “Vigor” perhaps is more apt 🙂
Julia says
Maybe that is the case, it’s been a while since I’ve slept with a very young man. Vigorous, clumsy and selfish is how I would think of most men in their teens and early 20s. But I’ve yet to see this traffic drop off in the male libido.
Sabine says
Some men just wan to have sex for having a physical need filled. They are not looking to bond or have anything on any other level. It seems women more than men “invented” “Friends With Benefits” to fit the same need though it’s not as “socially tabu” as meeting a guy in a bar and taking him home. Everyone likes variety. My girlfriends and I were talking about this. Why do you think people in relationships meet at bars as “strangers”? To spice things up!
So do men like a variety of women? Probably. Do women? They sure do like when guys flirt with them. As for sex? Some do. However, from all my chats with men and all I have read online, when a man meets a woman that’s amazing that need for variety….is squashed. There is a underlying current (at least this is my take) that women in his thread are concerned their man will continue to seek out this variety. I’m no mind reader. However, you have to trust the right guy will be with you and you alone. Just keep it spicy…lol 🙂
Tracey says
Evan, whats the point in arguing that men find it harder to be monogamous? I, like a lot of women, have an innate mistrust of men and have been betrayed before. How does arguing tooth and nail that men are more promiscuous help me to find love? All it does is perpetuate my theory that most men are cads and its just going to be that much harder to find love. Whats the point in trying to find love if he’s secretly (if hes decent) wanting to stick it to other women?
Evan Marc Katz says
Your theory that most men cheat is wrong. Not only is it wrong, it’s completely one sided. According to this site, http://www.statisticbrain.com/infidelity-statistics/, 22% of married men cheat at least once over the course of their marriage and 14% of women do the same. So that would mean that most men DON’T cheat, and that only 8% more men cheat than women. Get over your innate mistrust of men, unless you think men should feel similar about women. There are no shortage of monogamous men out there.
Sass says
I think what she’s asking is what she’s supposed to do with this information.
lolzno says
“I think it’s shortsighted to suggest that we are the SAME, as if gender was simply a societal construct and not somewhat tied to biology.”
Gender ISNT biological. It is a culturally conditioned. Brain studies pretty much prove that. The whole idea that women are different from men is a myth and it only benefits men. Sexism created it in order to put a wedge between us. Even biology disagrees with the idea that we are all that different. You know what? We aren’t. There are MORE WOMEN in polyamory and non-monogamy communities than men. More men say “I can’t let my wife/gf have sex with another man” than women say “I can’t let my husband/bf have sex with another woman”. So I actually see far more open minded women than men when it comes to non-monogamy.
Women’s sexuality has been controlled for so long it is no wonder that we internalize that and hate our sexuality, but I can tell you this as a woman, everything you know about women is WRONG. We just don’t talk about it because to do so would be against what we are taught to do. Women are basically in an abusive relationship with our society. It is time for it to end.
Evan Marc Katz says
Sorry, lolzno. You just said something that made my head snap back. “Gender ISNT biological.”
If you know anything about biology, you might reconsider. Simply the fact that men have penises and more testosterone proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is a difference between men and women. This is not to suggest that there is no societal conditioning, but you would have to work really hard to make a case that men and women are the same. Men are, on the whole, bigger, stronger, more aggressive, more violent, and more promiscuous than women. This does not mean that there are no big, strong, aggressive, violent, promiscuous women. But the mere suggestion that there aren’t general differences between men and women does biology a huge disservice.
My blog is not pro or con biology vs. sociology. My blog is about reality, and what to make of it. Men and women might be 90% the same – but the 10% in which we differ causes a lot of the friction and misunderstanding inherent in dating and relationships. Why do women spend so much time wanting to understand men? It’s because they are not men. Not biologically. Not sociologically.
So instead of suggesting something patently absurd – that people with different genitals and hormonal makeups are actually the same – how about you find yourself a partner who gets you, loves you unconditionally, and makes you happy – and maybe then you won’t rant on a stranger’s blog and substitute your feelings about sexism for facts about biology.
lolzno says
We aren’t talking about medical difference my dear. We are talking about gender and how we relate. Gender is socially conditioned. How we relate is socially conditioned. Women are just as likely to be non-monogamous as men are. So why don’t you actually try reading and understanding what we are talking about first before you come in with your penis talk. Also from a medical point of view, you are still wrong. For everything men have women also have something equivalent to it. Many women and men for example have differing levels of testosterone and estrogen. Some women even have more testosterone than they do estrogen. So thanks for playing. Nice to see sexism alive and well.
Evan Marc Katz says
No one will ever take you seriously if you argue with insults. It’s not sexist to suggest that men and women are different biologically. It’s science. You may not like the science, but your feelings don’t negate it. Testosterone is what makes men fuck and fight. I’m quite sure that you believe that men are the more violent sex. So why would it be hard to believe that they’re the more promiscuous sex as well? Probably because it makes your “men and women are exactly the same” narrative crumble. I’m not going to waste another second explaining myself to you – nor worrying about your specious claim that I’m a sexist – because one can’t argue with someone who starts from the place that she’s right. Go find another blog that traffics in the ideal that all gender is socially constructed and has nothing to do with biology. This one ain’t for you.
EmeraldDust says
Iolzno – If you really think men and women are exactly the same and it is ONLY social conditioning that makes us different (and not our slightly differing brains structures, our anatomy below the belt and our different hormonal make up) I would like to suggest that you read the book “As Nature Made Him”. A very tragic story about twin boys, both circumcised, but in ONE boy the circumcision went TERRIBLY wrong, so this doctor who had an axe to grind about gender being ONLY a social construct decided this was the PERFECT test case for his theory. TWIN boys, one with a male body part, and one boy who was accidently amputated. He convinced the parents to raise the amputated boy as a female. He closely manipulated and monitored this family and made sure that they really raised the amputee as a “girly girl” (to prove that with sufficient conditioning this boy could be raised as a girl) This is a TRUE story, and it is very sad, and the amputated boy in question committed suicide as a young adult. He grew up knowing SOMETHING was amiss, and didn’t find out the truth until in his teens.
http://www.amazon.com/As-Nature-Made-Him-Raised/dp/0061120561
Trying to parse out nature vs nurture in the gender wars can be an exercise in futility, as both are tightly interwoven, but I don’t believe for a moment that all general differences between men and women in the aggregate are SOLEY due to societal conditioning. I think of it more as societal RE-INFORCEMENT of biological differences.
lolzno says
Read the comment I made to the other guy. You are both the same. Not reading and actually understanding what is being said. I know it is hard for men to read, but please try. Beyond that I don’t really give a fuck. I’m tired of men trying to excuse their behavior as something men do when women do it too. It is something HUMANS DO. Women aren’t any more or less monogamous than men are. Time to stop with the lies.
starthrower68 says
This “we are the same” nonsense leads to a) burdening kids with adult issues that they do not need to be burdened with, b) Facebook developing at least 50 different gender identity terms and all but maybe a hand full having no meaning, and c) a society continuing to cave in to the mob rule of political correctness.
Karmic Equation says
Is monogamy HARDER for men than women? Yes. Because men, sad to say, can and will fuck any woman who lets him when he’s in the mood, regardless of what she looks like. His only criteria for fucking? She has a p*ssy.
Women, OTOH, unless she’s a nymphomaniac, actually has AT LEAST one more criteria to fuck a man than the simple fact that he has a c*ck. Usually, she has to consider him *hot*. A man will fuck a fugly woman. Very few women will fuck fugly men, even if she’s fugly herself.
This is a gender thing. Not societal programming. Men need only one criteria for fucking. Women need two. Simply math, dear lolzno.
Societal programming DOES make women THINK or FEEL ASHAMED if she’s ok with non-monogamy. But very few women “crave” variety. I myself like variety. But with the right guy, monogamy is easy. As much as I can enjoy variety, I don’t “crave” it. For me, personally, I like monogamy better because I like the logistics of it better 🙂 Whenever I’m horny, I know that there’s one guy I can count on to help me out. A horny woman without a bf, who calls up her lovers for a booty call can kill that lover’s attraction for her right quick. Double-standard, gender-based, biology-based. Call it what you will. Horny single women who call up lovers are considered whores by those lovers. Absolutely zero chance of being considered relationship-material if a woman does this with any of her lovers.
For men, yes, he can be monogamous for the right woman. But there’s usually a longing for other women that he’ll suppress for her sake. For women, there is rarely a longing for another man once she’s chosen a man to love.
A single woman not looking for a relationship and a single man not looking for a relationship? Yes, both genders are pretty much the same when it comes to monogamy when in this state.
But most women look for relationships first. Few women have a f*ck ’em and leave ’em attitude, because MOST women WON’T f*ck a guy she doesn’t like on some level. (Guess that would make 3 criteria).
Antonia says
EmeraldDust
Iolzno is completely right . There is very little or almost no difference between men and women. Women are equaly (if not even more than men) driven by sex. Unfortunately even in the 21st century women are forced to hide this. But if you would believe me, women are much more intriguing and secretive than one would ever think. Monogamy is an idea, it never existed really. It was constructed by the society itself and church. It has put everybody in a difficult position, men and women. Women are horibbly driven by sex, only it is hard for men to understand this. From the moment a girl becomes a teenager, and put her first make up on, she shows that she wants sex. And sex is something that we all want, it is the driving force for everything, for the entire planet spinning. Eventualy sex will see to it that we get kids. So any talk about women being monogamous is just another myth about women. Nothing else. Behind the so called and overly misused term “commitment” lays the fact that we all want the opposite sex to commit to us so that we could have sex. Sex is the starting and ending point of everything. It brings two people close to ech other , but it also means end of marriage/relationship if its bad or if there isn’t any sex between the spouses. So no studies need , all these blogs and all. It is very simple. ANd it is the same for both genders.
SparklingEmerald says
If women and men are exactly the same as you insist, what do you think of the idea of transexual, people believing that they are a man born into a woman’s body, or vice versa ? If all gender differences are 100% social brainwashing, then all we aren’t just people born into people’s bodies ? Isn’t gender re-assignment surgery an unnessesary operation ?
starthrower68 says
The pill was approved in 1957. Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” was published in 1963. So for about 50 years, if *The Man* has been attempting to hold women down by controlling their sexuality, he’s done a very poor job of it. And I don’t see any of our brothers here forbidding women from sex. It would appear they’re all about it. ☺
litlmitts says
I’ve always felt like something about me was weird. Now that I’m in my mid twenties and I’ve been through my share of relationships, here is what I’ve found: I feel like a straight woman who is wildly attracted to men, with a man’s mind, in a woman’s feminine body. I’ve found love. I’ve found monogamy. I’ve found passion and desire. I’ve found stale and soulless sex. I’ve found infidelity. I’ve found loyalty. The only thing I haven’t found is commitment…from myself.
I haven’t ever wanted to trust a man to be my “soul mate.” I am young, and I’m heading to medical school to marry my job, so I’m not ready for a lifetime commitment to a man. But I am learning, in hindsight, the circumstances in which I’ve used men, and used their feelings, and the circumstances in which I’ve been used. They have nothing to do with gender!
It’s all about which party is more sensitive. I will agree that most women are more sensitive than men. I find that a remarkable and beautiful quality in a person; Sensitivity. Perhaps that’s what has drawn me to overly sensitive men in the past. But all you have to do to decide you don’t want to feel sensitive towards someone, is purposely not be monogamous. It does, from personal experience, leave you feeling empty and unfulfilled, if you’re not careful. But it works.
But it comes with a moral cost. It’s just not very nice to use people for sex! I have hardened a lot of hearts and I’m not proud of it. Sensitivity should be nurtured, not taken advantage of, in a man OR a woman. And I agree that it is usually men who take advantage of women, because as I said, women are usually more sensitive.
So basically what I’m saying is, I whole heartedly agree with this post.
Sass says
Seriously, why does it matter who dislikes monogamy more? #1 no one male or female has to choose monogamy if they don’t want to. And #2 does knowing which gender hates monogamy more offer anything useful to improving modem relationships? No. All you need to know is whether it’s something you’re willing to commit to to be with someone who demands it, and that you can’t control someone else’s behavior.
Eric Jensen says
While monogamous women may be a culturally imposed concept.. It was a very much needed one once we started to become a global society and syphilis a worldwide epidemic. Someone had to be choosy about sexual partners.
Sauce says
The sex industry aimed at men is nothing more than an indication that we live in a “man’s world” where men are encouraged to be hypersexual and see women as objects. Women are not encouraged to be the subject, but rather the object. Women are not encouraged to be sexual unless they are doing so out of emotional connection and love. There are very similar infidelity rates between men and women also, however women probably find it harder to have affairs and go looking for sex elsewhere (including online) because a) the sex industry is not geared to them, and b) they are usually too busy with the majority of the house and child rearing duties. Men can stay back and have an affair after work. Women need to get home to the kids. Call me sexist but there are very few households where the man truly does equal duties. Men ‘working harder’ is not an excuse because these days women usually hav to work also. Or they are child rearing, which is a job and half in itself (I haven’t had children but I can appreciate the hard work a stay at home mum does). If a woman tries to find porn online for her she will usually find sloppy garbage which is emotionally charged because this is the ‘fantasy’ women want apparently – a long term stable relationship with slow sex which doesn’t give much variety in itself. The other alternatives to her are naked men that are usually gay. I have nothing against gay men but being abstraugh female, if I find a hot naked guy online and there’s ‘gay’ plastered all over his picture then it ruins the fantasy for me. Again, not because I’m against gay me. At all…but because I’m not a gay man and therefore it’s hard to project myself into that fantasy. Women are Constantly told they are emotional and need Emotionally connected sex. They prefer reading sexy novels or watching silly movies like 50 shades of Gray, with all that background relationship stuff. Nope. Plenty just want normal porn. But when they have to look at male porn it’s not much of a turn on seeing old hairy blokes nailing girls young enough to be their daughter, or having things rammed up their butt and contorted into weird and painful positions, and having them ejaculate in their eye. It’s a turn off and it’s boring.
Ignoring the social context for which people live in is ignoring a huge part of the debate. One major scientific aspect which is overlooked is neuroplasticity. There is little evidence to say our brains are hardwired and more likely soft wired now. Constantly evolving and changing and being shaped by our surroundings and the messages we are sent. A major one is men want sex, women want relationships.
I find it strange that even though these studies actually show women liking sexual variety as much, and sometimes more than men, that there are people refuting the conclusions drawn. The studies on men from the past which looked at men’s desires for more partners and variety, were biased as they relied on self reporting, which has been proven to be a major flaw in studies. However these studies looking at the female sexuality are not based on self reporting, and instead are actual scientific processes. Yet men still refuse to believe them! Sure, it may be harder for a man to be monogamous, but not for any biological reasons. I would put it down to pure entitlement, social conditioning, and less responsibilities than the woman. The woman is told from birth that she needs to play up to and keep men interested, so her sexuality is basically defined on keeping a man happy and being ok with his natural desire to sleep around. It’s not defined on her terms. A man is told from birth that all he wants is sex sex sex, and sex is for him. I’m not really sure how anyone can ignore this social construct.
Elizabeth says
I think you may be biased because you don’t want to believe this could be true about you wife. Maybe tied to the general belief that men’s egos are more fragile than women’s? You are right, IMO, that the majority of women are unable to separate sex from love. But that has never stopped me from having and desiring sex from multiple partners. It’s a CHOICE to be monogamous. I am as tempted by outside sexual partners as much as the next guy.
Lisannez says
I have a very high sex drive for a female. In fact in 38 years I have only had one serious relationship with a man with a higher drive and he was several years younger. But I have also gone years with no see when I was between relationships, never had a one night stand and very rarely had sex outside of monogamy. But I do know what it’s like to be in a long term relationship and be turned down for sex. But being turned down did not make me want sex with someone else I only wanted him. It hurt me and made me feel bad and maybe made me want attention from men but never sex. And yes in committed relationships that were very long term I was attracted to other men but would never have sex with them despite my high drive. What I’m getting at is the reason I think women cheat less or have less sexual partners is because sexual attraction and truly good sex is in our heads and it is true chemically that we bond with men we have sex with. For me not just one time but two or three for sure. Men can just look at a girl and be like I want her now and get there women not so much. I could have sex every night with a different guy I don’t want to. Men are just different. Case in point I have been cheated on several times. I am considered a very attractive woman. Well educated etc and always with very unattractive women while I was at home begging for more sex. Why? Because for every hot girl there is a guy tired of fing her. Men like variety all of them just some choose to control it for the sake of love while others don’t.
Antonia says
Lisannez,
you are still very young and unexperienced….You are very wrong with your conclusions. men are emotional and fragile more than women. You should not confuse love ans sex. From your post I can conclude that you haven’t been in that relationship long enough to realize that the flame would extinguish at certain point. Furthermore I can conclude that your guy was good in bed. This is very important for a woman to feel like you felt. I have been in a relationship for 2 years and everything was okay. But I was also fantasizing about other men. The sex with my ex-boyfriend was good, very good. But still, I met someone else and he became my lover. Sex was great, I enjoyed him very much. Everything about him. But somehow I did not love him. I realized at that point that I wanted to enjoy my life. There are always better guys out there, with whom we as women can feel better, YEs, I do like variety. I get very bored not only with sex, but just by being with the same person all the time. Try to set yourself free. Forget about that guy and go on with your life.He wasn’t good for you obviously. You will be suprised with how many beautiful things you are going to experience. Perhaps you should try to be an independent woman, once you stop continuously thinking that love is the only thing worth of having.
Kate says
I think you’re getting 2 things confused. Men want to play the field and be free, partly because it’s constantly re-enforced by our culture that they should. The studies show that within loving monogamous relationships, women get sexually bored, but not necessarily that they act on it. Behaviour Vs thought. Maybe all of the culture that encourages male philandering is a reaction to the easily bored nature of women that was discovered long before our culture existed in its present state. An attempt at control, possibly?
Paul says
Many women today are sleeping around much more than ever since they just Don’t know how to be very faithful with just one man.
Val says
Paul, darling, you’ve just brough out to the light another myth !!! Uhhhh, you guys (I mean men) really are so naive !
Do you really think before there were less women sleeping around !?? UUHhhh you would be even more dissapointed if you could look back in time.
There is a movie ( I think it’s with Nicole Kidman-not sure) . She plays gorgeous women who dances at the party with a handsome man and there is chemistry betwen them while her husband is in the other corner of the room. The handsome guy wants to sleep with her and he asks: ” But why is a women so beautiful like you married?? I could understand if you were living in the past when women got married so that they could sleep with the men they desired ” . Here the actor refers to the fact that women were forced to marry a man they didn’t really like (you know because once they were not virgins anylonger they could do what they really wanted). I believe that nowadays there are actually less women sleeping around because they have the freedom to choose a man. If you are able to choose your partner than you”ll last longer in a relationship before you reach routine point and bordom. it is not that women don’t know how to be with one man, it’s because that can help the bordom and very often they want something else. That’s the whole point. Variety in one word. Tormented by desire for something new. Just like you guys.:)
TheRealTruth says
Most women today just don’t know how to commit to only one man anymore which it is much easier for them to sleep around so much.
Barb B says
I agree you can cherry pick any studies or internet research to validate your own beliefs… When it comes down to it there are facts and fiction… beliefs fall into the grey… Kinda like the male justification for lusting after and objectifing young women as a primal instinct to spread their seed…. primal instinct-caveman instinct to take or rape her but fantasizing it as a porno where the cave woman is hairless with breast implants who suddenly cant get enough of the old fart or pervert that takes her. While men or trolls spew this entitlement on the internet or wherever to hate on women or promote porn. I see this as dangerous especially when young influential boys hear or read this. Then we wonder why nice middle to upper class young men will gang rape a passed out girl at a party and have absolutely no idea that there is something wrong with it… It happens more than you want know… only few get prosecuted and in the news… I know a victim and her rapists there is photo evidence but she was too humiliated to press charges. I dont understand how a man with children can hold this belief and let his daughter out of sight. Think very hard about how your son may perceive such a belief especially if he hasn’t experienced much of life… he may need to spread his seed in a very destructive way. Not to mention that young people – male and female are not wanting marriage or families…. Alot of young men are addicted to porn so bad they cant have real sex…. so much for spreading their seed? Shouldn’t a primal instinct come from a natural place? Heck before modern medicine people barely lived beyond 40 on average…. so think about that 40+ year old men that you are not included in the caveman spread your seed theory because you would be the oldest and the weakest in your tribe or dead.
Alexa says
Great points! I agree 100!
I see a much larger thing going on here too. Men do things that they know are harmful but because they don’t want to stop, they fund evolutionary psychologists to develop bogus studies that allegedly claim something is genetic and therefore ingrained. (And they tell everyone to lay off because these men just can’t help themselves!) I am talking about justifications for male promiscuity and involvement in porn.
As a doctoral student in psychology, I can tell you first hand that evolutionary psychology and its conclusions are built on a foundation of sand. Like sand castles, the assertions of evolutionary psychology can be easily knocked over and dissolved when a wave hits them.
I also think pornography is the biggest threat to marriage and family in modern history. As for the old geezers over 40 who are viewing barely legal porn, they need to take a walk in the real world and see how many barely legal girls wantonly lay down at the very sight of them! (They will be hard pressed to find one who isn’t a prostitute.)
josiejump1975 says
Totally agree, Alexa. Internet porn is doing untold damage to existing and future pair bonding that is so precious for nurturing children. If all teenagers were introduced to cocaine and found it hard to stop in adulthood, would be be willing to accept it as normal?
EricaX says
There seem to be so many emotions surrounding this issue. Sensitivities on both sides. Something to gain or lose, for both genders.
Maybe if we stop seeing each other as so separate and different just because we have different sexes, we can come to a place of understanding.
zsa zsa says
ppl dont sell books by telling you we are all the same, think about that
BigLee says
You have to stop and consider the effects of oxytocin. Women release oxytocin during sex and this hormone is associated with love and commitment. This hormone contributes in making one night stands less appealing for women. Men base the sexual desirability of women on looks for women sexual desirability is a much more complicated thing. So it is not surprising that men are crave sexual novelty more than women.
Val says
BigLee,, go and read about oxytocin on the net. You are not well informed. Oxytocin is a hormon of happiness and pleasure. It is realesed during sex, yes, but also during nursing babies and during other blissful event in our lives. It has nothing to do with commitment….Do not confuse things ….I had lots of release of oxytocin without commitment 🙂 thats because I have a great lover at the moment.
SparklingEmerald says
Val – Here’s an internet article for you on oxytocin. In addition to pleasure, it also facilitates bonding. Bonding between couples, mother and child and social bonding.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/oxytocin
Alexa says
Hi Evan,
You are a nice, Jewish boy and so it surprised me that you overlooked several thousand year old cultural anecdote: the concept of Onah. In Judaism, sex is the woman’s right, not the man’s. The ancient Jews knew that women were and are sexually ravenous creatures and I believe this is why Onah is a woman’s right in Judaism. Remember, ancient Judaism allows a woman to divorce for three reasons: if a husband is not providing enough food, clothing, or sex. (And if you consider that long enough I am sure several inappropriate jokes could be formulated based on this.)
Alexa says
PS-
I wanted to provide the perspective of my best friend. She just turned 45 and the only man who can keep up with her in bed is her 30 year old fiancé. And even then he cannot keep up with her. Is she promiscuous? Heck no! She is as loyal as the winter days are long. She just doesn’t have any internalized shame over her sexuality and therefore is not afraid to access fully that part of herself. She is not the only one. Once upon a time I was engaged to someone and we were together 4 years. We had sex 2-3 times a day. We did not get married because he left for an older woman. But, that’s okay, I ended up marrying a nice doctor and we have a lovely family together. We don’t have the same time to have fun since we both work. But, 15 years later I still have it bad for him and apparently he feels the same way judging from the way he treats me.
R.R. says
I think men are more driven to reproduce, while women are driven to have more orgasms. For males, orgasm is connected to sperm release (genetic survival, cloning themselves into the next generation, genetic immortality). For women, orgasm is an end in and of itself. A female’s natural role is to limit reproduction and carefully select which male genes should be passed on, if any at all. So I would venture to say we are motivated by sex probably equally but for different reasons. Also women have trouble receiving orgasms from men because men often don’t know anything about female anatomy, so women are less driven to cheat because the next guy likely won’t be any better than the current one. Instead we masturbate a lot, turn to other women, or try really really hard to train the male we have (usually a futile endeavor). Sex for women is all about pleasure, until when or if she decides to get pregnant. For guys, sex is always subconsciously about impregnating; the pleasure is secondary, biologically speaking — hence less nerve endings in dick and less intense orgasms in general compared to women (Then circumcised guys get even LESS pleasure from sex!)
Men and women are very different. I think just a lot of people are off the mark in explaining how and why.
josiejump1975 says
All down to the Coolidge effect. Applies to men and women but men more so. Sex starts much earlier for a man. He sees an attractive woman and he is sexually aroused, even if it’s just an image of an attractive woman (hence, men get sexual novelty from porn), when combined with masturbation, the guy’s brain thinks it has just had sex with a real woman.
Women need more mental and physical stimulation for arousal. They need attention from a man who they find attractive. Women can’t get sexual novelty from porn in the way that men can. They get sexual novelty from being copulated by novel men. Their brain will reward them with promiscuous chemicals (big dopamine hit), if they let novel men copulate them.
Porn will reward men with a big dopamine hit purely by masturbating to porn.
Women tend to use porn to feel sexy or to spice up their love life by viewing with a partner. It doesn’t make them feel like they have slept with the man in the image and they will not receive the big dopamine buzz that men get.
What people don’t realise is that when men view pornography when in a monogamous relationship, they are practising social monogamy, not sexual monogamy.
The big dopamine buzz is very addictive. That’s why men get addicted to porn. If a woman gets as far as sleeping with a novel lover, while in a long term relationship, she will get those addictive chemicals and come back for more.
This article explains about the Coolidge effect in men.
https://ideapod.com/harvard-scientist-reveals-shocking-impact-watching-porn/
If you look up Coolidge effect in women, you will find that the chemical rewards kick in when being physically copulated by a novel man. Men experience those addictive chemicals much sooner, simply by looking at beautiful women.
In porno clips, does the woman get wet and aroused simply by looking at the man? No, it’s the things the men say and do to her that make her aroused. That’s why women need foreplay.
Lots of women being short changed in their long term relationships, when the guy is looking at porn. He’s getting sexual novelty and promiscuous chemicals, whereas she is not.
Unfortunately, for the guy, the more porn he watches, the more novelty his brain will think he is getting and the more boring his long term relationship will seem. The women gets short changed again, as he will find his long term partner less and less attractive.
Guys who give porn up for a few months, start to feel closer to their real partner.
Guys need to think about what porn (internet porn particularly with it’s endless, free and discreet supply of sexual novelty) is doing to their relationships. You don’t get all that fun without cost to your long term relationship.
Good things come to those who delay their gratification and work towards long term goals, not short term sexual gratification.
josiejump1975 says
Just to stress. A female will be choosy about who she lets copulate her. Subconsciously, she will weigh up whether the man is potential father material (good job, good genes (handsome), likely to stick around etc etc). That’s why rape by a novel man will not make a woman feel good. It has to be able to regulate who copulates her.
antonia says
Many misconceptions are to be read on this blog. In most of the cases they refer to confusing women sexuality with social aspects. Women libido and sexuality are equal to that of men. No doubt about it. The social aspects are the ones pushing us towards monogamy, men and women. Wanting a monogamy isn’t the same as feeling sexual desire (especially sexual longing for other men while in long-term relatioship). Women don’t go off sex in marriages because they dont desire it any longer, but rather because they are bored with sex with the same men. No doubt about this. Men should not be fighting this fact as it is the fact of life. They should tone down their egoistic retorics and think about how they too desire other women and they are obvious and clear about it. So no anger-we are even….