My husband of eight years confessed to wanting to watch me with another man. I found a guy, and he agreed to a full STD screening—at my husband’s suggestion and our expense—so that we wouldn’t have to use condoms. I was worried about how my husband would react to the reality, but he loved every minute—he loved it a little too much. My husband had sex with me after our “guest” left. I still had our guest’s semen inside me. Is my husband gay? Is that what cuckolding is all about? He didn’t touch the other guy, but what the fuck?
Spouse Expressing
Concern Over Newly
Disclosed Sexuality
“Far from being an indication of homosexuality, your husband’s turn-on goes back to the roots of male heterosexual experience,” says Christopher Ryan, coauthor of Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality.
Before Ryan walks us through what’s so straight about your husband dipping his dick in another man’s spunk, SECONDS, let me get this off my chest: Sex at Dawn is the single most important book about human sexuality since Alfred Kinsey unleashed Sexual Behavior in the Human Male on the American public in 1948. Want to understand why men married to supermodels cheat? Why so many marriages are sexless? Why paternity tests often reveal that the “father” isn’t? Read Sex at Dawn.
Back to Ryan:
“Think about it,” says Ryan. “Why would women have evolved the capacity for slow-building
multiple orgasms while males evolved the orgasmic response of minutemen accompanied by a sudden disappearance of all interest in sex?”
Because—as Ryan and his coauthor Cacilda Jethá lay out in Sex at Dawn—for countless generations, our male and female ancestors, like our closest primate relatives (fuck-mad bonobos), engaged in multipartner sex. Females mated with multiple males, while males—so easily stimulated visually to this day—watched and waited their turn.
“Almost all of us get off on watching other people having sex,” says Ryan. “Even if our minds deny it, our bodies respond in many ways, ranging from increased genital blood flow (in both sexes) to stronger male ejaculations.”
By inviting another male into your bedroom, SECONDS, your husband—consciously or subconsciously—was inducing what’s known as “sperm competition.” Watching you have sex with another male made him more excited to have sex with you, not with the other male, and treated him to a more intense orgasm in you, not in the other male.
“So your husband’s experience was very heterosexual,” says Ryan.
I am a 24-year-old female. I’ve been in a relationship with a man for six years, on and off. I think I could spend my life with him. But I have a hard time being faithful. I have cheated on him with other men and with women. He and I are not together currently, but we maintain a long-distance sexual relationship. We say that we are going to be together someday, but he has no trust in me. I would love to be content, but I can’t seem to go very long before I get distracted. Please give me some insight!
Don’t Wanna Be A Heartbreaker
“Toward the end of Sex at Dawn,” says Ryan, “there’s a brief section called ‘Everybody Out of the Closet.’ We argue that it’s not just gay people who have to go through the sort of brutally honest self-exploration involved in coming out. We all need to go through this process—and the sooner the better.”
Here’s what you need to come out about, DWBAH: You’ll never be content in a monogamous relationship.
“It’s time to stop bullshitting yourself,” says Ryan. “You’re very young, so, with all due respect, a certain amount of bullshit is to be expected. But you sound ready to move beyond this. Before getting into a committed relationship, you owe it to yourself and to the other person to be honest about who you are, and for now at least, you’re clearly not sexually monogamous.
“And if you’ll pardon just a few words of old-guy wisdom while Dan shares his amazing platform,” Ryan continues, “many people your age misunderstand the odds of finding love in life. Few young people really appreciate that by being open about who you really are, you end up wasting much less time on relationships that are doomed from the start. In the long run, it’s much more efficient to fess up about who you are and what you’re really into from the get-go.”
Who are you, DWBAH? You’re a slut. (I mean that in the sex-positive sense! I’m a slut, too!). And what are you really into? Variety. And don’t feel bad: You didn’t fail monogamy, DWBAH, monogamy failed you—as it has failed so many others (Clinton, Edwards, Spitzer, Vitter, Ensign, et al.), and will continue to, because monogamy is unrealistic and—this is not a word I toss around lightly—unnatural.
“Maybe half of the people you’re interested in will walk away when you fess up,” says Ryan. “Let them walk! Those who don’t walk away are a much better investment of your time and energy—both of which are more limited than you can possibly realize at age 24.”
I’ve been with my partner for 10 years. I have lost all interest in sex, while my partner still has a healthy libido. We’ve agreed on a weekly “sex night.” I dread it. We could call it quits, but we have a child and we love each other. I don’t want to break up our family, so I put up with “sex night.” It sounds depressing, I know, but the alternative seems worse.
Wishes She Was Horny
“Lots of wonderful marriages aren’t particularly sexual or exclusive,” says Ryan, hinting at another alternative. “Sexual novelty was an important part of our evolution as a species. But, as you and your partner demonstrate, we don’t all respond the same way to the absence of novelty.
“You don’t say if your loss of libido pertains only to sex with your partner or to anyone at all,” Ryan continues, “but it’s a good idea to eliminate possible medical and psychological causes before concluding that it’s a purely sexual issue. Assuming it’s just about libido, I’d encourage you to find a middle ground that preserves your family and the love you share but incorporates a more comfortable sexual arrangement that doesn’t leave your partner frustrated and you dreading ‘sex night.'”
In other words, WSWH, ask yourself what’s more important: staying married or staying monogamous?
“If you can find a way to take the pressure off both of you, you might find a deeper intimacy with each other and a return of your libido,” says Ryan.
I usually end with a plug for my podcast. Not this week: Anyone who’s ever struggled with monogamy—and any honest person who ever attempted it admits to struggling—needs to read Sex at Dawn. For more about the book, and how order it, go to www.sexatdawn.com.
Dan, Facebook just posted an ad for Sex at Dawn on my profile. What have you done?
@143:
“1. Women are highly aroused only during their two-week ovulation period, and are repulsed by the scent of men during the other period of time. Hypothesis: Women only give a shit about their monogamous S/O 50% of the time. Naturally occuring chemical reactions.”
Where on earth did you pull this pile of bull from?
Only hot two week out of the (usual) four?
And repulsed by the scent of men the rest of the time?
Definitely post a reference for this one.
@143, You’re not a woman, are you? Didn’t think so.
Dan, OWIE. I’m NICE to you! Quit hitting me with that YOU’RE ALL POLY, NOW ADMIT IT stick you’ve got.
I cheated once. I did it because I was in an emotionally abusive relationship, and the other guy actually showed interest, affection, and non-threatening emotion towards me. After I finally got rid of my ex for good, I also stopped talking to the other guy.
And I never have, and never will cheat again. Just sayin.
My 2 cents’ worth for SECONDS:
Let me get this straight: It didn’t faze you when when your husband said he wanted to watch another man do you. You went out and all business-like found somebody. You took it in stride when your husband made arrangements to let this man put his sperm in you, no condom required. You actually went through with fucking someone other than your husband in a matter of fact way, and you even let the guy drop his load in you without apparent alarm. And the thing that you finally choose to freak out over is that your husband didn’t wait for you to go shower off before jumping in on the action?
Damn, lady, you have one odd sense of what’s weird and what isn’t.
Setting aside all the evo-psych stuff, I have to ask: what would you be thinking if the situation had been a straight-up MFM threesome? Would it occur to you to insist on a break in the action to clean up between innings, let alone on pain of suspecting your husband of being gay?
I am all in favor of heteros such as myself “coming out of the closet” and being honest about what sexually stimulates us. I feel that if this became a culturally relevent thing to do we would have more of the sex that we enjoy, find stronger attachment with our partners, be more satified with life and stop wasting so much energy on harassing gay people. It probably won’t happen, though, because humans are gregarious animals and are very sensitive to the judgement of others as a survival tool. That is why so many gays, even in this day and age, cower in the closet and hetero types will remain in theirs.
I need more evidence before I completely agree with Ryan that the standard narrative of evolution is a cultural creation of civilization and not biology. But let’s say Ryan is correct. We all used to sleep with everything and because of civilization we’ve lost our natural state. We don’t share food as we might have in the past & so women trade sex for food and only the alpha males have the most food to make the trade. We’d have to seriously change or abandon civilization for things to return to the previous natural state and that isn’t going to happen. So whether the standard narrative of randy guys & choosy gals is biology or culture doesn’t matter, it’s the current software that the whole system operates on now. We’re stuck with it. Reading Ryan may explain the 7 Year Itch and why marriage becomes a straight-jacket for most folks, but it won’t get rid of marriage and relationships and relationship problems.
@vab251
People have a right to willingly assume risk; we all do it every time we walk out the door. Thank you for telling us your opinion, but please don’t assume that everyone has the same level of risk-aversion as you.
Why can’t we all accept that sexuality varies widely and that hurting other people is what’s wrong? That, and using minors and anyone else who can’t give full informed consent sexually, should be it as far as no-no’s.
I admit that in our completely f-ed-up-about-sex culture, it can be very hard sometimes even to know what your natural sexuality is, and where your boundaries are, and to communicate them to others.
Don’t become the evil you are fighting, Dan. Monogamy works for a lot of people, and the irony of someone saying it’s “unnatural” and therefore wrong or shameful is really, really, weird. My heart breaks for people like tupa (6). I realize that s/he doesn’t have to fight legalized discrimination as well, and that’s a huge thing. But if the principle is that people are free to be themselves, then mean it and live it.
I’d like to remain objective and not get into the debate of what is natural and normal and what is not. I’m not defending our current society & its cultural “norms” nor am I criticizing it. I’m just saying that it is the current standard. It’s what we have to work with & deal with. Some people thrive in civilization. Others are discontent. The jails, asylums, and homeless shelters are filled with people who simply cannot adapt. Like Ryan’s book, Desmond Morris’s book The Human Zoo also talks about what we both gained & lost by becoming domesticated and civilized. We can cry over those losses but they are indeed now lost.
Camille Paglia, for one, doubts the promiscuity model. She says STDs would have wiped us out if we had been that promiscuous. She even talks about “Nature” as being out to kill us. But she may not have thought it through deeply. Bonobos & rabbits are promiscuous and don’t seem to be diseased. Perhaps it was humans restricted by culture from promiscuity that led them to have sex with animals that brought bring STDs into the population to begin with. Once the STDs were here, they only made promiscuity more dangerous, not less desired.
Even after looking at fossils and DNA, speculating what came before civilization is still difficult. And we also have to assume that the Cro-magnon/homo sapiens sapiens mankind that we are now would have done things differently from previous species and even from the Neanderthal species that co-existed with us for 100,000 years.
For one example, though we’re not entirely certain, we believe cave painting was most a Cro-magnon affair and that Neanderthals didn’t produce art. And we still have no idea why we created the art and what purpose it had if any. All we have are theories.
Even the 155 people who commented before me have described a wide variety of sexual experiences and desires. We can always try to talk about a mainstream or norm or hegemony or standard operating procedure that the majority followed but I’m not sure that monogamy or promiscuity are one size fits all systems. Even in the 10,000 years of civilization, we’ve seen a lot of change or a wide range of norms. Homosexuality and pederasty were more culturally accepted in ancient Greece and Rome than they are today. Fat was more culturally accepted as sexual or not at different times in our past.
That said, just because there are exceptions to the rules, doesn’t mean there aren’t rules. Once again, those rules may cause you to thrive or chafe, they may be natural or arbitrary, but they do hold sway. Wimpy guys aren’t attractive. Rich, muscular guys are. If women were once “take all comers” (and again I’m going to jump on that bandwagon without some doubt) most of them aren’t today no matter what caused the change.
Freudian slips, gotta love ’em. That was supposed to read “I’m not going to jump on that bandwagon with out some doubt” but who knows now? In any case, I hope Dan won’t just go around telling everyone who comes to him with marital issues that marriage is just unnatural and they should just give up on it and get divorced. He might be right that marriage is indeed unnatural, an arbitary social construct and convention, and we might all be happier living in one constant orgy, but my guess is it’s too easy a solution and will cause a lot of folks emotional pain to just tell them they’re having troubles because the whole thing is wrong to begin with.
This article has opened up a whole array of discussions in my already troubled marriage. My husband picked it up, I think, as a way to put some “spark” back into our lives because we used to read it together before we had kids.
His solution, after reading it, is that we should be more experimental in our sex life. Unfortunately, what I have been asking for is to be treated like a person and not a sex object, so that sort of solution seems very simplistic and “aspirin.” I have even given him permission to go find another girl to objectify and screw like an object–I’m sure their are plenty out there–but he won’t do it. Even with permission, he feels like it would be cheating.
There is a lot more underlying all of this. We’ll see how it plays out. Maybe I’ll go buy the book.
@160 Dan is not saying that marriage is unnatural. He never even said that monogamy is unnatural. What he says is that in order to have healthy relationships, we need to be honest with ourselves and our partners and not try to be something that we are not. It is a whole balance of genetic encoding and societal norms, but the key is communication.
@162 You are soooo wrong. Dan has said on numerous occasions that monogamy isn’t natural. Go check out Slog for examples.
@157 You are quite right about a person’s right to choose what level of risk they are willing to accept. What they don’t have is the right to transfer that risk to another person without that person’s informed consent.
@ 160 & 162: Whether monogamy is natural/normal or not doesn’t interest me. Also, love/sex is a game & a war, you can’t always be honest and win. But, as for being honest with yourself, yes I agree. Denial works against pleasure. However, we’re so filled with socialization from age one, and culture trumps biology in so many cases, that it’s difficult to know just who the true you outside of all that is. You have emotion to go on, what you like & don’t like, but even that can be programmed and therefore problematic.
In any case, just as there are both straight-laced girls and sluts today, I have to assume that this was the case with hominid females 2 million years ago too. Some put out more readily than others even if the default position back then might have been a free-for-all. Range and variety are the norm which makes any norm hard to pin down.
Today, the norm (whether natural or not) is not a free-for-all (I only wish! A lot less work for me) but one that follows the standard narrative of evolution where girls don’t feel it until you show signs of dominance or fitness. Today, sex is about power relations, money, looks, muscles, authority, and social status.
And if Ryan is correct, it would take a revolution if not a complete return to the Stone Age to return us to the free-for-all that may or may not have existed in the past. In other words, forget about it.
@140 (perversecowgirl) Thanks for the advice. I know how to communicate my needs in a long-term relationship with lots of opportunity to play and experiment. What I’m trying to figure out is how to enjoy quick & dirty sex with strangers. I liked Canuck’s advice @105 to evaluate how they use their body when they dance. And you’re right that evaluating how they listen to me is another good technique. I think phone calls before meeting would help differentiate between likelies and unlikelies, better than email does…And at the “pre-fucking” meeting-in-public, maybe I should make sure to include dancing on the agenda. On the other hand, guys who are good at dancing probably have an easy time picking up chicks, and so aren’t in the pool of people I meet on AdultFriendFinder or Craigslist. Food for thought.
Might makes right, it also makes babies. As a guy, I may think that when I put my penis into a vagina, it’s a place of recreation, but today, women think of the penis entering their vagina as a potential husband and father. Even if they are sluts who love sex, their vagina is a place of procreation. Weak sperm gets a Do Not Enter sign. Nice guys sleep alone.
@161 (livin-on-the-edge). I’m newly enamored of a book called Passionate Marriage, which points out traps marriages fall into, where each partner demands that the other one change first. On the one hand, if he’s really not treating you like a person, why are you still with him? On the other hand, if you basically like each other, but you’re withholding enthusiastic sex until he “treats you like a person,” you might want to consider if you chose such an ambiguous / hard-to-measure goal because you don’t want to be accountable for his efforts to please you.
The Alchemist,
Don’t try to feed me that “Girls don’t like nice guys” crap. Most men who call themselves “nice guys” are in fact, passive-aggressive ********* who think that being superficially nice entitles them to a woman.
I say this as a woman who has married the kindest and most moral man on the planet. (People think I’m exaggerating about that until they meet him.) He’s never called himself “nice” though. A guy calling himself “nice” is a red flag to any girl with an ounce of self-preservation.
I’m a geek-girl. I’ve been around a lot of geek-guys who can’t get girls. Some of them suffered from “nice guy” syndrome. Underneath the “nice guy” shell, they were all misogynistic assholes. Some were genuinely good people who weren’t attractive. I felt bad for them. The ones who got girls were:
1. Willing to date girls who were equally ugly. Women, just like men, don’t like to date “down”.
2. Wealthy. Not good for them durring college, when they were poor, but after they got into their software-developing jobs, very good.
3. (and this is most important) INTERESTING. They had things to say about topics that interested women. They were fun to be around.
Most “nice” guys weren’t interesting. They thought that being “nice” meant that they *deserved* vagina, dammit!
Women, like men, are governed by their biology. That doesn’t mean that a *genuinely* nice man has no chance.
@164
Of course, I didn’t state otherwise. By “willingly” I meant “consensually,” with the implicit understanding that the consent is valid (i.e. not coerced through lies, omissions, threats, or the inability to fully consent by virtue of one’s age or intellectual ability). I thought that was a given, but apparently not.
@169
THANK YOU!!!!! This is something that so many “nice” guys never figure out…. pussy isn’t something to be earned for good behavior, it’s something many women happily share with people they like.
Also, “nice” is a word I use when I don’t have anything substantial to say. It’s a space-filler; a way to say nothing. I would so much rather be called a bitch than nice…. at least a bitch is something.
If you’re always being described as “nice,” perhaps you should cultivate something about yourself.
Dan, I listened to your podcast this week and am kinda disturbed by your enthusiasm for this guys book. Sure it might have some good ideas , but you can’t go around claiming this guy “proved” anything. I haven’t read the book but I’d be shocked if he found any actual evidence for the theory. By saying he proved it makes me dismiss all your claims about the subject because I cant trust you
@162
Spin it however you like, but “monogamy is unnatural” doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room.
@165, 167
Have you ever stopped to consider whether the fact that women don’t want to ride your baloney pony comes from your obvious disdain for their entire gender? I mean, come on, if there were a checklist for every misogynist opinion out there, you’ve just been ticking them off. The madonna/whore dichotomy (women are either good and pure, or sluts), the belief that their entire motivations are shallow and materialistic, I can go on.
Here’s the thing, if you’re being “nice” so you can get some sex, you’re not actually a nice guy. You don’t sound like a good fellow in the least, you sound like a manipulative douchebag who happens to fail at it.
@169
I agree completely, though I’ve been trying to stage a revolt to take back the word “nice”. If only because I’m not sure what other word to use to describe a decent kind of guy.
But, that’s a semantic quibble. The problem I see is that guys don’t recognize the unstated truths of what their female friends are saying. When a woman says:
“You’re so great, I wish I could find a guy like you”, you have to remember that there’s a little clause she’s omitting. She means to say “I wish I could find a guy like you… Who I actually want to sleep with”.
I’m not sure guys should necessarily specifically try to date less attractive girls, but I think we do need to understand that if a girl isn’t attracted to you, and is attracted to the “jerk”, it isn’t about “dominance” or “confidence” or “girls like bad boys”, it’s about “she doesn’t want to see you naked”. It took one of my female friends showing an interest in me, and me not wanting to be intimate with her, to realize that there are just some times when the essential spark isn’t there. It’s not about nice or not.
I do believe that any guy who would pretend to be supportive or friendly in order to try to maneuver into a girl’s pants doesn’t deserve to be called nice.
@169,
Wow, you just described my life! 🙂
p.s. are you a Big Bang Theory fan by any chance?
Thanks 171 and 173;
This is a topic near and dear to my heart because in high school, I was pursued by a “nice” guy. This guy would follow me around, parrot back everything I said, and constantly try to please me. Then when I wouldn’t date him (How about getting your OWN ideas, and having a personality!?) behind my back, he called me names and ranted to everyone who would listen that he wasn’t getting me because he was “nice.” Everyone treated me like garbage for what I “did” to him.
And I’ve seen that scenario played over and over again with a million guys and a million girls.
One that particularly amused me was a “nice” guy complaining that a girl wasn’t interested in him, even though he was oh-so-nice. I spoke to the girl. The “nice” guy was only nice to her. He ignored her friends and tried to get rid of them when they were together. But the guy ranted at length about how she wasn’t interested in him because he was “too nice.” At first his guy friends started to hate the girl, until I quietly went around and told them what the “nice guy” was actually doing. Then it was all we could do to keep in our laughter every time he started ranting.
I married a genuinely nice guy. *Real* nice guys are out there. You sound like you became one, Seldon2639.
174,
Why yes. Yes I am.
@ 85.
Your comments are entirely wrong.
There was a study out somewhat recently about how baboons or some primate possibly chimpanzees. The theory was that the dominate males, the leaders of the trope, would have the most offspring because they get to mate with the most females and that the nicer baboons that aren’t as macho and take the time to develop friendships with the females aren’t as likely to get their DNA passed on. That turns out to be entirely false. The trope leaders that were friends with the females and eventually lost their alpha status still got to mate with the females. It was after the young and spry alpha males, but DNA research showed that the “nice guys” had a better chance of passing on their DNA.
Also, you seem like the sort that would agree that men are hard wired to kill off their step-child so that woman can mate and produce their offspring. It happens with chimps all the time. So, men are hard-wired to rape right? Not true. By studying primitive cultures, the researchers realized that a) a step-father is not going to rip the baby from his new mate’s arms and kill because that decreases the likelihood of her ever mating with him and b) that people tend to avoid rapists and a rapist would very quickly lose social standing. In addition, women are much less likely to let the baby of a rapist survive oh and more about the step-father thing, at the time when humans were doing primitive agriculture, you needed all the farm hands possible. So, the step-father doesn’t see children not of his seed competing for resources, he sees all ready grown farm hands.
As for this guy, it doesn’t really have to be strictly evo-based. He just gets turned on by getting cuckolded. Maybe it’s evo-based, or it’s just the idea of transgressing the boundaries set by society… There’s a lot of things here.
So the improved sex could be because he’s gotten a kink satisfied, or competition.
And 85 you also seem to be concerned that the union won’t produce children. Maybe they don’t want children, or they can’t have children, or they think there’s too many children that don’t have homes so they’re going to adopt and really fuck with natural selection.
Here’s a question, 173,
How is it okay to expect a girl to be unshallow and willing to date you even though you aren’t as attractive, when you aren’t willing to be unshallow and date a girl who is as unattractive as you?
I mean it’s more than okay if you are prepared to be single for a good long while, and not resent the female gender for being so “shallow.” But it ain’t exactly fair.
@173: I never said I was a misogynist. Nor did I say I was nice. Nor did I say I wasn’t getting any. In fact, I wasn’t really talking about myself at all. I was talking about the standard narrative of evolution and what most pick-up artists and seducers say/know works with getting women. I did interject that to be adult and responsible (which is attractive to women) takes a lot of work. The kind of work that wouldn’t be as necessary to do to have sex if Ryan’s pre-civilized promiscuity were the case. Also, to assume that getting a woman doesn’t involve some degree of strategy must mean you are a natural who doesn’t use tactics or just bumbles into what he has without knowing what he did right.
When I wrote “Nice guys sleep alone” I wasn’t lamenting my own situation but describing how most women feel about being with nice guys. I never said nice guys who weren’t so nice deserved vagina. Quite the opposite in fact. But perhaps “nice” should simply be replaced with weak and un-assertive, unable to lead, unable to steer a woman where you want her to go. What you call “genuinely” nice is someone who can meet your needs but that involves knowing how to deal with who you are. And my guess is that nice or not, if he couldn’t meet those needs, you’d loss your attraction to him.
All of this is still about alpha & beta males. Even your geek buddies with software bucks finally got action they didn’t have previously. Money is alpha. Meanwhile, I’ve met lots of interesting people with a lot to say who can carry conversations who get nowhere with women. Your buddies were lucky or were doing something else you didn’t catch.
As for the Madonna/Whore dichotomy. First, I make no judgments about these things. Second, I agree it’s not such a cut & dried split, it’s simply a general tendency. I’m sure you can find the faithful housewife who fantasizes or eventually has actual affairs and I’m sure you can find the slut who decides to say no.
@ 177: Do you know where I can see this study because it does run counter to the standard narrative of evolution. In any case, the alpha males in human society, especially chiefs, sultans, kings, and so forth had multiple wives and harems. So I have to assume we’re more like sea lions than chimps or baboons. Also, you are talking about alpha males losing their leadership roles through age still retaining relations with mates they associated with over time. Not only does this go against what Ryan is saying (it’s more pro-monogamy) but it doesn’t necessarily invalidate the basic theory that alpha males mate and beta males do not. I’m not saying that being nice (it’s difficult to define what that word means now) is a non-working strategy. Just because some women stay with abusive men doesn’t mean that all would. Obviously, you have to make a woman feel that you like her and that she is special to you and worth investing time and resources in. Even so, alpha characteristics, those that show fit genetics, are universally and almost automatically attractive to women. The real geeks & fake nice guys have a harder time of it.
I like toast.
to SECONDS
I’ve heard about the type of thing your hubby is into
it’s even exciting in a way
but eventually I couldn’t help but compare to William Macy’s scene, well, the FINAL scene he (and his “wife”) were in and see that as an inescapable consequence of this type of thing
it’s bound to happen – finally one day hubby finds himself bound and gagged in a chair while the highschool football team he coaches ends up pissing on him and barebacking his wife
et voila’ another crazed gunman kills wife, shooting spree at school killing 10 kids and then finally himself
one day it’s bound to happen
watch Boogie Nights again and pay attention to how much William Macy’s character plays along with this whole charade – until *snap*!
@178
Really, it isn’t. Oops, you’re on to me. I mean, it’s okay in the sense of “I’m not hurting anyone”, but it’s terribly unfair. I’m expecting that my other qualities would overcome whatever aesthetic disadvantage I have, but I generally don’t apply the same standard to prospective dates. I want the attractive, brilliant, insightful, caring, sweet, witty, girl, when I’m only maybe half of those things. Some part of me is hoping that my intellectual equal (who’s more attractive then I am) would actually settle for me. It’s a pipe dream.
That said, though, I don’t resent women for being shallow. God knows we all are. That also doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t date a girl who isn’t a blonde bombshell (I’m actually more into the mousy, nerdy, cute type, which could be the very “lowered expectations” you were talking about), it just means that in the same way any woman wants to have as attractive, intelligent, ect. a man she can reasonably find, I’m looking for the most attractive, intelligent, ect. girl I can find. I also know I’m likely to have to settle for less than my ideal (as will 99% of people), and that all of my exceptionally attractive, intelligent, ect. female friends are unlikely to want to date me.
I guess it’s an odd set of ideas to believe concurrently, but there you go.
Alchemist,
Did I say you were talking about you? I was arguing with the general principle. It’s untrue, and it’s a disservice to men to perpetuate it.
It does not fit with reality, and that was my point. Being truly nice doesn’t loose you points, and any man claiming and using that as evidence, in my experience, isn’t all that nice.
@183: I mixed up what you & Seldon wrote and got the impression it was aimed at me. In your case, I re-read you and see I got it wrong.
Well, the standard narrative of evolution, this general principle of the strongest gents taking the sexual prize that you think is untrue, doesn’t fit with reality, and you feel is a disservice to men, still explains a lot of sexual behavior in the civilized world. I’m not ready to toss it out the window just yet. I might be persuaded with enough evidence to agree with Chris Ryan that it’s cultural and not biological and that evolutionary patterns were different before 10,000 BC but as I’ve maintained throughout all of my posts, I believe it’s the general pattern (though not something that fits all people in all cases).
Most women do not want to be mistreated. They want to be made to feel special. In that case “being truly nice” should gain you points. But someone who places being nice before an ability to lead or survive is going to come off weak and thus unattractive. I see what you are saying. A guy who says being nice gets you no where is likely saying that to justify why he’s mean. But I guess I’m not talking about nice and mean so much as being a wuss or being in command. Men in command are protective. The alpha male’s muscles are attractive because they protect the female from being bothered or raped and that protection is certainly nice even if it means the alpha male has to beat someone up and scare them off.
@177: I was thinking about this study you raised. It’s one thing for an alpha leader who has had sexual relations with females to lose that status but still have access to the females because they have formed “nice” pair-bond relationships with them over time and another for those same females to have sex with beta males. At some point, the females have made the decision that the alpha males have fit genes and even if the alpha male’s powers flag over time, the females probably see them as good partners. This is different from saying that females mate with “nice” males who are beta.
@all (or Dan): If Ryan is correct, it’s a double punch for heterosexual males.
Think of it this way: once upon a time, women were sluts & easy to bed. Then civilization came by & women became choosy and hard to bed. But they remember their old ways & can’t help but want to stray. The result: women who are both hard to bed and yet won’t stay faithful once you’ve done all the hard work and gone through all the hoops to get them there. Unless they repress themselves with religion and morality and guilt. And become either miserable or non-orgasmic in the process.
As you can see, if Ryan is right, then it’s lousy for any man but the alpha and even he can’t be sure that an even more alpha male than him hasn’t gotten in and fathered his kids. It certainly sucks for the beta who if he can get any sex at all is bound to lose it over time.
Ideal male sexuality can be seen in the male gay community. Again, there is no set one size fits all standard as some gays are very promiscuous and others fall in love and have long-term longtime companions (and would be married if they were allowed to). That said, typical gay sex is all the men are horny, they meet, they have sex, they part, and move on to the next. This is male sexuality. This is ideally how men want things to be with women. They meet. They fuck. No talk, no hoops, no money, no status, no nothing. Just Me Tarzan, You Jane, let’s do it in the road. I suspect this is why Dan (who I can’t speak for obviously) feels monogamy is unnatural. He probably doesn’t have a monogamous boner in his body. And, if we set aside religion, ethics, guilt, society, and the rest and just asked men how would they want things to be set up between men and women if they could get exactly what they wanted, I would think that the vote would go, we want women to be as horny and promiscuous and easily available to us as we are to them.
I don’t have the evidence to agree with or dispute Ryan’s claims but personally I doubt men ever had such a utopia. And if they did, I can’t imagine they’d give it up for some crops when they were perfectly good reindeer around to spear. But that’s what Ryan is saying happened.
@170 What I was trying to say is this. I have every right to engage in whatever risky behavior I choose except to the extent that the consequences of that behavior has an adverse impact on individuals who did not consent to or may not be even aware of my choice. If I pick up an STD by cheating on my wife I do not have the right to give that STD to my wife. Since I can’t guaranty that I won’t pick up an STD, I don’t have the right to cheat on my wife. The basic concept is anything is game as long as no innocent party is harmed.
@tupa, comment 6…
Don’t give yourself heartbreak. There’s nothing wrong with not wanting your partners to sleep around on you. It works for some people, not for others.
There are a lot of things to admire about Dan Savage., but I find it really difficult to respect the position that monogamy is unnatural, and Dan’s advice to people that they shouldn’t feel any compunction about failing to experience commitment and monogamy.
Having lost my partner first to infidelity and then to AIDS, and having somehow managed to stay HIV negative myself during that time, it is impossible for me to discount the value of a monogamous relationship, both for the emotional benefits and the physical considerations.
For me, anyone who doesn’t value and observe monogamy isn’t datable, let alone partner material.
@187: Given your history, I can completely understand your position. Monogamy is the safest sex we can hope for short of giving up on sex altogether. However, there are those who not only don’t value and observe monogamy, but who are violently opposed to it. As you said, that person would not work for you as a potential partner. Also, there’s no reason for you to respect Mr. Savage’s position since it is different from your own. My own position is that people should find out what works for them, as you have, and then pursue it without making it a philosophy that they impose on others. That goes for people who are pro & con when it comes to monogamous partners. In terms of the ethical considerations of a poly lifestyle, I recommend reading The Ethical Slut. That said, I remember a quote from Cybill Shepherd of all people who once remarked that “Everyone lies when it comes to sex.” I’m not sure that everyone lies and it’s a pain to be so cynical and mistrusting, but….as the old slogan from the French Resistance reminds us, “Where there are two, one betrays.” In other words, watch your back.
Personally, I would never ask Mr. Savage for advice. If he doesn’t find your question odd or assume you are making it all up, he uses it as an excuse to yell at you. I like rudeness at times since it is a refreshing breath of fresh air in contrast to the PC police state that insists everyone follow polite etiquette at all times. But I’m not a masochist. There are times when I wish Mr. Savage would lay off with his occasional anger and disrespect for the people who contact him. I tend to take a quick glance at his column and if I think he’s “on the rag” that issue, I turn the page.
Ryan speaks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN6lvMfsD…
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/…
For some reason those links got cropped. Sorry.
In the YouTube clip, Ryan talks about nomadic hunter-gatherers sharing utensils and food, creating a culture of sharing, that only staying in one place and creating personal property put an end to. Instead of social darwinism, we once had communism.
So far I’ve expressed doubts or said that even if this was the case, we no longer have it. That said, things from our evolutionary past tend to stick. Try eating more that 2000 calories a day and you’ll see what I mean. If we were once into polyandry and stopped it and took on monogamy, we could get “fat & heart disease” from it.
I’ve been thinking about the Inuit/Eskimo. They have a culture where males often have more than one wife but also they have a culture of sharing their wives with visitors (Arabs may at one time have had a similar culture). Children aren’t raised by the group as a whole but by a nuclear family subset and yet sex is shared by the group as a whole. This is a mix of pair bonding and orgy that could explain our characteristics when compared with chimps and bonobos. It also suggests that both marriage and extra-marital sex were norms, neither one being “unnatural”. Even so, hunter-gatherer bands still had leaders and hierarchy. And so we still don’t know how alpha males dealt with paternity before private property. If the shape of the penis head was developed to scrape previous sperm out and the vacuum action of the penis inside the vagina was also meant to draw previous sperm out, then it was still an issue in evolutionary terms. The gene “cared” about passing itself on through sex even if the hominid was there for the orgasm. And that interest leads to exclusivity and monogamy and the suppression of a promiscuous female sexuality.
How is monogamy “unnatural”? There are plenty of other animals that keep one mate at a time, or for their entire lives. Not all humans would be comfortable with polygamy/polyamory and it would be unnatural to say so.
What IS unnatural is to say you’re stuck one way or another because your supernatural father figure said so.
Oh goody: Dan had gone a couple of columns without telling monogamous people that we’re weird and unnatural and wrong. I was beginning to worry he wasn’t feeling well.
@ SECONDS – I’m kinda jealous of you!
I’ve been reading Savage Love for years and usually find it insightful. This time, however, Dan has found a really powerful idea thanks to Christopher Ryan and his book, which I already ordered. I’ll keep on reading to keep on learning. THanks, Dan.
Oh Dan. Why are you giving this asshole, peddling his particularly nauseous brand of anti-monogamous, evolutionary-psychological BULLSHIT a platform? I would have expected a far more enlightened response to these questions, rather than a display of the fucking BLIND INFATUATION you seem to have developed towards this guy. Evopsych is 100% bullshit, plain and simple. Like all bullshit it may stumble upon a truth sometimes, but really, it hurts to hear someone I respect as a sexually conscientious voice tell me my sexual/life preference is “unnatural”. Piece of shit, walk away. Piece of shit, walk away.
Lots of excellent comments here. It’s especially gratifying to hear the thoughts of people who have actually read our book (or at least the excerpts we have up on our web site), like @145. For the doubters, we hope you’ll get a copy at some point, because we do attempt to make an argument, as opposed to just asserting a pet theory. Believe it or not, there is evidence for what we argue, but you’ll have to read the book to understand the nature of the evidence.
CPR
I love how Dan thinks that the ideas the author has come up with are in any way new or enlightening. This kind of crap has been used to justify gender stereotyping since the origins of Freudian psychoanalysis. From what I’ve read of the extracts, there’s very little evidence that doesn’t read along the lines of ‘it’s a staple in pornography? It must be biologically determined!’ Given that Christopher Ryan is an English graduate, I’m surprised he didn’t go the opposite route and state that everything is culturally determined – either extreme is unhelpful.
Anyway, as a female incapable of multiple orgasms but very capable of five-minute orgasms, I feel a bit neglected…
It’s disappointing to me that you have less tolerance for monogamy than fundies do for homos, Dan.
Here goes Dan, again, trying to excuse cheating on his marriage, by putting down Monogamy… it’s pathetic Dan. I know, is not cheating as long as your husband knows…That’s crap.
Dan want’s to have a husband and a family, but non of the responsibility and yes, the sacrifice of not screwing other people that come with it.
Dan only seems to place value on emotional monogamy, but none on sexual monogamy.
When you approach your husband with the open marriage thing … Sorry, I don’t care how you framed it, the only thing you are telling him is ” I am sick and tired of sleeping with your ass and if you want me to stay with you I need to fuck other people.” But someone like you probably think that’s ok.
And the choice you left this man with: is whether he lets you sleep around of lose the man he loves. what a manipulative asshole you are, Dan.
And I know, the veto thing. This is more like a line item veto. because your partner has no choice of monogamy or not. but only which man you sleep with. ” here are five guys I want to fuck honey, you can veto 2 of them”
In the real world open marriege is usually if not the end of the relationship is the beggining of the end.
And I know your relationship has been working like this forever. for god sakes, you have a stay at home husband. It is easy when you have all the power in it. you are Dan Savage: fame, money, and power. The other day you called him and asshole because he wouldn’t let you talk about your indiscretion on the air. I bet he had to beg for just that!
An your craze anti-monogamy thing…. I think the lady those protest to much… and I think is because you know, not deep down, but very on the surface, that your no boundaries behavior toward you husband and family is wrong. you are like anti-gay politicians with a man on the side.
Or maybe instead of you lame excuses for cheating on you husband, you should be like polygamist with the whole god told them too.
P.S.
I think you need to go back to the video store, Dan.
Stop telling us monogamous types that we’re “unnatural.” You’re sex-positive as long as the sex is freaky, involves multiple partners, or weird kinks. But for regular old vanilla types who just like having sex with our monogamous partners, we’re “unnatural.” It really is insulting and I’m tired of your implications that monogamous people are sexually deficient or repressed or unfair to their partners not to menion unnatural while the swingers and piss-drinkers and furries are sexually healthy. That may be so but it doesn’t mean vanilla monogamists are unnatural.