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.
@143 But I’d know and would have to live with myself. Some people are perfectly fine being a lying CPOS, but others have varying degrees of difficulty with it. I’m not here to judge them, I just have great disdain for them. I despise hypocrites (defined as people who say or imply one thing and act in a diametrically opposed manner) whether its religion, politics, sex, or whatever.
Hey Mr. Ryan, thanks for coming by to take a look. I’m intrigued by this thesis and its possibilities but I’m still perplexed by one thing: if females weren’t trading sex for food and we had a multi-male/multi-female sharing system when it came to sex, how did we evolve? I mean if natural selection and survival of the fittest and the standard narrative of evolution aren’t really a part of the human story, then what other factors made all of those physical changes in us over 4-5 million years?
Haha Dan, how much did you get to promote Ryan’s book?
@196
While I haven’t read your book in particular, I have read enough evolutionary psychology to be really distrustful of such hypotheses, especially when someone touts them as either (a) truly and completely explaining some facet of human behavior, or (b) as proving something to be natural, unnatural, inevitable, artificial, whatever.
The problem, at its core, with any retrospective analysis is that (as pure posteriori reasoning) it doesn’t do as well actually backing up its claims with evidence. Take Freud himself, who posited a huge number of theories based on “I know the final result, so the cause must recede logically from that”, which only works if your chain of logic works at each step.
But, evolutionary psychologists tend toward making a lot of assumptions and leaps of faith in order to make it work. Humans are “naturally” polygamous (though it strains the mind how a society of humans would decide and pass on a meme which was wholly counter to our nature), since men would do best spreading their seed far and wide, and that women are programmed to orgasm from long-term stimulation.
The only way to arrive at that is to ignore any confounding variables, and any alternative hypotheses (about nine of which come to mind immediately). I understand you make a decent argument for your hypothesis, but it’s no more inherently valid than any other conception of human society, nor does it account for the individual nature of sexuality. I’ve known plenty of guys (myself included) who would freak the fuck out seeing our girlfriend/wife having sex with another man. We know throughout history that men have objected strongly to such behavior. Are we really claiming that all of that history (including in the animal kingdom) is somehow simply a cultural artifact?
Similarly, if it truly were “everyone has sex with everyone”, then all sexual selection would not exist, and it would simply be a sort of survival of the fittest of our sperm.
Oh, and just to insert some fact here, we can track the fidelity of females in a species of primate or monkey through the size of the testes, and the size/shape of the penis head. The more pronounced a “shovel” shape to the head of the penis, the more partners the females have (the head literally scoops rival males’ semen out); similarly testes size correlates directly with infidelity. Chimpanzee females are much more promiscuous than ape females, and their testes size is significantly large relative to body mass. We’re somewhere in the middle. There are significant differences in the male genitalia between humans and the (oft-cited) Bonobo chimps, how do you account for that if our sexuality is meant to be roughly comparable?
TO #145: I agree that human beings are “plastic”: but I think you significantly overestimate the degree of our plasticity. If our sexualities were shaped by cultural inputs re: norms of conduct, there wouldn’t have been any homosexuality during the 1950s, heterosexual bonding would follow the romantic comedy script, etc. Human sexuality is diverse. There are some people who are incapable of monogamy; there are some people who are incapable of polyamory. No doubt human sexuality is molded by extremely complex interactions between personal experience and physiology.
By “natural,” I think what people mean is “biologically determined.” But human sexuality is more complicated than that, for sure. There is strong evidence of a powerful role for genetics in homosexuality; but there is also strong evidence for a moderate environmental influence. On the whole: People are horny; people are attracted to more than just their partners; people get jealous; people feel a need not to violate their partners’ trust (thus eliciting jealousy) — they feel “bad” about cheating on their partners. The roots of this type of behavior are too complicated to classify as “biologically”- or “environmentally”-induced. So what? It’s our “feelings” (whatever the causes) that determine human social interaction. I don’t think one cause (biological or environmental) should have some kind of exalted status over another.
@ 204. Thanks for bringing up the issue of penis and testicle physiology into this discussion. What you say is absolutely correct. In the case of gorillas, where an alpha male controls a harem of gorilla women, there is virtually no sperm competition, hence, the insanely small balls of gorillas. For humans, our balls are right on the line. Small enough to classify as monogamous, big enough to suggest cheating plays a minor but important role in driving human evolution.
Man I always thought I had a normal sex drive until I start reading this column. Sorry Dan, I’m content in a monogamous relationship. Do I periodically eye the 26-year-old in the package room and think “yummy”? Yes, for 3 seconds or so, then it leaves my mind for the day. That’s the extent of it. The thought of actually unclothing before someone I don’t know as well as my partner and dealing with his new feeling and smell and eeewww, yuck. If I were given a free pass – anyone I wanted – no one will ever know – no STDs, no problems, the dream zipless (*&^, I’d still take my guy. And before you ask, the answer is “20 years.”
@206
Plus, there are many other evolutionary psychologists who present a hypothesis for cheating which would be counterindicated to the hypothesis of SAD.
Basically, they argue that it is in a woman’s best interest to be monogamously attached to a “good provider” male, while cheating with a more masculine, raffishly handsome, male. This allows them both the best genetic code for their offspring (best being defined as “most likely to eventually pass on their DNA), and the best ability to rear the children.
If the SAD hypothesis were true (women and men are meant to sleep with everyone, and we shouldn’t be jealous or protective, monogamy is unnatural), then the other hypothesis would be impossible. Since both hypotheses describe a set of possible behaviors as explanations for human sexual proclivities, and cannot both be true, and since neither provides any concrete evidence aside from speculation and a decent logical chain of circumstances, neither can be held to be more true.
So, which is true? Oh, we don’t know? Who cares, then?
There are other evolutionary psychologists who point out that monogamy and polygamy are better for different groups within the species. Monogamy is best for the majority of men (each male is likely to at least get *a* wife, which gives them someone with whom to reproduce) and for the most desirable women (who can monopolize the breeding potential of the most desirable men). Polygamy is better for the most desirable men (harems galore), bad for most men (many if not most of whom will be left out of breeding), good for the bulk of women (who can share the most desirable men) and bad for the most desirable women (who have to share).
The problem is that any of these explanations for human behavior and what is “natural” could be true, since all make some logical sense. But, since all of them are mutually exclusive, there’s no way to say reasonably which one *is* true.
Referring to 200 & 207 (among others)
Are there any men writing responses like this? I’m curious.
I know that some men are in monogamous relationships but are there any men who are saying “Stop saying monogamy is unnatural! It is the way I am and sleeping with anyone else but my wife doesn’t sound appealing to me” ?
I see responses like that and wonder whether it is only women feeling so completely defensive of and devoted to monogamy.
@185
Right. Again, I completely agree and nothing that I said indicates otherwise. But let’s not lose focus…. this was all in response to SECONDS’s letter. In that scenario, all people seem to have mindfully agreed to take a calculated risk. I was responding to vab251’s assertion that the risk they all took was uninformed and/or unacceptable. They likely already knew everything that vab251 said (or at least the correspondingly accurate information… the 6 month window was for tests that were on the market more than 5 years ago. Today’s tests have a 6 week window.) The point being that we all sometimes do things we know are risky. As long as it is, in fact, freely and mindfully chosen, that is our prerogative, and people who blather on about risks that we’ve already considered just come across as self-righteous and tedious.
I want to scream at all of you! Dan isn’t saying that YOU have to be non-monogamous, just that it shouldn’t be the accepted default position. And short of that, that our culture should except non-monogamy as a valid option. Neither position, monogamy or non-monogamy, should be the default. The default position should be Null.
You should have the “want are you into” conversation early in your relationship and revisit it often.
@211 If that were indeed what Dan said then there wouldn’t be such a kerfuffle.
You really need to read more of his posts about monogamy. He most certainly does NOT come down on the side of a “null” position.
@209
I’m male (testicles, penis, the whole package), and I’ve never wanted to sleep with anyone aside from the woman I’m with at any given time. Do I believe in soul-mates? No. So, I’m comfortable with (at the end of a relationship) saying ‘now I go find someone else’. But, I never have eyes for someone else.
I don’t want my girlfriend to cheat on me, and I wouldn’t want to cheat on my girlfriend. Even if she offered me a “no harm, no foul” way to sleep with another girl, I wouldn’t be interested.
@104
Watch their hands. If they’re good with their hands in bed, they are good with their hands everywhere else.
@212 – Dan gets lots of letters from people in monogamous relationships, where one person is not happy. He gets few from people in monogamous relationships who are both happy. Dan’s experience is that it is very rare when a monogamous relationship lasts “until death do us part” with both sides still loving the monogamy. So that’s what he’s trying to publicize – because the “Happily Ever After” part of our culture is constantly promoting the idea that most people can find a partner with whom they will be monogamously happy, forever.
@213 So – do you tell your prospective partners that you will only want to sleep with them for a while, and then you’ll move on? Or do you give them hope of “Happily Ever After,” until your eye strays again?
@214, good advice, gnot. I love watching men’s hands…
@215 – That may be Dan’s experience from the letters he gets, but that hardly means that most people can’t find a partner with whom they will be monogamously happy, forever. The happily monogamous folk are not going to be the ones writing Dan for advice.
Most may be happy, or most may not be – but either way I wouldn’t base it on the letters Dan receives.
To add to the debate between Diane and Alchemist about the nice guy syndrome….
I agree that a lot of “nice” guys are just mysoginist a-holes who are only nice to get women, but I disagree that most self-called nice guys are this way.
There are two kinds of nice guys, the truly nice guys and the fake “Nice” guys.
The fake “Nice” guys want to be just like the douchey fratboy pickup artists, but their chosen style is to act nice. When their strategy doesn’t work, they get mad at the girls for not conforming to their plan, but they delude themselves into thinking its because their too nice. They get frustrated when girls are not doing what they think the girl should be doing. These guys don’t want to change, they want the girls to change and start liking what their doing.
The truly nice guys are just that, nice. They fail because the routinely get friend-zoned and/or feel too awkward to be more assertive. They have no ill will towards the girls that turn them down or women in general, but feel frustrated that they’re not the right “type” for certain girls or enough girls. They see fault in themselves whereas the fake “Nice” guys see the fault in the girls.
Truly nice guys that don’t get girls just want to be more assertive, but are uncomfortable in doing so. The fake “Nice” guys just want girls to start being more responsive to what they’re currently doing.
“Girls don’t like nice guys” is semi true. Its not so much that they dislike the nice part about the guy, but they are not attracted to the low confidence and self-esteem that many nice guys have after years of failing with girls.
Dan isn’t saying that YOU have to be non-monogamous, just that it shouldn’t be the accepted default position.
No, his actual words are that monogamy is “unrealistic” and “unnatural”. And that’s just in this particular column…there have been many others where he tries to say that everyone has a hard time staying faithful to just one person. I can’t recall whether he’s ever said everyone should be poly, but repeated assertions that monogamous people all feel miserable and constricted by their relationship model (and are apparently going against their very nature by fucking only one person) pretty much amount to the same thing.
A person who felt like monogamy shouldn’t be the “accepted default position” would probably not say “monogamy is hard/unrealistic/unnatural”, they’d say “Monogamy shouldn’t be the accepted default position”.
Can you see the difference?
Oh, and Erica P: with quick-n-dirty sex it’s even more important to tell each other what you want because a) the point of the sex is pleasure, not emotions/bonding/etc (so if you’re not getting off, what’s the point?). and b) you might not see the person again so there’s no time for a learning curve.
I know it’d be super-hot to have a one-night stand with someone where it’s amazing and full of fireworks and neither of you has to say a word – but that sort of thing is very, very rare (and has nothing to do with chemistry, magic, or skill – just a happy coincidence that his preferences, experiences, etc. happen to match up with yours). If you want consistently enjoyable stranger-sex, you’ve got to be all “touch me like this and when I really start getting into it you can increase the intensity” or whatever.
Giving instructions in bed not as clinical as some people would have you believe. Done right, it’s really just another kind of dirty talk. And if you’re having amazing orgasms, your partner will enjoy the experience more, too, because he’ll feel like a hero.
@215
Given that all of my break-ups have either been initiated by the girl, demanded by geography, or based on both of us saying “yeah, this isn’t really working”, I’m pretty confident that there’s no illusion I’m shattering.
I guess it’s just me, but I’d rather be broken up with than cheated on.
@217
I was with you until the friend-zone bullshit. If what you mean by “friend zone” is that some girls like the legitimately nice guys as friends, but don’t want to ride them like a prize stallion, I agree. If what you mean is that there are girls out there who would have slept with these guys, but decide not to because of the friendship, I don’t believe it.
Not only have I seen plenty of friendships-turned-relationships, but I highly doubt that had I asked out prior to getting to know any of my female friends who’ve rejected me after getting to know each other, their response would have been different. The major difference between a good friendship, and a relationship, is mutual sexual attraction.
Also, I don’t know about any other guys, but neither me nor any of my friends are unassertive or lack confidence in ourselves. We accept our shortcomings, certainly, but that’s a far cry from not being confident. The difference is that we don’t play the numbers game; we focus our attention on one (maybe, maybe, two) possible girlfriends at a time, and see how things play out to their conclusion. We wait to get indication of the girl’s feeling, rather than jumping right to asking her out(in fact, I’ve had more success waiting, rather than being “assertive”).
This whole “nice guys lack confidence/assertiveness” thing bugs me because it plays into the inaccurate narrative about why women chose certain guys. It’s simply about physical attraction. If Brad Pitt were as reserved and shy and awkward as the most World of Warcraft-playing, basement-dwelling, reclusive gamer-nerd nice guy, he’d still have girls fawning over him.
That’s not a complaint, by the way, just a reality we should admit. The difference between a nice guy who gets the girl, and a nice guy who doesn’t, is whether the girl finds the nice guy in question to be sexually appealing.
@215
Addendum:
Okay, I see the confusion. I never plan for a relationship to end. I’ve been in one relationship thus far which has had the understanding (from both sides) that it’s temporary and cannot (due to geographical concerns) last for very long (three months).
And that was fine, we both knew what was going on going into it. With regards to every other relationship, I don’t intend or plan on breaking up; it’s not like “I’m with her until someone better comes along”. I always plan for my relationships to last as long as they reasonably can, and accept that all but one of them is going to eventually end up in a break up of some kind.
My point was that I would never go looking (or even entertain interest in) another relationship while I’m in the one I’ve got. We can discuss the rationale behind that, if you’d like, but it really does come down (for me) to that when I’m with a woman, I’m with her lock, stock, and barrel until one or both of us decide it isn’t working.
The reason I’ve never broken up with anyone, incidentally, is that I really do spend a lot of ramp-up time to make sure I want to spend a significant amount of time with someone before asking her out. Plus, it helps when you’re friends, first.
@seldon
I don’t completely disagree with what you are saying.
However, I don’t mean to offend you but you may have actually proved my point. You say you’ve had more luck being patient and waiting around than being assertive, but maybe as a nice guy you just aren’t effectively/naturally assertive, so you need to take the more passive approach. Also, being nice and being assertive aren’t mutually exclusive, but many nice guys can’t pull off assertive.
Focusing in on one girl at a time and trying to be friends first doesn’t automatically make you a nice guy. A lot of “fake nice guys” try to do the same thing.
You can be a nice guy that wants to date around and have some casual flings/hookups, and you can be a complete jerk that only wants serious full one relationships. Those personality traits don’t dictate the kind of relationship you want.
And I wouldn’t say its all about physical attraction, but there is a turn on factor that physical appearance certainly contributes. A large turn for women is being made special/wanted/desired which the nice guys I talk about struggle to do for women. This is why assertive jerks are more likely to get women than passive nice guys. This says nothing about maintaining a stable relationship, just getting your foot in the door to start a relationship.
Sure a guy like Brad Pitt might have women fawning over him no matter his personality, but take an average looking assertive guy and an average looking passive nice guy and the assertive guy wins 9 times out of 10 (at least right out of the gate).
@222
Well, we will run into a big problem of defining what exactly makes a “nice guy” a “nice guy”. You’re viewing it from the passive vs. active track, I’m viewing it from the “what’s my motivation” track.
But, there’s something vaguely inconsistent in that a nice guy (god, this phrase gets annoying with repetition) having success with the less ostentatious, overbearing, and assertive kind of courtship which is part and parcel of how most people view nice guys, is proof that nice guys are somehow at a disadvantage in being assertive.
We’re looking at the same correlation, and coming up with two different causal links. You believe that the lack of assertiveness and “effective/natural assertiveness” informs the lack of success in being assertive. I would argue the opposite, the lack of success informs where we’ve put our effort.
Imagine, for a moment, that you can pick any sport to play. If you try Hockey and suck at it, there’s a good chance you’re going to give up on it, especially when you see other people who have some natural advantage at it kicking ass and taking names. So, you go play football instead. It’s the same concept.
The so-called nice-guys (myself included) have learned that we’re at a disadvantage when it comes to assertive, direct, courtship. Some guys are more attractive at first blush. Those guys who have the sheer attractiveness to get women without any extra effort do so (the extreme of this is being “jerks”). Those who realize they’re not attractive enough to succeed on purely shallow merits (we’re all shallow, every last human being is), figure out that we have to add something else to the mix. The bitter and resentful among us decide women are idiots who can (and should) be manipulated. The more reasonable among us decide that we can display those qualities which actually do make us more attractive (usually non-physical qualities, but they also do vary wildly).
Note: when I say someone “can’t” succeed by being assertive, and thus becomes a “nice guy”, I mean they believe they can’t. It’s a matter of what the guy believes of himself
So, in a lot of ways, being assertive (or at least being able to succeed being assertive) is counterindicated with being a “nice guy” (I’m using the term here more in the pejorative sense, since there’s a ‘being a decent human being’ which is divorced from how one tries to get women). Those who don’t need to put any effort into it, don’t (they’re the ‘assertive’ ones, who’re attractive enough to get dates either way).
And, it does dictate the relationships you want (or, at least, have some hope of getting). Guys who are able to have casual flings/hookups easily, generally tend to do that. Guys who don’t think they can achieve that, focus on wooing one girl, since they think that they’re “good enough” as a whole package for a woman to overlook their less-attractive physical features.
So, you can be a “nice guy” who wants to sleep around, but you’re not going to have as much success as the “jerk”… Since the jerk is more appealing as a hook-up anyway.
We’re obviously working off of very different observed and experienced phenomena. I’ve never run into a “nice guy” who has trouble showing a woman that she’s special/wanted/desired. And, there’s something fairly condescending in the way you phrased that, I just thought you should know. I’m choosing to assume you meant no offense, but it comes off as fairly rude.
The problem I have with your argument, fundamentally, is that you want to hold as constant physical attractiveness/desirability, and argue purely “does ‘assertiveness’ confer greater benefits in getting dates than ‘passiveness’?” Even if I grant you that “nice guys” are passive, and “jerks” are assertive, and that the major difference between the two is that distinction, I think you’re still hacking away too much of the situation to get a good feel for it.
If I’m right, and assertiveness is learned by being more physically attractive, and thus simply being able to ‘succeed’ at spec; while “passiveness” (or, I would argue, the slow-sell), is learned by being unable to succeed based purely on physical looks, then to “take an average looking guy of both types” is like saying:
“look at a black person and a white person applying for a job, now assume both of them are of “average color”, will race play a factor?” If the underlying thing you want to hold constant informs the variable you want to test, holding it constant makes your test infeasible.
And, not for nothing, but even if you could, I’d wager the “passive nice guy” would win most of the time in those cases anyway. We’re gonna have to agree to disagree, but in my experience women actually are more interested in the nice guys, save for the diminished sexual attraction based purely on physical looks (once again, every human being is shallow, so that’s not a pejorative). So, give a nice guy an added bonus of being physically attractive (or, at least, as attractive as his competition), and he’ll clean up.
You do note that you’re talking about “right out the gate”, and I appreciate that. It is a number’s game, and anytime one group takes fifteen-times as many shots (to be conservative), they’re going to get more hits.
The last thing is that it’s an argument about loci of control. You want the control to be on the guy (I acted like X, the outcome was Y), as opposed to being on something he has relatively little control over (I look like X, the outcome was Y), but I’ve seen too many less-attractive “assertive” guys go down in flames (even with greater frequency than their similarly-attractive “nice guy” peers) to think that it isn’t just a false flag.
P.S I’m not sure how rambling this was, so if anything doesn’t make sense, let me know, and I’ll try to correct it.
evo-psych tends to be crap… no one (yet) has figured out how to look at a modern skelton and tell how often they had sex (unless they were into something REALLY kinky that ‘left marks’), let alone how many different people they had sex with.
There have been arguements put forward that the ratio of men to women of reproductive age has a profound impact on monogamy vs. polygamy/ polyandry that are at least testable, unlike any evo-psych hypotheses. Go cross-culturally through current and recent historic times and you can find enough proof that any bonding arrangement can work if the environmental and social factors support it.
Sorry, Dan, but you are not ‘cutting edge’. When a 50-something Kansan feels like you are beating a dead horse, it is time to up your game or get out of the business.
@215 — Your point is moot. Why would a couple in a completely happy, emotionally and sexually fulfilling, monogamous relationship seek advice from a sex columnist?
None of us know how many people in “Happily Ever After” marriages stay happy until “death do us part.” But the evidence from advice columns and divorces and looking around you at the pain and suffering is that lots of people are unhappy in their marriages.
Those of you who are happy in your mutually fulfilling monogamous relationships, just enjoy your happiness. Dan isn’t talking about you when he says most people have trouble with monogamy at some point. Sure, he could put in more caveats (but this isn’t academia) and sure, he shouldn’t claim that “you, hey you, (yes, you) you’re having trouble with monogamy!” (Though I missed the column where he wrote that.)
He does often tell unhappy letter-writers that they ought to consider opening up their marriages. The rest of society says, “no, don’t consider it.” But he thinks they should consider it. And it’s his damn column. So lay off.
@226
If he had phrased his point less polemically, no one would object to it.
If he had said “for those who have difficulty in monogamous relationships, monogamy is unnatural”, or stuck to his “d’fferent strokes for d’fferent folks” shtick, no one would mind. He didn’t even say that most people at some point have trouble with monogamy. He said categorically “monogamy is unnatural”.
I mean, come on. Imagine if I wrote here that homosexuality is unnatural, and counter to the reproductive instincts of humans? You’d want to set my house on fire. But, the same “sex is everything” argument that Sex At Dawn makes for its justification of “monogamy is unnatural” also argues that homosexuality is unnatural.
Think about the outrage of someone saying homosexuality is unnatural, and you understand how those of us out here who are monogamous feel.
“Anyone who’s ever struggled with monogamy—and any honest person who ever attempted it admits to struggling…” Come on Dan – speak for yourself. As a gay man who had a 20 year monogamous relationship I can honestly say the sex got better over the years because we were open to experimentation and exploring (but within the context of each other). Sex had zero to do with our break-up. Playing around sexually with others just never worked for me, it’s not the way I’m wired. Fortunately my new partner is very much the same. Sooo, again I say, speak for yourself! 62, in shape and goin’ strong as a 1 on 1.
It’s also possible that the very happy monogamous people don’t really hear as much about the troubles of others because people struggling with monogamy are less likely to confide in the obviously happy monogamous person. I know when I have problems of any kind, I want to confide in someone who has a chance of understanding, which rules out the perfect and the annoyingly upbeat. Not only are they a shining contrast to my life’s failures, but they just won’t understand (although being perfect they will actually be concerned, probably sincerely, but will have absolutely no useful thoughts or information for me because they are inexperienced in actual real life as us normal people live it, and their attempts at comforting me will only make it worse). So that might be part of the rancor. If you are happily monogamous, maybe you just don’t hear truth from the people around you, because they know you don’t get it.
@208
I agree! There is also the argument that, due to our large brain and long childhood, humans need a particularly large amount of paternal care (someone to help feed the crew when mom is nursing). Across species, and gender for that matter, organisms are most likely to give care when the babies are closely related. So human children need extra care and males are most likely to give it if they think they are the father. But, in the end, who the fuck really knows? As a biologist, I get real sick of the ‘just-so’ stories that people make out of evolution. Traits occur for all sorts of reasons, sometimes because they are selected for, sometimes because they aren’t selected against, and sometimes because they are tied to something that IS selected for or against. In the end, people should just fuck who they want to fuck and stop trying to make pseudo-evolutionary theories to back up their own preferences
The question seems to be this: If you had no cultural constraints, fear of STDs and pregnancy did not exist, and you were free to act on your desires with essentially no penalties or limits, what would you do? What do you think people in general would do? I’m pretty sure I’d fuck anyone for the pre-historic equivalent of a chocolate bar, and I am the absolute opposite of promiscuous (much to my own disappointment I just don’t have it in me to be a slut). If I didn’t have to worry about anything other than what I wanted at the moment, why the hell not? Sure, pair-bonding, like strong friendships, can happen under those conditions. They don’t require sexual exclusivity by any means, there’s no reason why they should. Why would you bother? The concept of complete sexual faithfulness wouldn’t exist, although it might happen on occasion, it seems to me it would be rare. Why would it matter? If you’re having sex from onset of puberty with whoever whenever, I don’t think you’d get all emotionally wrapped up in it the way people do now. It just wouldn’t be important.
OK THEN DAN, IM GONNA BE UP FRONT TO WOMEN I MEET, AND SAY “EVERYTIME MY DICK LOOKS AT ANOTHER WOMEN, Im SORRY IM GONNA TRY AND FUCK HER”, you know why, i’m no better then a monkey, fuck youtube and cell phones. And yes every guy wants to see or know his Gf is getting fucked by any other guy, oh yea that’s so much more natural. You lost major points on this one Dan. Man you must be making your Mormon readers SUPER HAPPY-“see honey having 4 wives is a good thing”.
Fuck this shit-MY ADVICE, IF YOUR YOUNG, GO AHEAD AND FUCK AROUND, WHEN YOUR READY FOR WHAT SOCIETY WAS BUILT ON- SEX/KIDS/RELATIONSHIPS/MONEY/TRUST, THEN FUCKING BE monogamist. Don’t confuse being young and horny to being a higher monkey. Lets see in 20 years how “natural” it will be for Dan to be Fucking around with anyone. ALL HAIL TO THE ALMIGHTY DICK, IF IT SAYS I HAVE TO BE IN A CAGE TO BUST A NUT, I SHALL GIVE UP MY LIFE TO PURSUE THIS. I SHALL PUT WOMEN THOUGH HELL(OR FIND ONE THATS OK WITH IT) ALL FOR SOME SEMEN TO DRIP OUT OF MY DICK. MY COCK IS GOD.
Ps-i’m a straight single male,26.
@232, So when you’re 40, with two young kids and your wife says she’s all “touched-out” from the children and could you please stop asking for sex more than once a week or once a month — are you going to keep it in your pants then? What if you fuck up one night and get a blow-job from a girl you met at a bar? What if your wife then sees a text from the girl and figures it out? Does that have to mean the marriage is over? Dan’s trying to give people tools to keep marriages together, he’s not telling people to fuck around with strangers on AFF (that’s my job).
@233, What if I fuck up? You mean be natural? No EricaP remember I’m un-natural, I Like eww Monogamy. WTF are you reading, “he’s trying to keep marriages together”, look, get off the gay guys dick and see, he fucked up with this post, I have been a semi-fan for sometime, but calling me un-natural for me not wanting my GF to give a random guy a Bj at a Bar is insane, are you following so far. People fuck up, yes, but monnomy is built around trust/being safe/ and rasing kids.
I put age into the comment, because you know getting a BJ at a bar at 50 from a 19 year old girl is kinda hard from what I see, I don’t know how a 40 or 50 year old women(non-monogamist) would fair in the dating world but she sure would be NATURAL. Let me ask, when your Natural(non-monogamist, do you still have desires/tempted)or is everything perfect?
Do I want to have sex with Jessica Alba, yes, should I?, meh i won’t die if I don’t. Look I don’t call Manwhores or Sluts un-natural, I really don’t fucking care, But to bring Science and some shitty book into this post is stupid. To me Marriage and Monogamy is easier then say fucking 30 women and raising 8 different kids, (come one fight a point on that one). One more question Dan, how does someone go about being natural, does the shitty book suggest counseling, the same counseling that could help a marriage or LTR?. If so how can I be a better HUMAN?
If Dan would just say, look i kinda fucked up when i made that statement, everything would be cool, BUT WE ALL KNOW DAN, HIM AND HIS CRAZY FACTS!
hey dan i’ve read a couple of your columns and you are a rare gem, it is not often that the media encourages a healthy attitude towards sexuality. It’s such an important part of who we are as human beings and most of the time that aspect of our psyche is painted as being dirty and wrong. Thanks for being both entertaining and honest as well as supportive of all kinds of sexuality. we need more people like you in the world.
NO EMOTICON
LTR take a lot of work on a daily basis (duh, you think). If you compress the time spent together in even long term affairs, just how much are we talking about relative to the duration of your average marriage? As I understand them, people in affairs seldom have to deal with the daily problems and frustrations of a LTR, they are in the affair to escape them. They can focus on the sex. Of course I can see how the affair would seem to be superior to the LTR.
“Girls don’t like nice guys” is semi true. Its not so much that they dislike the nice part about the guy, but they are not attracted to the low confidence and self-esteem that many nice guys have after years of failing with girls.
@217: That’s what I was saying or trying to say.
@ Seldon: All I’ve been saying is that the standard narrative of evolution is the one which operates in current sexual culture. Women are attracted to fit genetics. This covers a wide range of factors. Brad Pitt can be painfully shy & extroverted but his looks alone will guarantee him sex because he looks so good that that is considered fit genetics. Without the looks, other factors are considered fit genetics. Money is one. Assertiveness (and dominating selfishness actually) are another. An ability to stand up for yourself & what you want against women making it hard to land them.
As for Ryan, this entire discussion led me to locate my copy of The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light by William Irwin Thompson where he writes the following:
“The shift from estrus to a receptivity for intercourse at all times…serves to attract males back to the females, but on the other hand this disturbs the traditional system of male-bonding and increases the likelihood of intrasexual competition” (72).
In other words, when females had mating seasons or periods when they were in heat, that’s when males were interested, otherwise not. They’d hang out with other males until the heat period returned. Females lost the heat period so that men would be interested in them all year round but this led to year round competition between males.
Thompson quotes Wilson: “Polygyny is a general trait in hunter-gatherer bands and also may have been the rule in early hominid societies.”
Fine, but according to Thompson, the shift wasn’t caused by the development of agriculture and civilization but by the loss of a heat period in women which would have happened at least 70,000 years ago if not before.
All civilization adds to the mix is the notion of women as property and monogamy as prized for the male line to continue. Even for those women who praise fidelity and monogamy, civilized sexual culture is repressive, and there was a time when women were literally placed into chastity belts. Today those belts are still around as morality and guilt.
Since monogamy is endorsed by religious texts and since people do see a logic in it, you will find very strong defenders of it. Because of the fear that society will collapse if certain behaviors aren’t repressed, sexual “deviance” is repressed often by law. But all of this is cultural and can change. Biology is harder to erase but culture can do a very good job of it and most people follow suit. It’s difficult for people to awaken from cultural hypnosis and see their entire society critically from the outside.
@ Seldon: All I’ve been saying is that the standard narrative of evolution is the one which operates in current sexual culture. Women are attracted to fit genetics. This covers a wide range of factors. Brad Pitt can be painfully shy & extroverted but his looks alone will guarantee him sex because he looks so good that that is considered fit genetics. Without the looks, other factors are considered fit genetics. Money is one. Assertiveness (and dominating selfishness actually) are another. An ability to stand up for yourself & what you want against women making it hard to land them.
As for Ryan, this entire discussion led me to locate my copy of The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light by William Irwin Thompson where he writes the following:
“The shift from estrus to a receptivity for intercourse at all times…serves to attract males back to the females, but on the other hand this disturbs the traditional system of male-bonding and increases the likelihood of intrasexual competition” (72).
In other words, when females had mating seasons or periods when they were in heat, that’s when males were interested, otherwise not. They’d hang out with other males until the heat period returned. Females lost the heat period so that men would be interested in them all year round but this led to year round competition between males.
Thompson quotes Wilson: “Polygyny is a general trait in hunter-gatherer bands and also may have been the rule in early hominid societies.”
Fine, but according to Thompson, the shift wasn’t caused by the development of agriculture and civilization but by the loss of a heat period in women which would have happened at least 70,000 years ago if not before.
All civilization adds to the mix is the notion of women as property and monogamy as prized for the male line to continue. Even for those women who praise fidelity and monogamy, civilized sexual culture is repressive, and there was a time when women were literally placed into chastity belts. Today those belts are still around as morality and guilt.
Since monogamy is endorsed by religious texts and since people do see a logic in it, you will find very strong defenders of it. Because of the fear that society will collapse if certain behaviors aren’t repressed, sexual “deviance” is repressed often by law. But all of this is cultural and can change. Biology is harder to erase but culture can do a very good job of it and most people follow suit. It’s difficult for people to awaken from cultural hypnosis and see their entire society critically from the outside.
Sorry double post!
I just ordered Sex at Dawn online. It arrives in 2 days, and I look forward to reading it and letting you know my favorite parts. (Which I expect to be a lot of it.)
All you people arguing for monogamy and bashing Dan are a bunch of morons. HE IS NOT PASSING JUDGEMENT ON YOU, YOU DUMB FUCKS. I AM. He’s said it on sooooooo many occasions that you being monogamous is just peachy keen by him. It’s just that he wants to make sure people who struggle with it don’t feel helpless. For fuck’s sake, stop misinterpreting everything.
I second 150’s recommendation of Robin Baker’s Sperm Wars — there’s a Wikipedia entry for it, if you want a summary of its strengths and weakenesses.
Some parts I liked about Sperm Wars were (roughly, as I can’t lay hand on my copy right now)
– Baker’s observation (which I paraphrase wildly) that the secret unspoken meaning of hetero pornography is that straight men like watching women having sex because in the back of their minds is the thought that Whoopee, maybe I’ll be next!! Cf The number of MMF threesomes in porn movies, especially European porn.
– Baker’s report of the sexual habits of young women, based mainly I think on studies of English women: How many women have had sex with more than one man in 24 hours? Most of them. In 12 hours? Not nearly so many. In 30 minutes? Even fewer, but still more than you might expect. Who’d have thought English women would be so horny?
I don’t believe Dan is being prescriptive about polyamory or whatever you want to call it, or about monogamy. Isn’t his point (as usual) that we shouldn’t be surprised or judgmental about what people may get up to, as long as it’s done honestly, with openness and informed consent?
By the way, I notice a few comments mentioning that ‘survival of the fittest’ meme, which in North America is usually read with a frontier-sy “nature red in tooth and claw” slant. In other parts of the world it’s mostly taken to mean that those best fitted to reproduce will survive. Fecundity rules.
I think Dan and the monogamy proponents are taking about two different kinds of “unnatural”. I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but if our goal as living things is to reproduce, monogamy is not the best way to do this. Thus biologically, monogamy is “unnatural”. Clearly, this ignores other factors as in keeping the offspring alive, etc and does not mean that monogamy is not socially, culturally, personally, or sexually “natural” for some people. To say that this (possible) biological naturalness translates to other kinds of naturalness is a leap i am not willing to make, yet the fact remains that other people find monogamy “unnatural” in all ways. Live and let live, people.
What I don’t intend to let live is the notion of embattled monogamy. Yes, Dan is out to get you. No, I do not agree with you. But as a 21 year old female, my experience is that the culture (as in Time Magazine, The New York Times, Fox News on Taylor Momsen as presented by Dan in his August 5th column, the book “Unhooked”, everyone’s reaction to Miley Cyrus) has nothing better to do of late than to yell at me and women and girls my age and younger to be less promiscuous and sexual, basically to toe the monogamy party line.
#15 does a strange thing, she proves that she Knows Dan’s comment is true and then argues the opposite. If she tried “dating other people” back in the beginning of her present relationship and discovered it didn’t work then, it stands to reason that she is one of the people who ‘struggled’ with the concept. In the end her ‘struggle’ led to choosing monogamy; other people might make a different choice. I didn’t read the article as saying monogamy was ‘good’ or ‘bad’, just difficult for some people to adhere to, and it posited a reason.
Thirty years ago I’d not even heard of the word ‘polyamory’. “Free Love” seemed a flaky and amorphous term, to me. I tried being honest, but I wasn’t as honest with myself as I ultimately needed to be, and fell into a sort of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ limbo which wasn’t fair to anyone involved and has led to corrosiveness and fallout, which I am still contending with to this day. This concept is a thunderbolt for me, wish I’d been aware of it much sooner in my life; I look forward to reading the book.
“Sexuality is by nature fluid; sexuality is a force that, by nature, violates boundaries and breaks barriers” — awesome comment #84.
Dan would be happy to know I’m about 40 pages into ‘Sex at Dawn’ and loving it!
I do see the POV of the people arguing against psychological evolution. Way back years ago in, oh 1986, psych evo was known as sociobiology and some nasty misogynists at Stanford used it to explain away all manner of inhuman behavior, especially rape, which they said was ‘adaptive’. (A good percentage of rape survivors are children, elderly women and men — how is the rapist engaging in ‘adaptive’ behavior???)
At any rate, I’m really liking the book and it’s damn interesting.
OK I have realized many years past that I am a freak, a sport, a non-typical mess.
So tell me where the hell do I fit in? I only like sex in relationships, I like sex more, the longer the relationship goes on, I am a large, masculine guy. What is wrong that I can’t enjoy or even approach sex on the side. I get plenty of offers.
My ex wife, oddly enough, and this is a long story has had 100’s of partners. My daughter was a virgin when she maried, even though she and her spouse had lived together for months. Makes me think there is more to the storey.
It’s odd how defensive everyone seems to get when monogamy is questioned or challenged. If you’re going to pooh pooh this book’s theories that’s fine but you’re still left with some big problems that need explaining. Why the high rates of divorce and adultery? Why all the sexless long term relationships? Why all the people sneaking off to view internet porn in the basement? If you’re going to slam the author’s findings it doesn’t let you off the hook from explaining the source of these “flaws” in the monogamous lifestyle.
I’m never struggled with monogamy Dan Savage. I’ve struggled with not struggling with monogamy, but sure as hell haven’t struggled with it.
I remember when I thought I could never be faithful to one man. Then I found one with whom I was actually sexually compatible. I’d had over 100 guys by then and really thought I was the shit and knew everything about sex. Boy was I wrong. I was all rah rah rah in the poly camp too. Going to McDonalds Burger King and Wendy’s doesn’t substitute for stepping it up a notch and going to a one of a kind steak house where it’s done right. Not saying that’s everyone’s problem, but considering the overwhelming majority of hetero men (especially under the age of 30 I’d put the percent in the high 90s) are absolutely fucking awful in bed, well, I don’t think we can just throw our hands up “poly poly oxen free!” just yet on this young 24 year old.
And yes I do firmly totally and strongly believe high divorce rates and sexless marriages are mostly due to people in denial about their sexual compatibility and having no fucking idea what good sex is before they get married.