Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality (42 page)

Medical

Association

declared,

in

1972,

“Masturbation is a normal part of adolescent sexual development and requires no medical management.” But still, the war continues. As recently as 1994, pediatrician Joycelyn Elders was forced from her post as Surgeon General of the United States for simply asserting that masturbation “is part of human sexuality.” The suffering caused by centuries of war on masturbation is beyond calculation. But this we know: all the suffering, every bit of it, was for nothing.
Absolutely
nothing.

John Harvey Kellogg, Anthony Comstock, and Sylvester Graham (inventor of Graham crackers—like corn flakes, a food specifically designed to discourage masturbation) were extreme in their grim campaigns against eroticism, but they weren’t considered particularly eccentric at the time.16 Recall that Darwin probably had had little or no personal sexual experience when he married his first cousin a month before his thirtieth birthday, and that Sigmund Freud—the other towering giant of nineteenth-century sexual theory—was a self-proclaimed thirty-year-old virgin when he married in 1886. No wonder Freud was hesitant sexually. According to biographer Ernest Jones, Freud’s father had threatened to cut off young Sigmund’s penis if he didn’t stop his obsessive masturbating.17

The Curse of Calvin Coolidge

Last time I tried to make love to my wife nothing was
happening. So I said to her, “What’s the matter, you can’t
think of anybody either?”

RODNEY DANGERFIELD

Men don’t care what’s on TV. They only care what
else
is on
TV.

JERRY SEINFELD

There’s a story about President Calvin Coolidge and a chicken farm every evolutionary psychologist knows by heart.

It goes like this: The president and his wife were visiting a commercial chicken farm in the 1920s. During the tour, the first lady asked the farmer how he managed to produce so many fertile eggs with only a few roosters. The farmer proudly explained that his roosters happily performed their duty dozens of times each day. “Perhaps you could mention that to the president,” replied the first lady. Overhearing the remark, President Coolidge asked the farmer, “Does each cock service the same hen each time?” “Oh no,” replied the farmer, “he always changes from one hen to another.” “I see,” replied the president. “Perhaps you could point that out to Mrs. Coolidge.”

Whether the story is historically factual or not, the invigorating effect of a variety of sexual partners has become known as “the Coolidge effect.” While there’s little doubt that the females of some primate species (including our own) are also intrigued by sexual novelty, the underlying mechanism appears to be different for them. Thus the Coolidge effect generally refers to male mammals, where it’s been documented in many species.18

But that doesn’t mean women’s only motivation for sex is relational, as is often argued. Psychologists Joey Sprague and David Quadagno surveyed women from twenty-two to fifty-seven years of age and found that among those under thirty-five, 61 percent of the women said their primary motivation for sex was emotional, rather than physical. But among those
over
thirty-five, only 38 percent claimed their emotional motivations were stronger than the physical hunger for contact.19 At face value, such results suggest women’s motivations change with age. Or one could also argue that this effect could simply reflect women becoming less apologetic as they mature.

First-time travelers to Istanbul, Bali, Gambia, Thailand, or Jamaica may be surprised to see thousands of middle-aged women from Europe and the United States who flock to these places in search of no-strings sexual attention. An estimated eighty thousand women fly to Jamaica looking to “Rent a Rasta” every year.20 The number of female Japanese visitors to the Thai island resort Phuket jumped from fewer than four thousand in 1990 to ten times that just four years later, outnumbering male Japanese tourists significantly. Chartered jets carrying nothing but Japanese women land in Bangkok every week, if not daily.

In her book
Romance on the Road,
Jeannette Belliveau catalogs dozens of destinations frequented by such women.

That this sort of behavior would seem unbelievable and embarrassing to most of the young American women filling out questionnaires for their psychology professors is both result and cause of a more general scientific and cultural blindness to the true contours of female sexuality.

Of course, there are plenty of men looking for sexual variety on the beaches of Thailand as well, but since that just supports the standard narrative, it seems unimportant. Until it is.

That tiger ain’t go crazy; that tiger went tiger! You know
when he was really crazy? When he was riding around on a
unicycle with a Hitler helmet on!

CHRIS ROCK,
talking about a circus tiger that attacked a
trainer

By temperament, which is the real law of God, many men are
goats and can’t help committing adultery when they get a
chance; whereas there are numbers of men who, by
temperament, can keep their purity and let an opportunity go
by if the woman lacks in attractiveness.

MARK TWAIN,
Letters from the Earth

A man we know—we’ll call him Phil—could be considered a living icon of male achievement.* In his early forties, handsome, he’s been married to Helen, a gorgeous, accomplished physician, for almost twenty years. They have three brilliant, beautiful daughters. Phil and a friend started a small software business in their late twenties and now, fifteen years later, they’ve both got more money than they’ll ever be able to spend. Until recently, Phil lived in a big, beautiful house on a hill overlooking a wooded valley. But Phil’s life was, as he puts it, “a disaster waiting to happen.” Disaster struck when Helen discovered the affair he’d been having with a work colleague. Unsurprisingly, she felt deeply betrayed and expressed her outrage by locking him out of the house, refusing even to let him see their children until the lawyers had finished their dismal task. Phil’s seemingly perfect life came crashing down around him.

Comedian Chris Rock said, “A man is basically as faithful as his options.” Phil’s professional success, good looks, and charming personality generated a constant stream of sexual opportunity. Many male readers are probably thinking,
“Of
course
he was sleeping with another woman—or two! Come on!” But if you’re a woman, you may be thinking,
“Of course
his wife and daughters locked the pig out!” Is there any way to reconcile these two opposed perspectives on this all-too-common situation? What could possibly motivate so many men who are otherwise demonstrably intelligent, loving, and cautious to risk so much for so little?

Everything from the respect of their friends to the love of their children can be lost in the quest for something as transitory and ultimately meaningless as a casual sexual encounter. What are they thinking? We asked Phil.

“At first,” he said, “the sex was fantastic. I hadn’t felt so alive in years. I thought I was in love with Monica [the other woman]. When I was with her, it was like everything was
stronger,
you know? Food tasted better, colors were richer, I had
so
much more energy. I felt high all the time.” When we asked if the sex he had with Monica was better than it had been with Helen, Phil paused for a long moment.

“Actually,” he admitted, “now that I think about it, sex with Helen was much better—the best I’ve ever had, really—at the beginning, you know, those first few years. I mean, with Helen it was never
just
sex. We both knew we wanted to spend our lives together, so there was a depth and, and, well, a
love
and spiritual connection I’ve never had with anyone else…. Even though Helen says she hates me now, I honestly believe we’ll always have that connection—even if she won’t admit it.”

So what happened? “Over the years … you know how it is …

the passion faded and our relationship changed. We became
friends
… best friends, but still … siblings, almost. It’s not her fault. I know this is all my fault, but what can I do?” His eyes tearing up, he said, “It felt like a life-or-death situation. I wanted to feel alive again. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but that’s how it felt.”

Phil is at a prime age for the so-called
midlife crisis
that seems to hit many men around this stage of their lives.

Explanations are easy to come by, ranging from economics (he finally has enough money and status to be attractive to the sort of sexy young women who had ignored him previously) to existential dread (he’s coming to terms with his own mortality by lashing out symbolically against his own impending aging and death) to the wife’s life cycle (she’s nearing menopause, so he’s biologically driven toward the fertility of younger women). Each of these may have some measure of truth, but none answers the most pressing question: Why do men have such overwhelming hunger for variety in their sexual partners—not just at midlife, but always?

If the ghost of Calvin Coolidge weren’t haunting him, a man would simply buy a DVD or two of his favorite porn actress and watch it over and over the rest of his life. Knowing how the movie ends is hardly going to ruin the experience for him.

No, what makes heterosexual men seek a constant stream of
different
women doing the
same
old things is the Coolidge effect. If you’ve never been to a porn gateway website, you’ll be astounded by the variety and specificity of the offerings there: everything from “unshaved Japanese lesbians” to

“tattooed redheads” to “overweight older gals.” It’s a simple, unavoidable truth almost everyone knows to be true but few dare to discuss: variety and change are the necessary spice of the sex life of the human male.

But an intellectual understanding of this aspect of most men’s inner reality doesn’t make accepting it any easier for many women. Writer and film director Nora Ephron has explored these issues in many of her films, including
Heartburn,
which was based on her own failed marriage. In a 2009 interview she explained how raising two sons had informed her view of men: “Boys are so sweet,” she said. “But the problem with men is not whether they’re nice or not. It’s that it’s hard for them at a certain point in their lives to stay true. It just is. It’s almost not their fault.” But then she added, “It
feels
like it’s their fault if you are involved with any of them.”21

The Perils of Monotomy (Monogamy +

Monotony)

The prerequisite for a good marriage, it seems to me, is the
license to be unfaithful.

CARL JUNG,
in a letter to Freud dated January 30, 1910

Remember what Phil said about how sex with his wife had grown overly familiar, how he’d come to feel he and Helen were “siblings, almost”? Interesting word choice. The strongest explanation for the prevalence and intensity of the Coolidge effect among social mammals is that the male drive for sexual variety is evolution’s way of avoiding incest. Our species evolved on a sparsely populated planet—never more than a few million and probably fewer than 100,000 of us on Earth for most of our evolutionary past. To avoid the genetic stagnation that would have dragged our ancestors into extinction long ago, males evolved a strong appetite for sexual novelty and a robust aversion to the overly familiar.

While this carrot-and-stick mechanism worked well to promote genetic diversity in the prehistoric environment, it’s causing lots of problems now. When a couple have been living together for years, when they’ve become
family,
this ancient anti-incest mechanism can effectively block eroticism for many men, leading to confusion and hurt feelings all around.22

Earlier, we discussed how men’s testosterone levels recede over the years, but it’s not just the passing of time that brings these levels down: monogamy itself seems to drain away a man’s testosterone. Married men consistently show lower levels of the hormone than single men of the same age; fathers of young children, even less. Men who are particularly responsive to infants show declines of 30 percent or more right after their child is born. Married men having affairs, however, were found to have higher testosterone levels than those who weren’t.23 Additionally, most of the men having affairs have told researchers they were actually quite happy in their marriages, while only one-third of women having affairs felt that way.24

Of course, sharp-thinking readers will point out that these correlations don’t imply causation: maybe men with higher levels of testosterone simply seek more affairs. Probably so, but there is good reason to believe that even casual contact with novel, attractive women can have a tonic effect on men’s hormonal health. In fact, researcher James Roney and his colleagues found that even a brief chat with an attractive woman raised men’s testosterone levels by an average of 14

percent. When these same men spent a few minutes talking with other men, their testosterone level fell by 2 percent.25

In the 1960s, anthropologist William Davenport lived among a group of Melanesian islanders who regarded sex as natural and uncomplicated. All the women claimed to be highly orgasmic, with most reporting several orgasms to each of her partner’s one. Nevertheless, reported Davenport, “it is assumed that after a few years of marriage, the husband’s interest in his wife will begin to pale.” Until the recent imposition of colonial laws stopped the practice, these Melanesians avoided monotomy by allowing married men to have young lovers. Rather than being jealous of these concubines, wives regarded them as status symbols, and Davenport claimed that both men and women regarded the loss of this practice the worst result of contact with European culture. “Older men often comment today that without young women to excite them and without the variety once provided by changing concubines, they have become sexually inactive long before their time.”26

Closer to home, William Masters and Virginia Johnson reported that “loss of coital interest engendered by monotony in a sexual relationship is probably the most constant factor in the loss of an aging male’s interest in sexual performance with his partner.” They note that this loss of interest can frequently be reversed if the man has a younger lover—even if the lover is not as attractive or sexually skilled as the man’s wife. Kinsey concurred, writing, “There seems to be no question but that the human male would be promiscuous in his choice of sexual partners throughout the whole of his life if there were no social restrictions.”27