Thursday, November 15, 2012

Manly Thor's Day Special: Women's need for novelty

So I am sitting at the barbershop waiting for a shave and a haircut and I find a women's magazine in the rack. I begin to leaf through with the firm intention of reading it for the pictures and not the articles when I trip across an article by my old friend Alexandra Molotkow. As with all her stuff, there is clearly a deep intelligence at work along with some immaturity. I doubt I was much different at her age.

In any case, what really jumped out at me was some research she cited beginning with this sentence:
While men are stereotyped as the ones who tire of monogamy, research suggests it isn't so.
And she goes on to cite three separate studies showing that women actually are. I won't quote all three here (the article is in the December 2012 issue of Flare magazine beginning on page 134 if you want to read more) but here is one example:
In a 2012 University of Guelph study of people aged 18 to 25, female respondents reported that their desire dropped slightly—but steadily—for each month they stayed with a long term partner. (The men's interest remained largely unchanged.)
That result should not surprise us. Any man who has been in a long term relationship will have noticed that women unfailingly do this. There are a number of reasons why you might miss it though. The principal one is that when her interest dropped she probably blamed you and you probably believed her. You then made all sorts of efforts to improve things. You asked her what she wanted and tried to make the things she said she wanted happen.

More often than not, these things not only fail but actually make the problem worse for the simple reason that women feel uncomfortable talking about the things that make them hot (and therefore sexually vulnerable); they prefer to talk about the things that make them feel loved which is not the same thing at all.

No matter what, there is very little chance that you will succeed because the person who needs to succeed is her. And if she does make an effort she has to make an effort at sex not at closeness or "love"; those are results of the effort but the way to get there has to be making herself sexually excited (and, yes, vulnerable) so that you can make things happen for her. In the same way that one of you going out in the cold to walk the dog, cleaning the kitchen, paying the bills and so forth is a way of loving the other, her making extra efforts to get herself hot and bothered and ready for sex is a way of loving you.

The second reason why the above study might surprise us is, as Molotkow notes, that men are stereotypically believed to be the ones who tire of monogamy. The truth is, men never fully buy into monogamy in the first place and that can make it look like we "tire" of it. A man is looking at and thinking of sex with other women from day one of any relationship. The studies cited by Molotkow don't show that men don't tire of monogamy; they actually show that men never tire of their partners, which is quite a different thing. But if we could have five or six sex partners concurrently without moral condemnation and without losing the woman we love most, most of us would jump at the chance.

That we don't do this is part of the deal. Everyone wants love and commitment and getting love and commitment means not getting everything you want. As men, we control (well most of us do) our desire to pursue multiple partners in exchange for a relationship. Forsaking all others is a way of loving her and any woman worthy of being a woman should understand that this is not easy or natural for you and should see your efforts as something they should be grateful for rather than, as women often tend to do, as something they should be able take for granted.

Women, on the other hand, want novelty. It's not an accident that serial monogamy has risen with women acquiring greater freedoms in our culture. As I've said before, I know quite a few women who have fallen in love, lost interest in the sex, broken up, moved on to another guy and repeated the process until they ended up bitter and unhappy and single in their forties.

A while ago, I said that most men manage monogamy even though we are not predisposed towards it. Currently four out of five men remain faithful for the duration of their marriages. Some might argue that one out of five failing is still quite a lot and it is but we should also consider that that one in five will contain men who only slip up a little but otherwise manage.

Now all we need is for more women to grasp that if they want love and commitment they have to tame their tendency to seek a new partner or simply give up on sex when their interest wanes and to make extra efforts on the sex front. Quite a few already have figured this out. They have, after all, nothing to lose and quite a bit to gain in terms of pleasure, intimacy, trust and closeness if they do. Quite a few others, however, don't and they either move along or, more typically, give up on sex in their relationship.

Again, as I have mentioned before, I know all about this once having spent about a decade with a woman who didn't make the effort for the simple reason that she never saw it as her responsibility to do so. If you find yourself in a  similar situation, giver her a good chance to get it right but dump her if she doesn't.

If, however, she does make the effort, any man worthy of being a man will understand that this is not natural or easy for her and should see her efforts as something they should be grateful for rather than, as we often tend to do, as something we should be able to take for granted.

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