• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Women Struggle with Monogamy More Than Men

Status
Not open for further replies.
D

Devolution

Member
Slate said:
Since its beginnings, when it was called "sociobiology," evolutionary psychology has been wed to the theory that women are monogamous and men are promiscuous—that men have a compunction to spread their seed while women instinctually want to lock some guy down to raise her children. Feminist attempts to create sexual equality between men and women were doomed to fail, because they went against biology. Shrugging was encouraged, and the term "hard-wired" was mandatory.

But now the evidence is beginning to trickle in, and one sticky fact has thrown this entire theory into jeopardy: It's women and not men who get bored with monogamy faster. As Daniel Bergner writes in the New York Times, women are far more likely to lose interest in sex with their partners. This doesn’t necessarily translate into infidelity—a choice many reject because it’s so hurtful—but, Bergner reports, spouse-weary women often just avoid sex altogether.

Add to that the study Bergner cites showing women respond to novelty in pornographic fantasies, and another showing that women are much more turned on by fantasies of sex with strangers than friends. You’d be forgiven for concluding that the gender most interested in mixing it up might be…women.

What's really fascinating is that with this shift in understanding comes a profound shift in how we as a society are deciding to respond. There will be no shrugging of the shoulders and tossing around the word "hard-wired" to rationalize women disappointing male expectations of passionate monogamous sex. Instead, as Bergner writes, a ton of money is being spent on developing a drug women can take to restore their desire for their husbands. The drug, called Lybrido, is in clinical trials now with the hope of writing an FDA application by the end of the year.

Bergner also implies that women’s declining interest in monogamous sex is socially, not biologically, inflected. Since women receive messages “that sexual desire and expression are not necessarily positive,” he suggests, they tend to require additional stimuli—such as novelty—to get them in the mood. The implication? If we can normalize female desire in society at large, we can presumably encourage women to continue lusting after their partners.
Click to expand...

NYT said:
Beckoned by ads on the radio and in newspapers and on Craigslist, in the fall of 2011 women across America began applying to be among the 420 subjects in the Lybrido and Lybridos studies. Plenty were turned away when the trials filled. Lack of lust, when it creates emotional distress, meets the psychiatric profession’s clinical criteria for H.S.D.D., or hypoactive sexual-desire disorder. Researchers have set its prevalence among women between the ages of about 20 and 60 at between 10 and 15 percent. When you count the women who don’t quite meet the elaborate clinical threshold, the rate rises to around 30 percent. For a minor fraction of all the sexually indifferent (or repelled), the condition has been lifelong, regardless of whom they’re with or how long they’ve been with them. For middle-aged or older women, menopause and its aftermath may play a role, though its importance is much debated. For a sizable segment of the undesiring, the most common antidepressants, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, can be the culprit. Millions of American women are on S.S.R.I.'s, and many of them would have good use for a pill to revive the libido that has been chemically dulled as a side effect of the pill they take to buoy their mood.

But for many women, the cause of their sexual malaise appears to be monogamy itself. It is women much more than men who have H.S.D.D., who don’t feel heat for their steady partners. Evolutionary psychologists argue that this comes down to innate biology, that men are just made with stronger sex drives — so men will settle for the woman who’s always near. But the evidence for an inborn disparity in sexual motivation is debatable. A meta-analysis done by the psychologists Janet Hyde and Jennifer L. Petersen at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, incorporates more than 800 studies conducted between 1993 and 2007. It suggests that the very statistics evolutionary psychologists use to prove innate difference — like number of sexual partners or rates of masturbation — are heavily influenced by culture. All scientists really know is that the disparity in desire exists, at least after a relationship has lasted a while.

Dietrich Klusmann, a psychologist at the University of Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany, has provided a glimpse into the bedrooms of longtime couples. His surveys, involving a total of almost 2,500 subjects, comprise one of the few systematic comparisons of female and male desire at progressive stages of committed relationships. He shows women and men in new relationships reporting, on average, more or less equal lust for each other. But for women who’ve been with their partners between one and four years, a dive begins — and continues, leaving male desire far higher. (Within this plunge, there is a notable pattern: over time, women who don’t live with their partners retain their desire much more than women who do.)
Click to expand...

Slate Article
NYT Article
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
I wouldn't say that all evolutionary psychology was "wedded" to the idea that Men cheat more than Women.

I would characterize the angle of books like "The Myth of Monogamy" as looking to our evolutionary past to explain how we behave today (call it "evopsych" or not) ... And it posited that males and females of all species cheat on each other on the reg.

Only a scant few species appear to pair bond for life, and even then, paternity tests revealed that it was often a public ruse.
 
K

Karkador

Banned
But for women who’ve been with their partners between one and four years, a dive begins — and continues, leaving male desire far higher. (Within this plunge, there is a notable pattern: over time, women who don’t live with their partners retain their desire much more than women who do.)
Click to expand...

That's a really interesting find.

....but it's just that women are hard-wired to get bored and look for new dick because she knows that taller, wealthier, alpha-er men exist in the world and her nest of babies could be getting better care. When she lives apart from her partner, she forgets exactly how tall he is and doesn't see his bank statement on a regular basis.
 
A

akira28

Member
hrm...yep
there were a few enclaves that fixed this, by allowing the married men and women to sexually educate the young men and women of their communities.

As bored as men get, women get bored too? Makes sense.

and what they do to fix that boredom...
 
O

Oersted

Member
Everytime I go on facebook, I see way more women breaking up with their friend, and way more men basically begging for the relationship than women. Thats my anecdotal evidence.
 
S

ShadyLurker

Member
So women are more likely to want to cheat, but men are more likely to actually do it? That seems accurate from personal experiences.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Devolution said:
Well the conventional wisdom was that women were just nonsexual creatures especially after becoming mothers.
Click to expand...
That's definitely not a memo I ever got, but I suppose it could have been a Victorian era thing.
 
A

akira28

Member
ShadyLurker said:
So women are more likely to want to cheat, but men are more likely to actually do it? That seems accurate from personal experiences.
Click to expand...

No, both are still likely to do it. But both do it in different ways, have different opportunities, different consequences, different exit actions, etc. Someone should do a study.
 
H

Henchmen21

Banned
Devolution said:
Well the conventional wisdom was that women were just nonsexual creatures especially after becoming mothers.
Click to expand...

The Slate article you quoted though doesn't refute that. It even states:

This doesn’t necessarily translate into infidelity—a choice many reject because it’s so hurtful—but, Bergner reports, spouse-weary women often just avoid sex altogether.
Click to expand...
 
J

jaxword

Member
Karkador said:
That's a really interesting find.

....but it's just that women are hard-wired to get bored and look for new dick because she knows that taller, wealthier, alpha-er men exist in the world and her nest of babies could be getting better care. When she lives apart from her partner, she forgets exactly how tall he is and doesn't see his bank statement on a regular basis.
Click to expand...

tumblr_mmv7u6tcGX1rjledmo1_500.gif
 
P

Piecake

Member
The whole idea that men are more biologically wired to fool around than women probably comes from our patriarchical culture since it is/was simply more acceptable for a man to sleep around or have a mistress than a woman, and a lot less consequences if they were caught
 
C

ClassyPenguin

Banned
Are they defining monogamy as in marriage or as a whole?

Like let's say, a woman who on the average her relationships last 4 or so years, would that count as normative according to these studies?
 
W

wenis

Registered for GAF on September 11, 2001.
And the moral of the story is that nature will make sure you're never happy and you'll die alone.

Good nite!
 
I

Imbarkus

As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
If one struggles, both struggle.

"Who cheats more?" isn't all that relevant compared to "how many relationships wind up unfaithful, and why?"
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Piecake said:
The whole idea that men are more biologically wired to fool around than women probably comes from our patriarchical culture since it is/was simply more acceptable for a man to sleep around or have a mistress than a woman, and a lot less consequences if they were caught
Click to expand...
Absolutely.

It's one thing for a man to cheat.. But his legal property? Nu uh.
 
C

ClassyPenguin

Banned
"by the paradox that one of the problems this medication might be addressing is the desire-killing side effect of yet another type of psychotropic chemical, the S.S.R.I.'s."

I really hate how the media writes about anti-depressants. Sure, the most common effects of SSRI's is wight gain and loss of sexual drive. It's like the early days of chemotherapy, where it was just a blanket "carpet bomb" sort of thing. The current gen of anti-depressants are still not as effective as scientists and doctors would like them to be. SSRI's target serotonin, while others target dopamine. Some people with sexual dysfunction side effects are given a combination of those two.

One aspect is we are not not entirely clear of the mechanisms of brain chemistry. They have the best efficacy in people who are severely depressed and that's why a lot of psychiatrist say that they are over-prescribed. It's way easier for a doctor who has to see multiple patients per day (our wonderful health system!) to prescribe a pill or so without even doing a referral to a psychiatrist and combined with a psychotherapist.

They aren't magic happy pills. They don't make you into a zombie, they don't make you feel "nothing", though ti varies from patient to patient.

Think of your moods as waves. In a depressed or bi-polar person those waves can be rough, huge swells and what is "normal" for that person might be depressed but with periods of some happiness and lots of downward troughs. Anti-depressants smooths those waves out. Makes you less prone to attacks of severe depression.


Not entirely on topic, but it always tricks a nerve on how ignorant people are of these things.
 
H

hateradio

The Most Dangerous Yes Man
Evolutionary biology . . . gross.


Struggling with monogamy is something that I don't do, but I think it always comes down to options and satisfaction.
 
M

Mumei

Member
Subitai said:
Could have fooled me.

Wait, how do you know?
Click to expand...

I have read his posts in other topics and so when he said something that is the exact opposite of the positions that he normally argues, I presume that he is being sarcastic. I also think that the sillier choices in phrasing ("alpha-er" and "nest of babies" and so forth) were something of a giveaway, though I might have wondered if it was serious if it were someone I didn't know.
 
R

RDreamer

Member
I've seen studies and things saying that men and women hit their sex drive peaks at different times. Usually they say men are in their early 20s and women in their 30s to even as old as 40. Could this have something to do with it, also? I'm talking a small part, anyway. I don't particularly think monogamy on a long-term scale like we humans do now is really all that natural for either gender.
 
Z

ZaCH3000

Member
There are a lot of couples that force their significant other to participate in activities that they absolutely don't want any part of. It happens a lot with my friend with one side dominating the other side. Of course they don't work out in the end.

The best advice a therapist could give them is spend some time apart. Enjoy the activities you like doing without the other person being there. Let them enjoy the things they like to enjoy while you are out enjoying the things you enjoy.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Is Mode One an effective dating strategy for men?
2
65
5K
West Texas CEO replied
[Reuters] More than a billion people worldwide are obese, WHO study finds
News 2 3
125
4K
Mistake replied
Incels need more mental health help, community is younger, more diverse and left leaning than previously thought
2 3
117
7K
nush replied
Vince McMahon / Brock Lesner Accused of Sex Trafficking and other weird shit
2 3
149
15K
Grildon Tundy replied
  • Locked
World Athletics bans transgender women from competing with other women
42
2K
Maiden Voyage replied
Top Bottom