Marianne Brandon Ph.D.
The Future of Intimacy
SEX
The genders seem more alike than different, except when speaking about sex.
Source: Rocketclips, Inc./Shutterstock
Said no man, ever, in my therapy room. Similarly, I’ve never heard a man exclaim “Before we were married I loved receiving oral sex. But now I don’t enjoy my partner going down on me” or “I don’t really care if I ever have sex again.” Yet I hear comments like these regularly from distressed hetero women seeking help for their failing intimate relationship.
Here are comments I don’t hear from my female clients. “He has all kinds of rules for sex. I can’t touch his neck, and he doesn’t like foreplay. He wants to just get things moving,” or “I want to turn him on! But he says nothing I do feels good,” or “I wish he’d just let go and enjoy himself. He just lies there, practically lifeless, and expects me to get off.” The point is, in long-term committed relationships, men and women display different predispositions between the sheets.
When I began my sex therapy practice years ago, I didn’t believe there were noteworthy distinctions between men and women in the bedroom — it defied my understanding of human nature. But that was before I started talking with people about the most intimate aspects of their lives.
When people are paying top dollar for a 45-minute conversation with a specialist, and taking time away from their crazy-busy schedules for this privilege, they get right to the point. The clients in my practice are primarily hetero couples in long-term relationships who want better sex lives. For them, sexual satisfaction is a critical piece of relationship satisfaction, and their relationship helps give their lives meaning and purpose. So there’s typically much more at stake than just good sex for most of the couples I work with. And we talk about things that you probably don’t even discuss with your best friend.
What I have come to understand, after having literally thousands of these kinds of discussions over the years, is that the genders are more alike than different… except in the bedroom. And even there, we all share some basic needs. We all want to feel loved, wanted, appreciated, and desired. We want to feel like skilled lovers, that we are capable of giving our partner pleasure. When we reach for our partner, we want them to receive our advances with open arms. All this is true for all of us… and we have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to exhibit some basic sexual differences. Ignoring this science creates extraordinary distress in romantic relationships today.
The bottom line: you and I are here because our ancestors successfully reproduced. The skills that increased their odds of reproducing are thus coded in human DNA. Because males have essentially unlimited access to sperm, the men who were less particular sexually reproduced more. Alternately, males who were sexually finicky or particular didn’t reproduce, and thus their qualities are not passed on in our DNA. The more sexually discriminant a man was, the less offspring he’d generate. And the opposite is true for women.
Our female ancestors produced more offspring when they were finicky. That’s because a woman had perhaps 8 chances to pass on her DNA, as she’s unlikely to use more than 8 eggs in her lifetime. Thus, she has to be pretty particular with all things sexual in order to increase her odds of successful procreation.
Think of it this way — you are hungry, and you need food. If you had unlimited seeds to plant a vegetable garden, you would use very different gardening strategies than if you were limited to only 8 seeds.
These tendencies have become part of our inherited sexual psychology. They aren’t under our conscious control. The fact that such strategies are less relevant to humans in 2021 has nothing to do with the fact that they remain a part of our sexual instincts and still play out in our bedrooms. They’ve helped me to understand the gender differences I’m regularly confronted with in my therapy room — women’s more particular sexual tendencies, and men’s less particular style. Most importantly, understanding these dynamics has helped my clients create the satisfying sexual relationships they long for.
Yet these evolutionary tendencies are frequently ridiculed and denied by well-meaning people who feel that acknowledging our evolutionary heritage can be restrictive or reductionistic. However, I witness the opposite impact. Acknowledging our biological heritage frees women to embrace aspects of their sexual experience that confuse and distress them.
Unarmed with this information, women believe they should feel and behave sexually in some way that’s inauthentic for them, and they go to one of two toxic places. Not understanding the evolutionary influence on our sexual instincts, she risks blaming herself, feeling ashamed about her own sexuality. Alternately, she blames her partner, concluding that he’s a substandard lover. She expresses fears that she’s not “meant to be” with her partner sexually, the effects of which can be literally devastating for a couple who have an otherwise solid partnership. Oftentimes, they stop touching completely, since touch signifies a willingness to be intimate. It’s not just sexual satisfaction that is lost — so, too, is relationship satisfaction, and even life satisfaction.
The conversation in my therapy room often goes something like this. I’ll say, “You know, I hear stories like this all the time. For reasons that have to do with our evolutionary heritage, women tend to be more finicky in bed. These tendencies are less obvious when romances are new, and passion is high. They become more obvious as a relationship ages and that lusty feeling that tends to accompany a new relationship dies down. To further aggravate the situation, women are evolutionarily programmed with a stronger disgust response (a topic for a different blog). As lust diminishes, but her disgust level remains stable, things that used to turn her on may now more likely to turn her off. Since men aren’t evolutionarily predisposed to be sexually finicky, they tend to not experience the same challenges. Neither approach is superior, they are simply different. The fact that these differences exist is not a problem — the problem lies when we make value judgments about one style being better or preferable”.
This explanation is often met with silence, shock, and a palpable sense of relief. Knowing that there is a biological explanation helps some people release shame, blame, and whatever other toxic emotions have come along for the ride. It helps partners become part of the same sexual team again, more able to identify compromises and strategies that enhance their mutual sexual satisfaction.
We are primates. Our primal heritage impacts our sexual experience, whether or not we are consciously aware of it. Understanding our evolutionary biology only empowers us to create the satisfying intimate relationships we desire.
To find a therapist, please visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.
