782 Sex and Love, Lust and Infidelity with Wednesday Martin
10 Apr 2019 · 94 min
This is a podcast episode titled "782 Sex and Love, Lust and Infidelity with Wednesday Martin," recorded in April 2019. It features a conversation between Lewis Howes (Lewis AI) and Wednesday Martin, a New York Times bestselling author and cultural critic. The discussion explores topics related to female sexuality, monogamy, non-monogamy, infidelity, and the social and evolutionary factors influencing sexual behavior. The episode also includes personal insights, scientific research, and cultural commentary aimed at understanding and potentially reshaping perspectives on relationships and sexual health.
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This is episode number 782 with number one New York Times best-selling author, Wednesday Martin. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Tan France said sexuality can be difficult to articulate and we have to be patient and compassionate. This episode is all about a lot of interesting things. We're talking about sex and love, lust and infidelity and why nearly everything we believe about women is wrong and how the new science can set us free. Interesting and controversial topic that some people may love to learn about and other people may not like at all. We've got Wednesday Martin, who is a number one New York Times bestselling author and cultural critic who writes and serves as a commentator on topics like parenting, step parenting, female sexuality, motherhood, and popular culture. She's the author of a number of books and she's got a new book out called Untrue. this has been amazing. All the new science that can set us free. We talk about the importance of sexual health. We discuss monogamy and why it is the accepted standard in North America. We talk about why the plow was the worst thing that ever happened for both men and women. This is actually pretty fascinating. Why parents should start teaching sex education to their children earlier and so much more about love and sex, multiple partners, monogamy, polygamy, and all these things that people are always questioning about these days in the new generation of love and marriage and open relationships and everything else. I'm excited for you to learn about this. Maybe it'll help you in your relationship journey. Maybe it'll help you in your marriage. Maybe it'll help you discover a new path for you or to reaffirm some things you already felt were true for your own beliefs in your relationships and love life. This podcast is sponsored by Northwestern Mutual. Everyone wants to feel good about their finances.
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High five.
You're in LA from New York.
Yes.
And I thought I would just ask a question off the start.
Oh, wow.
That is gonna get every woman mad.
Great. That's my brand.
Right? It is. So the first question that I thought would be interesting is why do a lot of women cheat?
Because we can.
Because we can.
Yeah, exactly. It's the same reason a lot of men cheat. A lot of times we now know it's about opportunity. And so there are certain factors that go into a woman, making the decision to kind of go against the social convention, right? The social convention is what's acceptable. Monogamy is easier for women. The social convention is this belief that we have lower libidos and that we seek connection, not sex, right? That's sort of the cultural script. It takes a lot to be female and to go against the social script that cheating is bad or being non-monogamous is bad, and then to go after this other gendered social script that says women don't want extra pair sexuality. So I think of women who step out openly or on the DL as kind of double renegades. I'm not there to judge them. I'm there to look at how they're crossing certain lines and what motivates them to do that. And one of the things that motivates them to do that is sexual desire.
Just like men have, too.
That's right.
Lots of sexual desire for all genders.
We've said all the time for decades, Book Untrue is about taking apart bad science and social science about female sexuality, which the flip side of that is that it's bad science and social science about male sexuality, right? So we have been really comfortable for a long time saying, well, women cheat for emotional reasons, and men cheat, I don't even like these terms, for sex because men are dogs and they're more highly sexed and monogamy is harder for them.
Right.
We've thought that testosterone and androgen were the main drivers of sexual desire. We're finding out that all that's untrue. But what's really fascinating when you talk to 31 experts like I did is that they tell you, many of them, male and female motivations for extra pair involvement. I'm going to call it that.
Extra pair involvement.
To sound judgy. Extra pair sex, right?
Sleeping with someone else than your partner.
Sleeping with somebody else. When you're in an-- When you're supposed.
To be in monogamous.
When you're in assumed monogamous relationship, the motivations are very similar. Many men are out there, they think that they've been told that they're dogs and they just want sex, but many men are having extra paired involvements because they want emotional connection and many women are doing it just for the sex. So we can't just have this simple binary about motivation. Okay, here's the other side.
Some women are doing it for the emotional connection, but some women are doing it for the sex.
That's right.
Just like some men are doing it for sex or because they're lacking emotional connection with their partner and they want to feel that.
So the data are telling us that motivations to step out or to say I want to be openly non-monogamous tend to be pretty similar between men and women. So, you know, that was a surprise to a lot of people to see that. Now here's another thing. When I said women refuse monogamy because they can, the other thing going on is it's a lot about a woman's circumstances. If you're a woman in a situation where you're completely economically dependent You're heterosexual, you're in a relationship with a guy. He has all the earning power. He pays the mortgage. Then you also have kids together. It's not just that you're dependent on him economically. You have economically dependent children, right? Now you see how the power relationship is in a heterosexual relationship like this. And you can see how the man would be the one to be emboldened maybe depending on his beliefs about monogamy. You can see how he might feel emboldened. There would be very few consequences since he controls the purse strings, although there might be hell to pay if his partner finds out, right? Now you can see how it's different for a woman who's economically dependent. Now let's imagine a woman who is large and in charge of her finances, has family money, has her owned, earned money. It's just gonna be easier for her a little bit to push that eject button on the monogamy contract in her head and in her relationship if she doesn't have to worry about getting kicked out of the house. If she has- yeah, exactly. So economics plays into it in a way. But a woman doesn't have to just be rich money-wise.
They wanna be non-monogamous.
Right. She could also just have a really great network of kin support. If her family is nearby, we know that Women tend to have more sexual autonomy. Really? Yes, if they have family nearby looking out for them.
Why? They just feel safer or feel like they have a fallback.
Yeah, worldwide, what we see is that where there are cultures where women are not monogamous, they have kin to rely on. So their husband gets mad, maybe tries to attack them physically even, their kin is nearby and has their back. and can tell them to back off, and then she can be in the family compound or be with her family and live with them for a while until she decides what her next move is. So women with different forms of security can be more sexually autonomous if we want to call deciding not to be monogamous a form of sexual autonomy. We also see that anywhere in the world where women have really high rates of political participation, They tend to have more sexual autonomy. Really? Yeah, so I like to say it's not just this like sensationalistic thing about female sexuality. Female sexuality ties into all these other forms of freedom. Wherever women are empowered politically and financially.
They're more open to have non-monogamous relationships.
You will see, they're more open to making their own choices, right? Yeah. It makes sense.
Some of them might be monogamous and choose to be that way.
Right. That's right.
But some of them aren't.
Yes, that's right. Women have true choice about their sexuality in contexts where they have control over their financial situation and they have kin support. And there are powerful female political leaders setting an example of autonomy. So it's funny, you know, I always say to people, how did the midterm elections affect women's sex lives in the United States? And the answer is, well, you know, if we get to the point where we have really powerful female political leaders, more Nancy Pelosi's, however you feel about Nancy Pelosi personally, I love her. If we have a female president, we will see women's sexual fates changing as well. It's all connected.
You think women will, I guess, cheat more or say, I want to be, you know, in more open relationships or, What do you think?
I think that when we see women, when we see lots of female CEOs, when we see lots of female powerful politicians, when we see women running countries, those are contexts where them having those positions of powers is sort of a symptom of gender equality, right? And the other manifestation of gender equality is usually having autonomy to make your own choices.
Why is monogamy looks, non-monogamy looked down upon so much in our society and in the world in general?
Well, the answer is that, and this is the great thing about the perspective of anthropology, right? What you do is you look at the worldwide, we call it the worldwide ethnographic data. And we say, how does this happen in other cultures? If you only looked at the United States, you would say, wow, non-monogamy is really dangerous for women because women who decide not to be monogamous experience heightened rates of domestic violence and even lethal violence.
If they choose to hide it.
If they choose to not be monogamous, whether they're hiding it or not, if they get found out.
If they get found out.
Women in this country put themselves at risk for domestic violence.
Because men just Don't know how to handle it. They get mad, they get protective, their ego, whatever.
That's right.
Their jealousy comes out.
Yeah, so...
They feel taken advantage, whatever they feel.
Yeah, and we're back now again to men having power. So when we're talking about why is monogamy stigmatized for women, it's because for a lot of women, a lot of women aren't in a position where they're privileged to say, you know what? I think I want to open up my relationship. A lot of women are with men who are more controlling than that, and monogamy is the safe, literally the physically safe decision for them to make. So that's one reason that non-monogamy is so stigmatized for women here. It's dangerous. But the other reason that monogamy in general is the way that we have chosen in this country.
As the most acceptable way.
As the most acceptable way. And I get into this in my book, wow, we're getting so wonky here. We're getting so wonky and academic, but I tie it as do many anthropologists, to the fact that our history, our recent history, is that we are a place that practiced plow agriculture. And everywhere around the world, you see that wherever there was plow agriculture.
Meaning plowing fields.
Plowing fields. Plowing fields of all the weird things, a plow, is the thing that set gender relations on the current sort of messed up course that they're on now. Hmm.
Why?
10 or 12,000 years ago, we went from being hunter-gatherers, right, where women were supplying their band. We lived in these rangy kind of community bands.
And women were- A tribe, like a-.
Yeah, you could say that. A lot of people don't like the word tribe, but we- Small community. Yeah, it's fine.
In the woods.
It's a useful term for a lot of people. So we lived in these rangy bands. And women supplied sometimes as much as 85 or 90% of the calories through gathering. Meat was this great thing that happened once in a while, but it wasn't totally predictable.
It was... Getting the berries, the nuts, the fruit, whatever.
That was the basic sustenance. And women provided it. That gave them a lot of power and a lot of autonomy. They could make their own decisions in many regards. And we see that in contemporary hunter-gatherer populations, they tend to be extremely egalitarian, including a lot of gender equality. All right, so bear with me. 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, there's this shift, and humans start to domesticate plants. They get pretty good at it. We invent the plow. Now what happens? Men suddenly have an advantage. You know what? One of the few advantages that is consistent across all cultures that men have over women is upper body strength. The plow privileges upper body strength. If you have upper body strength, you are out there and now instead of the nuts and the berries and the seeds being the main event, You are like the primary producer, all right? Now, women are no longer off-gathering, off in the bush, off wherever, autonomous, ranging for miles a day sometimes, meeting up with a lover out in the bush, unsupervised basically, free. Plow agriculture. Suddenly he's out pushing the plow with his superior upper body strength. What makes sense now is a very gendered division of labor in which she becomes the secondary producer in the home. You can't have kids and be manning a plow. We say man a plow. Or controlling the draft animals, right? The big animals. Before, even with pre-plow agriculture, women could be out there with their hoes or their digging sticks and the kids could help out. Not anymore with the plow, right? So women are suddenly taken from their kin network, taken from the group, into an individual situation. They're living in a house, a dwelling, probably with one man, maybe his kin. Now they're under the watchful eye. They're not ranging and roaming. They're secondary producers. Also their fertility gets jacked up. They're more sedentary. They're not ranging and gathering for miles and miles a day. Agricultural settings, pretty sedentary. Suddenly increased fertility, shortened inter-birth intervals. You're having a kid instead of every four years. You have a kind of natural birth control going on if you're a hunter-gatherer and you're gathering all the time. Lower body fat, lower levels of fertility. You're breastfeeding for a long time. which helps, although don't count on it. So suddenly all these things have changed because of one thing, the plow. So now heightened fertility means heightened dependence because you have one kid after another now, more fertility, more children. And plus with agriculture now we've developed this notion of property, right? So women really become the property of men now. And we have progeniture now. Now that we have property, we have property that we can pass down. So suddenly men, it matters to them a lot more that they're passing down to their own offspring.
Yeah, not someone else's kid, yeah.
That's right. So believe it or not, you know, you and I have our kind of messed up gender script that we're living.
Because of a plow.
We have the plow to thank. Stupid plow. You know what? My friend Helen Fisher, who's an anthropologist, says the plow is the worst thing that ever happened to women. And I want to suggest that it's also one of the worst things that ever happened to men. Because men don't benefit from gender bias any more than women do, really. We've reduced men in our culture to their dicks and their wallets, and we've said, that's all you're good for. So I always like to say that-- Both sides, yeah. Yeah, that Helen is right, Helen Fisher is right, that the plow is the worst thing that ever happened to women. But it was no picnic for men either.
Right.
Yeah.
What are you teaching? Because you have two kids, three kids?
I have two boys, they're 17 and 11.
17 and 11. What are you teaching them about sexual education and self-worth if they choose non-monogamy?
Right. Well, first of all, I think the most basic thing to teach our kids is sex education, right? Because we are living still in the shadow of abstinence only sex ed, if you want to call it that. That in many schools, all you can teach is that abstinence is the best policy.
Don't have sex.
Right, exactly.
That's what-- I remember maybe one video when I was like 11.
Yeah.
That was like awkward. And that's all the education I got.
Right, so it's really important. Parents have to fill in the gaps. And parents and honorary parents, people who care about kids, have to fill in the gaps because we're not allowed to teach it in schools. So I think the first most important thing is to just teach your children about sex, have books around about it, be open to their questions. So I try always to be open to their questions. I tried when they were little to always use the correct terms, you know, no euphemisms, no calling it a PP.
Right, right, right.
So I think at the most basic level, there's that. And now that my kids are older, They're 11 and 17, my boys. You know, they have these kind of cringey moments when I'm talking about how great female sexuality is, or I'm showing them a three-dimensional model of the human female internal clitoris. Do you know what it looks like? I'll give you a tutorial later.
Sure, give me a tutorial.
I didn't bring the model, but I'll give you some sex ed later.
I'm sure I've seen photos and diagrams, but I can't draw it for you.
I should have brought one for you today. So they find that kind of cringey, and yet I think they like knowing about it. They like looking at a 3D computer printed model of the human female clitoris, even though, and also it has come in very handy with my 17-year-old. I can tell him that, you know, well if you don't get good grades in boarding school, clearly I'm gonna have to come to school and do a lecture about female sexuality. that gets him right back on task.
Right, right, right, yeah.
But I think they actually think it's kind of interesting, but they're a little bit embarrassed too. Are they? Yeah. Too bad.
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Oh my God.
In the first place. Was it girlfriends were coming to you saying, I'm cheating and I feel horrible, why am I doing this? Was it they wanted to cheat? Was it, you know, why?
Well, okay. So this book is so personal for me. I describe myself as a catastrophe at monogamy in my 20s and early 30s. Just a complete train wreck in relationships.
In relationships, but never truly faithful in relationships.
That's right. And thinking that I must be really highly unusual because I was taught, well, yeah, men need to step out, but women, we don't have these his feelings.
His desires.
Right. So I would be with somebody and within a year to three years, my sexual desire would drop off. And I would say, this is not a trade-off I can make. I would want to be with the person, but I would think, this isn't a trade-off I can make. I can't go without this. I like sex too much. It's too great. And so since I wasn't a gay man, I didn't have the option, like my gay male friends really, to say to my heterosexual male partners, listen, I really like you a lot, but monogamy isn't working for me. So let's figure something out. It wasn't-- you- didn't have the courage to do that? It wasn't in the vocabulary for heterosexuals. I'm 53 years old, so this was a wide-- It was for women. Right.
Maybe men would be like, hey, I wanna, you know.
I tried it at the urging of my gay male friends. So keep in mind, this was like 25 or 30 years ago. And my gay male friends urged me because they've been doing consensual non-monogamy for a long time, gay men.
It's more accepted in the gay community to have a partner but also have other partners.
And it was then, too. I mean, consensual non-monogamy is now gaining respectability and understanding, but at the time there was none. So I tried telling One of these guys that I was very into, I'm really, you know, I really like you a lot. And my gay male friends are like, and then just say the second part that you don't want to be monogamous. And they said, It's gonna be fine. It was so not fine. It was a catastrophe. And then I felt so guilty.
And wrong for your feelings, your desires.
Yeah, exactly. So this book is very personal for me. Because what happened afterwards in the ensuing years is, you know, I spent more time looking at the anthropology of female sexuality, looking at primatology, right? The science of... History of everything. Monkeys and apes and our evolutionary prehistory. And I learned, I also looked at the sex research. And one of the most surprising findings was that in numerous longitudinal studies, one in England of over 10,000 British adults, one in Finland of over 2,500 women, one in Germany of about 3,000 adults. These longitudinal studies all found the same thing, which is that for women only, not for men, a long-term monogamous relationship predicts low desire. Here's what happens. Man and woman start in a relationship, right? This is a 90-month study done by a German researcher. He studied people from their 20s into their 50s. And the other studies that I listed had almost identical findings. We start here, right, in the relationship. The libidos are aligned. The man and the woman have- Excited.
Passionate- Driven by sex.
Lusting. Lusting, having such a great time. Even Steven, libido is the same. And by the way, the science now shows us that when we measure male and female libido the right way, they're pretty much the same. We can talk about that later. Here we go. We're starting with limerence, or you and I would call it sex insanity. We're so into each other. Yes. The chemistry is incredible. We wanna have sex all the time. We love it. It's great. Here's what happens over 90 months for the man. It's going like this. Just going down a little for 90 months, it's going down like this. Okay, here we are at the 90 month point. Your desire hasn't gone down that much.
What's 90, how many years is that?
I think it's seven and a half years. Here's my desire. Hot as you are, desirable as you are, here's what happens to me. Ready? Year one. Bam!
No way.
My fingers in the sub-basement. What? No offense, Louis. It's not a referendum on you.
No matter how hot the guy is, how well he treats you, no matter how great the sex is.
No matter what.
Your sexual desire goes down.
This is natural for women. It is normal for a heterosexual woman and for a lesbian, we have studies about this too, that within one to three years, Her desire plunges. Wow. It's not a referendum on her partner. It's not a referendum on her. And it's not a referendum on their relationship. It is a normal thing that happens to most women within years one and three. Let's put a name on it. Let's normalize that experience. Let's get into mainstream discourse and conversation that monogamy is harder for women in the aggregate than it is for men. That's one of the revolutionary new findings in the sex research that excited me so much.
That's all in your book, all in your research.
Think about how we can set women and men alike free if they have access to that information. So I wrote an article about it for the Atlantic called Women, the Bored Sex. And it went, you know, it got a lot of attention. because it speaks to something in women and something that motivated me to write this book, which is, am I alone in this experience that I'm struggling sooner than my male partner is with this issue? Doesn't mean you have to step out, doesn't mean you have to open up your relationship, doesn't mean there's anything wrong with your relationship. It's just something we need to know about women.
Just to be aware of. Not saying that after three, five years you should go cheat or have the conversation and ask, can we change and do something different?
If heterosexual men and women knew that this is a normal thing that happens, and this can help lesbians too and bisexual people too, if we just know that this is a normal thing, there are exceptions, not all women. But if we know that in general, across all these great well-designed studies, the same thing happened.
All of the women all over the world.
Yes, the same thing happened consistently with women. if we knew that and acted on it, I think we could save a lot of relationships and help a lot of women become more sexually satisfied in the relationship because they wouldn't, here's what tends to happen. You have this drop off. He has not had the drop off, right? So what are you saying to me all the time? Let's do it. Let's have sex. Come on. I'm so into you still. I'm still attracted to you. And I'm saying, sorry to personalize.
No, it's all good.
I'm just trying to make my point. I'm saying, I love this guy. He's so great. He's perfect. There's something wrong with me. I don't know what's wrong with me. I've turned into my mother. It's true women like sex less than men. No. We need to tell women at that crisis point, it's not that you don't like sex. It's that you struggle more with having sex with the same person over and over than he does.
Wow.
Nothing's wrong with you. Okay, you see the problem we have. That goes against the whole script of what we've been taught about men and women. This data kicks the ass and upsets the foundation of the house we've built about who men and women are. So we have a problem. But we have to get this information to women and men. Otherwise everybody's gonna be unhappy. Okay, so guess what happens?
So how do we deal with this information?
Okay, the first thing we do is we have to kick to the curb what women tend to do. They get to this point, there's the drop off. I know, looking at you, oh my God, he's the ideal guy. He's great.
I'm happy. Hits my list, everything checks off. Everything checks off.
Everything checks off.
Amazing with our kids. He's making money.
He's a great person. He's desirable by women, whatever. Yeah, exactly.
Now what am I gonna do?
All right. Ruin this relationship. All right, am I gonna ruin this relationship or am I gonna start giving service sex? And that's what most people tend to do. You know what service sex is before I even tell you, right? Wow. Service sex is, and men do it sometimes for women, and women do it for women, and women mostly tend to do it for men the data are suggesting. Wow. But you get to this point, you have your DOP off, he's still wanting it. I'm talking about heterosexuals now, but I wanna speak to everybody. And what happens is then the woman tends to say, Well, this is about me having a lower sex drive. It's not. So I'm just gonna have sex with him to make him happy. And then sex goes from this joyous thing where you're focused on your own pleasure and you're selfishly seeking desires and... Yeah, satisfaction, orgasm, whatever your thrill is in sex. Instead of seeking that, you're using sex to service someone. And what the sex researcher Marti Milia has said about service sex, which women more often tend to do for men because we have our drop off, is that it doesn't feel good to give it, but it doesn't feel good to get it either, right? So this is the conundrum people find themselves in. What can you do when you realize you're having service sex? Know about the data I described about what happens normally to women. Know that service sex isn't the answer because it means that you're basically becoming subservient about your own desires and that will lead to resentment.
And unhappiness and unfulfillment or whatever. That's right.
Now armed with the data about how women just tend to be in the aggregate armed with the term service sex and knowing that it's not good for either person and it's not good to give it and it's not good to get it, Now have the conversation.
With your partner.
With your partner.
What if it's another explosion? What if it's another explosion like you had 25 years ago?
You just blame it on Wednesday Martin.
The science.
And the science in my book, and you look at the data together.
What if you're with a really jealous man who's just been taught a belief system of the social norms, what's acceptable and what's not acceptable, the roles of relationship and what happens when that happens.
What I could say to that man, if there's anybody listening who sort of identifies that way, is don't you want a great sex life with the woman that you're with?
Don't you want to make the person you're with happy?
And don't you want that excitement? That's a woman's right and a man's right to feel sexually excited, to not let go, to not feel like, now of course we have to make compromises and trade-offs. But there are ways to get variety and novelty and adventure in a long-term relationship without blowing it up. And the first step might be, oh, I heard this podcast. Does this speak to you at all? We should talk about this. Did you read this book about these women going to sex parties when they're married? And what do you think about and on and on, right? You can triangulate the discussion so that you're bringing it in in a relatively neutral way. Oh, I heard this, I read this. What do you think about this? And I would say-- no, I don't like it.
Not acceptable.
You know, then what a woman or a man has to do if they.
Have a partner-- you- have to make a choice, huh? Is it worth being in a monogamous relationship with this person?
Right.
Do all the benefits outweigh, I guess, the price I pay for not having sexual fulfillment or creativity or whatever it is we're lacking, right?
And the non-monogamy thing isn't the only choice. It's not like we look at this data and the fact of service sex and say, that's it. We have to open up our relationship or else we're never going to be happy. There are other things that people can do. Well, if you don't feel comfortable opening up your relationship, which I would say tons of people don't, and that's okay. Know yourself. But you want sexual excitement. You want your girlfriend or your female partner to have that and you want it yourself. Now I'm talking guys, but there are other things you can do. Here's a crazy finding from science. There's this thing called misattribution of arousal. You're sitting, you and I don't know each other. We go on a roller coaster together. It's so scary and so thrilling. We get off the roller coaster and we look at each other and we have this thing that feels like sexual attraction to each other. It's a misattribution of arousal that comes from a rush of adrenaline.
Interesting.
When you get a rush of adrenaline with another person, it fools your body into thinking that you're sexually aroused. You can see how useful this would be for people who have been together for a long time.
Do something with an adrenaline rush.
Go on a zip line. Go bungee jumping.
Skydive.
Or if that's not your thing, take a risk. Like go to a ballroom dancing class. I don't know what your risk is gonna be.
Something where it's going to increase the level of excitement, fear, whatever it may be.
Yes, exactly. And then you'll experience this misattribution of arousal. which gives you that new lust feeling.
Interesting.
That's one finding from science. Another thing that we find really helps people is if they like to watch it and they can find things that, you know, don't bother them about it. Pornography can be really helpful for people watching other people having sex. Some people have told me that they really improved their marriages by going to a sex party together and just watching. Some people would not be comfortable with that. They would maybe be comfortable watching porn together. It takes a lot to get people there because it might feel very personal and it might be, what if your partner makes fun of the porn you like? What if you like totally different things? Whatever, get over it. Find the porn that you like and that can be a way of infusing some excitement. Imagining that you're that person, your partner is that person, imagining your partner with those suddenly your partner is new and exciting to you, not the same old, same old in the same way. And another thing that some people like to do is just talk about. I interviewed several therapists who told me there's this concept of the third, right? We're in a dyad, we're together, we know each other. You left your dental floss on the sink. You've seen my bloody tampons, whatever.
See me throw up or whatever.
Familiarity, right? Domesticity, we know, dampens female desire more than it does male desire.
Being domestic.
Yeah, so we're all like this. We know each other and we're like companion it. That kills the female libido more than the male libido. So another solution.
How can a man keep the sexual desire up for a woman?
Exactly. She's always when they're so domesticated. You need to engineer and Esther Perel is great about talking about this. Yep, she's helped so many people. She's talked about, she's sort of crossed over some of Marta Miana's work about how women need distance to feel excited. So you have to engineer some separateness. And one of the things that Marta Miana has suggested and Esther has as well is when you go out on a date night, don't show up together.
Really?
Show up separately.
Wow. Don't think about that.
Yeah. Yeah, she's looking at you across the room and she's seeing you how other people see you.
Suddenly-- She sees how attracted other women are to you.
Yes, or she just sees you as separate. She's not showing up with you in the dyad. She's meeting you. You're out there. You're separate. So try a little thing like that.
Maybe not every time, but once, whatever, once a month, a couple times a month.
Don't engineer some separateness. Here's an extreme version of this. Women like variety and novelty and adventure, and they need it. more than men do. Wow.
The science shows that?
Yes, the science shows that. And we've evolved an appetite for variety and novelty. We used to attribute that only to men. A lot of anthropologists and evolutionary biologists now believe that women really evolved for a lot of variety and novelty. Well, there could be a lot of advantages. And for an early female hominin or an early human female, one of the advantages of liking sex and having multiple partners is that you get a great variety of sperm for your cervix to choose from.
Oh, interesting.
You up your odds of heterozygosity, which is the sperm that's gonna make a really great robust pregnancy and offspring, 'cause you're so genetically dissimilar. You have sex with one guy. What if he's infertile, right? There goes your reproductive success. So those are just two advantages. Another advantage some evolutionary biologists think for women having been what we might call promiscuous multiple maters, is that suddenly you have multiple males figuring, well, I had sex with her, there's a good enough chance that that's my offspring, that I'm gonna like support her during her pregnancy, I'll provision her a little bit. I might even provision the offspring. Suddenly you might have multiple men who figure they might be the father. They're all supporting the willing to do it. Here's another advantage that female primates get from mating multiply. Sperm depletion. They get the sperm and other females don't. So there are all these competitive advantage. Yeah, competitive advantage. So there are all these exciting theories in the science about why women may have evolved for promiscuity even more than men. We used to think that if men just had sex and ran and had sex with somebody else, that that was a great strategy. For all kinds of reasons, it's not that great. It's hard to impregnate a female. A lot of offspring do better with biparental care, so it's not a good idea to just scoot and let her raise it on her own. And I could go on and on about how it turns out that it's, there's an argument to be made that it was more advantageous for females.
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So 10,000 years ago, or whatever, 3,000, 5,000 years ago, when five men were like supporting a pregnant woman because they all slept with her.
That would have been like before plow agriculture, so we need to go back to- 12,000. Yeah, we need to go back at least that far.
So were all these men jealous? Do you think at the time of like, no, this is my, like punching each other and being like, get out of my way. Or were they all like these loving, supportive men working together for this one woman woman that they all slept with.
Okay, we have. Anthropology has an answer for you, Louis Howe. And it is in South America, in some lowland Amazon cultures, where there is a belief among indigenous people called partible paternity. The belief is that it takes many fathers to make a baby. Wow. So. There's the father whose sperm created the baby's head, the father whose sperm created the baby's body, and the father whose sperm created the baby's arms and legs. And these indigenous peoples have words for each of those different fathers. So the belief is, now of course it's a biological fiction, but it's an important practice. So what happens is a woman wants to become pregnant or discovers she's pregnant, she immediately starts having sex with men other than her husband. Really? And the men with whom she has sex believe when the baby comes that they contributed some of the sperm that created part of the baby.
Wow.
They are all responsible for that baby. Then what happens?
They all help raise the baby. They're all kind to the baby.
They're all... That's right. So an amazing anthropologist named Steven Beckerman studied the Bari people of Venezuela, I believe. And what he found is that if a child had more than one father in a partible paternity culture, that child was dramatically more likely to survive to age 16 and reproduce himself or herself than a child with only one father who was dramatically less likely to reach age 16. So it's a biological fiction that serves everyone's needs. Meanwhile, what do they believe about monogamous women in this culture?
It's, there is no monogamy.
They're lousy mothers.
Really?
What a shitty mother. You kid only has one dad?
Oh, wow.
What if your dad climbs up a tree to get some money and falls and dies? Because there are high rates of paternal mortality in these cultures. So women hedge their bets and they have this reproductive and social strategy that ensures that their kids are more likely to survive. And the reproductive strategy is what we might call promiscuity. That tells us something about our evolutionary prehistory. We at least had many different mating strategies. We didn't evolve to be monogamous. We didn't evolve to be any one particular way. But we have to look at these traditional cultures and say, well, that is one way that humans who are super flexible sexual and social strategists can be that serves us well in certain circumstances. So are those men ever jealous? Yes, there is some evidence that sometimes they get angry, but there's also evidence that everybody has this belief, right? That the fathers are all equally fathers and that they participate in the well-being of the mother and the child. What's the optimal number of fathers?
Four.
2.4 or something like that. Don't have too many guys because then they're gonna say, you know what? I'm just the father whose sperm created the baby's fingernail, so I'm out. I don't really care. Yeah. So women have to always be pretty strategic about their sexuality in these contexts.
Two or three guys.
Yeah, don't go crazy, right? And yeah, unless you're Canela, the Canela people Traditionally, if a woman, and you can imagine that missionaries just went berserk about these cultures, right? They really got involved and tried to stop these practices. But among the Canela people, there is a belief that the thing for a woman who is pregnant to do is to have sex with basically all the eligible males in her network. That that's the responsible step to take.
Wow.
Yeah.
So, I mean, okay, so this was 15,000 years ago when resources were slim and people were dying younger, but now people have money and it's a lot safer to live.
Don't forget, partible paternity is right now in the Amazon.
Gotcha, right?
Yeah. Yeah, sorry, go on. So you were gonna say, you know.
Now that we don't have that, I guess, concern as much, are they gonna live past 16?
Right.
Are they gonna be healthy as, I have other family that can support this child if the husband isn't here, the father, right? There's a lot of single moms out there and their kids are doing okay. They're living past 16. So I guess what do we do with this information?
What do we do with this information?
What do we do with this information? And with all the women or men who have been taught a belief system, whether it's a religious belief system of like, no, this is the way you're supposed to find the partner, be with that person, be in an endearing, loving relationship where you give to one another only, like that's the way. Everything else is bad and wrong.
What do we do?
Yeah, what do we do?
Okay, so here's what I think, having researched this for the better part of three years and for a couple decades before that, I've just been fixated on female sexuality for a long time. First of all, I always say monogamy is a great arrangement for some people. Some people find it cozy, reassuring, a great context for raising kids. And there are such wonderful things about monogamy, companionship, connection, great things. But what we know is that enjoying true sexual monogamy for our entire lifetime does not conform to any model we have in science about how we habituate to a stimulus over time. It is gonna be the extremely, extremely rare person who can live out a truly monogamous life with zeal. Most of us are going to struggle with it at some point. Now, my friend Tammy Nelson, in her book, the New Monogamy, talks about monogamy as a continuum. She talks about it as a difficult practice, like yoga, that you have to commit to every day. Do you want it?
It's a choice every day.
Yeah, do you want it? Okay, it's gonna be difficult, but like yoga, you can get really good at it. Or she says, we could think of monogamy as a continuum. And over here we have monogamy beliefs that some people have, like, you should not even look at porn. Because that feels like a betrayal. Yeah, yeah. All right, some people really feel that. That's one part on the monogamy continuum. Over here in the monogamy continuum, maybe in the middle we have, I really like you. I value and love our relationship. I'm feeling bored. Can we think of some adventures? Even if it's like lingerie having sex in front of a mirror, whatever it is. By the way, women, there was a really fun study that Marta Meana did about how much women like having sex in front of mirrors. They like it more than men do. Oh, I know. Think about getting a mirror, people who are listening. Male, female, identify as neither. If you're having sex with a woman, consider a mirror.
They love it for some reason. Why is that? Why do women love watching, why do women love watching themselves?
We don't know why. It's just like this, we can theorize why. Okay, so Marta Meana, I'm gonna get back to the monogamy, but right now we're gonna take a little, we're gonna take a little sidebar. Sidebar. Sidebar about Marta Meana's study that she did a few years ago. One of my favorite sex researchers, the study, she has a sense of humor, she called the study, It's Not yout, It's Me. And she asked a group of women, Hey, she just had this feeling sometimes science starts as an insight that's like an intuition. She had this feeling about the people that she was talking to, about the women she was talking to, that they had this sort of like autonomous piece of their sexuality. She had been taught that women really need to connect and be emotional during sex. But she had a feeling that there was this more independent piece that wasn't about the partner. So, she said, let me try this. She asked a group of women, listen, if you were having sex with your partner in front of a mirror, how much of the time would you be looking at yourself and how much of the time would you be looking at your partner?
90% of yourself probably, right?
The women were like looking at themselves a lot more than the men were. Why? Okay, then she asked the men and women.
The men are probably looking at the women.
The men are saying, no, I'm looking at my partner. The women are saying, I'm looking at myself. Tells to the S, I'm looking at myself. Ooh, I'm hot when I'm getting married. 'Cause women are more beautiful when I'm getting married. Yeah, exactly. Well, okay. So then she's like, huh, that's really interesting. So then she says to the group of men and women, she says to the men, let me ask you a question. Would you have sex with yourself? And the men say, what are you talking about? She says to the women, would you have sex with yourself? And she's hilarious. She said, and the answer was, oh hell yes. As if they already had.
Wow.
Yeah, we don't know why women get turned on by seeing themselves having sex with someone else to an extent that men seem not to. But in the aggregate, that seems to be a really exciting thing for women. Until we figure out why, let's just install mirrors. Yeah. Because that's one of the fixes.
Now can that ever get too boring? You know, you get used to the mirror.
Or is it all- Go to a hotel where there's a mirror then. You know what I mean? Keep it fresh. But that's one of the things, if you don't want to open up There's another thing. Hey, go on a roller coaster, get a mirror, show up separately at a restaurant, or make him move out. Okay? It's true, right? Back to the monogamy continuum.
We were in the middle of it, right?
Yes, where there's people, it's like, if you watch porn, you're cheating on me. That's their monogamy contract. Then there's like, I'm a little bored.
Could we get a mirror?
Yeah. Okay. Now, here's another end of the monogamy continuum, which is we come first. You can whoever you want. You can be with whomever you want. but our relationship takes priority. Tammy Nelson is defining all of those places on that spectrum as the monogamy continuum. So one solution for people, you asked, what can we do now in the industrialized West? We have these evolved appetites and preferences that we've now said are bad. What's something we can do? Well, we evolved to be sexually flexible. And so one of the things we could do is think about monogamy as continuum. And again, when you bring up a book or a conversation or something else, it can seem a little bit less threatening to your partner if you're partnered. So that's how I think of what we can do now in the industrialized West where we value monogamy so much. Okay, let's think about monogamy and let's still value it. But now let's blow it out so that there's a monogamy continuum instead of one pinpoint that is the only right way to do monogamy.
Yeah. I mean, I, I've had a, I was in a past relationship where I've, the relationship was ending. It was over. We had been through, you know, therapy and on and off and all this stuff, and it was over. And I flirted with a girl, and she called that cheating and infidelity. I never touched the girl. Never even saw the.
But you were flirting and that, and.
She called it infidelity.
And. Right. So on her monogamy continue, right?
It's like small minded, you know, and her, in her Spectrum.
Right, on her spectrum, fidelity is don't cheat with other people.
Don't talk to anyone, don't even think about anything.
Okay, yeah, and that's gonna be, for her to be happy, she's gonna have to find somebody else who's at that place on the monogamy continuum. And she might find somebody at that place, but if that is a mismatch, if you're at different places on the continuum, that's a mismatch. And one way to approach that is to say there's no judgment, this is just a mismatch. Listen, there was a recent YouGov study. YouGov is like a big survey and they do weighted samples which are pretty much almost as good as a representative sample. And they said, let's talk about affairs. How many men have had them and how many women?
It's a lot of women, right?
In the UK, 19% of women and 20% of men adults in long-term committed relationships said that now women are less likely to disclose stigmatized sexual behaviors in men are. Men are likely to over-report cheating and women are likely to under-report.
So you think it might be more women?
I think women might be outpacing men in infidelity and great Britain.
Is that married relationships or just in a non-monogamy?
I believe it was married relationships, but this is one of the problems with these instruments is how you're defining monogamy, how you're defining a relationship. It gets a little hairy But the good thing that we have is that the data is pretty consistent with the definitions that we're using about people who are unable to be or have not been sexually excused.
So about 20-25% of women in the UK, they're saying have had an affair in their marriage.
That's right. Or their long-term relationship.
Whether they've been caught or their partner knows about it or not.
That's right. So in the US, I believe the figures were 15% of women and 19% of men. That is not statistically significant difference. We, right, and again, women are under reporting and men tend to over report. Factor in that women between the ages of 18 to 29 in the US, the General Social Survey found outpace men in infidelity. So we have a lot of people, men and women alike, who are really struggling with monogamy. They're really struggling with our inherited, recently inherited cultural script, that monogamy is the baseline of health and happiness and being mentally healthy. It's the proof that you're a grown up. It's the right thing to do. Well, then why are so many of us having such a hard time? Isn't it time to rethink it and give people an option? Because right now, people's options are mostly, let me stick with monogamy and be unhappy if I'm unsuited for it, or let me blow up my relationship. We need to give people other options.
Yeah, and being less judgmental about people's desires or wants or needs.
Yeah. And I had a great time when I was writing this book interviewing people who have found alternative paths, whether they're swingers or polyamorous.
Or by mirrors or whatever.
By mirrors or whatever it is. People are charting other paths right now. And that was an interesting part of researching and writing Untrue, talking to those people, those trailblazers really.
The challenging thing is I don't know a lot of people in open relationships or maybe I just don't know them openly talking about it.
Right, they might not tell you.
Right, but the ones I do know, like Aubrey Marcus, who's a friend of ours. Yeah. And I was talking a little bit about him because he's very public about it.
He talks about it on Instagram.
And Whitney talk about it.
Podcast, his partner Whitney. Whitney coaches people, right?
She's a relationship coach for people who want to be open.
Challenges, they say it's the way. Right?
They say it's the way, at least for them.
They say it's the way for them, yeah.
Right now. It's the way for them right now based on the way of their desires and things like that. And Whitney was not in that belief in the first couple years of the relationship.
Right.
And it's kind of evolved into that and seems like.
It's processed, right?
They've figured it out, yeah, there's a process. And it seems like they come a long way. The challenge is, when we were talking before, there's like these huge highs and big lows where you deal with jealousy and ego and am I enough? What if this other partner, they love them more. And doesn't that get messy also?
I mean, look, humans are messy, right? I know that what Aubrey and Whitney say, and what a lot of the people that I interviewed who are into consensual non monogamy say is they say, this is so much work. It can make me so upset sometimes. But the passionate excitement that I feel for my person that I've been with for five years, eight years, 10 years, 20 years. is so incredible that we keep doing it. What do we know about who does well with this and who doesn't? There have been studies. Thank you, psychologist. Thank you to a psychologist especially named Terri Conley, who's at the University of Michigan, and she has been studying consensual.
Nonmonogamy for a long time now.
So who does well with it and who doesn't? Okay, so here's what Terri Conley and her colleagues found out. Your attachment style matters a lot. Our attachment style is something that happens when we're babies. What is our relationship to our primary caregiver? Can we depend on that person? When that person looks at us, do their eyes get that light that just being there were enough, we're wonderful, we're perfect? Was that our first experience with our primary caregiver? Or was our primary caregiver unreliable?
Stressful.
Did that person come in and out? Did we feel anxious in the face of that person? Did we not get it reflected back to us that we're worthy? That would be an anxious attachment style. Are we avoidant with our attachment because we couldn't rely on that person? So there are these different attachment styles and we have found- I think I.
Had anxious and avoidant.
Yeah, so depending on your attachment style, consensual non-monogamy could be very, very hard for you or it could be easier for you. What do we know about the people who are doing well with it? What we know is that people in consensually non-monogamous relationships report lower levels of jealousy and higher levels of relationship and sexual satisfaction.
People who are in non-monogamous relationships are less jealous.
That's right. They report lower levels of jealousy. Who reports the highest level of jealousy?
Monogamous relationships.
And people in relationships that I call don't ask, don't tell relationships, where you say to the person, you, know what, Louis? You go do your thing. I'm gonna go do my thing. Let's not talk about it.
Don't make me look stupid. Keep it safe. Be smart.
Those people that don't ask, don't tell open relationships versus the process it together and monogamous report the highest levels of jealousy.
Don't ask, don't tell.
And the monogamists are the highest level of jealousy. So we have some data about this, and we're gonna get more data about this if sex researchers get it together and stop feeling like they have to answer to the monogamy industrial complex. And like Terri Conley and Amy Moors and Justin LaMare, they start studying what people are actually doing versus what we think people should do. A lot of shrinks will tell you, and this is why I'm so glad that Whitney Miller does relationship coaching for people who wanna be openly non-monogamous. And my friend Mark Kapp in San Diego does it. The reason I'm so glad is that many people will go to a psychoanalyst, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, and say, we want to be consensually non-monogamous, or we're swingers, or we're into polyamory. They'll trust and open up in that situation and be honest about what they're doing. And the shrink will tell them, or maybe worse, believe but not tell them, that can never work. That's a sign that you're unhealthy. That's a sign that something's wrong. Imagine being in this position where you're trailblazing in this way.
And people are telling you that.
Feeling a little insecure. And then you go to a trusted professional.
Yeah.
And you get judgment. So.
Then you just feel bad and wrong with everything you do.
Right. We need to give people options.
It's, you know, it's our, we only have one life that we're aware of, you know, it's like, and as long as we're not, as long as we're not hurt, I'm not here to judge anyone either way, you know, I grew up with certain beliefs and I'm starting to evolve those beliefs, but it's like, as long as you're happy and you're not hurting people, you're not deliberately hurting.
People, you're honest, you're communicating, and you're aligned with each other's values. A lot of people who are into consensual non-monogamy say that the most important aspect of it is the consensual part. Yeah, of course. And they say, and what Amy Moore, Terry Conley, and other researchers have found is that people in consensually non-monogamous relationships, whether they're swingers or poly people, tend to have really great communication skills.
They're super honest.
David Lay writes about this a lot. He writes about people who are into the cuckold lifestyle and hotwifing. And he writes about how he, as a therapist, he felt really judgmental. These people would come into his office, and they would say, I'm really into watching my wife have sex with other men. Like, that's my sexual thrill.
That's crazy.
Right. That's what, and in the back of his mind, David Lay felt that way. And yet, he's such a great guy because he said, I'm letting my script about what female sexuality is supposed to be and what male sexuality is supposed to be impinge on my clinical judgment. Let me actually sit here. and see what's going on with these couples. And what he found out is that they had commendable, amazing communication and really high levels of sexual satisfaction after being together sometimes for decades. Wow. So David Ley is just one of the therapists who, because he had an open mind, he gave us data that can help people whether they want to be monogamous or not. Yeah. So we have a lot of lessons to learn from consensually non-monogamous people, even if we don't want to be monogamous. Of course. Consensually non-monogamous. If you want to be monogamous, great. We evolved as flexible sexual and social strategists.
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Now, what are you comfortable sharing about with your relationship and how you, now you're in love with the information and how do you handle this with your, how long you've been married or?
I've been married, yesterday was my 19th Wedding anniversary.
I know.
Isn't that great?
So you're saying the only way you can be married that long and be happy is if there's consensual nomina-- I have no idea.
Is what you're telling me. No, it's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that. You have lots of mirrors. I haven't said a mirror is a really fun thing. I'm gonna go on record about that. But you know, when you spend so long researching a topic, as I did, I feel very hesitant to talk about what I do. Because what if people think that I'm endorsing one thing? What if a woman who's Consensually non-monogamous feels like I'm endorsing monogamy, then you know, that's weird. So you're not endorsing anything. I'm not endorsing anything except if it's safe for you. Get yourself into a position where you're safe to have the conversation. Yeah. Right? For some women, it's gonna be very, like literally physically dangerous for them to talk about consensual non-monogamy. So they don't have that option. We need to remain aware of how privileged we are if we can. For other women you can have a discussion about how monogamy is going for them. I just want them to feel entitled to have the conversation. How many people do you know who got married without talking about monogamy? My husband and I got married, we never had a conversation about it.
Probably 95, 90% of us.
We would be the worst gay men, my husband and I, because we never had the talk. Wow. So that's very personal for me that we never had the talk. And this book made us have the talk about things we had never discussed. Which has been so much fun.
Or 18 years after your marriage, you started talking about things.
Yes. Wow. Yeah, and it really helped us connect with each other in new ways.
Even if you don't act on anything. Communicating about desires or thoughts or feelings or whatever it may be is a powerful way to connect.
It is a really powerful way to connect. Thank you for reframing that for me. I absolutely agree with what you said, that even if you said to your female partner, Wow, I read this book about female sexuality on true. What do you think about X, Y, and Z? Your partner might really surprise you.
You might be afraid to ask the question. They might be like, yeah.
You might have to ask more than once, too. Women have been so socialized to deny, like, I have been so socialized, like many women to to protect the man's feelings at all costs. I think probably in a heterosexual relationship, a man might have to ask many, many times and hit it right by not seeming like he's badgering or like he has an agenda. But to just be truly curious, just keep asking with true curiosity and about what she wants. And you could have a really great discussion that could change your relationship even if it's just improving, yeah, that the communication. And even if it's just knowing your partner in a new way. How exciting would it be, you're thinking that your female partner is just giving you service sex because she's not into sex. How exciting would it be if you found out what she's really into?
Powerful.
Yeah.
Game changer for your relationship, the marriage, whatever.
Yeah.
How important is sexual health in a relationship? for the happiness of the relationship, the longevity, the longer we're in it, how important is sex in your mind? I mean, what does the research say?
The research says that high levels of sexual satisfaction predict overall satisfaction with the relationship. And there's data suggesting that high levels of sexual satisfaction predict just happiness, right? So it's not that sex is everything. It's not that your sex in your long-term relationship has to be perfect for you to have, or that you have to get everything from that person. But it is important and let's talk about what sexual health really is. Let's talk about what sex really is. When we're talking about heterosexuals, so many women and men believe that sex is intercourse and that intercourse is over when the man ejaculates. That's sex. Okay, if you're female, how does that definition of sex impact you? It's like you don't matter. It's like you can have a caring partner who really does care, but if the overall cultural definition of sex is getting your man off and then sex is over and everything you like is like four player extra. What are we doing to women and men that we're doing that to them? So I really think that part of sexual health for women is feeling entitled to sexual pleasure, however you're defining that. And I always say, I have a shirt that's from an art show. Maybe you can put a link in your podcast. I can't remember her name now, but she's an artist. She had a show at the at the New Museum in New York, and she created these t-shirts that say, Selfish in Bed. And I like to wear mine to remind myself that being selfish in bed is something that is a lesson from heterosexual men and gay men that women could do really well to learn. I love that about men. I love that they feel entitled to sexual pleasure, and now I just want women to feel the same thing. To catch up and to feel the same way. And we know that it's not happening. We know there's an orgasm Gap. We know that in their last sexual encounters, something like 60 of women had an orgasm and something like over 90 of men did in heterosexual sex. We know that lesbians really don't have that much of an orgasm Gap. So we know that it's something about heterosexual sex. And I'm willing to bet the farm that what it is is that we've tetrasyexual sex is men having an orgasm.
That's when it's complete.
Yeah, we need, so part of sexual health is redefining sex so that sex isn't just intercourse, right? It's all the other things and what women like isn't just foreplay and what women, what gets women off, that's sex. What excites women, that's sex.
Whatever excites them, it might be something different.
We're so used to being submissive. to men and sex. And by the way, don't get me wrong, for some women that's like really fun and great and they enjoy it. It can be really fun and powerful if you're a heterosexual woman to give your male partner sexual pleasure. It can be great. Oh my God, you give him a blowjob and the power that you feel and the excitement that you feel, that can be great. It's just that it shouldn't be service sex all the time.
Sure.
Right? So I want women to get more selfish in bed.
I think all men should be gentlemen in the outside of the bedroom as they are in the bedroom, where they put the woman first.
Interesting.
I think so, because... What does that.
Mean for you putting them first?
Whatever that gets them off, gets them excited, whatever turns them on, whatever allows them to have multiple orgasms, focus on that.
Now, can we talk about sexual health and multiple orgasms? This is one of the most amazing things about female sexuality. In orgasm, women have no latency period.
What does that mean? Multiple ones?
Exactly. The man has a latency period.
It takes time.
I mean, even if you're a total stud, you need a few minutes, right?
Or like, she's, it takes time. Yeah, it takes time.
It takes some time. Women, we can have an orgasm, no latency period, just again and again and again and again. again. And that's one of our clues that women did not evolve to just be monogamous. If they can have multiple orgasms, that really kind of stokes the fire of the theory that in our evolutionary prehistory promiscuity may have been the name of the game. Women might have been having successive populations, one after the other, in search of the ultimate payoff, the multiple orgasm. That's one theory.
Wow.
From Sarah Hurty.
Because the men would probably have an orgasm in five or 10 minutes back then or whatever, and, you know, it would just be a quick thing. And then they're like, okay, well, I need to keep going.
The woman, the people who believe in this theory, and this was something that Sarah Hurty put out there back in either the late 70s or the early 80s, this idea that it might be that the clitoris is there and multiple orgasm exists so that a female would seek successive copulations so that she can get there. Interesting.
To try to reproduce more.
If the male orgasm from intercourse takes whatever, four to eight minutes, there's a range of figures about it. And the average time a woman has an orgasm from intercourse is somewhere between say, 14 and 20 minutes. Being with one male wouldn't do it, wouldn't get you there. So did women evolve to seek out the ultimate reward of the multiple orgasm by having successive populations with multiple partners? That is one theory. Some people consider that theory really out there. But if you read Sarah Hrdy's work, seems less infeasible and one possible explanation for why monogamy might be as hard for women as it is for men. But if you read my work, I believe the social scientists who are telling us that monogamy is a tighter shoe for women than it is for men. To your whole thing about being a gentleman in bed, I think one of the great things about sex is that people feel so turned on when their partners are selfless, but also when their partners are selfish. So there can be a whole repertoire, you know? And, of course. That's the amazing thing. That's where you see really how we did evolve this very sexual flexible strategist, all the many different things that can turn us on. We can be really turned on if our partner is like, do this now.
Right.
But we can also be totally turned on if our partner is just completely focused focused on our pleasure.
Pleasing us and supporting us. Yeah.
You never get bored. Yeah. Well, we do.
You gotta mix it up. So don't always be a gentleman. But most of the time, be a gentleman.
You know, see what your partner's into.
Yeah. Ask them questions. I've always found like when you have questions, like even in the middle of sex and you start asking like, do you like this? Show me what you like. Help me guide me. It may seem uncomfortable at first, but I actually find it's like really nice. And at the end of the end of sex, it's like, okay, let's have a conversation. What did you like? What did you not like? What do you want more of? I think communicating about what people want more of is a powerful way to build the relationship, not make it awkward.
Yeah.
And the more you practice it, the more comfortable it becomes and the more easy it is to communicate.
And you know, that's such a great.
Point that I suppose just expecting them to know everything you like.
No, I mean, and a lot of women are guilty of this. We're just programmed to believe that the greatest thing is you just get into bed with a man and he knows how to push all your buttons. A woman said to me recently, she's just really high functioning, she's at the top of her game, and she talks about how she just wants her, she's in a long-term relationship, and she just wants her boyfriend to magically know what she wants.
How is it supposed to know?
And she knows that she's not supposed, that that will not be productive and she wants it. So our programming is very deep that we're just supposed to let men, you know, sort of men-- Try to please you. Yeah, that's our fantasy. That you're all like Prince Charming and that you know all these magical things. How much more exciting is it for everybody? Well, not for everybody. I can't speak for everybody, but like, you know, a lot of men are very excited when a woman just says, Do it like this. Like a lot of men have told me that that's when I interview them, oh, the thing that really turns me on when I'm with a partner.
She says, Do it this way.
Yeah, when she's not guessing.
You just do it.
When you see how much she wants you to get her off.
Pleaser, yeah.
Pleaser or just help her have fun. I mean, a lot of times we're really focused on orgasm. It's not the only thing. There's plenty of other great things to do. So something to bear in mind, right? Amazing. Yeah.
I feel like I could talk for another few hours on this subject, but I want to give people this information and let them get your book. It's called Untrue: why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free. By Wednesday Martin. Make sure you guys, I love the blurbs on the back. These are really interesting, fun, fun, fun, interesting. Make sure you guys get this book. Very powerful.
Thanks, Louis.
Of course. Couple final questions for you, Wednesday. This is called the three truths question. So at the end of every episode, I ask my guests the same question.
Okay, I wasn't prepared for this. Perfect. It'll be a surprise.
You're not supposed to be prepared.
Okay.
So imagine it's your final day many years from now. You get to pick the day, but one day in this life you gotta leave, right? Right. And you had the life of your dreams. You accomplish everything you want, every dream, every goal, the relationship, all the sex, whatever you want. Your kids are made, everything. It goes the way you want it to. But for whatever reason, you've got to take your work with you. So any book that you've written, any articles you've written, any future books, they've all got to go with you, you know, in this hypothetical life exit. you get to leave behind a note, a piece of paper that you write down. There are three things you know to be true about all of your experiences in life. Three lessons or three truths that you would then share with the world. And this is all the world would have.
I can't believe I didn't know that.
To remember you by, to have your wisdom. So off the top of your mind, the top of your heart, What would you say are your three truths?
You are already perfect. I believe in reading Buddhism. It helps me a lot to reframe all my experiences. I live in New York, a really stressful town, where all everybody thinks all the time is, I have to get to the next place. I have to get the next thing. And they're never-- this is going to sound trite, but the present moment is the perfect teacher and you don't need to change. You have everything right now. So I think something about the present moment and satisfaction with what you have and who you are is probably a profound truth that I just try really hard to pursue for myself. So it would be something about that. Yeah. Can that be two of them?
Sure.
Yeah. One is that you're whole. You're good how you are. So many women tell me like, there's something wrong with me. I'm too thin. I'm too fat. I'm too sexually obsessed. I'm too this. I'm too that. You're okay, you're good. And then the second one would be, be in the present moment like this thing right now that you're doing, this is your life. Not where you might get in five years, not where you hope to be in 10 years. Right now, this moment is what you have and it's beautiful. Now I need a third one and I think it would be that connection is everything. you know, we evolved to be social. In our evolutionary prehistory, being alone meant death. Of course we need alone time, but I think that as I age, what I see more and more is just the value of connecting with people, of having a community of people who really do it for me and for whom I'm useful. So whether it's your family and then the other people who become like your elective family, right? The people around you, just kin support and community is huge. Pursue it. You're not going to go out saying to yourself, wow, you know, I really wish I had connected with my work more. I think you'll probably go out feeling, hopefully, I hope to go out feeling really good about my emotional connections to my family and friends. Does that count? Did I tell you? That was a lot of pressure, Louis.
It's all good. Tell you what we want to make this powerful. I want to acknowledge you Wednesday for doing all this research and doing the consistent study, the work to help women and men and all humans learn a new way that might be better for them. Whatever decision they want to do in their relationships, you're just unpacking the research and the science, which can be very messy with the belief systems we have with religion, with parents, bias, with whatever social norms we face. You're helping unpack to make it less scary and less judgmental for people to have better conversations and connect better. Which you said connection is one of the most powerful things for you and your truth.
Absolutely it is.
So I acknowledge you for the work for you. Thanks, Louis. Putting yourself up for judgment, criticism constantly and hatred by I'm sure lots of different groups out there. But also at the end of the day helping a lot of people connect.
And that's what it's all about. Thank you, I really appreciate you acknowledging it. And I do so much appreciate my readers who just get in touch now, you know, they can be in touch by social media.
What are you on social media?
I'm @WendyMartinPhD on Instagram, and I'm @WendyMartin on Twitter. I don't really do Facebook anymore, so you can't find me there. But I love it when I get the DMs from people just saying, Thank you, I feel seen, and I feel understood, or I feel less unusual, or I feel you know, less weird now. It means a lot to me.
So thank you for acknowledging. Of course, yeah, and make sure you guys take a screenshot of this podcast or the video if you're watching it and send Wednesday a DM on your Instagram story. Let her know you're listening, let her know you're watching and share the part.
You enjoyed the most about this. And what's your website too? It's www.wednesdaymartin.com and they can learn more about that. Yeah, I have a blog. They can buy a book, they can see where I'm going next, they can read blog posts and there are links there to my social media. Amazing, yeah.
Very cool. Final question for you is, what's your definition of greatness?
Being comfortable in your own skin and accepting who you are and being happy with what you already have is the key to greatness. not always striving for the next thing, not always focusing on the next moment. Just if you are happy with yourself and what you have, that's your golden key to happiness and greatness, I think. People are going to think, wow, that woman has no ambition. But it takes a lot of ambition and work to get yourself to the point where instead of thinking, my life would be better if only I had blah, instead to focus on, my life is really great because I have. X. So I think that's the key to greatness.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Louis. It's great talking to you. Thanks for having me on.
Amazing. There you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Fascinating. I'm holding the book right now, untrue. Why nearly everything we believe about women lust and infidelity is wrong. How the new science can set us free. Make sure to check out the and share this with a friend. Share it with a girlfriend of yours who might be interested in this topic. Share with a guy friend of yours. Share with someone who you think could benefit from learning about this. Maybe someone who's looking to strengthen their relationship or find a new relationship or be open to exploring new possibilities in relationships. Again, lewishouse.com/782 Tag me on Instagram while you're listening. Let me know what you enjoyed the most or got out of this the most and start a dialogue and a conversation with a friend of yours. Spread the message of greatness. You are a dream maker if you're a listener of this episode and this podcast, because the community of the School of Greatness is dream makers. DreamMakers. We're out here to make our missions happen. We are out here to manifest our dreams in the real physical world, and that's what we we are alchemists making magic happen. So make sure to check this out with your friends. Have the conversation, share it, and tag me at Lewis Howes. Let Wednesday know what you thought of this as well. And make sure to check out that interview I did on Born to Impact podcast with my friend Joel Marion. Episode number 18. We went deep, guys. I opened up about a lot of stuff in there, so make sure to check check it out, Born to Impact Podcast as well. Big thank you to them for the support of this show and helping with the production and the marketing so we can spread the message of greatness to more dream makers in the world. DreamMaker, you are doing incredible things. You are loved. This is your life. You can design your life the way you want it to be. Create the environment of love, an environment of inspiration around you from to your home life, to your family life, to your relationships, to your work, to your mission and purpose, your health. Your flourishing is based on or a lack of your environment. You will flourish if you create that environment around you, or if you have a horrible environment, it's going to be hard to thrive. Design your life. Become the alchemist. You are a dream maker, my friend. Go make magic happen. As always, I love you so very much and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. this is Comedy Bang!
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