Do Women Even Like Sex? The Hard Truth About Desire - With Dr. Orion Taraban

All right, we got a good question from Mr. Steve. He read your book, so there you go. Thanks, Steve. He says, I have a question for Orion. In your book, you say that in general, in relationships, men try to get as much sex as possible for as little commitment as possible, while women try to get as much commitment as possible for as little sex as possible. I see your point and I agree women try to get as much commitment as possible, but quote, for as little sex as possible. I don't understand that part. He says it makes it sound like women don't enjoy sex. How would you explain the discrepancy?

Feel like what I wrote is that men attempt to exchange— they want as much sexual opportunity as possible for as few resources as possible, and women want as much resource, broadly defined, for the least amount of sexual exchange. So commitment is one of those resources, but it's not the only such resource that men can exchange for sexual opportunity. There does seem to be some gender differences with respect to the desirability of commitment. It's like there's an old joke that what does the lesbian bring to her second date? U-Haul. A U-Haul trailer. Yeah, exactly. Because they're like, they're going to move in together and begin the cohabitation process and they're ready to start nesting. So there does seem to be a gender-based preference for security and emotional intimacy and commitment in women, whereas there might be more of a preference for novelty and playing the field and sowing your wild oats and diversity of partners in men. And on some level, that might be reflected in the biological realities of the gametes involved, etc., etc. That's mimicked across the animal and plant kingdom. So it seems to be baked into the nature of sexual dimorphism across kingdoms for billions of years. There might be something to that then. But the idea here is, don't women enjoy sex? Yeah, a lot of them do. A lot of them do. However, they don't often. So here's the thing. As I've said on the channel, I don't know if I said in the book, but I probably said in the book somewhere, all men pay. But the more she likes you, the greater the discount. So a woman who's very attracted to a man won't need commitment, won't need exclusivity, won't need time and attention. She finds being in his presence, sleeping with him, engaging with him to be inherently valuable. But that's because her attraction for him is off the charts. Because her attraction to him is off the charts, she feels that she's adequately compensated for her sexual opportunity. She doesn't even see it as an exchange. The less attracted a woman is to a man, the more that she is going to require other resources to compensate her for the lack of intrinsic value to the sexual, the romantic relationship. So, you know, sex is like pizza. It's rare that it's really bad, but there's certainly better pizzas than others, you know what I'm saying? But to answer this man's question, the reason why it ends up this way is not so much because women don't like sex. That's like saying, well, do men not like money? Because that's often what they're using to exchange for that sex, right? I think men like money and women like sex. The reason why it's come out this way is it's the cat that decides the milk is good. So because most men have put such a high premium on a woman's sexual opportunity. And because women have a cultural monopoly on their ability to sell that commodity, sell that commodity, like they get to decide who gets access to their bodies and who doesn't. Men don't get to decide that for them. You put those two things together and like men have taught women that they have an extremely valuable resource that they are willing to exchange for rings and jewelry and trips and dinners and drinks and houses and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's not the fact that women might enjoy it is just like the icing on the cake. But even if they didn't enjoy it, like the enjoyment is, it's sort of irrelevant. It's the fact that their customers, their consumers value it so highly that they're willing to trade all of these other things in order to get access to that aspect of a woman. So it's men who have created on some level this exchange by their, let's say, hypervaluation of sexual opportunity.

And using that as a framework, we can more clearly see why the current environment of very easily available casual sex for many people, especially many young people, kind of disrupts the whole system, doesn't it? If I don't have to, quote, pay a lot or anything for it— but let's back up, put, you know, Piggybacking on one of your points where if she is so over the top attracted to you in the moment, you don't have to pay much of anything. You're just you. You are enough currency just in your own self. Well, if that's the case, and we have people out there saying, man, I got laid 4 times last week by 4 different women, he probably has a high currency. His self is such that he is a good all-around package that a lot of women go, oh, I like that.

It's true, but you have to understand that both men and women have different short versus long-term mating strategies and selection criteria. Like, women will have one-night stands with men that they, they might not want to get married to or even have their friends know that they're seeing them. The overlap is more considerable with women between, like, casual sexual relationships and long-term partnerships, because even a casual relationship can lead to pregnancy and more or less a long-term commitment to to a, with a man, whether he's involved in raising children or not. Men, the Venn overlap is smaller, but you're absolutely correct is that the hookup culture and the free love promised by birth control and has radically changed the valuation system. It's like for better or for worse, the price of sex used to be marriage, which let's be honest is an exceedingly high price to pay for sex. Like a lifetime of protection and provision.

Mm-hmm.

But men are so horny and they're so driven by that biological impulse that if there is no other way to get laid except marriage, they'll do it because they're, they're thinking with a different part of their anatomy. And so that's also something to keep in mind, is that we should be careful about idealizing some of our grandparents and our great-great grandparents' relationship. Some of these folks were just horny teenagers who did the only thing that they could do to get laid, and they lived in a culture where divorce was just— it didn't happen. There was— you couldn't do it. So it doesn't necessarily mean that they were happy. Doesn't necessarily mean that getting married and staying together was the best thing for either one of those people. Might have been, but I don't— I don't think it's fair to say that just because they didn't get divorced meant that that that was the best possible relational outcome for either one of those individuals.

Yeah. But anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry.

So just to finish my thought, we've gone from the price of sex being a lifetime of protection and provision to a couple of drinks at the bar. And this has led to a radical reevaluation of commitment between men and women. Women are anchored historically. They think that there are no gentlemen anymore, chivalry is dead, all men are cads, they just want to get in their pants without providing them any kind of commitment because they're thinking about the way things used to be. And there's been a huge devaluation of the price of commitment and the price of sex. But men are anchored contemporaneously. They're thinking, Well, I slept with you on the first date after a couple of drinks because I assumed you were attracted to me and you wanted to, and we're just two adults and you've done that to other men. So like, why? I can't get married to you because of the sexual opportunity anymore, because you've already proven through your behavior with me and other men that you'll give your opportunity in the absence of a lifetime protection provision. So I'm not going to pay more for something than I have to. Men and women are rational in that capacity. No one pays more for the same good that they have to. And so men are like, well, what else can you give me? Like, what, what, what else is in it for me? I don't have to marry you to have sex with you, so why should I get married? Well, if you don't marry me, then I'm going to leave you. It's like, that ultimatum works on a lot of guys because even in today's day and age, most men don't have any optionality to speak of, and the threat of Maybe this was the first woman who ever treated him well. Maybe it was the first girlfriend he ever had. And he's thinking back to the years of loneliness and horniness and rejection and desperation. He's like, okay, fine, I'll give you what you want. That's— that sounds great. But there has to be some other rational reason to motivate men to move in the direction of marriage. It's really interesting because there's a lot of, I'd say, modern apologists for marriage, like Jordan Peterson is one of them. And these folks try to make their best argument for why marriage is good for men in the same way that I think the Army is good for some young men too. It's like it gives you— it grows you up. You finally stop being a boy and you start being a man. You learn to care for something. It's like you can do all of those things. They're good things to do. You don't have to get married to do those things. That's my counterargument. But my point is that if marriage was obviously good for men, they would be lining up to get into it. Like you wouldn't need arguments to motivate guys, they would, they would clearly see that it was in their best interest. So rather than making really articulate and heartfelt and persuasive arguments in defense of the institution of marriage, if you actually want to motivate more men to get married, change the incentive structure, make it much more worthwhile for men to get married, and men rationally will line up to do so. But in the absence of that, I think you're just going to have to like— you're preaching to the choir. Which is what Jordan Peterson is increasingly doing, and/or you're just sort of like trying to whip someone into compliance. And when that doesn't work, you're gonna use shaming language, or you're gonna use angry outbursts and name-calling and denunciation. And when that doesn't work, you'll leave them alone, I suppose. But it's not gonna motivate people to do what you want.