Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

I read something interesting (It’s evolutionary psychology, so take it with a grain of salt) about something called “The Coolidge Effect.” This is basically a phenomenon that after a number of years together, the woman wishes her husband would have more sex with her, while the husband begins to desire sex with other partners, and less with the woman.

From the article:
“Without the Coolige Effect urging them toward new sexual partners, the small, isolated bands of hunter/gatherers from whom we’re all descended would have in-bred right out of existence. None of us would be here now, wondering why familiarity numbs eroticism. Hybrid vigor is as important in people as it is in tomatoes, so men have evolved to be turned on by the unfamiliar and sexually numbed by sustained familiarity…

We’d expect to find that males were eager for sex with their mates in the first few years, becoming steadily less so as time passed—regardless of how much love existed between the couple or how objectively attractive the woman remained. They’d be likely to feel confused and shamed by these feelings; the women likely to feel betrayed and insulted.”

In relation to your observation about women being more likely to blog about/pursue sex therapy for a lack of sex/unsatisfying sex in their relationships, I think it’s an interesting thing to consider.

[One nit to pick with evolutionary psychologists would be… how exactly does making the child of every woman in the village half-brothers and half-sisters reduce inbreeding. Plus for far more than half the women blogging it doesn’t seem to be a requirement that their current partner be the one with the recharged libido. That’s not to say there’s no “Coolidge effect.” And there appear to be a number of (pan-gender) incest avoidance reflexes. But both of those can also be explained by the general phenomenon that also leads to “familiarity breeds contempt.” Anyway, there’s probably something in our ancestry that explains all this, but it probably isn’t about hunter-gatherers on the savannah. That said I’m still going to follow up on your tip, Britni, for which I’m quite grateful. Thank you. —fl]