Photo by Tumblr user allinone. Don't know the original source.

Last night I ran into yet another version of the same old "men want more sex than women" thing.  This one from a commenter on that Laura Schlessinger post at Feminist Mormon Housewives I referenced here.

Men value sex very highly. We have a drive for it which is rather insistent, and which every source I’ve seen indicates is, on average, higher than the drive of the average woman.  Husbands who feel deprived of sex aren’t likely to be happy about it, and may do things which are bad to try to feed that drive.

We've all seen variations on this hundreds or (if you're a sex, relationships, or gender blogger and follow such things) thousands of times.  So I don't know why yesterday was different.  The commenter was frustrated but not all that belligerent, nor was he wrong -- every source he's seen probably has indicated that men have higher sex drives.  But for whatever reason when I read it I had a little scientific-wild-assed guess epiphany. 

It’s not that men want more sex than women. In decades of first, second, and third-hand observation I’ve noticed that women want just about same number of hours of sex in a month… just not the same number of minutes of sex in a day. They don’t always want it with the exact same frequency we men do, but when they do they often want it to last longer than men can usually provide.

Don’t assume that women’s sexual “insufficiency” is more of a burden on us than men’s “insufficiency” are a burden for women. The frustration cuts both ways.

The main difference is that social expectations (see, for instance, Schlessinger's The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands) tell women, basically, “hold your nose and bite your lip and it’ll all be over soon… and then you can make him a sandwich.” Which is actually precisely the problem, not the solution!

I also want to be really clear that in saying this I'm not bashing men for "premature" ejaculation, and I'm definitely not perpetuating the myth that "prowess" in men means being able to pound and thump away for hours on end.  It's not about "inadequacy" or "insufficiency" at all! (Which is why I keep scare-quoting it.)  It's just about recognizing that to the extent men and women have different approaches to sex it's not a good idea to make one wrong and the other right.  It's maybe a better idea to give both realities equal weight... and seek to accommodate each other. 

One last thing.  That it sometimes works the other way for hetero couples, or that the same issues arise with same-sex or intersex partners or poly partners obviously doesn't change or invalidate the basic point that when drives are different it's a good idea to converge on each other rather than demand that one of you needs "fixing."  If you're both, or all, just naturally synchronized then great!  But you're still not doing it "right."  Because "luck" and "correct" aren't in the same domain.

Anyway, that's my hypothesis. I think it's testable. And maybe even has been. And while I don't think I am I could be completely wrong. So I'm posing the question: what's your experience? What do you think?

Em & Lo respond to a reader, Rizzo, who asked if her really strong libido makes her a “slut” or “sex addict.” And ask a critical question of their own. (Emphasis mine.)

...too many people still refuse to believe that there are some women out there — not all, admittedly, but some — whose sex drives compare with or even surpass the average male sex drive. And, unfortunately, it’s because of outmoded attitudes like this that you are left asking us if it makes you a slut to satisfy your high sex drive. Can you even imagine a guy writing us the same letter?

They said it here.

It’s a good question, and one that hints at another question its hard to imagine a guy writing. Rizzo might feel so out of place about her high “like a male” libido partly because men with low libidos are nearly invisible.

For instance we’re all so sure we “know” men are supposed to have higher libidos that it may never occur to some men that their libidos are particularly low. And because there’s a lot of social pressure that equates high libido with “manliness” men who do worry they might be on the low side of the spectrum tend not to ask experts for advice.

(In fact seems like I read recently that nearly half of heterosexual couple’s visits to relationship and sex councilors are initiated by sexually dissatisfied women?)

One of many downsides of this invisibility is women with perfectly ordinary libidos worrying they might be “sex addicts” because they’re more interested than their partners.

This is not a new problem by the way. Back in the bad old days (up till the mid-1960s in some parts of the U.S.) when a woman could still be involuntarily committed to a mental institution on her husband’s say so a frequent lay diagnosis was hysteria or nymphomania. A.k.a. “having a higher libido than one’s husband.”

Based on private conversations I get the impression a lot of low-libido men hide behind acceptable social scripts like “let’s take this slow” and “I want to be a gentleman about it.” Or even (a la Ross Douthat) they can closet themselves in with the cloaks of prudery, sanctimony, and the no-sex class paradigm’s Two Rules of Desire.

[Still on family vacation till next Tuesday morning. Still next to no time to write even though there’s lots to talk about. —fl]

Susie and Aretha Bright have an occasional advice column at Jezebel and cope nicely with a correspondent who’s having a first-hand collision with a highly recognizable component of the “no-sex” class paradigm.

Dear Aretha & Susie:

I’ve been in a relationship for over three years, and for the past year we’ve been talking about getting married. Since these conversations started, my boyfriend started to expect different things of me sexually. He gets upset if I use “dirty” words like cock, pussy, or fuck. He said, “The mother of my future children doesn’t talk like that.”

We’re having less sex, and the sex we do have is more vanilla. I like vanilla sex, but I would like it more frequently. I’m afraid that he isn’t seeing me as a sexual person anymore. If we do get married, I wonder if this will lead him to cheat. One of the things that I liked about our relationship before, was that we had a great sexual connection- and he told me over and over how important sex is to him. So if he can’t get it from me, will he look elsewhere? Help!

—Unhappy Angel in the House

She said it here.

The standard narrative has it that women are always the ones who lose interest in sex… typically because her partner “wears her down” with endless solicitations caused by his “naturally higher” libido.

That’s the descriptive part of the paradigm — the one of the expectation setting elements whereby men are indoctrinated to believe that, except maybe for that lusty, anomalous single moon after sex begins where honey flows smoothly, women would just never think about sex if their partners weren’t perpetually bringing it up.

And yet here the proscriptive mechanism is pretty clear: side B of the paradigm is that inside it men believe women shouldn’t be interested, shouldn’t be eager, shouldn’t be creative, shouldn’t be ready to say “yes.”

Rule #1 of my unfortunately non-cynical Two Rules of Desire is that it’s simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable that women should have sexual desire. The descriptive part says it’s inconceivable. The proscriptive part says it’s intolerable.

I say it’s incomprehensible. Not least because it causes so much misery and ill will in both victims and authors of the ideology.

Incidentally, Susie’s advice begins pithily: “I wouldn’t want him to be the father of my children…” Aretha’s conclusion is equally blunt: “Anyone who says “The Mother of My Children Doesn’t …” – Deal breaker.”

My advice, for Unhappy Angel in the House, anyone else who’s had her experience, and for you for when it happens to you is to confront the issue straight up! Say “You know, story has it that 99% of couples wind up with the man wanting more, more adventurous sex than the woman does. I don’t want to be one of those couples but when you say crap like ‘the mother of my children, blah, blah, blah’ I get the strong feeling you do! We need to talk about that because I don’t feel that way, I don’t want to feel that way, I don’t want you trying to make me feel that way, and guess what? I’m actually pretty sure you don’t want me to feel that way.”

I’m pretty sure that conversation doesn’t happen often. If it does I still don’t think it happens often enough.

I can’t say how much I’ve been enjoying Bob & Susan-Yager-Berkowitz’s He’s Just Not Up for It Anymore: Why Men Stop Having Sex, and What You Can Do About It (which I first mentioned in passing here.)

It’s highly readable, following a familiar and conventional-for-relationship-books mix of case study, quotes, citation, and interpretation without a lot of deep theory or analysis. But if the form is familiar the content is eye-opening.

First of all: In just about half of all “sexless” heterosexual relationships (technically defined as fewer than ten sexual events together per year) it’s the man rather than the woman who’s less interested.

Second of all: the reasons couples give for men’s lack of desire are sometimes cliché, but when they are they’re cliché with a twist. Even better, the reasons men give for their lack of desire are interestingly different than the reasons women who’s partners lack desire give. One commonality though?

Although the men know (or at least think they know) the reasons for their voluntary celibacy but the women are only guessing, either way the situation is embarrassing and painful. It is therefor not surprising that both men and women agree most with statements that shift responsibility away from themselves.

And it’s not as though men are secretly beleaguered, saintly, and misunderstood… just human:

Indeed men indicate a lack of sexual adventure (hers, not his) as primary. It is difficult to believe that this lack of erotic excitement is completely one-sided, and that these men who identify their wives as unadventurous are themselves imaginatively passionate guys, just somehow mysteriously unable to inspire the one woman they chose to marry.

Another interesting tidbit…

Slightly less than half say they are interested in sex, but not with their partners.

...implies that slightly more than half aren’t interested in sex with anyone.

The authors bring a seriously interesting twist to another big reason that you’d think would be obvious: weight gain. Again with the nuance — read to the end of the excerpt before jumping back out. (Emphasis mine.)

It is always easier to obfuscate blame, especially when the problem is, at least in part, yourself. So, let us make this clear before we write another sentence — we aren’t talking about a few extra pounds, which, without question, are an excuse, not a reason. However, if a woman is more than around thirty pounds overweight, her partner maybe telling the truth. ... Mysteriously, whether or not they themselves have added extra pounds, too, is irrelevant [to the men’s responses.]

Obesity also diminishes libido, so an overweight person may not be as responsive a partner as he or she once was. There is also new evidence that correlates male obesity and impotence. Mix obesity, ED [another big factor discussed elsewhere in the book —fl] and low libido together and it may be easier to just stop trying.

So, again another instance where popular, gendered stereotypes about women’s weight and appearance get in the way of what might actually be going on. (A single anecdote is just an anecdote but the authors quote a woman who found her husband in bed with a neighbor who… was the same weight, age, and appearance as she. Which, if I’m not mistaken, is actually pretty common and which again suggests the most conventional “reason” may not an actual explanation.)

Another really important bit is that women surveyed revealed that their partners weren’t that into sex even before their relationships became permanent ones. So it’s not just the conventional explanation of familiarity breeding contempt.

And there’s more. Which I may post about later when I’ve finished the book. Which brings up a caveat: it’s risky to being positively reviewing a book before you’ve finished, and I’ve got a lot more to read. But the information and insights in those first few chapters seem worth the price of admission.

What I especially like about the authors so far is they’re wonderfully non-judgmental. They’re aware of stereotypes but not bound by them. Willing to pass along conventional ideas from authorities but not willing to swallow them whole. They’re on to something new, or, more accurately, something almost never discussed, and so, knowing there are already more than enough stories about gender expectations, they’d prefer not to prematurely make up their own.

Bottom line, though, is yet another half of what we “know” about libido imbalance in relationships, especially hetero relationships, turns out to be myth-based rather than, oh, say, true.

One more instance where what society tells us is true about men, women, sex, and relationships gets in the way of dealing with what’s actually happening inside the relationships!