"Our Genes Can Be Heartless Puppeteers"

Note the grim, bored faces.
Too many orgasms for the Coolidges?

"Pete and I haven't had sex for awhile," said a friend. "I'm not particularly in the mood, but I feel like we should. You know, for the good of the marriage."

I murmured in an affirmative manner, conveying something along the lines of "Yeah, go hit that dutiful marital sex." After all, sex--even possibly tepid sex--has all kinds of benefits--the immune system boost, happy endorphins, lower incidence of incontinence and all that.

But, at it turns out, not only am I a sucky friend for putting her personal business all up in my blog, but I also might have given her exactly the wrong advice. At least according to the limbic system, a primitive part of our brain that doesn't care a whit that we've based our entire societal structure on the responsible-sounding, seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time ideal of monogamy.

By having sex with good old Pete, my friend would be inadvertently setting off a chain of neurochemicals that would actually increase marital ennui (it means boredom/lack of interest, if you happen to be afflicted with dictionary ennui). Surprisingly, sexual satisfaction kicks in a biological impulse full of monogamy-unfriendly side effects like making a couple more irritated with, and less attracted to, each other.

Marnia Robinson in Psychology Today reports that sexual satisfaction, specifically orgasms, actually compels us to want to move on to a new partner. 

[A] mating frenzy (hot sex, lots of orgasms) resulting in sexual satiation (that "I'm done!" feeling) plays right into Cupid's plan. Decreasing dopamine (after the delicious neurochemical blast of orgasm) tells your limbic system, "Fertilization duty is done here; time to find this mate less alluring-and respond to any potential novel mate with gusto."

The same cruel, cruel swirl of chemicals that make you swoon over another's perfection and general dreaminess, then:

 --makes you think it's a swell idea to bear children with this lovely person, 

-- fills you with a fiery rage toward this person who can't seem to fucking realize that wadding up a wet towel makes it moldy,

--makes you think a new partner would be a much more suitable mate. (I'm keeping a shortlist, just in case.)

Our bodies are, annoyingly, designed to make us stop desiring a mate once we've had our way with them. It's all about creating genetic diversity in our young, maximizing our fertility and all sort of other biological constructs that don't go over too well with a certain monogamous mate.

It's called the Coolidge Effect, and refers to the tendency in mammals to develop deadened sexual responses to their familiar mate while miraculously having no such problems with a novel mate. The name comes from a story about Calvin Coolidge and his wife touring a government farm. After hearing that a particular rooster spent a good part of each day mating, Mrs. Coolidge, in a moment of First Lady TMI, supposedly remarked, "Tell that to Mr. Coolidge when he comes by." When told, the president asked the farmer, "Same hen every time?" "No, sir," answered the farmer. "Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge," retorted the President, thus ensuring that no one in the Coolidge house would be doing any mating that evening.

In the Coolidge Effect, a male rat will mate with a receptive female (so made that way through chemical injections) until his libido dies out and he gives up and ignores her, doing whatever the male rat equivalent is of grabbing the remote. However, if a new receptive female enters, he jumps out of his stupor and begins banging her with a fresh vigor. The effect repeats--Mr. Rat rising to the occasion with each fresh female and giving them sweet, sweet rat love--until the dude is overwhelmed with exhaustion.   

I know this is science and all, but part of me wants to take the Creationist Approach to Science and just declare that, hey, I don't believe and/or like this idea, ergo, it's untrue. Despite all the testing, data, chemical analysis, carbon dating, friggin' dinosaur and early human bones littering the whole fucking globe...er, sorry, off topic.  

I mean, I get the whole fresh-excitement-with-new-mate part. Anyone who takes a look at the latest celeb pairing on US Magazine's cover can see that clearly enough, but the rest of it is so counter-intuitive. Having sex with your mate is...bad? And orgasms are especially bad because they make you want to leave your mate and move on? 

So where does this leave us? We live in a society that at least nominally supports families and lifetime pair-bonding. But our uncouth biological impulses are fighting us with every one of our well-intentioned, sanctioned-by-marriage thrusts.

It is a bit of a pickle and I don't have any great solutions for you yet. In the meantime, should you have sex with your mate? Hell, I don't fucking know. Play it by ear and we'll figure it out next time.

xoxo
jill

"Our senses crave novelty.  Any change alerts them, and they send a signal to the brain.  If there’s no change, no novelty, they doze and register little or nothing.  A constant state--even of excitement--in time becomes tedious, fades into the background because our senses have evolved to report changes, what’s new, something startling that needs to be appraised, a morsel to eat, a sudden danger.”  Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses