"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

Dopamine, The Cruel Bitch Mistress

If you'll open your books to where we left off the other day...we talking about the exquisite agony of The Crush. The crush, as you recall, is where we basically become dreamy fuckheads, walking ids powered by the hideous/delicious combo of single-mindedness, spaciness, magnanimity to your fellow humans ("Everyone is so awesome!"), hateable neediness, and general giddiness alternating with sudden despair--all set to the constant backdrop of the throb of unquenched sexual desire.

As reader can't keep anything to myself put it:

Crushes are torture, but the most delicious kind of torture. They make you realize what a masochist you really are. It's such a fun feeling though when your insides are squirming and you're smiling at random people like an idiot because you're thinking about them again and your jaw hurts from smiling so hard/much.

If you are suffering thusly right now, please know that you're not acting like such a pitiful lovesick idiot because you're inherently weak or out of your fucking head, but because cruel, cruel dopamine is totally screwing with you. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, "a kind of natural drug associated with the expectation of a reward that brings us pleasure," writes Sheril Kirshenbaum in The Science of Kissing. Dopamine can start fucking you up even during a first kiss. Writes Kirshenbaum,

Spiking during a passionate kiss, dopamine is responsible for the rush of elation and craving, and can also result in obsessive thoughts that many of us experience in association with a new romance--almost like an addiction.

I'm sorry, did she say "almost like"? Because dopamine is involved with stimulating the mesolimbic reward system (Mmmm, you like it when I talk to you all scientifically, don't you?), the part of the brain involved with virtually all of the addictive drugs. Wheee!

It primes us to make us want more, making us feel energized. Some people pumping lots of dopamine even lose their appetites, or feel that they cannot fall asleep--not surprisingly, the same 'symptoms' commonly described when "falling in love."

So maybe you're not in love, maybe you're just high on dopamine, you friggin' junkie. Which can go either way, depending if your ardor is returned. Writes the delightful Helen Fisher in Why We Love:

Because romantic love is such a euphoric "high," because this passion is exceedingly difficult to control, and because it produces craving, obsession, compulsion, distortion of reality, emotional and physical dependence, personality change, and loss of self-control, many psychologists regard love as an addiction--a positive addiction when your love is returned, a horribly negative fixation when your love is spurned and you can't let go.

If you don't get your love fix, well, it's not good. The suffering includes all kinds of sucky withdrawal symptoms like "depression, crying, spells, anxiety, insomnia, loss of appetite (or binge eating), irritability and chronic loneliness," reports Fisher.

Fisher continues, and I suspect she based her research solely on my diary entries from 1987: "Like all addicts, the lover then goes to unhealthy, humiliating, even physically dangerous lengths to procure their narcotic."

Which is not good, either. (Well, it's sorta good.)

Our takeaways from all this?  Hmmmmm, I guess, if you're going to get all hepped up on dopamine over someone, at least try to make sure that they might be someone who'll like you back. Which, you know, is totally easy. (Helpful hint: After years of painstaking research--ahem, Nobel committee--I can say with a fair degree of certainty that emotionally unavailable, meanish, and your basic garden-variety insane dudes are not, to my great surprise, good choices. You're welcome.)

Anyway, after awhile nature finally gives us a break. Because even a good dopamine ride can be, well, a bit much. I mean there's only so much time you can spend in a state of constant arousal, contemplating such uber-focused matters as the insanely lickable curve of a loved one's particularly enchanting body part. "Our biology places a limit on how long the 'high' conferred by dopamine can last," writes Kirshenbaum. "Studies have shown that levels of this intoxicating neurotransmitter decrease as we become more accustomed to a romantic partner, which might be why sexual desire tends to wane with the same person over time." (See also: the Coolidge Effect in "Our Genes Can Be Heartless Puppeteers").

On the other hand, it also doesn't seem reasonable, or at all fun, to avoid excessive, stupid, sexy, out-of-your-fucking-mind passion, for fear of getting the dopamine monkey on our backs. As "Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of The Female Orgasm" author Nicole Daedone's current, possibly grammatically problematic, Facebook status says, "Desire is there to be lived inside of."

I will await your tales from the front....

xoxo
jill

[addendum: As the unrelentingly brilliant and hilarious Betty Fokker points out below in the comments, the sweeter, more mellow high of attachment and bonding chemicals conveniently kick in just as the harsher high of the dopamine fades.]

[addendum 2: My dear friend Tricia sent me this bad-ass article on the fleetingness and horrible unsustainability of such passion.]

(photo: Marlo Broekmans, Photo extraite de la serie "Autoportraits")

Can the "Rule of Thumb" determine how you have an orgasm? Let's see!

So could you take a moment, grab a mirror and stick your fingers in your pants for me?

I'm asking because my post about Princess Bonaparte and her tenacious efforts to figure out why the hell she couldn't come via fucking alone is running right now over on the Good Vibes blog.

Basically, Bonaparte discovered that the distance of the clitoris from the vagina determines the likelihood that a woman can have an orgasm from intercourse alone. Clit close (less than an inch) = easy coming.  Clit far (inch plus) = break out the heavy artillery.

I was thinking about this because my friend Janet, she of the exceptional ass, hosted a marathon showing of Gigoloslast weekend. It's a supposed reality show about male gigolos working in Las Vegas. Beside the shock my cable-less self found at them showing people, like, actually fucking, on TV, I was also struck by how many of these supposed customers ended up getting a porn style rapid-fire fucking. In the eps I saw (an embarrassingly high number I must admit), I saw no vibrator use, no mouth pleasuring and just a wee bit of finger stroking.

Is the fuck-pound what these women really wanted? Or, were these particular gigolos just kinda bad at figuring out what women want/need? Or was the reality show fake, with producers just creating sex scenes that they thought women would request?

Because, according to those randy fuckers over at ABC News, about 75% of women never reach orgasm through intercourse alone. That's right, I said Never.

Now, nothing wrong with a good fuck pounding, but it makes me want to do some unscientific research. (The fuck pounding itself doesn't make me want to do research--I'm not that nerdy.*--but the prevalence of all of these clients supposedly requesting it.)

Which brings me back to that finger in your pants? Do me a solid and measure the distance between your clit and your vagina (your vagina in the true, non-vulvaish sense.) An inch is about the distance between the tip of your thumb and the first knuckle.

Let's do some research!

This is what I need:
--Tell me if your clit-vag distance is more than an inch, less than an inch, or about an inch?
--Tell me if you come easily, never or sometimes via intercourse alone.
--Optional:  Rapid-fire fuck pounding--yay or nay?
--Optional Plus: If you had to chose, who is the most desirable of the Gigolo gigolos?

I know, they are completely personal questions, so go ahead and comment anonymously if you want. If you're a gay chick, feel free to answer regarding other blunt object penetration.

I'll report back with the results.

xoxo
jill

*Not true.
(photo source)

On the Benefits of Someone Who Can Kiss The Hell Out of You

The other day at the grocery store, a man came up to me and said, "You must know that you smell incredible." "Uh, thanks," I murmured because, in truth, it was all I could do to tamp down my geeky impulse to add, in a manner reminiscent of a female Mister Peabody: "Ah, you are responding to biological clues in my scent. Most likely you are detecting a favorable genetic similarity between us--although not too much similarity, as that would encourage genetic mutations in our young. All this sensory information is telling you we are probably well-suited to bear healthy, symmetrical young with a balanced assortment of genes." 

It is impulses like these that make me glad I am already married. As Dorothy Parker said, "Men seldom make passes at girls who say nerdy &%$# like that."  

So it was with trepidation that I started studying the biochemistry of kissing. Because as any formerly religious person can tell you, there's nothing like a little science to ruin a wondrous, magical thing. 

"Soul meets soul on lovers' lips," said Percy Bysshe Shelley in Prometheus Unbound. A truly good kiss does feel like the meeting of souls -- maybe it's because so much is happening in a kiss. Helen Fisher, author of Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, calls kissing a "mate assessment tool" and says, "When you kiss, you can touch, see, feel, taste somebody. A huge part of our brain lights up." Feeling someone's breath upon us or inhaling the scent of their neck is lovely in its own right, but also provides us clues as to each other's health, diet, and genetic make-up. In other words, it makes good biological sense to mate with the one whose kisses make you weak in the knees. 

So why is kissing the right person so damn good? Well, darling, those sweet kisses are making you crazy with a triple hormone combo that increases your sex drive (testosterone), makes you think pair bonding with this person is a fine idea (oxytocin) and causes you to be all sappy and prone to the excessive playing of Iron and Wine CDs (serotonin). In a 2007 study, researcher Wendy Hill compared the hormone levels of college students who had spent 15 minutes kissing with those who merely held hands and listened to music in the student center. For some reason, I love the detail that they were in the student center. The results of the study--stress levels in the kissing couples decreased, blah blah blah... wasn't as interesting as this bit of student center-related info:  

Hill thought that the setting might have been too clinical for the women to get turned on, so she tried in her latest study to up the ambience by locating the couples in a secluded room of an academic building, outfitted with a couch, flowers, jazz music and electric candles.

Alas, the article did not include a picture of this academic love nest with its "electric candles." Not that I think that setting is really all that important. I base this sweeping assessment on the fact that I received my best, most sublime kisses ever in an attic bedroom in Ann Arbor, Michigan, atop a set of bed sheets festooned with pictures of The Flintstones. (There was also a giant tapestry over his bed featuring Aries the ram, but in my memory, I choose to edit that detail out.) I didn't care about any of the decor though because, god, that guy could kiss. Sweet, melty, insanely wonderful kisses. I would live inside his kisses if I could. As the night grew later and later, I told him I should probably go home. "You could," he whispered, while placing the most delightfully soft kisses on my chin and nose, "Or you could stay here and kiss me all night." In a typically bad decision of that era (I was drunk, natch, as was my wont in those days), I inexplicably chose to go home. Dumb moves such as that, plus--okay, fine--my delightful habit of drunkenly calling him at all hours, ended things quickly thereafter.   

Which was too bad, because, damn, our young would have been symmetrical as hell.