I stood in the polished new kitchen with glass of wine in hand. As I smiled politely and glanced around at the other women standing around the granite island, some of them my good friends, I noticed that the housewarming party could have been recast as a junior high mixer. The two genders had segregated themselves, and suddenly there wasn’t a Y chromosome to be found, in this room or on this floor.
As I idly wondered where my better half had gone – I would have placed money on him being in the garage that housed the big, burly A.T.V.s – I took a sip of the reserve Malbec that the hostess had so graciously poured.
“Kyle’s sex drive just doesn’t seem to be…what it used to be.”
My friend Sally was apparently taking advantage of the situation and seeking some female solidarity. I had talked with her in private about this very issue, so I wasn’t too surprised to hear her voice her common complaint. But when Janet, a woman I didn’t know as well, exclaimed in a high-pitched, desperate-sounding whine, that she wished she could keep her husband as a companion and have a few lovers on the side, the Malbec almost took its leave through my nose.
We all started in at once, looking at one another with sudden camaraderie and real understanding.
“It’s not fair! I’m hitting my sexual peak and he started down the back slope at 23!”
“They say God, or whoever, has quite a sense of humor. Well, I’m not laughing.”
“Now I’m the one ogling construction workers, instead of the other way around!”
“My husband is such a great partner, but I really need to be fucked.”
“Now that we’re finally married, I can’t keep my mind off of other men.”
We were in consensus: biologically, we simply felt mismatched with our partners. Common wisdom holds that men reach their sexual peak somewhere between 18 and 22 years of age. As women in our thirties and early forties, we’d always been told we’d hit our sexual peaks anywhere from 35 to 45, and most of us were feeling it. But there was something more complicated at work. Many of us were newlyweds, and our new status of being married had awakened the intense desire to mate with strange men, which didn’t make any sense to any of us. Oh sure, it’s commonly thought that men just aren’t cut out for monogamy, being hardwired to sow their oats with as many women as possible; while women, biologically speaking, are thought to be hardwired to seek out a single, strong provider. But here we were, a group of dedicated, loving female partners, wondering aloud if we were even capable of monogamy, let alone biologically designed for it.
As I listened to the discussion, a sharp nostalgia hit my inner thighs. A flash of memory seared through my body: a lover from my past, Seth, thrusting into me as I lay half hanging off the foot of his bed, kissing my mouth with those full, hungry lips. I remembered that amazingly muscled back and arms and abs – not too much muscle, but just the right amount, running my hands over his taut, young skin. And then, in one graceful motion, he acrobatically swept me up and we were vertical. I wrapped my legs around him and to my amazement, he fucked me against the wall as if I weighed less than a feather. I could still remember the smell of his young, pure sweat and the feel of the cool plaster on my back. I had been 22; he was 25.
I was sure I was slightly swooning from my private memory, and couldn’t help but say, “Why can’t my husband just fuck me against the wall? What I wouldn’t give to have my young lover back, just for one night…”
The conversation was cut short by the appearance of the other sex. I couldn’t help but wonder how they would feel if these men had known what their wives and partners were just discussing.
I went home wondering about the biology behind “sexual peaks.” Was it an old wives' tale, or true wisdom? And was it possible that women were not, after all, hardwired to stay with one man, one provider?
Researching on the Internet can be risky business – but that’s where my queries led me. Sifting through the quagmire of information, a few nibbles of truth seemed to emerge. First, there was a medical consensus that men’s erections are harder and straighter at the supple ages of 18 to 22 than at any other time in their lives. Second (and as many women can attest to), younger men can get hard more quickly after ejaculation. However, beyond that, there wasn’t a lot of biological or genetic data to speak to the sexual peaks of either men or women.
Many medical experts explained that women may seem to reach their sexual peak between 35 and 45 for a variety of different reasons: their children are getting older and they’re getting more sleep (a necessary ingredient for feeling horny); as women mature they have more sexual experience, both with partners and with themselves, and are therefore more capable of guiding their lover in meeting their sexual needs; even as their bodies age, most women get more comfortable with themselves, allowing them to be more free and experimental in the bedroom.
And back to men. While their erections may not be as straight or hard (oh lord, straight and hard Seth, here we go again…), I couldn’t find any sources that actually stated that men’s sexual stamina biologically changes. There were, however, other factors that were discussed, including increased stress at work, weight gain, and again, having young children.
So it appears that the sexual peak is not so much genetic and biological, minus the straight and hard factor, as it is social and psychological. But what about monogamy?
Again, scientific data was hard to come by, although there was an agreement that while humans choose to be socially monogamous, we are biologically "adulterous." One of the most telling pieces of evidence I found was “Deflating the Myth of Monogamy,” by David P. Barash, a professor of psychology in Miami. According to Barash, many species that have once been thought to be monogamous have been proven otherwise in the last decade, including many of our old monogamous standouts in the bird world. More specifically, they are socially monogamous, but sexually polygynous. In other words, they have life-long life-mates, but have sex with many partners. Yes, they cheat. Males have often been thought to be the promiscuous ones, “Yet the DNA data are unequivocal: Female animals, in species after species, are sexual adventurers in their own right.” (Barash) So it seems that in the animal world, females, as well as males, are hardwired not for sexual monogamy, but for polygyny.
The sexual behaviors of humans are not as easy to quantify, since we do not typically lend ourselves to DNA testing. Thus, there was no real scientific information available to me as I sought out the truths of our sexual natures online. According to Barash, there is biological evidence that suggests the Homo sapien is not naturally monogamous, including the fact that men are significantly larger than women, which is congruous with other mammals who are “harem keepers” in nature, including deer, seals and primates. But without the hard numbers of DNA testing, or scientific testing of the social behavior of humans, it’s hard to know just how sexually monogamous we really are, and where the gender lines truly lie across the issue of promiscuity.
I read Barash’s article alone in bed, since my husband was out of town on business. After I finished it, I closed down the search engine on my computer – that little hummer that had been working so hard for me – and I settled back into the pillows. I looked over at the empty spot beside me. I could lament our “sexual mismatching” – his slowing down as I was just getting into my groove, and I could fantasize about past lovers all I wanted. I could laugh about and daydream about having my husband as well as a male concubine. Indeed – all of this was probably healthier to talk about and laugh about than to deny. But I knew, as I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep, that even though I may not be hardwired for monogamy as a Homo sapien, as a person, it was indeed my chosen way of life.
Originally published February, 2008.