Why Women Have Sex (29 page)

—heterosexual woman, age 39

Long ago, researchers who studied sexual behavior in rats discovered that if you drop a male rat into a cage with a willing female rat, he engages in enthusiastic copulation. He will mount her repeatedly until he is completely tired out and ready for the rhetorical post-ejaculatory “cigarette and nap.” But if you replace his former sexual mate with another willing female, he becomes randy all over again. In fact, every time you replace the female with a new female, the male rat shows renewed vigor and begins copulating afresh. He will keep going and going
with new females until he nearly dies of exhaustion. Scientists believe this happens because the rat’s brain releases dopamine when he is presented with a new female. Dopamine excites the brain’s reward receptors, which keeps him coming back for more. Amusingly, the name given to this phenomenon is “the Coolidge effect.” Story has it that when President Calvin Coolidge and his wife were touring a farm in a small American town, the farmer proudly showed Mrs. Coolidge a rooster that “could copulate with hens all day long, day after day.” Mrs. Coolidge suggested that the farmer tell that to Mr. Coolidge, who was elsewhere at the time. When the farmer later related the story, the president asked if it was with the same hen. When the farmer replied that it was not, the president told him to tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.

Does the Coolidge effect exist in humans, causing some people to stray from or even avoid monogamous relationships? As we discussed in chapter 3, dopamine is released during sex in humans, and, as with rats, it serves as a major reward mechanism. Dopamine has been linked to addictive behaviors ranging from alcoholism to gambling, and some scientists believe it plays a role in sexual addiction as well. To test the Coolidge effect in humans, most universities would not allow researchers to run an experiment to see how many times a person can get aroused and have sex with different people; the best they can do to approximate the situation is to test how aroused a person gets in response to repeated presentations of erotic stimuli. This test has been done in both women and men. Researchers present, for example, either a series of ten erotic scenes involving different people or a series of ten different scenes of the same couple engaging in sex. During each presentation, the scientists measure how sexually aroused the viewer gets in response to the erotic image. Then they look to see whether, over time, there is a difference in how aroused the viewer was by scenes of different couples versus scenes of the same couple. When the study was done in women, researchers found that women were similarly aroused—both genitally and mentally—by erotic scenes of the same couple and of different couples—even up to the twenty-first presentation. When the study was done in men, however, a very different pattern of arousal was seen. After a few presentations, men were more aroused when they saw erotic pictures of different people than when they
saw the same couple. Scientists call this habituation, and it is defined as a systematic decrease in the strength of a response—including a sexual response—resulting from repeated stimulation.

These studies suggest that habituation to the same sexual partner may be more likely to occur in men than in women. Keep in mind, though, that the studies used only photographs, not real people. Thus, they did not involve any decision making about actually engaging in sexual behavior. Humans have evolved much more sophisticated brains than rats. Consequently, when a human chooses a sexual partner, it is a much more complex process than simply responding to a surge of dopamine.

There is no doubt that women differ considerably from each other in the degree to which they seek sex with a variety of different partners. Many factors determine whether or not women choose to be monogamous. Sexual desire also plays a role in women’s mating strategies. Women with high levels of desire who are mated with men who desire sex less often may seek out other partners simply to get their needs met. Opportunity plays a role—women who are frequently presented with sexual offers may, over time, become tempted. Relationship satisfaction plays a role; women who are less satisfied with their relationship are more likely to have an affair. Life goals play a role. A woman who is just beginning to explore her sexuality, or a woman who just ended a twenty-year marriage, may enjoy her newly found sexual freedom and not want to commit to one sexual partner. On the other hand, a woman who has dated many men and had many different sexual partners may be ready for one stable, committed sexual partner.

A woman’s personality can also play a role in determining whether she would enjoy having sex with a variety of partners. In a study of 16,288 people in fifty-two nations (spanning North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Oceania, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia), psychologist David Schmitt found that two personality traits were linked to sexual variety seeking in women—
extraversion
and
impulsiveness
. Extraversion describes individuals who are sociable, gregarious, and thrive on social interaction
. Impulsiveness describes those who leap before they look, act on the spur of the moment, and have less inhibition about acting on their urges. The study showed that the more extraverted and impulsive women were, the more likely they were to seek sexual variety.

Similarly, a study of 107 married couples conducted in the Buss Evolutionary Psychology Lab found that impulsivity was linked to infidelity in women. But an even greater predictor was the personality trait of
narcissism
—a personality cluster defined by the attributes of being self-centered, grandiose, and exhibitionistic, feeling a strong sense of entitlement, arrogance, and being interpersonally exploitative. In the Meston Lab, a survey of 121 women aged eighteen to forty-seven found that individual differences in
perfectionism
were also related to relationship fidelity and sexual variety seeking. Those high in the trait of perfectionism set unrealistically high standards for themselves and others: They expect perfection, and this leads them to evaluate themselves and others stringently. The study found that women who scored high in perfectionism had engaged in sex with more partners than women low in perfectionism, and they also were more likely to have been unfaithful in a sexual relationship. Perfectionists appear to hold unrealistic or unattainable demands of sexual performance from their partners, which causes them to be continuously disappointed in the bedroom and consequently to look elsewhere for sexual gratification.

In our original scientific paper on why humans have sex, we found that college-age men were more likely than same-age women to report having sex because “the opportunity presented itself” or because they wanted more sexual variety and experience, and in his cross-cultural study, David Schmitt came to the same conclusion. In each of the fifty-two different regions studied, men and women were asked, “Ideally, how many different sex partners would you like to have over the next . . . ?” He had the participants answer with respect to several different time reference points, ranging from one month to their remaining lifetimes. In every region studied, and at every time point assessed, men said they wanted more sexual partners than did women. For example, using “next month” as a time reference, overall about 25 percent of men wanted more than one sexual partner. The highest percentage was seen in South America, with 35 percent of men wanting more than one sexual partner
in the next month, and the lowest was in East Asia, with about 18 percent of men desiring multiple sex partners in that period. The percentage of women who wanted more than one sexual partner in the next month was dramatically different. They ranged from a high of about 7 percent of women in Eastern Europe to a low of about 3 percent of women in East Asia.

The women profiled in this chapter devalued virginity. Sex was neither forced nor prescribed; it was an opportunity for exploration and adventure with new partners or using new techniques. They placed a high premium on sexual pleasure—their
own
pleasure.

In the widely discussed book
Female Chauvinist Pigs
, journalist Ariel Levy argues that women today—who alter their bodies cosmetically, take pole-dancing classes during lunch break, and attend Cake parties where audience members assess the breast sizes of women simulating sex on stage—are not feminists who demonstrate how far women have come in terms of sexual freedom. Rather, she says, women who make sex objects of other women or themselves only prove how far women have left to go. Levy calls for a new wave of feminism in which sex for women is passionate—a primal urge, to be explored freely. The women whose stories are shared in this chapter might typify this new wave of sexual liberation.

The dress is for sale. I’m not.

—Diana,
Indecent Proposal
(1993)

 

Stephanie Gershon yearned to explore the Amazonian rain forest before leaving Brazil to complete her college education back in the United States. Her efforts to locate a tour guide who would take her past the edge of the forest, however, came up empty. When a local busboy at her resort started to flirt with her, she questioned him about the rain forest.
Could a tourist such as herself, she wondered, survive alone in the jungle for a couple of weeks? “He laughed and told me I was nuts,” said Gershon. But when he revealed that he had deep knowledge of the jungle, having grown up there, Gershon turned on the charm. She was not attracted to the busboy, but sent out flirtatious signals anyway. She wanted him to become her jungle guide. Her sexual magnetism succeeded. The busboy managed to get out of work, and they left for the jungle:

It was amazing. We built our homes out of palm leaves, I saw animals I’d never seen before, he taught me the medicinal properties of all the plants, we picked fruit off the trees, we swam with and ate piranhas. And, of course, we had sex . . . for almost two weeks. It was a good barter both ways. I got to stay in the jungle, and he got to have sex with a cute young American girl.

Gershon reported that she did not feel at all uncomfortable or sleazy about the arrangement. In exchange for the sex, she gained memories of an Amazonian adventure that will last her lifetime.

Although Natalie Dylan’s and Stephanie Gershon’s barters are perhaps more exotic than most, a recent study of 475 University of Michigan college students supports the view that some women are motivated to have sex not because they are sexually or romantically attracted to the person, but simply to get things they want. Despite the fact that the University of Michigan is an elite institution of higher learning, with students coming from homes that are typically above average in income, 9 percent of the women reported that they had initiated an attempt to trade sex for some tangible benefit. Of these, 18 percent occurred in the context of an ongoing romantic relationship; the vast majority—82 percent—did not. But while some women barter sex to get the necessities of life to survive, as we will see later in this chapter, dire need was not the motivation of these college women. As the study’s author noted, “It’s more about getting what you want than getting what you need, unless you think everyone needs a $200 Louis Vuitton bag.”