Category Archives: Sex

This tends toward the academic rather than the erotic. But not entirely.

Why Do Humans Mate in Seclusion?

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12

Quote of the Day

Despite considerable cultural differences, a striking uniformity is argued to
exist in human preferences for concealing sexual intercourse from the sen
sory perception of conspecifics. However, no systematic accounts support
this claim, with only limited attempts to understand the selective pressures
acting on the evolution of this preference. Here, I combine cross-cultural and
cross-species comparative approaches to investigate these topics. First, an
analysis of more than 4572 ethnographies from 249 cultures presents sys
tematic evidence that the preference to conceal mating is widespread
across cultures. Second, I argue that current anthropological hypotheses
do not sufficiently explain why habitual concealment of mating evolved in
humans but is only seldom exhibited by other social species. Third, I intro
duce the cooperation maintenance hypothesis, which postulates that
humans, and a specific category of non-human species, conceal matings to
prevent sexual arousal in witnesses (proximate explanation). This allows
them to simultaneously maintain mating control over their partner(s) and
cooperation with group members who are prevented from mating (ultimate
explanations). I conclude by presenting a comparative framework and
predictions to be tested across species and human cultures

Yitzchak Ben Mocha
June 7, 2020
Why do human and non-human species conceal mating? The cooperation maintenance hypothesis | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Interesting.

I didn’t read the paper in detail, but it appears to me he is ignoring a significant subculture. There are lots of people who video their sexual activities and post the video on the Internet. There are sex clubs in all western large cities. At these clubs’ people have sex with their spouse in front of other people. They also have sex with people not their spouse in group settings. If this were an evolutionary beneficial behavior, why would people seek out others and places to defy the norm?

I agree that this is far from mainstream. And I have often wondered why people seek seclusion. Growing up on the farm it was common to see the cattle, cats, and chickens mating. It just did not make sense to me that people were so private about it. There was no emotional damage to any of the animals. And it was my understanding chimp, monkeys and other primates mated in public. So, what is going on with humans?

If Mocha’s hypothesis is correct, it’s a restriction created by men for their benefit. One would then expect women to be more inclined than men to engage in public sex. I don’t believe this is the case. On the other hand, women are much noisier during sex than men. This lends credence to the idea that they have an evolutionary bias toward getting attention when they are highly aroused.

I’m glad Mocha put some thought into it. His hypothesizes are far better than anything I came up with. I’m not entirely convinced they are correct, but they are worth discussing and testing.

Increasing the Anguish

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Quote of the Day

Above all I would advise people against posting expressions and videos of their personal anguish over the election, there is a substantial number of people here who use this as masturbation material.

David Burge @iowahawkblog
Posted on X, November 6, 2024

Sure, this is rather funny. I doubt there is much truth to it though. Yeah, there are some really strange kinks out there. But I doubt there are “a substantial number of people” which find this sexually arousing.

I think the more likely situation is that Burge finds it humorous to increase the anguish.

Although, there is one person who replied to his post with “I’m literally out of lube and shooting dust”. But I think he is joking too.

It Has Been a Long Time Coming

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Gilead’s twice-yearly antiviral protected women from HIV infection

Gilead said Thursday that twice-a-year injections of a new antiviral drug, called lenacapavir, completely protected cisgender women from contracting HIV in a large Phase 3 trial.

In the study, none of the 2,134 women who received lenacapavir contracted HIV. By comparison, 16 of the 1,068 women who received the long-running daily pill Truvada contracted HIV. And 39 out of 2,136 women who received a newer daily pill called Descovy developed HIV.

It’s not clear from this article and I had to read this web page to determine these are women have been infected with the virus and this medication suppresses HIV to the point the virus is not a threat to their health.

HIV found its way to the U.S. in the late 1970s or early 1980s. At the time I expect it would be just five or ten years, at most, before there was a cure or a vaccine. There have been pretty good treatments for,what, 10 years now? But those treatments could not claim anything close to perfection. After about 45 years this drug appears have a good chance of making that claim.

The Stupid Party

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Quote of the Day

Never ascribe to a conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by unplanned financial self-interest.

Porn is not a Jewish conspiracy to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids, okay?

It’s a market correction for the gap between the male demand for sexual release, and the female supply of desirable and willing partners. You know, a market correction? That thing that happens in the free market? You remember the free market, right?

It’s that thing conservatives praise occasionally, but immediately turn against every time it points out a gap between their ideals and the reality on the ground.

People are just making money selling porn to horny men. That’s all it is.

But what conservatives are never, never asking themselves is, why are there so many horny men around? Why is there such a demand for porn, when it’s transparently obvious that no man in the world prefers porn to an attractive and enthusiastic female partner (or two)?

No, they never ask themselves that question because it’s easier to scold men than to address issues which would require them to take on someone with actual political power.

Look, when a man hits puberty, he starts getting horny. He can hold off doing anything about that for a little while, because he’s young, easily indoctrinated, and he’s still figuring it all out anyway. But pretty soon, he’s going to be driven to do something about that, and not all the lectures about sin that you can muster are going to stop him.

So why are men turning to pornography?

Because sex with a preferable partner is unavailable to them. Duh.

Conservatives uttered not a peep when boomers fucked the economy so no one could afford to buy a home, or raise children, until their late twenties or early thirties. Conservatives uttered not a peep when women wanted to leave the home and compete in the workforce, delaying marriage to build their careers. Conservatives uttered not a peep when women wanted to stop cooking food, and remained silent when the stores filled with pre-packaged factory slop made from processed corn and soybeans, and packed with sugar, causing an obesity epidemic.

Conservatives actively opposed availability of contraceptives at every opportunity, and refused to compromise at all on abortion.

Conservatives sat idly by while feminists took over the culture and taught women to hold men in contempt.

And on and on it went, until now, we’re reduced to landscape where only the top 5% of women are as attractive as the average woman of 50 years ago, and only the top 5% of men are desired, admired, or respected by women at all, and things have gotten so bad that young men will pay for naked pictures of attractive women because that is the closest they can get to the real thing, and conservatives’ solution is… scold young men some more? Ban porn?

Great.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Because attacking the supply side worked sooooo well with drugs, didn’t it?

Conservatives are so goddamn dumb that they spent decade after decade fighting a “war on drugs” that they could never win, while ignoring the leftists quietly gutting the economy and fucking up everyone’s quality of life.

Thereby ensuring an ever-increasing supply of people so frustrated and miserable that porn and fentanyl sounded like an improvement over their daily lives.

Conservatives, please have this tattooed on your foreheads, backwards, so you can read it every morning in the mirror:

Demand creates supply. Supply does not create demand.

If you want to get rid of something, you must reduce the demand for it. If you want to get rid of the demand for something unhealthy, you must supply sufficient quantities of a superior alternative which is healthy.

A healthy society must have a healthy and available outlet for all human appetites, or it will cease to be a healthy society.

I swear, if you guys had spent half the energy fighting income taxes, socialism, feminism, government entitlements, and the erosion of the American quality of life that you spent on porn, abortion, and men in dresses pretending to be women, then you would have a lot less to cry about right now.

But you didn’t wanna upset women or boomers, and you didn’t want to cut federal spending, and you certainly didn’t want to confront the crass material appetites of human nature instead of retreating and burying your nose in a bible instead.

So now you are the Stupid Party. Which still makes you superior to the Evil Party, for all the good that does us.

But every two years, I’m still left with the unexciting choice between Stupid Party and Delusional Party, and things aren’t getting any better.

You’re nice guys, you really are. Your hearts are in the right place. I just wish your brains were in the right place, too.

Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_
Posted on X May 23, 2024

News You Can Use

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Quote of the Day

A new study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine looked at the effects of taking erectile dysfunction (ED) medications on the risk of serious cardiovascular (CV) conditions, like heart attack and stroke. The medications studied are PDE5 inhibitors: sildenafil (Viagra), tadalafil (Cialis), vardenafil (Levitra), and avanafil (Stendra), all approved for the treatment of ED.

…

The group of men taking PDE5 inhibitors had significantly fewer serious CV events (by 13%), fewer deaths from CV events (by 39%), and fewer all-cause deaths (by 25%) compared to men not taking one of the medications. Findings in those with CV risk factors, like smoking or high cholesterol, were similar.

…

There wasn’t an independent measure of sexual activity—it may be that the sexual activity itself contributed to the positive study results.

PETE STAHL, M.D.
April 24, 2024
New research suggests a beneficial link between erectile dysfunction medication and heart health (aol.com)

Just as I suspected, the increased health is really due to Dr. Joe’s Cure for Everything instead of the meds.

[I’m mostly kidding.]

My recommendation is to do both, just to make sure.

Interesting Analogy From Someone With Very Different View

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Quote of the Day

thinking seems like two things – a powerful engine (good memory, fast computation, abstractions) and a steering wheel (avoiding cognitive biases, noticing when beliefs are incentivized). But it’s way easier to tell if you’ve got a weak engine than if you’re missing steering

Our brains are super bad at noticing steering problems. We just steer straight into whatever validates us, and the faster your car goes there, the smarter we think we are. This is how u get people like my dad, who’s IQ tested 140+, but thinks evolution is a lie.

It also seems like it’s pretty hard to improve your engine, but it’s a lot easier to improve steering, given deliberate practice. I’d rather have a weak engine in a car that’s pointed in the right direction, than a powerful one in a car that’s pointed in the wrong direction.

Aella @Aella_Girl
Post on X here, here, and here on April 22, 2024

Interesting analogy. It seems pretty solid to me. I like her stuff. She has a different way of looking at things. More different than even I look at things. She has some very twisted Twitter surveys. Example:

Quick, don’t think, just vibe- are snakes more good or bad? || In general, you’re more sympathetic to Israel or Palestine?

Snake good || israel
Snake good || palestine
Snake bad || israel
Snake bad || palestine

And she made a blog post with a flow charts, statistics, and pictures from her birthday gang-bang.

Confirming Evidence of My Hypothesis

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I have interviewed a number of women on the topic of monogamy and/or the lack of it in their relationships. Numerous women told me things which indicate to me it was virtually impossible for them to be happy in a monogamous relationship.

Here are some sample quotes (paraphrased for conciseness):

  • After that threesome with two men I realized I could never be in a monogamous relationship again.
  • My husband is a great guy and a wonderful father. He is good looking and good shape. I just don’t want to have sex with him. I want to have sex with a half dozen different strange men at the same time.
  • After being married for two years I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to have something more so I divorced him. I married a second time and the same thing happened again. They were both good men and they did nothing wrong. It was me. I just feel comfortable at the sex club. It feels right to me.
  • My husband and I estimate I have has sex with about 600 different men since we have been married. I can’t imagine it any other way.
  • All people want to do this sort of thing (sex with multiple people). The ones that say they don’t are lying to themselves and/or others.
  • I was monogamous in my first marriage. We had lots of great sex but there were other things wrong in the marriage. After getting divorced I discovered there was a sex club nearby. In the first year after joining I had sex with 600 different men. Not 600 times in that year, 600 different men. Multiple times with many of them. Now I create my own parties for people in private homes and nothing gives me greater joy than seeing women discover their true sexual nature like I did.

Numerous other women tell me they simply don’t have an urge to have sexual relationships outside of their committed relationship. I believed them because they were in a safe place to be completely honest about their feelings.

There were others which described a middle ground of some sort. Yes, they had been unfaithful for a while but that was when their primary relationship was bad and in their current multi-year/decade relationship it wasn’t a problem.

I didn’t see any environmental factors which could explain the difference so I concluded there was likely a genetic factor.

Now there is evidence confirming my hypothesis:

The Surprisingly Strong Link Between Genetics and Infidelity | Psychology Today

  • Monozygotic twins are more similar to one another in the likelihood of being unfaithful than dizygotic twins.
  • It is estimated that between 40-60 percent of the variation in infidelity can be explained by genetic factors.
  • Research attempting to link infidelity to specific genes has been largely unsuccessful.

…

In Cherkas et al.’s research, concordance rates were significantly higher for MZ (46%) than DZ (32%) twins, suggesting that “MZ co-twins are approximately one-and-a-half times more likely to be unfaithful if their co-twin has been unfaithful as compared with DZ co-twins.” When adjusting for factors such as number of sexual partners and age, the authors estimated that 41% of the variation in infidelity in this sample was due to genetic factors, a “heritability estimate.” By contrast, the shared environment in which twins were raised did not contribute to twins’ concordance rates.

…

Zietsch et al. calculated heritability estimates of 63% for men and 40% for women, suggesting that for men as much as 63% of the variation in infidelity was due to genetic factors. While the estimate for women was very close to the earlier estimate calculated by Cherkas et al., the estimate for men was much stronger than the heritability estimate for women, potentially suggesting a stronger genetic basis for infidelity in men vs. women.

I find this fascinating. How can such complex behavior/urges be influenced by differences in brain chemistry or some such thing? How is this behavior controlled at the genetic level rather than via rational thought?

I am, again, left with the conclusion that rational thought is a very thin veneer over the mind of most people.

Dr. Joe’s Cure For Everything Improves Cognitive Function

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Another study in support of Dr. Joe’s Cure for Everything (see also these posts):

Numerous studies have noticed that loneliness and social isolation are associated with cognitive decline in later life; however, these analyses do not often consider one of the most intimate types of social activity: sex.

What’s more, some experts think that a lack of social activity is a repercussion of cognitive decline and not a cause of it.

Nevertheless, the models that Shena and Liub ran in their study suggest that the link between sex and cognitive health does not go both ways.

In other words, they found better cognition was not predictive of sexual activity five years on.

…

Shena and Liub have put forward several explanations for their results.

First, sex often involves physical exercise, which means improved cognitive performance may be due to improved cardiovascular health, which, in turn, can increase blood flow to the brain and reduce inflammation.

Sex is also known to reduce stress, and stress is thought to prevent the neuronal growth in some parts of the brain associated with memory.

Lastly, sex may improve cognitive function through the release of dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter linked to improved memory.

There have been lots of studies showing correlation between sexual activity and various aspects of better health. This is the first one I have seen that supports sexual activity being a causation of better cognitive health.

This post was motivated by Archer who suggests Dr. Joe’s Cure For Everything could fix the entire country. The country could sure use some improved cognitive function.

Do your patriotic duty.

Posted in Sex

An Alternate Point of View

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Quote of the Day

We have horrific double standards when talking about polyamory vs. monogamy. relationship issues in polyamory get blamed on the poly; relationship issues in monogamy dont even get processed as being caused by monog

Aella @Aella_Girl
Tweeted on August 29, 2023

This was sort of mind blowing to me. What a difference an alternate point of view makes!

The majority of people in this country probably see many problems with all the variations of consensual non-monogamy even if they do see the potential benefits. But can those same people see the exact opposite of that. That is, can they see many problems with monogamy even if they do see the potential benefits?

Now apply that logic to gun control and the advocates on the alternates sides of that debate.

Rationality is a just a very thin veneer over our emotional brains.

Don’t make impractical sex rules

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Quote of the Day

A new study in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy sought to investigate the relationship between sexual values and sexual incongruence as well as the effects of religiousness on this relationship. The findings indicate that religiousness predicts sexual incongruence, but not more than conservative sexual values, which demonstrated the most substantial relationship.

…

The research demonstrates that specific sexual values are predictive of sexual incongruence, over and above the effects of religiousness. Conservative sexual values surrounding abstinence may be particularly difficult for individuals to uphold, leading to greater sexual incongruence.

These findings have important implications for sexual education and therapy, highlighting the need to consider individual values and beliefs in promoting sexual health and well-being.

Laura Staloch
February 21, 2023
New study finds the more conservative your sexual values, the more challenging it is to stick to them

On one hand this is a, “Well, duh!” moment. Adhering to strict rules is obviously going to be more difficult and less likely to happen than having lax or no rules. But there are some implication not mentioned in the article.

If the rules are so such that compliance is too difficult, then guilt, depression, and perhaps even self harm could result after failure or having extreme difficulty in abiding by the rules..

They are doing it wrong

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Really?

The fear of the use of nuclear weapons by Russia against Ukraine looms over the current crisis, but some Ukrainians have found a… creative solution.

A large group of Ukrainians has decided to organize a mass orgy to take place on a hill outside of Kyiv in case Putin does launch a nuclear bomb.

More than 15,000 have already registered on Telegram for the sex party. The mass orgy will take place on a hill outside the city where the participants would be asked to decorate their hands with colored stripes, symbolizing their sexual interests. If you are considering participating – three stripes are for anal sex lovers and four stripes are for oral sex lovers.

That’s pretty messed up as far as I’m concerned. You should stay in your bunkers.

The orgy is after you know you have survived all the firestorms and fallout.

Quote of the day—Annalee Armstrong

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HIV integrates its genetic material into the genome of a host cell, meaning available therapies just can’t remove it. A team of scientists at Temple University and the University of Nebraska Medical Center managed to remove the virus completely from mice during preclinical testing using a combination of CRISPR and antiretroviral therapy. They also found no adverse events that could be linked to the therapy in the study, published back in 2019.

…

The company is also working on similar treatments for other viruses, including herpes and hepatitis B.

Annalee Armstrong
September 27, 2021
Excision’s CRISPR gene editing therapy for HIV is heading into human testing after FDA clearance
[A few months ago a male friend (who I suspect is bi-sexual) pointed out that COVID-19 is not the first pandemic our generation has lived through. My thinking about this enabled a quick response to different friend just a few days later who was pontificating on how COVID-19, “Hit the sweet spot of infectiveness and lethality.” I disagreed, “It could be a lot more lethal.” “Not really”, he replied, “It would be hard to be more lethal and still infect a lot of people because it would kill people before they could infect as many people as it does.” I had a three letter acronym response, “HIV”.

He immediately conceded. A disease as infectious as chickenpox with the silent latency and deadliness of HIV would have the potential to exterminate humanity.

I fear that as long as we have global trade if we don’t develop the ability to respond to new diseases in timeframes of weeks, or perhaps days, some disease will, “Find the sweet spot” (or be engineered) to close the curtain on humans.

HIV was first recognized as a new disease in 1981. At the time I figured scientists would have it figured out and curable in “five or ten years”. Forty years later a promising cure is going into human trials.

Herpes too was a pretty big deal in the mid 1980s. Like HIV, herpes is now treatable but incurable. That may be changing in the next few years.

Think of all these diseases as practice for the future.—Joe]

Self-esteem correlated with number of sex partners

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Interesting:

An analysis of data collected across 10 world regions suggests that men’s self-esteem is more strongly tied to their sexual success than women’s. The findings were published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

…

The study authors accordingly proposed that having a greater number of past sexual partners should increase self-esteem. They further reasoned that this positive link between self-esteem and number of past sexual partners should be stronger among men since greater sexual acceptance is more adaptive for men. That is, men’s ability to pass on their genes relies strongly on having a high number of sexual partners, while women’s success in passing on their genes rests on having higher quality sexual partners who will invest in offspring.

The first thing that came to mind when reading this was, “Correlation doesn’t mean causation. Perhaps having a high self-esteem, as a consequence of such things as job success, physical attractiveness, etc. contributed to the higher number of sexual partners.”

The authors are concerned about that as well:

The authors note that past experimental studies have found that manipulating self-esteem seems to impact sexual desire differently among men and women, suggesting that self-esteem might be “both a cause and a consequence of short-term mating success in men.”

“Future work should seek to disentangle the many functions of self-esteem within men’s short-term mating psychology,” the researchers write, “including work to identify how self-esteem may serve specially-designed functions as both a consequence, and a cause, of short-term mating success.”

Many years ago I would hear things to the effect that women with high number of sexual partners by women was frequently a result of low self-esteem. At the time I knew two young women (in their mid 20s) who that seemed to apply to but it did not appear to be a consistent pattern. More recently with women in their 50s and 60s I have talked to about numbers of sex partners don’t seem to show any correlation one way or the other. But this did not involve any accurate self-esteem measurements.

More study is required before, if ever, the head shrinks start prescribing lots of sexual partners to increase self-esteem.

Quote of the day—Terri Conley

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If you inch towards suggesting that people who do something other than monogamy might not be miserable or that they might have some advantages, they were just so hostile to that. I found that really fascinating.

Terri Conley
August 4, 2020
How One Psychologist Upended Everything We Know About Women, Sex, & Monogamy
[As well as being fascinating I think making people uncomfortable with clear factual data is great fun! I love doing it with the stupidity of gun laws as well as human psychology.—Joe]

Looks indicate which men have cheated

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This is almost unbelievable:

People can predict with modest accuracy whether a man (but not a woman) has cheated before based solely on the appearance of his face, according to a recent study published in Royal Society Open Science. In other words, we seem to have a limited ability to pick out men who have committed infidelity just by looking at them.

I’m having trouble coming up with plausible reasons for this to be true. Perhaps a particular physical appearance gives them more opportunities/temptation.

Posted in Sex

It’s in the genes

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Infidelity Lurks in Your Genes

We have long known that men have a genetic, evolutionary impulse to cheat, because that increases the odds of having more of their offspring in the world.

But now there is intriguing new research showing that some women, too, are biologically inclined to wander, although not for clear evolutionary benefits. Women who carry certain variants of the vasopressin receptor gene are much more likely to engage in “extra pair bonding,” the scientific euphemism for sexual infidelity.

I’m not surprised. My informal interviews with women indicates a bimodal distribution. Either women 50 years and older have had a relatively small number of sexual partners, less than 10 or else dozens or, sometimes, many hundreds.

See also my post here.

Posted in Sex

Quote of the day—Wednesday Martin

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Most people in sexual partnerships end up facing the conundrum biologists call “habituation to a stimulus” over time, a growing body of research suggests that heterosexual women, in the aggregate, are likely to face this problem earlier in the relationship than men. And that disparity tends not to even out over time. In general, men can manage wanting what they already have, while women struggle with it.

Wednesday Martin
February 14, 2019
The Bored Sex
[I’d like to see the research on this. I’m a bit skeptical that women are more likely than men to have these feelings. However, I have talked to a number of women who identify with this.

One women asked me to take some sexy pictures of her. It turned out it was for one of her boyfriends. Not her husband. The husband wasn’t supposed to know about them. “How many boyfriends do you have?”, I asked. Her answer was a bit of a surprise to me, “Enough for my own basketball team.”

Another woman was married a couple years to a really nice guy when she started getting “restless”. She felt she just had to have sex with someone other than her husband. She decided there was something wrong with her mate selection and divorced him. She found someone else, thought things were great, then after a couple years the same thing happened. She ended up finding a local sex club that she started attending regularly.

Another woman had been married something like five to seven years and found she could barely stand to have sex with her husband. He was a really nice guy and she liked him a lot, he was good looking, but sex just wasn’t something she wanted to do with him. What about sex in general? Did she have an interest in sex with some other men? Ahh…. yes, she would like to have sex “with like seven guys at the same time”. The last time I talked to her she was meeting a married man several times a week but still had no interest in her husband.

Another woman “stopped counting” after she had 200+ sex partners (both male and female) before she finally “settled down” and got married. After a couple years she was “climbing the walls”. She got her husband to regularly go to a sex club with her and her cravings were brought under control. But her husband didn’t really care for that solution and the last I heard from her there were a lot of compromises on both sides but without either being very happy about the situation.

Those are just the few I can think of off the top of my head. I could go dig through my notes and find many more examples. The point is,I am quite sure what Martin is saying has some truth to it. “Conventional wisdom” on this topic is at least not universally applicable. I’m willing to consider the hypothesis that a significant portion of the female population is content being monogamous but there is a lot of data that says it is not universal and that women who have very ordinary childhoods with no discernible “damage” are not comfortable with monogamy.

See also Sex at Dawn (Sex at Dusk is a counter argument) and Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free.—Joe]