Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love (27 page)

Neanderthal man and woman apparently used to have no problem with sex—they thought it was just a bit of fun and probably never argued about the point of it. It was only when a more sophisticated kind of guy called Neolithic man came along that anyone made the connection between sex and childbirth. Before cheap, effective birth control became available, men had to try to suppress their sex drive or use the “withdrawal” method to avoid being overrun by children.

Historically, when men wanted something, they would ask in a direct way. When they didn’t want something, they would also make that clear. Historically, men have always been in the position of being able to demand something and be given it. Since they were the ones who always held the power in a relationship, it often wouldn’t occur to men to think any other way. As a consequence, many men still believe it’s their right to demand sex. Today women don’t feel under any obligation to comply, and the more a man demands sex, the less likely they are to submit. Women don’t understand why men don’t try a more subtle approach, and men often don’t even realize there is an alternative.

Today’s women want to be made to feel sexy, loved, cherished, and adored. They don’t like to feel they are being taken for granted. And although foreplay is important, what happens before foreplay is even more important.

Stress has been found to be the biggest dampener of sexual desire in women because it creates negative emotions, and women’s emotions are entwined with their desire for sex. If a woman is tired, fed up, or anxious, then her sex drive can diminish to nothing, so it’s important to help her feel relaxed, appreciated, and needed.

These images are far more likely to make a woman feel tender toward a man than anything else. For a woman, particularly one with children or in a demanding job, it’s hard to find the energy and inclination for sex when all she wants to do is sleep at the end of the day. A man getting involved in housework and domestic duties has been shown to be the best aphrodisiac for a woman. Most men are stunned to hear that the sight of him vacuuming the house is a bigger turn-on than $300 spent at a fancy restaurant.

Maria Quinn, the author of
Between Clean Sheets
, a housework handbook for men, showed how housework and sex are intimately connected:

Quinn says that a man taking on his share of the housework could end up surprised by the unexpected outcome as the woman in his life suddenly becomes far more sexually demanding.

Only female humans have orgasms. For almost all other species, sex is a seven- to ten-second affair dedicated purely to procreation. No drawn-out bonding ritual is required. Human females have disguised ovulation—that is, a man never knows when she’s “in heat.” This appears to be an evolutionary adaptation designed to keep men around for most of the time. Women are almost always available for sex, whether they are ovulating or not, and this allows sex to become a constant bonding process, thus keeping men around.

Researchers inserted video cameras into the vaginas of women who were having an orgasm. The images revealed that at the moment of climax, the muscles of the vagina pull upward and the opening to the womb—the cervix—stretches forward and opens to draw up the sperm that is present, similar to the action of a vacuum cleaner. This is why simultaneous orgasms between a man and a woman have special significance, as they increase the odds of conception. From a conception standpoint, female orgasm should only be during or after male ejaculation and not before.

Evolutionary biologists also see female orgasm as a form of quality control for the human species. They believe that if a woman senses that a man doesn’t have the right genes she needs, her body is unlikely to go into orgasm mode. If, however,
she goes off like a firecracker with him every night, it’s nature’s way of telling her that, in evolutionary terms at least, he’s got the genes she wants for her children.

Studies show that in simple terms, the higher a woman’s IQ (intelligence quota), the lower her EQ (emotional quota). This means that the brighter she is, the less likely she is to make good choices in love. Professional women, it has now been shown, are more likely to divorce and have affairs and are less likely to have children. The
American Journal of Marriage and Family
cites several studies that show how the divorce rate rises for women who outearn their male partners. In fact, women who earn more than their husbands divorce twice as often as those who earn less. It demonstrates that financially successful women are less tolerant and more controlling of less successful men and that these men have difficulty living with women who are more successful than they are. Dr. Robert Holden, author of
Success Intelligence
, says that intelligent women spend too much time analyzing the meanings and motives in their relationships instead of just letting themselves be open and emotionally vulnerable to their men.

David Buss found that women in all thirty-seven cultures he studied preferred older men. This is because the older a man is, the more likely he is to have greater resources and status. For example, the average earnings of an Australian male aged twenty in 2008 was $27,000, whereas a thirty-year-old earned $44,000 and a forty-year-old made $53,000. Also, older men are more stable, more reliable, and more likely to make a commitment. Women prefer men three to five years older because men who are significantly older are more likely to die, meaning their resources will end. In some cultures, women
sometimes marry younger men, but this usually happens only when the woman is wealthy or the man stands to inherit large amounts or will receive power and status. These marriages are usually “arranged” marriages.

Occasionally, older women will get involved with much younger men, and this happens for two reasons: First, she has her own resources and doesn’t feel she needs a man’s resources, and second, older men mark her down on the Desirability Scale because she is past her childbearing use-by date. She can attract a younger man by offering him sex or access to power and resources, but these relationships are almost always shortlived, as was the case with the then fifty-nine-year-old Elizabeth Taylor, who married the thirty-nine-year-old construction worker Larry Fortensky.

Women prefer men who are more intelligent than themselves, and men prefer women who are less intelligent. You often see a dumb woman (or a woman playing dumb) with a smart man, but you’ll rarely see a smart woman with a dumb man other than in a comedy movie or a TV show attempting to portray irony or political correctness. It rarely happens in real life.

In our book
Why Men Don’t Listen & Women Can’t Read Maps
, we revealed that women evolved over 10,000 touch receptors throughout their bodies, compared to 3,000 for men. Being sensitive to touch helped women assess the emotions and condition of their babies. It also explains why women love to be touched and why physical closeness is so important. For most men, however, physical closeness is interpreted as meaning a woman wants sex, and this causes enormous relationship problems for couples everywhere. Women want plenty of non-sexual touching, such as cuddling, hand holding, hair stroking, massaging, and any type of kissing. Most men do these things during the courtship phase with a woman because they know it could lead to sex, but many stop after the relationship becomes more permanent.

Men everywhere complain that when it comes to having sex, women seem overly preoccupied with their surroundings. Men claim that women say the room is too light, too dark, too noisy, too quiet, that the walls are too thin, or that someone will see them or hear them. Men are not concerned about these things—a man has a monotracking brain that focuses intently on the task at hand, and he becomes virtually deaf and blind to outside stimuli.

Neuroscientist Professor Gert Holstege of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and his team compared the brain activity of thirteen heterosexual women in four states: while resting, faking an orgasm, having their clitoris stimulated, and receiving clitoral stimulation to the point of orgasm. As the women were stimulated, activity rose in the primary somatosensory cortex but fell in the amygdala and hippocampus (the brain regions involved in alertness and anxiety), confirming that women cannot enjoy sex unless they are relaxed and free from worries and distractions.

Women’s multitasking brains can deal with all these data simultaneously. In ancient times, if a copulating couple both focused on their lovemaking, they could become targets for predators. Someone needed to be hardwired to keep guard, and women got the job.

To keep a woman in the mood, a man needs to pick the right time to be sure she is stress-free, play soft music to cover up external sounds, and assure her that she is safe and won’t be disturbed.

Sexual aggression can be broadly defined as one person pushing his or her sexual urges onto another without permission. Dr. David Buss listed 147 upsetting actions related to sex and found that women rated sexual aggression the worst possible act a man could perform in a relationship (93 to 100%). This is completely contrary to the image portrayed by Internet porn, which suggests that women have a strong urge to be involved in violent sex. If a woman dreams about having sex, it’s usually with a rich, handsome man who is prepared to dedicate his resources to her—it’s rarely sex with a rough, tough, unemployed loser with bad body odor. Men were less concerned about sexual aggression (43%), and some reported it would be a turn-on for them.

Buss also found that men consistently underestimate how acceptable sexual aggression is to women. The act men said that the worst thing a woman could do was infidelity, closely followed by verbal aggression. Three-quarters of women, however, overestimated a man’s response to aggression by a woman. It all means that most women are likely to reject a firm slap on the butt, whereas a man either doesn’t mind doing it or thinks it’s a good idea. In a world in which women believe that men think like women and men assume women think like men, we have a recipe for disaster.