The Coolidge Effect

Reading “Sex At Dawn,” a really great book about the prehistoric origins of human sexuality, in Ch 21 there is a section on the “Coolidge Effect”, which has to do with the way men and women seek sex and sexual partners. It really raises the issue of female demand for variety. We all know men are very much maintain an appetite of variety in their sexual desires, or as Chris Rock put it, “Men are only as faithful as their options!” The chapter goes on to talk about how women “of a certain age” (in their 30’s) suddenly seem to have a much higher demand for variety than they did when they were looking for a man to father her children.

I totally get this, and can affirm that it has been my experience, both as a man seeking variety and as a man being seduced by (married) women seeking a sex partner.

Now that I am in love with my wife, I find that variety is not nearly as interesting or motivating. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that the ONE thing that makes my wife more attracted to me than anything else is that she is “The One”. Nothing has turned her on more than feeling like my one true desire.

The second reason that variety is not as much of an issue, is that we are living a created life. What do I mean by this? I mean that each and every day, we both take 100% of the responsibility for creating each other and each day NEWLY.

Think about that for a minute.

First, I know without any shadow of a doubt, exactly what makes my wife desire me as her lover more than any other thing. She told me early on in our relationship, that she, “Needs to be ‘The One’.” Once I heard that, and I heard that during a long back and forth with her about polyamory and ethical non-monogamy, which we were debating while considering opening our relationship. More significant in my calculus is the fact that since our wedding, the degree of passion and intensity of loving feelings between us has never been at a higher apogee. I put it ALL down to the fact that she feels loved and she trusts that I love her. This feeling of being “The One” has unleashed her passion full blast.

Secondly, by committing ourselves to living in the present and taking responsibility for creating each other, we both are “on” all the time. We take every minute we share with each other fully to heart. So, for me, my wife is sexy, gorgeous, lovely, horny and into me in a big way, and that is exactly how I treat her. She cannot feel another way with me because I treat her like my sexy horny lover all the time. Having been a woman who in her earlier life did not feel sexy or gorgeous or horny, this is a new experience for her and she loves it. At the same time, she treats me like I am always her hunk of sexy man, and because that was never my experience in life, I dig it, so it really works.

There is a third point. Both of us are to one extent or another, demi-sapiosexuals. What this means is that, especially in my wife, who is more demi than Sapio, although she is both, she really needs to spend time with a person to get connected enough to form a bond before her interest in their intellect stimulates her arousal. For this reason, the fact that she is into me has chosen me and is aroused by and into me means that she has no incentive at all to seek another lover. I already give her more orgasms on a daily basis that she had on any day prior to meeting me. For me, my attraction is first physical, then intellectual, so, while I might be sexually interested in another person, the fact that I do not know if they are intellectually stimulating means that they do not hold my attention. For this reason, coupled with really enjoying being loved, this means that I too have no need to interest in looking beyond her.

There is one final reason that neither one of us seeks variety. It is in spite of being sexually satisfied and fulfilled, we are both wholehearted. For each of us, love has healed us. This has been a two-fold experience. First, the experience of being loved is magical. We both feel it deeply. Prior to our meeting 8 years ago, each of us experienced a paucity of love in our former marriages. Not so now. Now, we are each being intensely loved by the other, and we both love the experience of that firehose of love. I would not trade that for anything.

Second, we are each having the way we love validated completely. We each accept the love language of the other unconditionally. Being allowed to love the way we each choose to love is a big component of being wholehearted. Those two things, being loved, and being able to love are massive contributors to the feeling of being worthy of love. They contribute deeply to the experience of being wholehearted.

So, with all that, the idea of being biologically predisposed to seeking variety in our sexual partners, we find ourselves in a completely different frame. We are sexually satisfied with each other as our partner, and there is zero draw to either one of us pulling us away from having sex with our partner exclusively.

Perhaps it’s because we have the best sex of our life every day. Perhaps it’s because we are both deeply in love. Perhaps it’s because we both feel completely validated and wholehearted, which ever, one or all, the reality of the moment is that we are happily monogamous.

Now, what this is NOT meant to be is a dissertation on why “monogamy is good and non-monogamy is bad”. That is not it. We do not want to yuck on your yum at all. Lots of people are happier in a multi-partner dynamic than a monogamous dynamic. The point is that if you really break it down, our kink is communication and it took being in communication to fully understand one another. That understanding led us where it led us. A couple in love, deeply happy, deeply fulfilled and deeply wholehearted. We would not change a thing!