Wednesday Nov 21, 2012 - BY Stacey
Photo via CC
Conventional and movie wisdom has taught us the following?women want relationships and wedding china. Men, on the other hand, are horny pigs who are only interested in sex.
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This idea gets trotted out in nearly every movie that purports to represent the male experience or anytime a prominent male is caught having an affair (General Petraeus anyone?).
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But what if the conventional wisdom has it all wrong? What if men are more relationship minded than we?re giving them credit for?
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The evidence of this is both anecdotal and scientific. On a personal level, I?ve heard many young women complain about being with the men who want serious relationships when the ladies only desire a less serious attachment and sex. And then on the more researched end, psychologist Andrew P. Smiler dispels the popular myth in his new book,?Challenging Casanova: Beyond the Stereotype of the Promiscuous Young Male.
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Smiler challenges the orthodoxy when it comes to male sexuality, asking??If Casonova-style promiscuity is men?s naturally evolved state, then why do most men want no more than one partner?? Smiler notes that the Casanova average is three partners per year. While there certainly are men who fit the ?Casanova? label, it?s not representative for most of them.
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Tracy Clark Flory, Salon?s excellent sex columnist, interviewed Smiler and got him to address the oft-cited ?evolutionary biology? argument, which has been used to justify the existence of the ?promiscuous? male:
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The evolutionary argument basically goes that guys have the ability, theoretically, to produce hundreds of children per year, and they can never quite be 100 percent sure that any child is theirs, so they should spread their seed widely. But what gets left out of that is the fact that if you want your genes to go beyond that next generation ? beyond your children to your grandchildren, then your odds are better if you actually stick around and help raise that kid until that kid is old enough to pass on his or her genes.
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So that?s the part of the evolutionary argument that tends to get left out of the debate. But does it actually matter that we seemed to have misunderstood young men?s sexuality? Is it a bad thing if we think that they are only desirous of many partners and a no-strings attached approach to sex?
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Well, first there?s the impact that this type of thinking has on female sexuality. Explicitly and implicitly, we teach girls from a young age that men want sex and only sex and that men have to be enticed or tricked into relationships. According to Smiler, this might push young women to cross sexual lines in order to convince a man to settle down in a relationship.
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We?re giving girls the wrong percentages which makes them perhaps behave in ways in which they wouldn?t behave otherwise ? starting your contact with somebody sexually instead of relationally, for example.
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And finally, Smiler commented on the scandal of the month?Petraeus. Far from being a lust monster out of control with desire, Smiler argued that the general didn?t merely choose to hook up with a stranger for the sake of an orgasm.
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If we just write it off as, ?Oh, it?s just another guy trying to get some on the side,? then we really miss the fact that this extramarital affair really has at its basis a relationship. This is a guy having sex within a relational context.
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Understood in this light, the affair, while still a terrible betrayal, is far less tawdry. But it makes sense. If sex was the only object then why didn?t Petraeus seek out a different woman to sleep with? Why choose someone from his own circle?
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Perhaps it?s because when it comes to sex and relationships, men and women aren?t as far apart in what they want than previously thought.
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