When I was teaching lectures on this touchy subject (pun intended), I would begin the lecture by posing the question: Who has a stronger sex drive, males or females? During the Q and A session on this subject, most students felt that males had a stronger sex drive than their female counterparts. After all, didn’t males have sex on their brains for the majority of their days on this earth? Admittedly, males do have sex on the brain 24/7. However, how often do the females of the species desire sex?
After the initial Q and A period, I went on to point out that I had specifically asked which gender had a stronger sex drive. I stressed the fact that I had not asked which gender had a more frequent sex drive. After all, there is a big difference between the frequency and the strength of a person’s sex drive. Stronger doesn’t necessarily mean more frequent. On the other hand, frequency doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in strength. They are entirely different concepts.
Once I distinguished the difference between these concepts, the students in the class started to think about the answer to my question in a different light. And by the end of the lecture, the majority of the class had agreed that males had a more frequent sex drive; and that females had a stronger sex drive.
Mother Nature has more of an effect on relationships than most people realize. In fact, she has been tweaking her influence on men and women’s sex drives since the dawn of humankind. A good example of her influence on our sex drives is how she constructed people’s hormone levels at different times of the month.
How the Male Sex Drive is Influenced by Testosterone.
“Welcome to the sexual brain of the male which does cause males to “think about sex all time, every hour”
Mother Nature made it so that males are interested in sex 24/7. That is, she made it so that Testosterone would course thru men’s bloodstream both day and night. Sometimes this hormone even affects the subject matter of male’s dreams (e.g. wet dreams). To put it bluntly, men are horny at all hours of the day and night. But Mother Nature made it this way on purpose. It was all part of her overall plan to make sure the human species consistently reproduced itself.
An article from the magazine Cosmopolitan sums up men’s drive in an article about how women who have had a hysterectomy react to Testosterone injections meant to restore their sex drives. I realize this is an article about women. However, it does a superb job of describing the effects of the hormone Testosterone.
When women are suffering from the results of a hysterectomy, their doctors will often prescribe them the male hormone Testosterone. But after some time after prescribing Testosterone, it can have a shocking side effect: it can increase a once-normal sex drive to an X-rated frequency. Some of the women on the drug said that they felt like a nymphomaniac. According to that article, one woman expressed it like this, “I’d walk down the street and wonder what everybody looked like naked … what they’d be like in bed.”
But Testosterone that boosts women’s sexual intensity has a down side. The Cosmopolitan article goes on to quote Joan as saying, “He (her husband) couldn’t keep up with me.” Joan couldn’t even keep up with herself.
In the Cosmopolitan article, Joan went on to comment further, “If you could turn it on just on Friday nights, it would be nice. But to think about sex all the time, every hour . . . I didn’t enjoy it.”
Welcome to the sexual brain of the male which does cause males to “think about sex all time, every hour” Testosterone is the primary driver of male sexuality. And as a result of the Testosterone coursing through their bloodstream, most men do walk down the street wondering what many women would look like naked; wondering what they’d be like in bed. But remember, this is all part of Mother Nature’s grand plan to reproduce the human species.
How the Female Sex Drive is Influenced by Estradiol.
Mother Nature made it so that females were very interested in sex, but not necessarily 24/7. The ratio of female interest in sex was more like 24/2. Or put another way, she made it so that females were very interested in sex for about a two-day period out of each month. In sum, Mother Nature made it so that males were interested in sex all the time. Yet she made it so that females were very interested in sex for two days out of the month. She did this so that when any individual female was interested in sex, she would have absolutely no trouble finding a mating partner. This process ensured that there would be an adequate overlap of male interest in sex whenever the female sex drive kicked in.
Ovarian Hormones and the Estrus Cycle. …the cyclical events in the ovary and endometrium are neatly coordinated. Each developmental circumstance in one is timed with the other. It has long been established that this timing is controlled by chemical agents circulating in the blood stream, viz. hormones. …the enlarging follicle cavity… becomes filled with a fluid. This fluid has been demonstrated to contain a hormone called estradiol. …Estradiol also promotes the buildup of mating desire, which reaches its peak at estrus. It is during estrus, of course, that the follicle ordinarily ruptures, freeing the ovum and at the same time releasing a maximum amount of estradiol, which incites maximal sexual activity. *
When a female desires sex during the two day period of Estrus (right before her reproductive egg is released), Mother Nature makes it so that a woman would not have any trouble finding a willing male sex partner. Generally, when a woman is ready to engage in sexual activity, most males would probably be ready and willing. I’ve even heard the question posed as, “What does it take for a woman to convince a man to have sex with her?” The answer: A pulse!
On one hand, Mother Nature made it so that females wouldn’t necessarily be “turned on” 24/7. Nevertheless when a female was “turned on,” she would be climbing the walls in search of sex. Sex would definitely be on her brain. Right before a female releases a reproductive egg into her fallopian tubes, during a period called Estrus, Mother Nature secretes one of the Estrogen hormones called Estradiol into female’s bloodstream. Estradiol causes her to become sexually aroused, and to thus readily desire sexual activity.
The result of Mother Nature’s scheme is that when women do become interested in sex; there would be an adequate pool of ready-and-willing males ready to mate with her. Phenomena such as this are more prevalent than most people are aware of.
There are more instances of how Mother Nature works “behind the scenes” to make sure that males and females have sex in order to propagate the species. Below we will explore and discuss these often insidious and seemingly “invisible” mechanisms that Mother Nature uses to help entice humans to engage in sexual activity.
As an undergraduate university student, I originally declared myself a psychology major. I had some experience in the US Army as a Psychological Operations operative and figured that learning about psychology would be a comparable field of study. However, I was mistaken.
By the time I entered college in the mid-1980’s, the field of psychology had progressed so far that the practitioners in the field were now looking at micro structures within the body to explain human behavior. Such a micro-focus on human behavior didn’t really pique my interest. Thus, I ended up majoring in social psychology which emphasized a more environmental (social) component of the causes of human behavior. However, only recently have I come to fully appreciate the micro influences on human behavior as I learned how much influence they had on human behavior in relationships.
Hormones are Mother Nature’s invisible weapon upon human behavior. Below is a quote from lumenlearning.com. It nicely summarizes how hormones are Mother Natures “messengers” that influence human behavior on the micro-level.
Hormones serve as chemical “messengers” that function in cellular and organ activity to maintain the body’s homeostasis. Maintaining homeostasis within the body requires the coordination of many different systems and organs. Communications between neighboring cells and between cells and tissues in distant parts of the body occurs through the release of hormones into body fluids (usually blood), which carry them to their target cells. Target cells, those having a receptor for a signal, respond to a hormone when they express a specific receptor for that hormone.
The key point from this quote is the phrase “Hormones serve as chemical “messengers.” As the quote suggests, these “signals” course through the human blood stream and tell the body what to do in certain social situations. On other words, hormones influence human behaviors in more ways than most people realize.
Peptides
Have you ever interacted with someone, no matter their level of physical attractiveness was, and instantly become attracted to them? Perhaps this attraction was to a person who wasn’t even your “type.” If you’ve ever experienced such an attraction, perhaps it was because of the peptides operating inside of your body that caused such an attraction?
Peptides are one of the micro-influences that Mother Nature uses to nudge human behavior in a certain direction that serves her purposes. The movie What the Bleep Do We Know? provides a great example of how these Peptides influence human emotions. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmYMzPBGBYc)
When two people’s peptides “match,” there is an instant physical attraction to one another and thus, an interest in engaging in sexual activity. The evidence suggests that human pheromones are responsible for more of an influence on human behavior than previously believed. As the video referenced above suggests, when two people’s peptides “match,” they will develop an instant attraction to one another. And all of this will take place through the noses of the two people who feel such an “instant” attraction to one another. Perhaps this is the cause of the phenomenon of “love at first sight.” Maybe this phenomenon should be called love at first scent?
An example that will help me illustrate how peptides operate is by using the analogy of Classic Tupperware toy called Shape-O-Toy. This is a red and blue plastic toy that teaches young children about the different shapes. The basic design consists of a plastic spherical red and blue ball that has a range of different shapes molded into it. The idea is that young children will learn about the different shapes by attempting to match the molded plastic yellow shapes with the proper-shaped hole in the plastic blue and red sphere (see photo).
Pheromones work in a similar manner. Simply put, if one person’s pheromones “match” and fit into another person’s pheromone receptors, the two people will instantly become attract to one another. If the peptides do not “match,” the two people will not become attracted to one another.
Sex Drives Enhance a Newborn’s Chances of Survival
Another example of Mother Nature’s influence on human being’s sexual habits is the hormones released into the bloodstream of mothers who recently gave birth. Mother Nature only cares about one thing: the reproduction rate and survival rate of the species. She doesn’t necessarily care about the moral codes that human beings have attempted to impose on her mission of the survival of the species.
An example of Mother Nature’s influence upon human sexual behavior is how women who have recently given birth to a baby may become attracted to a new lover who is not their either their loving boyfriend or their husband. All Mother Nature knows is that she needs to ensure the “survival of the species” as Darwin would have called it. All she knows is that in order for the human species to survive, the newborns need to have a healthy immune system which will help them defeat any threats to their physical health.
Scientists have learned that a child to whom a woman has given birth will likely survive into adulthood if they have more immunity to the various diseases in society if they are exposed to such diseases in the earliest stages of their lives. Thus, if a woman has a baby, that baby is likely to develop immunity to the diseases to which she and her lover who impregnated her were exposed to. So if the women gives birth to a child, her immunity system will recognize and develop an immunity to all the diseases she and her lover have been exposed to during their sex lives.
However, if the woman has a new lover, and gives birth to another child, that child has an increased chance of living into adulthood and reproducing. This is because the child of the mother giving birth will receive the immunity of all the lovers to which each of them has been exposed to. This phenomenon is additive in nature. What this means is that the more lovers the mothers and fathers have had, the more immunity to disease their baby will have. Thus, a baby born to parents who have had more lovers during their lifetime will stand a better chance of surviving into adulthood and giving birth than a baby whose parents had fewer lovers.
The concern for humans is that they have to “deal with” Mother Nature’s tendencies. Yet the fact that most humans have no clue as to how Mother Nature operates possibly throws a wrench into many of the relationships people experience without the knowledge of the people involved in them. For example, after about four years after a child is born, Mother Nature will give a happily-married woman who has given birth to a child the desire to have sex with another lover. This will give her offspring more of a chance to survive into adulthood than if the mother had the same lover produce each of her offspring. In other words, the more lovers the mother has, the more chances each of her offspring will have of surviving into adulthood than if she had all of the same lovers produce the same number of offspring.
Is Monogamy Natural?
Another example of Mother Nature influencing a woman’s sexual habits is the fact that Mother Nature accounts for the fact that women will have more than one lover. For example, the sperm of the first lover a woman sleeps with will from a protective barrier to the other sperm of any subsequent lovers she has afterward. The sperm of the initial lover will lock together to form a barrier to any other sperm from reaching the egg in order to fertilize it. Think of such a barrier as similar to the Barrel of Monkeys toy in which the tails of the monkeys lock together to form a chain of sorts.
The logic from this fact of nature is that Mother Nature was preparing for a defense of sperm from a number of follow-on lovers a woman might have in one sexual encounter. Yet the big take-away from this fact is that Mother Nature knew that women would likely have more than one lover at a time. This fact would challenge the notion that women were inclined to be monogamous creatures. Perhaps Mother Nature was fully aware of the fact that women were not inclined to be monogamous lovers. If this above information is true, then the teachings of society, in which women are thought to be monogamous beings are thus called into question. This would point to the fact that women in our past history were inclined to have multiple lovers at any given time.
Conclusion:
When we closely examine the manner in which Mother Nature structures human sexual activities, we have no choice but to conclude that she has some plans about how human beings will reproduce that run counter to many of the taken-for-granted suppositions that we have socialized our societies to believe in. It appears that Mother Nature has a huge influence on how our sex lives play out. We humans however, have to “deal with” these influences despite our general lack of knowledge about their existence.
* Torrey, Theodore W. & Alan Feduccia 1988. Morphogenesis of the Vertebrates. 4th Ed. John Wiley & Sons. New York, NY. page 167.
** Jennings, Karla 1991 “Fascinating Facts About Testosterone” Cosmopolitain. pages 138 – 142.
