What Role Does Sex Play in Sustaining Relationships?

During the research I did on the role sex plays in sustaining relationships, which is part of my series of articles on family relationships and society, one of the statistics that I found most interesting is that less than half of the heterosexual people in long term relationships reported being satisfied with their sex lives. Split by gender, 42% of women are satisfied and 54% of men. Conversely, lesbians reported as high as 86% sexual satisfaction in their relationships, depending on the study. What I found most interesting was that they generally experienced much higher frequency of orgasm during sex, 50% more, and reported much wider variety of touching, which they equated to more feelings of emotional intimacy.

Among the reasons women give for why they seek divorce, and 70% of divorces are sought by women, emotional connections failing to match expectations is a primary reason. One of the key differences between men and women is that women are far more likely to have close friends than are man, and if a woman’s close friend gets a divorce, they are 75% more likely to get one also.

There are other statistics that give us some perspective on the unhealthy state of our relationships. 17% of married people have sex once per month. 7% have sex once or twice per year, and 10% of married people haven’t had sex in a year. When you add those numbers up, 34% of marriages have sex once per month of less.

Conversely, the number of men who masturbate more than once per week is 81%, and 30% masturbate daily. A study of 6,000 women from twelve nations found that women masturbate an average of once per week and 35% of women reportedly never masturbated, although studies indicate that women desired intimacy twice per week on average.

It is obvious that there is a huge disconnect in human sexuality, resulting in frustration from unmet needs.

I have previously shared a time in my life that was not part of my public persona. I once belonged to a segment of society that enjoyed recreational, social sex. It is a somewhat difficult world to describe to people who are not aware of it’s existence, but imagine that you had friends of both genders who you occasionally gather with socially. Perhaps, you went on vacations together, or played card or board games. Over the years your affection and love for those people created bonds and familiarity. Now, try to imagine that along with other means of expressing that comfort, you include physical expressions with those of the opposite gender; things like kissing, holding hands when you walk, or sitting on each other’s laps. Perhaps you would curl up together on a couch together to read, or just to talk.

It isn’t a far-reach to consider, as comfortable as you are together, that sexual activity becomes a natural part of your community life. Before you discard that as being ridiculous, I think that if you consider the subject, it happens all the time, just not openly and with permission. Friends often have affairs with the husbands and wives of neighbors or friends. What if everyone had open permission to love each other physically, and it was common during your time together? Imagine that there was no shame in seeing each other naked, that seeing each other’s bodies was regarded as healthy behavior.

I stumbled into that community by chance, having noticed an ad in a magazine that made me curious. I followed up and made contact to see what it was about. Over the following months I uncovered an entire world that I had no idea existed. In every city, both here and in many nations, there are tens of thousands of people who belong to this culture. One group that I was close to had more than 10,000 members in that city. One vacation club that caters to that lifestyle has more than 30,000 members, and some online groups have enormous membership bases of hundreds of thousands of people.

To be clear, while these were often very large communities of like-minded people, those who routinely spent significant time together were usually small groups who developed close relationships. We traveled, and had similar interests like cycling, diving, or surfing. Many of us were naturists, or as some people term, nudists. We knew where there were legal beaches where people were comfortable without clothing. We spent a lot of time with each other’s families, and often knew each other’s children and parents. Not all of the us had sex, some were just very affectionate to a degree uncommon in the general population. I remember once when several of us were watching the Tour de France, and a woman friend was sitting on my lap as we discussed the stage of the race we were watching. Another couple, not of the same ‘community,’ came into the room and were quite flustered to see us sitting together so intimately. We thought it was funny, because to us it was so innocent. Just two loving friends snuggled up watching something on TV. We would attend large gatherings as a small group, and most often we were associated together. People knew who was with who, it was just that the “who” was eight or ten people, instead of one other person.

Being a student of humanity, I often observe what is happening around me, trying to answer the obvious questions that come from watching people. In those situations, I often wondered why do so many people seek that form of community and why, given the significant numbers, is it not more legitimized. Of course, that answer might be buried within the stigmas created by religious influence, but given the way that modern society has opened up so many other archaic taboos, it always seemed like this question was most difficult to answer given the large percentage of society, 48%, that identify in surveys as being in poly relationships.

Another question that I pondered had to do with body image issues. Anyone who has ever spent time around Naturists, or as some term them, Nudists, will understand it when I say that the obsession people have with nudity or exposing very specific body parts is hilarious. Images of naked women are socially acceptable as long as the very tip of her breasts, and the immediate opening to her vagina are covered. Everything else being exposed is apparently unremarkable. Touching someone’s arm is not considered taboo, but touching a woman’s breast is.

I will share a specific experience that changed my perception of human normality. I was in a co-ed locker room getting ready to go swimming. I heard a man’s voice behind me, someone I knew slightly, comment, “Oh, my god, your breasts are amazing!”

Not being something you often hear a man say to a woman, I turned to humorously watch the interaction between a forty something man and a beautiful woman in her twenties.

The woman replied, “Thank you!”

The man asked, “Can I touch them?”

She delightfully replied, “Of course!”

Curious, I watched the two of them as he confidently reached out and touched her. It was one of the most interesting interactions I have ever witnessed. As he casually hefted and softly squeezed her breasts, they continued their discussion with the same emotion two people might have as they discussed avocados at the store. It wasn’t sexual, per se, not at all. Her breasts might as well have been her arm, or any other bodily feature. She wasn’t offended, he wasn’t leering, it was just one person expressing appreciation for the artwork that is the human body, to the person whose body he was admiring.

I looked around the room at the many people present. None of them were alarmed at the conversation. They were a group of about thirty unrelated friends and acquaintances, who were all in various stages of nudity. About ten of them were showering together, perhaps washing a back, or talking about some topic of the time. Every body shape was represented, tall, short, fat, thin, and many different races. What wasn’t present were the obsessions and hangups people have with their bodies, or those of others. When people’s clothes came off, the façade they lived was removed as well. There was no rich or poor, no status seeking, or confusion about roles or gender.

I was struck that this was health, and what was in the outside world was illness, but as I describe this, people from the outside world would think WE were perverse. These were the most emotionally healthy, real, honest, and accepting people I have ever experienced, and that extends to any church I ever attended. I am not saying that polysexuality is the cure all to our evils, but my observations is that we should be more open to deliberately and with forethought blending old social structures into our future.

The other thing that some people might find curious was the number of regular church attenders there were in that community. We often attended services together, and of course nobody in the sanctuary except us knew that we were joined in a closer than usual relationship. They thought we were just friends going to church with friends. As I write these words, I am smiling while remembering the many hours of intimate, often non-sexual times we spent together, as well as those times of loving expression.

I am quite comfortable with suggesting that every person who reads this article knows someone who belongs to that culture, although most likely you have no knowledge of it. Of those who don’t belong to such a society, many have had affairs. Which brings up another interesting fact: Of the thousands of people I encountered in that culture, I never heard anyone talk of having an affair. There was no cheating because permission and rules were defined. The attraction to cheating, and the excitement of it, was removed by permission and accessibility. Anyone who wanted attention, variety, or excitement got plenty of it. This is part of my discussion here. We have a path that provides a solution to many of the problems our culture faces. If we were to openly accept and embrace behaviors we involve ourselves in anyway, and perhaps modify them slightly, I can’t help but believe some of our most difficult challenges could be overcome.

As it turns out, two of my best friends were also involved in that lifestyle, and I had no idea. I had known him and his wife for twenty years, saw them weekly, and had no knowledge of their involvement until I ran into them at an event. They had no hint of my involvement either. Imagine the laughter. I have known countless hundreds of others whose family and friends had no idea that they had lives that included enjoying sex with their friends on weekends and vacations.

The purpose of this paper is not to promote one lifestyle over another. Neither is it an endorsement of any specific religious sect or spurious of others. Rather, I wanted to explore some aspects of human sexuality as it relates to intimacy, family bonding, and to explore one big reason why we are in a freefall of infertility. We lack intimacy and sexual satisfaction. That is not the only issue, and we will explore others, but as a culture we are not bonding into intimate colonies, and I believe that it is within our DNA to do so. In my paper on Marriage, I explore this colony idea more, but let’s continue to explore the sexual aspect of our challenges and the divergence between what we pretend to be, and who we are.

Research done in 2009 estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of polyamorous families in the USA, mostly polygynous, and 1.44 million participants. Other research indicates that there are 17 million people who are poly-relational, 5% who practice that family structure, and 20% of single people have been involved in some form of consensual non-monogamy. My experiences and observations growing up support those numbers. I knew of several families who had an unrelated person living with them, housekeepers who were actually lovers, or close friends who purchased property together. Often these relationships were casually understood by others in the family, and although not usually openly acknowledged, were often the source of jokes and innuendo.

My point is that, while generalizations are challenging, the number of people who are NOT monogamous, either by being openly poly relational or cheating, GREATLY outnumber the individuals who are. Yes, I am equally certain that there are people who find their person and mate for life, are happy, loyal, and feel fulfilled in their marriage. The truth is obvious, however, that those instances are far from being the norm. There are more than eleven million sex workers in the USA between the ages of 18 and 24. Do we need to discuss who their clients are?

Studying thousands of men and women at various kinds of events within poly cultures, I have some observations:

First, women who had NEVER expressed any interest in sexual contact with another woman, and vigorously denied any interest, often respond eagerly when in a situation where they were uninhibited by social stigmas. That often happened in a social circumstance like dancing at a club. I have watched as many husband’s eyes bugged out while their wife heatedly made out with another woman on the dance floor. In my years of observation I only saw one or two women out of thousands where this wasn’t the case. It is clear that for women, desire emerges out of being sexual, not from situational expectation. Just being in bed on Saturday night isn’t very desire producing for women. Preparing for social interaction, getting dressed up, applying makeup, doing their hair, especially if they are doing that with other women, enhances desire. Touching and facial expression is very important for women. For men, visual stimulation is crucial and they are much more transactional and goal oriented during sex. This becomes obvious if you have ever observed men sitting and watching women dancing together.

Secondly, women are MUCH more sexual than society would expect. The sexual capacity of a 40 – 50-year-old woman is astounding, and far more than any man that age. As we saw in the statistics of lesbian sex, it is not unusual for women to have many orgasms and engage in sexual activity for hours at a time, sometimes for days. These were the same women who rarely had sex with their husbands. I could not possibly count the number of times I have heard astounded men exclaim, while his wife was having sex with another man or woman, “I have never seen her like this and we’ve been married twenty, (or thirty) years.”

Rather than reading that with judgement, I hope people think about the experience, which, in my experience, is universal among many tens of thousands of women that have shared their experiences in online forums.

So, What Is The Conclusion?

As I said, generalities come with their own issues, but if we are to find solutions to the overwhelming problems we are facing, it is my belief that generalities are the place to begin. For those who are not familiar with my work, I have written books and other papers that explore the subjects of Human Nature, Marriage, and Philosophy. Those can be found at https://vscampbell.com/blogs/

The first conclusion I will make is that healthy men are sexually aroused by female fertility and variety. Those observations shouldn’t raise many arguments, but when it comes to the way our society approaches relationships, we go against every natural instinct men and women have. In my paper on Human Nature I explore the origin of that tendency, the ascetic movement within the early Christian church and it’s perverse focus on self-debasement and the denial of how God structured us.

When you consider the focus that our society has placed on institutional education, career paths, personal gratification, and the resulting female infertility, it should come as no wonder that men don’t generally find sexual fulfillment in monogamous infertile relationships.

The next conclusion I will make, and this one might be a challenge for people to understand if they have no experience in the poly family culture, is that women also lose interest in infertile monogamous relationships. They frequently fail to provide the stimulation and emotional intimacy women desire.

I want to discuss the way that many of our commonly accepted practices interfered with the biology of relationships between men and women.

One of the studies I uncovered in my research, titled Hormonal Contraceptive Use During Relationship Formation and Sexual Desire During Pregnancy, exposed the fact that women on birth control pills chose weaker men as partners, but later, when they were ready to breed, tended to cheat on them in favor of more virile men. The article was written from a decidedly feminist academic bias and I thought it interesting that rather than describing the woman as cheating, they used the phrase they sought “extra-paired” male partners. One such passage in the paper, compared the women’s level of sexual desire toward the partner they met when on contraceptives, and to “extra-pair” men when the women were “regularly cycling.” The point was that when women were hormonally manipulated by “the pill”, which mimics pregnancy, they chose men who were less masculine and perceived to be more nurturing. When they stopped contraceptives and began their normal biology in preparation for breeding, they no longer found those less masculine men as desirable. Interestingly, this seems to contradict what women do on dating apps, where they largely select more attractive men with masculine features, and ignore the less attractive ones. We can presume that recreational dating and sex causes a different selection process than does mating behavior if females are under hormonal manipulation from contraceptives.

Sadia Khan, a popular psychologist, summed it up perfectly when she said, “Men cheat because they want attention. Women cheat because they want more masculinity.”

In other studies, research suggests that men may find women more attractive when they are fertile, particularly during ovulation. This is based on the idea that men may be unconsciously picking up on subtle cues that indicate a woman’s fertility. These cues might include changes in scent, facial features, voice, and even body movements. I can tell you that many men have shared that in the days following their wife’s period, they could rely on having sex and they looked forward to her being “in the mood.”

However, the evidence is not conclusive and studies have investigated this phenomenon with mixed results. Some studies have shown that men rate women’s body odor as more attractive when women are ovulating. Other studies using facial photographs have found that women’s faces may be perceived as more attractive near ovulation, potentially due to subtle changes in facial symmetry or skin coloration. However, other research has questioned whether these cues are truly detectable or perceptible.

Some studies suggest that cues to fertility may increase testosterone levels in men, which is associated with mating motivation.

Overall, while the idea that men are most sexually excited when a woman is fertile aligns with evolutionary psychology principles related to reproductive fitness, the scientific evidence to support this claim is not definitive and shows mixed results. Personally, I think the evidence is insurmountable. When you look at the visual images of females, it is obvious that men are attracted to young, beautiful, healthy, and therefore presumably fertile women. I can tell you that conversations I have had with African men indicate that they are very attracted to non-thin women as they are perceived more assured to be healthy. This is an acknowledged aftermath of the HIV issues in African populations.

Further, vocalization of women during sex, urging men for their seed, is extremely arousing for most men.

Other factors that tremendously affect natural sexual functions between men and women are trends like bottle feeding vs. breast feeding babies, and natural childbirth vs. the manipulated, drug managed way women give birth in hospitals. I won’t go into all of the physiological reasons why this is so, but these factors and others, result in lower female orgasm rates, feelings of disinterest in sex on the part of both men and women, and lessened bonding between partners. In total, they combine to help create the disastrous destruction our society is experiencing.

One of the most interesting correlations that I found was between fertility during the first five years of marriage and “positive marriage quality” later on in life. Child bearing in a woman’s 20’s, especially using natural child birth and breast feeding, apparently results in better quality sex (as reflected in orgasms) during a woman’s 30’s. The feeling of the researchers was that the acts of birthing and raising children naturally developed specific bonding and stimulation ability in women that never got developed if the women were not having children and breast feeding. The implication those practices had on the divorce rate in the third decade of life was significant.

Women are competitive, much more than men are. When a woman has achieved her goal of securing a committed mating relationship, she relatively quickly stops competing for her man’s sexual attention. She owns him, at least that is the form of marriage our society endorses. It isn’t about the man owning the woman, it is about her owning him. He got on one knee and begged her to make him the happiest man in the world. She agreed and the entire wedding affair is all about her. The implication, and specific messaging, is that he is losing his freedom. Psychologically this is a very bad message when it comes to sexuality. Ownership and exclusivity, again, is perceived by women as being less masculine. Many women report being attracted to dangerous men.

A recent study of 1304 women from 47 different nations found that: “For short-term relationships, most women are more attracted to risk-taking men, a new study reports. Women who are in better health or have greater access to quality healthcare are more likely to be attracted to risk-taking men than women from other socioeconomic or health backgrounds.”

Again we see that for long term relationships women tend to select less masculine men, but those men don’t have sustained interest for them sexually. When they are expressing breeding behavior, women seen masculine, risk taking men. Another quote from that same publication in Evolutionary Psychological Science, “For casual sexual liaisons, women prefer courageous ‘cads’ with a good genetic constitution—risk-takers seem to fit this bill.”

Regarding dating apps, 80+% of women select the same 10% of men. 80 – 90% of men have about 20% of the women to choose from.

Going back to women being competitive, I want to be extremely specific about that, because in my experience it is very much misunderstood. Women are competitive for semen. VERY competitive. They want a man’s attention and they want him to breed with them. This is one of the reasons why the early child-bearing years are among the most sexually exiting for a young couple and why delaying that function until she is in her mid-thirties is a cultural disaster. Birth control, social career pressures, and her ticking biological clock make it more difficult to conceive and for this reason, women instinctively are freezing their eggs and resorting to IVF in order to have a child late in life… without a father in many cases.

Studies indicate that “baby longing’ is different with men and women. Women’s longing shapes the couple’s fertility behavior before mating. Her natural urges during her teen years and twenties drive her to mate, so she is highly competitive with other women and seductive in her behavior to men. Men report feeling a higher “baby drive” DURING periods of mating. They are highly driven to have sex during their teens and 20’s, but don’t equate that to pregnancy in the same way, but DURING mating, imagery of fertility are highly arousing.

The point of this is that a cultural emphasis on removing women from reproduction during their teens and 20’s, when they are encouraged to focus on education and a career, is one of the worst thing a society can do. I know that is highly inflammatory, but as I so often say, math and biology don’t care.

The other period of time when a woman is highly sexual is in her 40s and 50s. It is during this period that hormonal changes often cause a resurgence of sexual interest as her body is winding down her fertility clock. For women in this age group, they feel freedom from fertility, are frequently divorced, and at the same time they desire to affirm their attractiveness. During a study I performed across 8 dating sites, nearly all of the women were looking for a man to buy them dinner and have sex on Saturday night, then be gone by Sunday morning. Very few of them expressed interest in marriage. A large percentage of the most attractive 55-year-old women were selecting for 35-year-old men to engage in purely sexual liaisons. When asked why they were seeking much younger men, the most common answer was, “Because I can.”

When you have a poly family structure, everything becomes inverted in comparison to a monogamous culture. Now the women are highly interested in sex, and I have seen it MANY times. They have a sexual incentive they didn’t have before, they are competing with the other family women for sperm. If you have any doubt about that I suggest you refer to the story of Rachel and Leah. Sisters, best of friends, who were put into a situation where they were competing for Jacob’s seed. It is a very interesting story and an illustration of how God intended humans to live, in polygynous families, among colonies of women. Again, for more detail on that refer to my paper n Human Nature, and the one on Marriage.

There is also a pattern that women living in colonies experience: Social Contagion. Studies suggest that women in close proximity, like those living together, may experience pregnancies around the same time due to a phenomenon called social contagion. Seeing a friend or someone close to her become pregnant can influence her own desire to become pregnant.

Living together often means more opportunities for sexual activity, which can increase the likelihood of pregnancy if contraception is not used or if it is used inconsistently. Women who share a mate encourage each other, especially if they chose each other well. Living with another woman can create a shared social environment where pregnancy and parenthood are discussed and normalized, potentially leading to a desire to experience it together. Living together may also offer social and emotional support, both during pregnancy and after the baby is born, which can be a positive factor in choosing to become pregnant.

Studies have also indicated that female cohabitation is increasingly common before marriage and that many births occur within cohabiting unions. This suggests that the context of cohabitation is an important factor in fertility and family formation.

There is one more aspect of this subject that I want to explore, female bisexuality, and I can think of few topics that are more volatile. As the veil of sexual culture is lifted, more and more women are finding themselves open to sexual affection with other women to some degree. Details vary, as do the terms. Bi-sexual, Bi-comfortable, Bi-curious, all are terms that reflect the varied degrees to which women are interested in touching each other. While there are certainly different cultural aspects to this, I believe the world of the internet has opened our eyes to this fact. While we are certainly aware that male sexual interest in other men is not uncommon, as a percentage of the population it is my observation that the numbers are very small compared to the almost universal interest, or at least acceptance, of women to touch other women. In my thousands of sexual encounters with people of both genders, I have never known a man who ‘discovered’ an interest in other men, but the women who have done the same with other women is almost universal. I can only conclude that the nature of healthy women extends to being physically affectionate to a much higher degree than it is for men.

I want to make another observation, that the statistics on lesbian sexual satisfaction correspond with my experience that women who are in relationships that involve another woman, such as one man and two compatible women, have much more satisfactory sex lives. I have observed this in many families, that when they add another woman to their lives, and both women are in cooperation, the sex lives of all parties immensely improves, sometimes going from sex a few times per year, to several times per week, with the women having multiple orgasms each time. Women touch other women differently than men do.

There are going to be those who read this and proclaim that girl-girl affection is sinful and forbidden. I have studied scripture in the original languages for more than thirty years and I have never found accurately translated passages that say so. People apply vague references to “sexual purity”, which have very little actual definition but seem to orient to sex inside of a legal relationship. There are passages that are just blatantly misappropriated to apply to the question, such as Romans 1: 26 and 27. Those passages are specifically addressing anal intercourse and have no application to girl-girl sex. Again, this is a deep conversation, which I explore elsewhere, but I find no passages in support of, nor against, two women taking care of themselves within the bounds of their family marriage. I find that curious, that despite many opportunities to be specific, I find no such declaration. Conversely, there are ample passages that specifically deal with male-male sex, that being anal intercourse.

I want to be clear, lesbian relationships in Hebrew society would not have existed. Women weren’t free to live a life outside of marriage or unmarried widowhood, in which case they would live with a son or inside the temple. Women simply didn’t live alone, or it would seem, together with another woman. Neither am I saying that there was any endorsement in Hebrew society of women spending time together sexually. All I can say is that from my experience it would not surprise me to find that the practice of mutual sexual affection was a quiet part of polygynous family life.

For more in-depth discussions of this subject, please refer to my other publications.