While men may experience more spontaneous desire — they can go from 0-60mph very quickly — when it comes to responding to erotic stimulation women show levels of passion that rival, if not outdo, the men.
But why would women crave variety? After all since Darwin it’s been accepted that a woman is biologically programmed to seek out one mate who can provide for and protect her while she brings up her babies.
Meanwhile men are designed to spread their genetic material far and wide. If they have affairs it’s because their evolutionary make up means they just can’t help it. Right? Yet, the latest evolutionary research turns that whole idea on its head.
In fact, some scientists now suggest that it’s women who need new experiences to keep interested because of how things went in our evolutionary pre-history.
It turns out, there are sound evolutionary reasons why we are are programmed to get bored making love to the same man and lust after others.
Forget the popular image of the fur-clad caveman going off to hunt while his woman looks after their baby, there is a growing theory among anthropologists that we evolved not as monogamous pairs but as ‘co-operative breeders’. In this way of life, loose bands of men and women raised their young collectively, and very likely mated with multiple partners.
For early humans, female promiscuity was, under certain circumstances, a smart reproductive and social strategy.
A way to increase the likelihood of getting high-quality sperm and maximizing the chance that numerous males might be willing to support her during pregnancy and protect and feed her and her offspring.
It makes a lot of sense. Sleeping with a number of men, hedged against a single partner with poor fertility, could increase chances of being impregnated at your fertile time.
There’s also a theory that the unpredictable nature of a woman’s orgasm, the female capacity for multiple orgasm, and the need for cumulative stimulation to have an orgasm (‘build up’) was biology’s way of encouraging us to have sex with a variety of men in rapid succession.
If one man couldn’t give us sexual satisfaction in a single copulatory bout, perhaps another or another few could get us there.
It may be a comfort to many despairing wives to learn that their ‘disinterest in sex’ is actually sexual boredom, and is a likely part of a woman’s biological make up — and not because they don’t love their husbands.
For centuries the script has been written for us: women — unlike men — are not meant to be sexually voracious and we’ve been brought up to believe sexual satisfaction is not something we should be actively seeking out.
As more and more women now start to assert themselves in this area of their lives, some find themselves breaking society’s taboos — whether through infidelity or exploring more open relationships
