Letters to the Editor
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Ha Ha
I think some people's crummy marriages are showing.
At at Chief Payne- so I'm supposed to let my stud fuck me hours a day while I'm young so that I can harangue him to get it up when he's old. That's rich. Getting a new hubby seems a bit more fun and convenient.
Less snarky, I think it's age. I have seen my own partner's desire diminish with time. I think people just grow out of the urge to have to get off every second they can. I think it's people who don't grow out of sex a little who are strange. It seems more to me of people trying to recapture youth via the genitals than anything else. Or other underlying personal issues.
Sex is fun, but there's a lot of shit to do, too.
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but the wider issue is that
When researchers determine women's desire tapers off it's a national medical calamity requiring more studies, consciousness raising, protests in the streets with giant paper mache puppets and a new host of pharmaceutical chemicals. When men's desire tapers off, it's because there's something wrong with men. Who are, after all, nothing more than defective women in the first place.
My blushing bride 'closed up shop' in her early 30's. That's it, done. Go away. Now I can safely say that after almost 20 years of "No" even a dumb male brute like me gets the message. You don't think men can turn it off like a light switch? You're wrong.
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Also...
If it's about sex and was published somewhere, it's true. Run with it.
...especially if it "confirms" your "suspicions" about American middle-aged men, even if it wasn't a study on American middle-aged men. And if it lets you brag about how sexually desireable you are (turned down sex while you were writing this article? Oh please.)
I like reading these columns occasionally, but some of them have been really, really stretching lately.
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NeilPaul
NeilPaul brings up an excellent point about procreation. Sex is *supposed* to be for procreation. Only in the last few minutes, so to speak, of our evolutionary history have humans a)had long life spans and b)had sex for fun. We're on new territory here, living long past our reproductive purpose on earth. Add to those 2 factors the demands of *modern* life - 24-7 connectivity, long commutes, financial demands of children, and it's a wonder that anyone other than high school and college students are doing it!
Anecdotally, I am a 34 year old woman who has absolutely zero libido and a very very strong desire to NOT procreate. I've often thought the 2 were linked. Now that would be an interesting study!
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Shazzer4400
Biologically speaking that is false. If sex in humans were just for procreation, human females would go into heat like most other mammals. They would have a breeding season. But from a survival point of view it doesn't give you any advantage to be pregnant at any time of the year regardless in fact it's a distinct disadvantage.
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Didn't we already know this?
Isn't it already widely accepted that as they get older men's sex drive, at a hormonal level, goes down from what it was when they were teenagers? (Like it could possibly go anywhere else.)
The reverse has long been said to be true of women, though it may be that the trend there proves more culturally and historically located than biologically predetermined — it's not hard to imagine young women today having less fraught relationships to sex than did their foremothers of a generation or two ago when they were the same age.
But regardless of which way that goes, one would have to be living under a rock to be shocked to learn that one's male partner isn't quite as raring to go at 40 as when he was 20. Yeah, that may mean turning down sex sometimes — but is that a wholly bad thing? Given the kinds of sex that young men sometimes agree to?
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Shazzer on living past our purpose
NeilPaul brings up an excellent point about procreation. Sex is *supposed* to be for procreation.
Yes, but it's important to consider the relationship of any hyperintelligent species (that is, one that's intelligent enough to talk itself into doing itself permanent harm) with genetic impulse.
Humans can convince themselves to starve for higher purposes. We take mammalian group-survival instincts to an extreme, sacrificing ourselves for strangers, for ideas.
The fact that some of us can even persuade ourselves to willingly embrace a lifetime of celibacy in order to focus on some higher purpose is a clear indication that our brains are way too powerful to leave reproduction up to mere urge. So evolution gave us (and apparently a few other species in the same boat) this tremendous delight in sex.
So sexual pleasure really is an advanced procreative mechanism, serving the same underlying purpose only for a species that would otherwise run the risk of total die-off within a generation of creating "World of Warcraft."
We're on new territory here, living long past our reproductive purpose on earth.
Again, it's important not to take too narrow a view of reproductive purpose. The survivability of a community of intelligent creatures benefits tremendously from the presence of experienced members — and that benefit curve becomes steeper the more intelligent the creatures. Producing their own offspring is only a part of what individuals can do to advance their fundamental self-interest (both genetically and memetically speaking, if you want to get all Dawkinsian).
And if sex into old age is a byproduct of all that, what's not to like?
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NeilPaul is right
It feels so taboo to say this in our sex-saturated culture, but I suspect diminshed libido is just a natural result of aging and diminshed reproductive ability.
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Other thoughts
First off, thanks to everyone who commended my first post. I would also like to express my lack of thanks to whoever is handing out the red stars. I'm sure its an oversight, but it strikes me as unforgivable in view of how many posters liked what I had to say.
Amity,
I don't think I disagree with what you have to say. Your one post is pretty similar to my first one, except with better grammar and more cohesive paragraphs.
As to delight in sex into old age, that is what most of us would want. It is what I hope for. Still, I realize that although I might still find delight in sex even at the ripe old age of forty-two (and beyond!), I might be delighting less frequently. Setting aside the real life challenges of so many of us at that age, especially those who have kids in their late thirties and still have the aftermath of that decision to deal with, there is the simple fact of having less energy as we get old. Exhausted people will frolic less than energetic people and life can be exhausting when you are heading a full household.
Older people also have already had lots of sex (I hope) and the novelty might be diminished. I know for myself that my own sexual bucket list is not as long as it was fifteen years ago. I have traded a fair amount of yearning for (mostly) fond memories and am more content than I was as a teen.
None of which is to suggest that people should just throw in the towel. I only thing folks, especially old folks, should give themselves a break if the drive has lessened. People shouldn't feel the need to pharmaceutically induce four hour erections that they have no good use for. For those with four hours in them, be warned that permanent blindness could be a side effect and that is not an old wives tale.
None of the foregoing should be taken as an endorsement of ignoring your spouse in favor of Internet-addicted chronic masturbation or ignoring your spouses needs due to creeping contempt bred by too many years of familiarity. It is one thing to slow down and be cool, it is quite another to slow down and be gross or mean.