Better Living Through Psychology

A woman’s sex drive begins to plummet once she is in a secure relationship, according to research. Researchers from Germany found that four years into a relationship, less than half of 30-year-old women wanted regular sex. Conversely, the team found a man’s libido remained the same regardless of how long he had been in a relationship.

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Yes Virginia, women really do have different sexual arousal characteristics to men.
I found this article which explains what the differences are. Chivers and Bailey found that when women viewed films of animals having sex they reported no subjective feelings of sexual arousal. Nothing surprising there you say.

But the researchers had them hooked up to recording equipment that measures standard physiological components of sexual arousal. And the women, but not the men in the study who saw the same films, became sexually aroused. …or at least, their bodies did.

What does it mean?
No definitive answer to that yet. It’s easy to draw from this study some dangerous assumptions either way. Like, “Women really want it, even when they say no.” or “Gee, men really are single-minded when it comes to sex”.

Chivers and Bailey speculate that this may have evolved as a protective mechanism - preventing injury in case of sexual intercourse that women didn’t want (i.e. weren’t subjectively feeling aroused for).

My interpretation is that women’s slower sexual arousal might have required a broader set of arousal stimuli. That would provide more frequent opportunities for intercourse, even when they weren’t completely, you know, in the mood. That gives her the opportunity to get pregnant to somebody who maybe isn’t her ideal, but with whom it’s a good idea at the time. On the other hand, with the narrower set of stimuli to which men respond, they are - you guessed it - simpler.

How can I use it?
Let me first speak over your heads, dear readers, to all the rapists and wannabebuthaventgotthecharmstylemoneyorbrains sexual bullies out there. “She was physically aroused” definitely won’t cut it as an excuse for ‘misunderstandings’ if it ever did. Women apparently get physiologically ‘ready’ for sex sometimes when it’s the last thing on their minds. Like in this study when they were watching monkeys have sex.

The good news for the rest of you guys is that you can stop worrying about the early phase of physical arousal - women’s bodies do that quite okay thank you - and concentrate on the two phases that women have been asking for more attention on anyway: romance (foreplay by other means) and mind-blowing orgasms!

…you’re getting more sleep than you think you are. Allison Harvey and Nicole Tang of Oxford University showed in one experiment that people with primary insomnia underestimate the total amount of sleep they get and overestimate how long it takes them to fall asleep. This suggests that maybe it’s not so much the amount of sleep or the quality that matters, but how anxious you are about how much sleep you (incorrectly in all likelihood) think you’ve had. Sure enough in a later study, Harvey and colleague Christina Semler found that to be the case. A group of insomniac patients was given false feedback about their sleep. Across three nights they were given information each morning that the previous night’s sleep had been of better (Positive Feedback) or worse (Negative Feedback) quality and quantity than it actually was. The next day at midday and in the early evening subjects recorded in diaries to what extent they were troubled by thoughts such as ‘I didn’t get enough sleep last night’ and ‘I feel tired’, whether they adjusted their behaviours during the day (‘rearranged/cancelled my social plans’, ‘did less exercise today because I was feeling tired’), and how their functioning during the day was affected (productivity, concentration, etc.) On the days when they had received Negative Feedback, subjects had more negative thoughts about sleep, reported feeling more sleepy, felt they functioned worse and cut back on activities that called for energy.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Two things. Firstly, you’re probably getting more sleep than you think you are. Secondly, it may be that what’s making your day difficult is not that you’ve had a poor night’s sleep (subjects in the first study averaged 7.2 hours each of the three nights - where I live, in Parentland, that’s a sleep-in!) it’s that you keep telling yourself you’ve missed out on sleep and are therefore more alert to feelings of tiredness, instances of poor performance and so on.

HOW CAN I USE IT?

• Remind yourself that your estimate of how long and how well you slept is most often likely to be wrong. You slept better than you think you did.
• Even if you didn’t sleep well or long enough, you’re awake now. How does it help you to keep reminding yourself of something you missed out on and can’t regain? Try putting your attention on what you can do and what you can do well. Without suppressing your thoughts or feelings, see if you can notice moments of alertness, vigour and enjoyment in your day.
  What you pay attention to expands.
• Consult an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy practitioner. They specialise in helping people to move forward in their lives in the face of thoughts and feelings that often hold people back. There’s also more information about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on my website.