无聊的性爱
曼哈顿精神病学家安德鲁·戈兹斯（Andrew Gotzis）多年来一直在治疗一对夫妻，我们称之为简和约翰。 他们每周约三次发生性关系，这可能让许多人感到令人羡慕，考虑到约翰和简 - 已经40多岁了 - 已经在一起将近20年了。 仅基于数字，人们可能想知道为什么他们需要夫妻咨询。
但只有其中一人对比赛状态感到满意。而且这个人不是简。
“问题不在于他们在功能上无法发生性行为，或者没有性高潮。或频率。这就是他们所拥有的性别不是她想要的，“Gotzis在最近的一次电话交谈中告诉我。就像他看到的其他直女一样，“她因此而感到困惑和士气低落。她认为她有些不对劲。“与此同时，约翰感到受到批评和不足。大多数时候他无法理解为什么，如果他的妻子与他发生性关系并且有性高潮，她想要更多。或者不同。
尽管“担心看似性上瘾，不忠或愚蠢”（Gotzis不喜欢这些术语，但他们会说出患者的焦虑，他解释说），Jane试图告诉约翰，在治疗中以及在治疗之外，她是什么后。她想要约翰并想被他需要，像一段关系的初始阶段那样，是全新的的和火辣的。简已经购买了内衣并预订了酒店住宿。她提出了更多激进的潜在解决方案，比如开放婚姻。
简的坚持不懈可能会让她做很多事情：一个理想主义者，一个梦想家，一个精明的性战略家，甚至再次引导典型的焦虑 - 不现实，自私或有权利。但是，她在长期关系中的性斗争，性高潮和性生活频率，使她再次成为别的东西：正常。尽管性伴侣中的大多数人最终都面临着生物学家称之为“习惯性刺激”的难题，但越来越多的研究表明，总的来说，异性恋女性在这种关系中可能比男性更早地面对这个问题。而且这种差异往往不会随着时间的推移而平缓。一般来说，男人可以管理他们已经拥有的东西，而女人却在努力。
拉斯维加斯内华达大学的Marta Meana在2017年年度性别治疗与研究学会会议上对我进行了一次采访时说明了这一点。“长期关系对欲望很强烈，特别是对女性的渴望，”她说过。我被她的断言吓了一跳，这与我多年来关于女性性行为和内容的内化有关。不知何故，我和几乎所有我认识的人一样，坚持认为女性与高潮一样在拥抱中，而且 - 实际上需要情感联系和熟悉才能在性生活中茁壮成长，而男人则反对这种限制一夫一妻制。
但Meana发现，长期异性恋伴侣关系中“关系的制度化，过度熟悉和角色的去性化”与女性的激情特别混淆 - 这一结论与其他近期研究一致。
“与你的男朋友一起可以杀死你的性欲”就是“新闻周刊”对2017年11,500多名16至74岁英国成年人的研究进行了如何调查。结果发现，对于“仅限女性”，对性别缺乏兴趣的女性超过一年的持续时间，“并且”与伴侣一起生活的女性比其他关系类别的女性更容易缺乏对性的兴趣。“2012年对170名年龄在18到25岁之间与之关系密切的男性和女性进行的研究同样发现，女性的性欲，而不是男性，“在控制年龄，关系满意度和性满足感后，关系持续时间显着和负面预测。”2002年和2006年发表的两篇经常引用的德国纵向研究，显示女性欲望在90个月内急剧下降，而男性则持相对稳定。 （引人注目的是，没有和伴侣住在一起的女性幸免于这种游乐园般的下降 - 可能是因为他们正在以过度熟悉的方式结束。）并且发表了一项由超过2,100名女性组成的芬兰七年研究报告。在2016年，透露女性的性欲取决于关系状态：在研究期间处于相同关系的女性表示较少的欲望，唤醒和满足感。该研究的共同作者之一Annika Gunst告诉我，她和她的同事最初怀疑这可能与生孩子有关。但是当研究人员控制该变量时，结果却没有影响。
许多女性想要一夫一妻制。这是一个温馨的安排，我们的文化赞同，温和地说。但是，想要一夫一妻制与在长期一夫一妻制的伙伴关系中感受欲望并不相同。精神科医生和性健康从业者Elisabeth Gordon告诉我，在她的临床经验中，如同数据一样，女性比一年或更长时间的男性伴侣表现出更低的性欲，并且从长远来看也是如此。 “这种抱怨在历史上一直归因于女性的基线性欲较低，但这种解释很容易忽视女性经常开始平等关系，因为对性生活很兴奋。”处于长期，忠诚的异性恋伴侣关系中的女性可能会认为她们已经“走了”性 - 但更多的是，他们一遍又一遍地与同一个人发生性关系。
对于Jane和其他直率女性来说，这些都意味着长期排他性的愚蠢，尽管他们被教导说他们是为这个而设计的并且自然倾向于它？我们怎么看待女性远离焦虑的一夫一妻制守护者，可能总体上更像是受害者？
“当夫妇想要保持一夫一妻制的关系时，治疗的一个关键组成部分就是帮助夫妻增添新鲜感，”戈登建议道。 Tammy Nelson是一位性治疗师，也是The New Monogamy和When You's Who To Cheats的作者，他同意这样的观点：“女性是与性相关的技术和润滑剂，按摩油和内衣的主要消费者，而不是男性。”
当然，正如简的例子所示，内衣可能无法解决问题。 尼尔森解释说，如果“他们最初的尝试不起作用，[女性]将多次完全关闭或转向外遇或在线'朋友'，创造......一种性感的短信或社交媒体关系。”当我问到 Gotzis认为约翰和简在哪里，他告诉我他不确定他们会在一起。 在关于男女在一段关系中扮演的角色的基本叙述的颠覆过程中，简是对冒险的渴望。 当然，女性出轨并不是什么新鲜事 - 这是莎士比亚和布鲁斯的作品。 但是通过数据和轶事证据折射起来，简似乎不那么特别。
女性让他们的直接伴侣在“一夫一妻制的灰色地带”中玩耍并不常见，让他们在没有真正作弊的情况下作弊。 “快乐的结局”按摩，单身派对的口交，单圈跳舞，会议护送......受到无处不在的流行文化暗示的影响，许多人认为男人需要这些机会进行娱乐性的“性别”，因为“这就是男人的样子。”这是 看来女性也是如何。
妇女不能被归类; 人类性欲的荣耀就是它的变异和灵活性。 因此，当我们谈到未来的愿望时，我们应该承认，更公平的性别渴望与某人或某事物相遇的新事物（如果不是更多的话）与男人相遇，并且他们可以从灰色地带中受益。
Andrew Gotzis, a Manhattan psychiatrist with an extensive psychotherapy practice, has been treating a straight couple, whom we’ll call Jane and John, for several years. They have sex about three times a week, which might strike many as enviable, considering that John and Jane—who are in their 40s—have been together for nearly two decades. Based on numbers alone, one might wonder why they need couples counseling at all.
But only one of them is happy with the state of play. And it isn’t Jane.
“The problem is not that they are functionally unable to have sex, or to have orgasms. Or frequency. It’s that the sex they’re having isn’t what she wants,” Gotzis told me in a recent phone conversation. And like other straight women he sees, “she’s confused and demoralized by it. She thinks there’s something wrong with her.” John, meanwhile, feels criticized and inadequate. Mostly he can’t understand why, if his wife is having sex with him and having orgasms, she wants more. Or different.
Despite “fears of seeming sex addicted, unfaithful, or whorish” (Gotzis doesn’t like these terms, but they speak to his patient’s anxieties, he explained), Jane has tried to tell John, in therapy and outside of it, what she’s after. She wants to want John and be wanted by him in that can’t-get-enough-of-each-other-way experts call “limerence”—the initial period of a relationship when it’s all new and hot. Jane has bought lingerie and booked hotel stays. She has suggested more radical-seeming potential fixes, too, like opening up the marriage.
Jane’s perseverance might make her a lot of things: an idealist, a dreamer, a canny sexual strategist, even—again channeling typical anxieties—unrealistic, selfish, or entitled. But her sexual struggles in a long-term relationship, orgasms and frequency of sex notwithstanding, make her something else again: normal. Although most people in sexual partnerships end up facing the conundrum biologists call “habituation to a stimulus” over time, a growing body of research suggests that heterosexual women, in the aggregate, are likely to face this problem earlier in the relationship than men. And that disparity tends not to even out over time. In general, men can manage wanting what they already have, while women struggle with it.
Marta Meana of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas spelled it out simply in an interview with me at the annual Society for Sex Therapy and Research conference in 2017. “Long-term relationships are tough on desire, and particularly on female desire,” she said. I was startled by her assertion, which contradicted just about everything I’d internalized over the years about who and how women are sexually. Somehow I, along with nearly everyone else I knew, was stuck on the idea that women are in it for the cuddles as much as the orgasms, and—besides—actually require emotional connection and familiarity to thrive sexually, whereas men chafe against the strictures of monogamy.
But Meana discovered that “institutionalization of the relationship, overfamiliarity, and desexualization of roles” in a long-term heterosexual partnership mess with female passion especially—a conclusion that’s consistent with other recent studies.
“Moving In With Your Boyfriend Can Kill Your Sex Drive” was how Newsweekdistilled a 2017 study of more than 11,500 British adults aged 16 to 74. It found that for “women only, lack of interest in sex was higher among those in a relationship of over one year in duration,” and that “women living with a partner were more likely to lack interest in sex than those in other relationship categories.” A 2012 study of 170 men and women aged 18 to 25 who were in relationships of up to nine years similarly found that women’s sexual desire, but not men’s, “was significantly and negatively predicted by relationship duration after controlling for age, relationship satisfaction, and sexual satisfaction.” Two oft-cited German longitudinal studies, published in 2002 and 2006, show female desire dropping dramatically over 90 months, while men’s holds relatively steady. (Tellingly, women who didn’t live with their partners were spared this amusement-park-ride-like drop—perhaps because they were making an end run around overfamiliarity.) And a Finnish seven-year study of more than 2,100 women, published in 2016, revealed that women’s sexual desire varied depending on relationship status: Those in the same relationship over the study period reported less desire, arousal, and satisfaction. Annika Gunst, one of the study’s co-authors, told me that she and her colleagues initially suspected this might be related to having kids. But when the researchers controlled for that variable, it turned out to have no impact.
Read: Multiple lovers, without jealousy
Many women want monogamy. It’s a cozy arrangement, and one our culture endorses, to put it mildly. But wanting monogamy isn’t the same as feeling desire in a long-term monogamous partnership. The psychiatrist and sexual-health practitioner Elisabeth Gordon told me that in her clinical experience, as in the data, women disproportionately present with lower sexual desire than their male partners of a year or more, and in the longer term as well. “The complaint has historically been attributed to a lower baseline libido for women, but that explanation conveniently ignores that women regularly start relationships equally as excited for sex.” Women in long-term, committed heterosexual partnerships might think they’ve “gone off” sex—but it’s more that they’ve gone off the same sex with the same person over and over.
What does it all mean for Jane and the other straight women who feel stultified by long-term exclusivity, in spite of having been taught that they were designed for it and are naturally inclined toward it? What are we to make of the possibility that women, far from anxious guardians of monogamy, might on the whole be more like its victims?
“When couples want to remain in a monogamous relationship, a key component of treatment … is to help couples add novelty,” Gordon advised. Tammy Nelson, a sex therapist and the author of The New Monogamy and When You’re the One Who Cheats, concurs: “Women are the primary consumers of sex-related technology and lubricants, massage oil, and lingerie, not men.”
Of course, as Jane’s example shows, lingerie might not do the trick. Nelson explains that if “their initial tries don’t work, [women] will many times shut down totally or turn outward to an affair or an online ‘friend,’ creating … a flirty texting or social-media relationship.” When I asked Gotzis where he thinks John and Jane are headed, he told me he is not sure that they will stay together. In an upending of the basic narrative about the roles that men and women play in a relationship, it would be Jane’s thirst for adventure and Jane’s struggles with exclusivity that tear them apart. Sure, women cheating is nothing new—it’s the stuff of Shakespeare and the blues. But refracted through data and anecdotal evidence, Jane seems less exceptional and more an Everywoman, and female sexual boredom could almost pass for the new beige.
It’s not uncommon for women to let their straight partners play in a “monogamy gray zone,” to give guys access to tensional outlets that allow them to cheat without really cheating. “Happy ending” massages, oral sex at bachelor parties, lap dances, escorts at conferences … influenced by ubiquitous pop-cultural cues, many people believe that men need these opportunities for recreational “sorta sex” because “it’s how men are.” It’s how women are, too, it seems.
Women cannot be pigeonholed; the glory of human sexuality is its variation and flexibility. So when we speak of desire in the future, we should acknowledge that the fairer sex thirsts for the frisson of an encounter with someone or something new as much as, if not more, than men do—and that they could benefit from a gray-zone hall pass, too.
