This is an email I wrote to my therapist. She said something in our session that went against my experiential knowledge and pushed against one of my core beliefs.
* Names have been changed to protect their identity
Dear Janet,
One thing you said in our session has stuck with me, and that’s usually a clue for me to write it out. You talked about the way that men can sleep with women and move on, in a way that women can’t. I remember you based it on the idea that evolutionarily speaking, women carry the children which is why we have a greater desire to nest. Men, on the other hand, have a lesser desire to nest because their evolutionary drive is to spread their DNA as wide and as far as possible. I am not sure who made this evolutionary argument, I have tried looking and the closest thing I have found is the Coolidge effect which seems to argue that men are more likely to look for new sexual partners despite already having an established partner. I am not aware of the body of work around evolutionary psychology and relationships, and I would love to be pointed to some of these writers, or researchers because even though I don’t know the research, I know that these arguments have had a profound effect on how we interpret men and their actions.
I wanted to point you to two people who have played a role in how I have developed my opinion that how we understand, and talk about men is deeply flawed. I think the flawed ways that we talk about, and understand men are actually very much influenced by patriarchal structures that have had detrimental effects for both men and women. Feminism has done amazing work in deconstructing the myths around women and our ability to live, work and function independently of men. I don’t think enough work has been done to deconstruct the myths that patriaarchal ideologies have built up about men too.
Helen Fisher, PhD biological anthropologist and Senior research fellow at The Kinsey Institute, Indiana University presents many arguments that push against the myths that have been built up about men. In her blog, she writes that she and her colleagues have
She does say the following: “In a recent study of ‘hooking up,’ 50% of women and 52% of men said that they went into this sexual experience hoping to begin a longer relationship. One third succeeded.” This information tells us many things: that men are just as likely to hope for something more after a hook up. That women are just as likely to not want anything after a hookup and that sometimes, two people can find each other in this kind of scenario. This also tells us that 2 thirds of the time, it doesn’t work out—but what we cannot do is assume that it is solely because men have a fear of commitment, or attribute it to an evolutionary reason.
I now want to attend to the argument that women are more interested in long term relationships because we carry the children and therefore are more likely to want a partner to stick around. I think this idea is rooted in the myth that for women, sex and commitment are deeply entangled. But Esther Perel, psychotherapist and New York Timesbestselling author points out that if this were true, then sex in long term relationships and marriages would be thriving. While sex might be thriving for some couples, it does seem that sexual passion precipitates when commitment settles in. Furthermore, Perel argues that male desire is far more relational than we are willing to acknowledge. Men are socially conditioned in one profound way: don’t be a weak. Weakness has been connected to anything that is feminine. And so verbal expression of vulnerability and disclosure in their friendships are not always part of male friendship. And when men do verbally express vulnerability, it is often in their romantic relationships. Perel points out that for men, sex is the place where they
There is a part of me that wonders if the idea that men are able to move on after a night of casual sex is really because they experience a vulnerability hangover— a sense of shame and fear of disconnection. It is much easier to be the one who walks away first because this allows the man to maintain a sense of control — imperative to a masculine identity. Additionally, he never has to experience the vulnerability of waiting to find out if his partner wants to continue to see him. Finally, Perel says that for both genders,
I write this email because I feel that my father and brothers have taught me something profound about men. I have seen, again and again, this struggle between what they feel as people, and who they think they are supposed to be as men. More often than not, they are frozen in the middle of that struggle with very few tools to help them out.
Best,
Ellie
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