Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love (32 page)

In 2007, Dr. Mark Brosnan at the University of Bath’s psychology department tested 100 men and women and found that longer index fingers indicated good verbal and literacy skills. These are the brain skills that are dominated by females. Brosnan also found that children—both male and female—who had longer ring fingers are better with math and physics than those with the opposite finger ratio. They also concluded that a longer ring finger for boys may be an indicator of autism, which is four times more common in boys than in girls, and that these boys could be at greater risk of a heart attack in early adulthood. Lesbian women have been shown to be more likely to have longer ring fingers, indicating exposure to higher levels of testosterone when they were in the womb.

Professor John Manning, author of
The Finger Book
, said the ratio was decided during the early period of pregnancy and was a measure of exposure to testosterone and estrogen and is thereby an indicator of a person’s future potential. He conducted research on gay men that showed that gays were more likely to have the same finger ratios as women, showing that they had received less testosterone in the womb.

In 2008, John Coates and colleagues at Cambridge University measured the right hands of forty-four male London stock traders and took saliva samples from them in the mornings and evenings. They monitored the traders over twenty months and found that those with longer ring fingers compared to their index fingers made eleven times more money than those with the shortest ring fingers. Over the same period, the most
experienced traders made about nine times more than the least experienced ones. Looking only at experienced traders, the long-ring-finger traders earned five times more than those with short ring fingers. They also found that those with higher levels of testosterone in the morning were more likely to make a big profit that day. They believe that the finger ratio appears to signal likely success in high-actively trading, which calls for risk taking and quick reactions, because testosterone affects aggression, confidence, and risk taking.

Science probably will play a significant part in how we will love in the future.

Genetic studies of mating and courtship have so far remained limited to animals and to relatively simple questionnaires. The most spectacular study of this type was conducted with two species of North American voles, which are a type of rodent. These are the monogamous prairie voles and the genetically related montane voles, which do not form any bonds but bonk every vole in sight. Researchers Thomas Insel and Larry Young at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, discovered a gene in the monogamous prairie vole that is absent in the polygamous montane vole. They incorporated the gene into the male montane voles. This simple genetic manipulation succeeded in “curing” those rodents of their promiscuity. It will soon be possible to genetically modify people to make them monogamous or to turn them into raving sex maniacs.

Scientists who study genetics and mate preferences have shown that each of us is attracted to people who possess a particular set of genes known as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). The MHC is a gene family that makes molecules that enable the immune system to recognize invaders. The more diverse the MHC genes of the parents, the stronger the immune system of the offspring. In 1995, Claus Wedekind, professor of biology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, conducted the famous “sweaty T-shirt” experiment, which showed how we unconsciously select mates with dissimilar MHC to us. He asked a group of women to smell T-shirts that men had worn for two nights without deodorant, cologne, or soap. The shirts were then put into identical boxes. The women were asked to smell the shirts and to indicate which shirts they were most sexually attracted to. Overwhelmingly, the women preferred the odors of men with dissimilar MHCs to their own. Another study in 2002 showed how we mainly use smell to detect a person’s MHC.

However, if they were taking oral contraceptives, their preference was reversed. In 2005, a study of fifty-eight women taking the pill confirmed that using oral contraceptives made women prefer men with MHCs similar to their own. The women in the experiment who were not taking oral contraceptives had no particular preference. This shows how a woman taking the pill can make the opposite partner choice to her natural instinct. These studies confirm that people literally appear to sniff out their mates’ pheromones and that women prefer the odor of physically symmetrical men. This is what “sexual chemistry” is all about. You’ll know it’s happened to you when you meet someone and for no explicable reason find yourself excited by his or her presence.

Race differences apply to MHC detection. In 2008, Professor Peter Donnelly, director of Oxford University’s Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, and colleagues showed that MHC is related to mating choice in European Americans but not in Africans.

Drugs and other treatments are being developed that can cause people to fall in and out of love and to recover more easily from lost love, so what does the future hold for love? Greater knowledge of something very often brings with it the ability to manipulate and control it. People will be able to immunize themselves from love by using treatments that prevent the lust or romantic love processes from developing in the first place. People with a poor track record in relationships might decide that the possibility of a new love is just too painful to bear and might want to protect themselves from romantic distractions to devote their time to a career. Or they could decide that love is just too costly and they are better off without it. Or they might try getting rid of their mates by secretly feeding them a compound that makes them fall out of love … or fall in love with someone else.

For love and lovers, the future holds things that have so far been seen only in the movies.

1. Sex cures mild depression by releasing endorphins into the bloodstream, producing a sense of euphoria and a feeling of well-being.
   

2. Sex is a natural antihistamine. It can help combat asthma and hay fever. No one ever gets a stuffy nose during lovemaking.
   

3. Lovemaking can burn up those calories you piled on during that romantic dinner.
   

4. Sex tones up just about every muscle in the body, and it’s more fun than swimming twenty laps.
   

5. When women make love, they produce large amounts of estrogen, which makes hair shiny and skin smooth.
   

6. The more often you have sex, the more sex you will be offered. A sexually active body secretes large quantities of pheromones. These subtle sex perfumes drive the opposite sex crazy.
   

7. Sex is around ten times more effective as a tranquilizer than Valium.
   

8. Kissing encourages saliva to wash food from the teeth and lowers the level of the acid that causes decay and plaque buildup.
   

9. Sex relieves headaches by releasing the tension that restricts blood vessels in the brain.
   

10. Gentle, relaxed lovemaking reduces your chance of suffering dermatitis, rashes, and blemishes. The sweat produced cleanses the pores and makes the skin glow.
    

The politically correct lobby still continues to staunchly resist the overwhelming evidence that we are born with inherent brain differences that dictate our choices and preferences. Any parent who is raising both a boy and a girl quickly realizes you can give sons and daughters equal love, equal opportunity, equal everything, and you will still get a completely different response. Give a teddy bear to both a three-year-old boy and a girl, and the girl will nurture the bear, give it a name, and make it her best friend. The boy will sit it on a fence, throw things at it, pull it apart to see how it’s put together, then walk away, leaving a mess behind. While a girl patiently watches a bird singing in a tree, her brother tries to hit it with a rock. The parents never taught their children to behave like this—they are hardwired in the womb to do it. And so men will still ogle any big-breasted woman who wiggles past, and women will do the same to any well-built man with a gold watch, a tight butt, a nice smile, and a fancy car.

In life, there is only a small percentage of highly attractive potential partners. These attractive people are desired by the majority of people, who, in fact, do not have a high Mating Rating themselves. That’s why most people settle for partners who have roughly the same Mating Rating as themselves. Most people do not recognize the minor everyday things they do as being part of an urge to compete successfully for mates. For example, few women consider that buying a face cream that helps remove wrinkles, a lipstick that highlights the lips, or a conditioner to make the hair shine is all done to try to outcompete other women for the attention of men. Men pumping iron in a gym don’t consider that they are trying to beat other men by looking as if they have the ability to chase and wrestle large animals and bring home the bacon. In other words, to try to look as if they can control resources.

Because of the way men’s and women’s criteria for their mates have evolved, it is virtually impossible for couples to coexist without some conflict from time to time as their life circumstances change. When you accept that conflict is
inevitable and choose strategies to deal with conflicts as they occur, your life with the opposite sex can go relatively smoothly. Any thoughts you may have about conflict-free relationships are best relegated to bedtime stories or novels. The way to true relationship happiness is to understand a mate’s needs and to have fulfilling those needs as your goal.

Both the popular and scientific press love to report studies showing differences while tending to ignore the usually more common research showing no real gender distinctions. It is all too easy to forget that men and women are far more alike than different and that people change over time, both individually and as a society. The major cognitive gender differences have been declining significantly over the past three decades, including the “traditional” ones of superior female verbal ability and male mathematical ability.

One of the more recent explanations for this is proposed by the theory that children are no longer segregated as far as “male” and “female” activities and that behavior has a profoundly interactive relationship with hormones and the development of cognitive skills and brain structures—for example, rough-and-tumble play, previously more common in boys, might better develop spatial abilities.

Here are four powerful tips for relationship happiness:

1. Have a relationship coach
   —a person who can see clearly what you are doing as you enter a new relationship.
   

2. Don’t expect a new encounter to be “the One.”
   Statistically, it won’t be. Recognize that many failed relationships can still become long-lasting friendships.
   

3. Avoid the vacation trap
   . Many couples falsely believe that going on a vacation together can revive or cement a relationship. Traveling is stressful, and many relationships come to grief on vacations because of alcohol, heightened emotions, and an unfamiliar environment. Never take a new person to any location that brings back memories of another experience.
   

4. Avoid the baby trap
   . Many couples also falsely believe that somehow the birth of a baby will magically fix their relationship problems. The opposite is usually the case. A new baby becomes the center of attention, the couple’s sex life comes to a grinding halt, and their problems are amplified. Never have a child unless your relationship is strong and stable and a child is what you both really want. Otherwise, unhappiness, divorce, and chaos are almost inevitable.
   

Most discussion about what we do or don’t like about our sex lives usually happens when it’s present in the mind. Unfortunately, that’s usually immediately before, during, or straight after sex, which are the worst times for sex discussion, as each person is likely to feel vulnerable. Make an appointment away from your home—at the beach, a park, or a coffee lounge—with your partner to discuss your likes and dislikes. An outside location allows each person to remain objective, as sex is unlikely to happen at these locations (for most people). As a woman gets older, this situation can be compounded,
as when gravity starts to take its toll on her appearance, she needs more support from a man to tell her she is still a sexy, attractive person. If she doesn’t receive this support, she may begin to reject his advances. A man needs to understand that as a woman gets older, she may need more reassurance that she is still sexy and attractive to him. She needs to understand that when a man wants sex, he is so fueled with testosterone that he doesn’t even notice wrinkles.