This, say researchers, is down to men being program-med to continue producing offsprings and women being program-med to lay off the sex and concentrate on bringing up the young. But are things really that simple? Reading the comments in the Daily Mail article talking about the research paints a somewhat more complex picture.
Women have weighed in citing various reasons for no longer being attracted to their long term partners in a sexual way. Some say their men have let themselves go and are no longer the attractive hunks they married. Others claim the sex life itself has gotten boring, no longer providing any excitement. Interestingly, one woman commented that for her (and other women), sex is as much about mental stimulation than it is about physical stimulation, whereas for men the physicality is often enough. Keeping your sex life interesting over a period of many years is challenging.
The fact is, many women regain their sex drive by moving on or even cheating on their men, in much the same way men would. Is this a sign of a primitive urge to produce more young with more mates? Could be, but it could also be a way for a highly developed brain to maintain interest in what would otherwise be a dull, repetitive task. It’s easy to blame biological conditions for dictating our psychological and emotional lives, but it can be an overly simplified view that completely ignores those aspects of humanity that set us apart from animals.
Sure, we all partake in the modern day equivalent of courtship rituals, “mating”, etc. but in a world where many people consciously choose to not have children, for example, we’re obviously not entirely at the mercy of hormones and primal biological urges. Our brains are much more complex than those of the average lab rat or monkey, so reducing everything we do to what an animal would do and feel is a very narrow view that can also end up being somewhat derogatory to both women and men.
Written by Shimrit Elisar
