Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / Why Men Nowadays Don't Know That Drive Drops For Men After The Honeymoon Stage And With Age
Transcript
- 0:05Hi everybody and welcome to the Doctor Psych Mom show.
- 0:08Today we are going to be talking about how obviously drive also
- 0:12drops for men in monogamy. And the men who don't think that
- 0:17is real and why, and the various sociological changes that have
- 0:21transpired over the years that would explain how men could deny
- 0:27something that is biologically obvious.
- 0:30And before we get to that, and I must tell you to subscribe, most
- 0:33recent subscriber episode was why it does not work when you
- 0:36try to verbally seduce your wife, AKA dirty talk or talking
- 0:41about sex, et cetera. And I explain why and when you
- 0:46can do that instead and you get 150 other subscriber episodes if
- 0:51you do subscribe. So there are like 1,000,000
- 0:56reasons I could talk about this, probably for like 7 months, you
- 1:00know, instead of 20 minutes. But there are so many reasons
- 1:04why guys deny the fact that drive drops.
- 1:07We're just going to go through a few.
- 1:09First of all, I've discussed repeatedly that porn fluffs your
- 1:14sex drive up, and when I've worked with guys and they go off
- 1:18of porn, they are shocked. They're shocked that I was
- 1:21right. Which is surprising in and of
- 1:23itself, because I'm usually right, but they're shocked by by
- 1:27how much they stop thinking about sex.
- 1:30And guys in previous generations, even just the 90s,
- 1:35like literally just before Internet porn.
- 1:37Remember married with children? There's no married with Children
- 1:40now because all guys are telling themselves that they want to
- 1:44screw anything that moves, especially their wife.
- 1:47It used to be a known thing in every generation that a man got
- 1:53sick of screwing the same woman all the time.
- 1:56That was just beyond obvious. It's called the Coolidge effect.
- 2:01And in fact, you know what, I'll I'll actually, I'll I'll read
- 2:04you the story of the Coolidge effect.
- 2:07So this is right from Wikipedia. Behavioral endocrinologist Frank
- 2:12A. Beach claims in a 1974 letter to
- 2:14have introduced the term Coolidge effect in either 1958
- 2:17or 1959. He attributed it to an old joke
- 2:21about Calvin Coolidge when he was president.
- 2:23The President and Missus Coolidge were being shown
- 2:25separately around an experimental government farm.
- 2:28When Missus Coolidge came to the chicken yard, she noticed that a
- 2:31rooster was mating very frequently.
- 2:33She asked the attendant how often that happened and was told
- 2:35dozens of times each day. Missus Coolidge said tell that
- 2:38to the president when he comes by.
- 2:40Upon being told, the president asked same hen every time.
- 2:44The reply was, Oh no, Mr. President, a different hen every
- 2:47time, President. Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.
- 2:50OK, so the the real definition, the biological definition, is an
- 2:56increase in sexual responsiveness and a shortening
- 2:59of the refractory period. The evolutionary benefit to this
- 3:03phenomenon is that a male can fertilize multiple females and
- 3:06may be reinvigorated repeatedly for successful insemination of
- 3:10multiple females. This type of mating system can
- 3:13be referred to as polygamy, where one male has multiple
- 3:17female mates, but each female mates with only one or a few
- 3:20males. This Coolidge effect of the
- 3:22shortening of the refractory period that I just described
- 3:26with a new female has been demonstrated to occur in humans
- 3:28across cultures and both sexes and also in other animals, by
- 3:32the way. So that's right from the
- 3:34Wikipedia page on the Coolidge effect.
- 3:36The point is, this used to be known.
- 3:38This was jokes. Guys were the ones who were
- 3:40supposed to be sick of monogamy, right?
- 3:43Guys. You know, women were obviously
- 3:46so obviously, there's so many other pieces.
- 3:48But women were having sex within marriage.
- 3:50That was part of the marital contract.
- 3:52You didn't stop having sex with your husband, even if you didn't
- 3:55really want to. Of course, if you're in a loving
- 3:57relationship, no man is going to pressure his wife into sex.
- 4:01Some women just, especially if they were religious and could
- 4:04not use birth control, therefore, and their body was
- 4:07destroyed after having all these multiple kids and it would hurt
- 4:10them. That's when they moved into
- 4:12separate bedrooms, right? At that point, many men found
- 4:16another female right a mistress. People used to cheat a lot more.
- 4:20It used to be understood that men, at least, would cheat a lot
- 4:23more, and that most men would not stay faithful right now.
- 4:27Now, like in that situation, if the woman cut them off of sex,
- 4:32some men did, right and they just there was no Internet porn.
- 4:35So they just kind of their sex drive was, you know, a a chore
- 4:39is something they wish would go away.
- 4:41But it wasn't this sort of massive fluffed sex drive in an
- 4:45older man that people have now because there wasn't the
- 4:47Internet porn. There also wasn't testosterone
- 4:50replacement therapy, which we will discuss soon.
- 4:53So yeah, he wished they were still having sex, but you know,
- 4:57if he was the guy that wasn't going to cheat, then that was
- 5:00just that. Life sucks, you know, Like, you
- 5:04know, things are hard. Life spans were shorter, you
- 5:06know, and people struggled more with all sorts of illnesses.
- 5:09There weren't all the advances nowadays, and we'll get to that.
- 5:12You know, that they have nowadays.
- 5:14And there were more religious people.
- 5:16You know, you go to church, you take care of your kids, you
- 5:19work. If you can't have sex anymore,
- 5:21you can't have sex anymore. You should speak to older people
- 5:24about this. You know, 'cause guys were
- 5:26really in two camps. The ones that would have gotten
- 5:27a mistress and the ones that would have just not had sex
- 5:30anymore if their wife couldn't couldn't have sex.
- 5:34Next right we we come to the fact that now we do have
- 5:39Internet porn and it fluffs guys up so much they think that
- 5:42everybody is having this crazy sex life except for them.
- 5:46And if you look at porn every day and it bombards these images
- 5:49of women doing whatever you want into your mind that you can
- 5:51never find anywhere in the natural universe, never.
- 5:55No man is going to walk into a room with 100 women waiting to
- 5:58do whatever he wants to do. These are, you know, fantasies.
- 6:01That's not real. And there is nothing in your
- 6:04actual brain that can replicate Internet porn.
- 6:08It's like saying like, can exercise replicate cocaine?
- 6:12No, it can't. You know, so it's like a drug in
- 6:16your brain. When people go off of it,
- 6:17they're shocked by how little they think about sex and what
- 6:20their what they thought their base sex drive was plummet,
- 6:25'cause it's being artificially fluffed, right?
- 6:28And so therefore, and also cheating has become like the
- 6:32worst thing in the whole world. You know, like people are
- 6:35supposed to get everything out of their partner.
- 6:37They're supposed to be soulmate, best friend, you know, just
- 6:40every single thing in the world. You could read this the new the
- 6:45It's a book by Eli J Finkel, The All or Nothing Marriage, and it
- 6:50talks about how nowadays the partner's supposed to be
- 6:53literally everything was never like that.
- 6:55So if we go back to previous generations, so few people said
- 6:58my partner's my best friend, you had a best friend of the same
- 7:00gender. You could even see this if you
- 7:02go back to TV shows in like the 90s or something.
- 7:05The woman had a group of friends, the guy had a group of
- 7:07friends, you know, and that's that.
- 7:09Those people were actually characters on the show versus
- 7:12Now you got like a lot of shows that are literally just about a
- 7:15couple. Pretty much.
- 7:17But the the the point B and about their kids.
- 7:19Of course, because people are now more obsessed with their
- 7:21kids, child centered, they won't get together with their friends.
- 7:23They'll just have a group chat, and instead they'll just focus
- 7:26on like the child's 15 baseball games that week or whatever the
- 7:29case may be. So the point is, is people are
- 7:32supposed to be everything to each other.
- 7:34You're not supposed to cheat. Advances in medicine have made
- 7:37it so that you're living a very long time, for sure.
- 7:40But at least you think that, you know, as as you're going through
- 7:42your life, everybody expects to live longer than they used to,
- 7:46and you are. And the guys are fluffing
- 7:49themselves up with Internet porn.
- 7:51And the women are still the same people, right?
- 7:54Except that they refuse to think that the marriage that there
- 7:57should be a sexual marital contract, at least more liberal
- 7:59women. They I do, of course, think that
- 8:02sex is part of marriage, and I talk about that all over.
- 8:05I even have a podcast about, yes, there should be a sexual
- 8:08marital contract. But anyway, So what we have is a
- 8:11guy who's fluffed up beyond reason because he looks at porn
- 8:14all the time in a medium that was never delivered before.
- 8:18So he's not actually monogamous. His brain doesn't think he's
- 8:22monogamous. His brain is seeing multiple
- 8:24naked women all the time, like the rooster in the yard and the
- 8:26Coolidge effect. His penis may be monogamous, but
- 8:30his brain is not. He's looking at all these women.
- 8:33I'm not saying it's a moral referendum.
- 8:35He's not actually cheating, but he's fluffing up his brain like
- 8:39he's a man who screws 100 women a day.
- 8:41That is a man who has a pretty fucking high sex drive, right?
- 8:43He needs to, you know? And that's what you're You're
- 8:46tricking your brain into doing that there's something called
- 8:48mirror neurons, and the same things activate in your brain
- 8:52when you watch somebody doing something as when you do it
- 8:54yourself. That's how people learn through
- 8:56observational learning. So if you're watching some guy
- 8:59you know screw a woman, it's like you're screwing that woman.
- 9:02That's what your brain does. It screws that woman virtually.
- 9:06And so your sex drive is at 1,000,000 because you are a guy
- 9:09who's virtually screwing many, many women all the time.
- 9:13And then your wife. Even if now there are cases, of
- 9:17course, many cases where the woman still wants to have sex,
- 9:20you know, regularly a couple times a week or something.
- 9:23But the guys that are addicted to porn, which is almost
- 9:26everybody that uses it and gets some level of of this, everybody
- 9:31who uses it gets some level of this uptick in sex drive, you
- 9:34know. So it doesn't matter.
- 9:35Using an hour a day, you're using a 15 minutes a day.
- 9:38If you're using it regularly, then you're basically creating
- 9:42this fluffing effect, right. So then the stuff that she wants
- 9:45to do no longer seems so palatable.
- 9:49For example, in the 50s guys did not think that their wife was
- 9:51going to give them oral sex. Like that was like something
- 9:53that you get in a whorehouse, you know, like your nice wife is
- 9:56going to have missionary style sex with you.
- 9:59You know, it was a huge thing, a huge change.
- 10:02And like you know, the the free love for people to have, you
- 10:06know, oral sex at all, you know, in the generation that came
- 10:10after the 50s. But if we go back to the men in
- 10:12the 50s, when the Coolidge effect was they didn't have the
- 10:15Internet porn, They didn't expect their wives to do crazy
- 10:18shit in bed, and their wives expected that they were going to
- 10:21have sex when the guy wanted to, you know, And not to say they
- 10:24couldn't enjoy it, plenty of women enjoyed sex.
- 10:27But that wasn't really the point.
- 10:28The point was that this is a marital duty.
- 10:30Then if you add in the testosterone replacement
- 10:33therapy, my God. So then there's a lot of guys
- 10:37who need it. Sure.
- 10:38You got very low levels of testosterone.
- 10:40You got brain fog. You got like all these, your
- 10:42weight gain and your drive is low and all of these things.
- 10:46Right. So you go to it, go get your
- 10:49testosterone replacement. I nothing to me, you know.
- 10:52So the point is, though, that there are many men who are not
- 10:57just remediating A deficit but who have normal levels, pretty
- 11:01normal levels, and of course, everything's within a range.
- 11:04So if they're not at the top, top of what the normal range is,
- 11:08then in these hormone clinics they get pretty much any level
- 11:11that they want. You know, and you have clients
- 11:15like this. I got people that I talked to in
- 11:18my in my group and just just this is a thing.
- 11:21So and it's not it makes you aggressive and it makes you want
- 11:25more and more and more sex. You know, a guy with a who's 70
- 11:30is not supposed to have the testosterone levels of a guy
- 11:33who's 20. And when they do, then they are
- 11:36obviously a huge problem in their marriage because they have
- 11:39basically done that Twilight Zone episode where I think I've
- 11:43mentioned this one before where the the couple only had enough
- 11:46money for one of them to go, you know, get their old young body
- 11:51back. So they picked him because he
- 11:52had such bad back pain. He came out, he was 25 years
- 11:55old, and he's like clicking his heels and he feels great.
- 11:58But then he sees her and, you know, she just looks so
- 12:01shattered. First she's very happy, but then
- 12:04she touches her own face and she's like, shattered.
- 12:07She knows they won't stay together.
- 12:08She knows that they're not a good fit anymore.
- 12:10And then he realizes it too. And in The Twilight Zone, which
- 12:14was made in the 50s and 60s, you know, they they had the, the,
- 12:19the end of that episode. Sorry for the spoiler.
- 12:22But the end of that episode was that he went back and had it
- 12:24reversed. And then they, you know, walked
- 12:27off as well as he could walk with his cane.
- 12:29They walked off into the sunset together, right.
- 12:32So that was the message that they wanted to give.
- 12:36You know, nowadays most people would say fuck her, man.
- 12:39Get a New Girl. You're living your best life,
- 12:42dude, you know? And that is not where I'm coming
- 12:44from because I work with couples on their marriages.
- 12:47So sometimes guys say then like if you don't believe in
- 12:50optimizing your testosterone, again, it's cool to get
- 12:53something remediated. That's a deficit, right?
- 12:55But when you're bringing yourself up, specifically saying
- 12:58things and bragging that I have the testosterone level of a 20
- 13:00year old guy, you know, and I can lift like this tremendous
- 13:04amount of weight and I want to fuck, you know, three times a
- 13:07day, come on, you know, how's that going to be good for the
- 13:11marriage? So some then guys are like, oh,
- 13:13should I not take insulin then if I'm diabetic or should I not
- 13:16take a heart medication if I have a heart problem?
- 13:19Well, unless your marriage is very bad, real bad, then your
- 13:23wife does want you to take insulin or heart meds because
- 13:25otherwise you'd be dead. So in fact, that makes the
- 13:28relationship better, not worse. I also do an analogy.
- 13:33I say, So what if a woman talks a lot?
- 13:35She talks so much. The guy's not very verbal and
- 13:38it's it's already a problem that she talks so much more than him
- 13:41and they can't come to terms with it.
- 13:43But you know what? She just likes to talk, and she
- 13:45wants to take a stimulant, you know, and she that stimulant
- 13:48will make her talk even more. Should she take it even though
- 13:52she really, really likes talking?
- 13:54No. That would be bad for her
- 13:56marriage, for him to have to listen to twice the talking,
- 14:00right. They're already not doing so
- 14:02well, You know, Why would she exacerbate the difference
- 14:06between that? Obviously, that would be quite
- 14:08bad for the marriage. So you know what?
- 14:11What you got to think about is all of these variables together.
- 14:14Not everybody does. All of them, Right.
- 14:16But I'm saying there's there is. Oh, and of course there are all
- 14:20of the advances in medical technology not limited to
- 14:24testosterone replacement, certainly.
- 14:26And and so people think that they should somehow live their,
- 14:32quote, best life all the time in every which way that age is just
- 14:36a number and that, you know, you could basically, you know, be
- 14:40the same age until you're dead and dead.
- 14:43I mean that is a bad word now. I mean it's very secular world,
- 14:47you know, and people no longer think that there will be a much
- 14:50afterwards. And many, some people let that
- 14:53really screw their heads and they try to basically live
- 14:56forever. And that just doesn't happen.
- 14:59And I have podcasts on the Age is Not Just a Number and why
- 15:02people hate aging more and more. Those are the titles of those.
- 15:06So you end up with people who basically aren't allowed to
- 15:10cheat in their own mind. You know, they fluff themselves
- 15:16up so that they have the minds of a man who's screwing 100
- 15:18women, but they're not. The wife no longer really thinks
- 15:22that she should, that she needs to be having sex when she
- 15:25doesn't want to and doesn't know anything about responsive
- 15:28desire, so therefore doesn't understand that If she tries,
- 15:31she may want to. You know, in the early stages,
- 15:35if the guy's watching that much pour and then the things that he
- 15:37wants to do are coming off aggressive and extreme, that
- 15:43certainly does happen. Some of this is amplified by
- 15:46effects of unneeded extra testosterone supplementation,
- 15:52but not in all people, certainly.
- 15:55And then you end up with this perfect storm, right, this
- 15:59perfect storm for guys to say that they do not understand why
- 16:04their wife's Dr. decreases. Well of course they don't.
- 16:09They they will understand it pretty quick if they stop all
- 16:12the porn and any extra supplementation beyond what
- 16:16would remediate them, You know, I mean they would understand it
- 16:20pretty quick and they do, they do understand that.
- 16:23But it's a lot, you know, more comfortable to complain about
- 16:26your sex drive disparity than it is to actually work on your
- 16:30relationship on a deeper level in all areas, sex being one of
- 16:34the areas. So there's a lot of guys out
- 16:37there that are saying they don't understand why their sex why sex
- 16:40drive drops and and that's the whole reason behind their
- 16:45marriage being bad. I think a lack of empathy in
- 16:48that case is is the reason. Because if you literally cannot
- 16:51understand how a mammal would age like, I mean, I have a
- 16:54million podcasts about this and if you want to experientially
- 16:57learn it, just go off the porn. And also, let's point out the
- 17:02obvious, there's plenty of guys who think they could do it 3 * a
- 17:05night because they could jerk off with porn and unlimited
- 17:08visual stimulation three times a day or night or whatever.
- 17:11But nobody's actually testing that out.
- 17:14They're not testing out having sex with their wife three times
- 17:16in the night, and many of those guys go on vacation.
- 17:19And if they could do it twice in a day, the next day they're
- 17:21destroyed, you know, because they just can't, can't do it
- 17:24again because that's literally how their body works and they
- 17:27can usually not come multiple times in a day anymore, you
- 17:31know, without excessive help. This is when I tell people I say
- 17:35that's cool, masturbate, just masturbate, Analogue.
- 17:37Don't use porn. And most of them come back and
- 17:40they're like, that shit was so boring, I can't even do it.
- 17:42And I'm like, well, that's what your literal job was.
- 17:44Because when you were 18 years old, you could think about like,
- 17:48you know, like a girl's smile and jerk off, you know,
- 17:52successfully, quickly. And now you can't, you know,
- 17:55because that's aging. So when one partner says to
- 17:58another, I can't understand why XYZ biological phenomenon
- 18:03happened. It used to be an understood
- 18:06thing, as I said, with the Coolidge effect, you know, it
- 18:08used to be understood men get bored within monogamy.
- 18:12That was because they didn't have this, this, this harem
- 18:15online, you know, to keep them fluffed up all the time.
- 18:19So you know, and it's not like it's a moral thing.
- 18:22Of course some porn is quite unethical and that is a moral
- 18:25problem. But if you are, you know,
- 18:29single, you could watch all the porn you want.
- 18:32But if your relationship isn't going well, and it doesn't go
- 18:36well for you to do that, it doesn't go well for you to do
- 18:39anything. That makes you less empathic and
- 18:41less understand where an aging partner is going.
- 18:45You know like how how they are experiencing the world and
- 18:48you're not allowing yourself to experience, to experience it
- 18:52because of these these ideas that your life has to be
- 18:55perfect. You only have one option.
- 18:57So she can never age because you never want to age.
- 18:59So if your wife acts old in any way, then that makes you feel
- 19:03old and then that makes yourself feel.
- 19:05You know that you don't feel as good about yourself because you
- 19:09want a free lunch. And that's what I'm always
- 19:11saying you can't have is a free lunch.
- 19:13Nobody can. So you know that that is what it
- 19:16is, and that is my my my thoughts about this topic in as
- 19:21condensed a form as I can get it is that of course you would
- 19:25understand your wife's decrease in drive.
- 19:28Men used to have a decrease in drive as well.
- 19:31But if you're if you are making things different for yourself,
- 19:35you know by by artificially priming yourself constantly,
- 19:41then you're going to say you don't understand it.
- 19:43And also people that are less secure, people that are late
- 19:46bloomers, people that feel that they never got enough, you know,
- 19:50sex life in when they were young and now they're being told that
- 19:54yes, like all animals, they are aging and the lifespan is finite
- 20:00and sex hormones decrease over time.
- 20:04They don't like that. They they want to think that
- 20:06somehow they can do all of the exploring that they ever did now
- 20:11that they're married and they're 50 years old, 40 years old.
- 20:14They want it to be like being single at 20 years old.
- 20:16I'm confident. How, how, how would it be?
- 20:18It's just not like that. So that's, it can't be like
- 20:20that. And if you struggle a lot with
- 20:24feelings of aging, of mortality, of resentment to your wife, of
- 20:30of if your wife is like nothing is enough for you, you're
- 20:33obsessed with this. You know, some of them are
- 20:36right. Some of them are wrong.
- 20:38And I've talked a lot about the differences between a man who's
- 20:41a sex addict and a man who's not, you know?
- 20:44But that doesn't mean that there aren't people who are truly
- 20:48never happy with what they get and who are not truly asking for
- 20:51more extreme things than an average woman would give.
- 20:56You know? And if you talk to somebody,
- 20:59then that can help you level, set and calibrate.
- 21:01Oh, my expectations are at this place on the normal
- 21:05distribution, whereas I thought they were right in the middle,
- 21:08you know? And some of y'all's are not.
- 21:11And there are myriad reasons why not.
- 21:14But before you spend the money on therapy, many of you can try
- 21:18going off porn, you know, or whatever or whatever, like super
- 21:23optimization maximization dosages you're on of of
- 21:27testosterone could be discussed with a doctor, because a lot of
- 21:31people you know and I have friends or doctors, right?
- 21:35And this is, you know, people do not always report things
- 21:40accurately to doctors if they like the effect.
- 21:43So for example, if you're on Adderall and it makes you do
- 21:46like 7 times the amount of work that you could usually do, but
- 21:49also your wife says you're unbearable to be around, a lot
- 21:53of people may not say that last part to the psychiatrist.
- 21:56They'll only say the first part, that they're super productive
- 21:59because they want to get the substance.
- 22:01And that's not like that. That's just normal.
- 22:03That's just like a normal, human way to be.
- 22:06So a lot of people are not coming in to the clinic and
- 22:09saying actually, like, my huge uptick in sex drive is causing
- 22:14problems at home. And my wife says I've turned
- 22:16into a sex addict. They're not saying that part.
- 22:19They're saying, man, I feel like I'm living my best life.
- 22:21Let's keep it how it is, you know?
- 22:23So think deeply about that and obviously talk to your medical
- 22:26doctor. I report on what I see in my
- 22:29practice as a PhD, as a a clinical psychologist.
- 22:34Always talk to your doctor about anything physical.
- 22:37And just for the guys who get ironically super aggressive on
- 22:41my Facebook page defending the TRT that they're on, this is not
- 22:45about remediation. This is about the guys that are
- 22:48saying my testosterone's at a 1200, you know, and I'm like 50,
- 22:53you know it. It's like come on.
- 22:55So, all right, I will talk to everybody soon.
- 22:58Have a great day guys. Bye, bye.