Relationship Advice I Wish Everyone Understood: Sexual Compatibility

I’ve spent a little time sitting on the sidelines occupationally and some of that time has found me on various websites where people seek advice.  One of the more common families of issues seems to be:

I’m in a relationship/marriage and my partner doesn’t satisfy me.  I really love him/her and I want things to be better…

Which is typically followed by a long list of reasons they want to stay together—children, religious ideals, economic situation—which are usually very rational reasons to want to stay together.  This is usually not followed by a description of the partner’s qualities.  Generally, it’s the female partner who is actually seeking help.

The issue is—like my title suggests—sexual compatibility, but the problem is many people only consider it after the fact and a very long time after the social and economic commitments have been made.  In many cases, the person seeking advice admits up front their sex life with this partner was never particularly satisfying in the first place.

To be honest, because I’m a nice guy, my suggestions to them in the fora they ask usually are a combination of a medical work up (to catch any underlying health issues), mutual counseling with a professional counselor (ideally, to resolve communication issues), and to try something different sexually with their partners (to identify potential common sexual interests they haven't explored yet).

What I really want to do is ask them “What were you thinking when you committed to someone in a sexual relationship who can’t even provide you basic sexual satisfaction?”  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a realist and I know sexual satisfaction for both parties isn’t going to happen all the time, every time either party has an interest.  But regularly satisfying sex in a sexual relationship has got to be a requirement.

Why?

Oxytocin

Oxytocin is a neurohormone  which means it’s a chemical signal (hormone) released by nerve cells (neuro-), primarily in the part of the brain—the hypothalamus—that’s key to our sexual responses, many of our stress responses, and integral to the system in our brain that drives how we respond to friends, lovers, enemies, our children, and basically every other being in existence.  Oxytocin is released during sexual arousal and in higher doses (with another hormone called prolactin) with orgasm. 

What does this have to do with sexual compatibility? 

Simple, one of the effects of oxytocin is increased cooperation.

In the last few years, oxytocin has been available to researchers in a form allowing them to administer it nasally.  This has resulted in a lot of less-than-sexual research in the field of experimental economics.  To make a long story short, in controlled studies, people administered oxytocin make more cooperative economic decisions, are more likely to share, and increases empathy in males.  Also, it makes it harder for people to “remember the bad times”.

This means, if you are sexually compatible, you regularly dose each other with a chemical signal promoting sharing, forgiveness, and cooperation in a way most people will proactively seek out.  Add into it the fact prolactin—also released in high doses with partnered orgasm—produces sexual satiety so both partners tend to forgo looking for sex elsewhere, you have a reasonable starting place for a committed sexual relationship with added economic, social, and familial commitments.

However, as some people point out in advice forums:

I’ve been married (a large number of) years to my partner.  He/She was my first and we’re still going strong.  We just took the commitment seriously…

Desperation and the Learning Curve

As kids, we learn rules reasonably quickly so, by age five, we often end up arguing with little kids about rules they know well—like grammar and spelling rules—as we try to teach them the exceptions to these rules.  For example, the plurals of mouse/house and why “its” is a possessive and doesn’t have an apostrophe seem to confound many kindergartners and first graders.  After a while, we learn that most rules have exceptions and start picking up on how to make decisions including cost, benefits, and risks based less on rules and more on the underlying expectations.

Once we grasp the concept there are alternatives, but they might differ in these three qualities—cost, benefit, and risk—we often start making more responsible decisions when we have experience with each alternative.  Or, we simply emulate the people we know who’ve already made those decisions.  The reason this is important is the fact emulation is often of a lower cost and risk than gaining experience with an alternative in order to make an informed choice.  As far as a learning curve goes, it’s a strategy to “leap ahead” to a hopefully better choice. 

As a society, because many of these choices have consequences for all of us—consider the choice to follow traffic laws vs. driving 90mph through school zones—we often find ways to “incentivize” particular choices by either lowering the benefits—speed bumps—or increasing the costs—speeding tickets—in order to drive individual decision makers toward a socially beneficial ideal.

Sexual relationships are prime real estate for this.  The institution of marriage, for example, is a public announcement of an (assumed) sexually exclusive relationship that’s incentivized with social benefits in most cultures as well as increased costs for violating marriage vows and expectations.  The ideal result is a decrease of social and family disruption and the hope for a stable upbringing of socially compliant children.

Where does sexual compatibility apply to this?

Simple, when the perceived consequences (cost x risk) of a failed, socially accepted relationship is more than the level of perceived sexual frustration in the relationship, many people will take the easy way (change their perceptions) or find enough social pressure to apply to their partner to change.  

Even if this fails, the amount of emotional and social investment in their relationships creates an effect called cognitive dissonance.  With cognitive dissonance, the individual changes their own perception of their situation and often tries to “recruit” others into similar situations to validate their investment.

However, another factor may also be at work and that is developmental age. 

Humans have a very long development.  We have a delayed childhood compared to even our closest primate relatives including a long infancy providing more time for brain development and language-related ability acquisition.  We have a very long juvenile period before puberty.  We have an additional growth spurt of neurons in the part of the brain we use to learn how to (socially) solve problems and interact with others as an adult during puberty.  We have provided a long socially-mandated developmental period between biological adulthood and when they are considered—legally and socially—an adult (i.e. the “teenage years”).  We—at least the female half of the species—have a reproductive phase (pregnancy/motherhood) and post-reproductive phase (post-menopause) with the potential for yet more social roles.

In each of these stages, our “place” in society and even the same relationships changes because we change neurologically (the way we think), physiologically (the way our body functions), socially (the way we interact with each other).  In some stages—like early childhood and the period right after puberty—our behavior is much more plastic or changeable and we respond differently to our environments and partners.  During these stages, we can develop sexual traits that are much less flexible later on. 

Victims of child sexual abuse demonstrate this to an extreme in a negative manner.  Learning that sex is something done to you, against your will, and that you have to put up with it tends to change the way you deal with partners later on.  Sexually active teenagers kept blind about consequences of their sexual behaviors often become more irresponsible adults.  Sexual isolationism is probably a source for much fetishism as well when sexual learning becomes focused on what is available during this plastic period.

At the same time, if two people enter into an accepted, supportive relationship while still “pliable” and learn together, their sexual compatibility may develop as a consequence of their sexual plasticity.  With positive reinforcement and attention to their health, that can result in long term, successful, sexual relationships as well.  Probably the only way to tell the difference between the “desperation” and the “shared learning” crowds would be some measure of general health as desperation and frustration often results in health consequences related to stress.

So, what’s a guy or girl to do to avoid the problem completely?

Communication, Experience, and Honesty

Because sexual compatibility is important, sexual experience with a partner before becoming seriously committed—or a willingness to break a committed relationship after the sexual experience starts—is very important.  Obviously, reducing risk to both partners up front and avoiding situations that force some level of commitment—like pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections—are one key to this solution.

A second key aspect is avoiding “desperation decisions” based on economics or living situations.  Helping someone out of a bad situation is good.  Helping them by having them become your boyfriend/girlfriend and having them become financially dependent on you isn’t good.

Communication is also very important.  While learning isn’t as quick depending on age, communicating your desires, satisfaction, lack of satisfaction, and listening to their issues up front helps you both assess whether the relationship is working and helps you and a partner establish what works for each other.  Without direct communication, a partner is left open to assume, try to interpolate what you want, think, and feel off of less informative non-verbal cues.

Communicating clearly also keys into honesty, both with a partner and with yourself.  If you aren’t happy, you need to be honest.  If sexual satisfaction isn’t happening—and with some partners, it simply won’t—you have to be honest with yourself and not commit. 

Unless the partner is between 13 and 17 years old, don’t expect to be able to change them.  The odds are, it’s not going to happen in a way you want them to change.  This means—if you are an adult and you aren’t a criminal—don’t marry someone expecting to “fix them”.  Their flexible learning years are mostly over by the time you can legally date them.  They will change, but the trajectory is set by about 18.  If they aren’t “good enough” for you now, you need another partner.

(Note: I am not advocating sex with legally underage people.  Though a biological reality and a cultural reality in many cultures, exploiting this is illegal and considered immoral in the culture we live in and I accept that.)

Likewise, on the prospects of change, some physiological events are going to change people, but usually in ways beyond your ability to change them.  Pregnancy and menopause for women are key events.  Both of these will change how a woman sees herself, feels about herself, and what she needs emotionally.  This will change sexual compatibility.  Sometimes, in a good way, but usually just in a  different way. 

Also, trauma, illness, and even social changes can affect sexual compatibility by changing how a person—especially men in this case—see and feel about themselves.  If they are on medication or start taking medication—whether hormonal birth control, psychoactive drugs, or illegal drugs—sexual changes often follow.   Expect change, and try to adapt with a partner by focusing first on how they feel about themselves emotionally.  Don’t expect everything to always be the same.

At the end of the day, sexual compatibility can make or break relationships.  If it’s there, it’s a mutually desired activity replacing “you and me” with “we”.  If it’s not, it’s one more problem for “you and me”.  And that’s what I really wish people knew up front.