I love new things.
Not consumer goods, mind you.
More like new experiences.
Interruptions in the norm. Reminders that I’m still alive and have (at least in some quantum form) free will in this life. A new hobby. A new genre of music. A new route home. A new yoga pose. My brain loves novelty. Which is why this GQ piece on “don’t watch porn” interested me – particularly when it spoke about how it motivated men toward novelty seeking behavior too – specifically, sexually. It listed a lot of reasons why avid adult entertainment watchers are screwing themselves over (#zing) including the fact that the brain starts to look like an addict’s after a while. And it also claimed that digital fcck flick fappers get bored with the same IRL chick quickly and want to move onto new partners.( I was made to understand that kinda happens with a lotta dudes anyway, but whatever. I’ll bite.) It’s this thing they call the “Coolidge Effect” and the way the anecdote goes is pretty fun:
… an old joke about Calvin Coolidge when he was President … The President and Mrs. Coolidge were being shown [separately] around an experimental government farm. When [Mrs. Coolidge] came to the chicken yard she noticed that a rooster was mating very frequently. She asked the attendant how often that happened and was told, “Dozens of times each day.” Mrs. Coolidge said, “Tell that to the President when he comes by.” Upon being told, the President asked, “Same hen every time?” The reply was, “Oh, no, Mr. President, a different hen every time.” President: “Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.”
See? Birds don’t watch porn. And they still tend to do it.
For me, it could be biology or whatever, but I’ve always tended to be a one-dong-atta-time kinda gal. Trapped by the shackles of my genetics, having a dude queue lined up to my bedside is a concept that just doesn’t do it for me. It’s more selfish than anything really (“Oh great. Another human to judge me while we’re being naked together.”) Yet I enjoy intimacy. And novelty. So when mixing those two with the same partner became boring, it’s almost like that “Coolidge effect” just mutated into this new category where I seek novelty in everything except sex . I crave it so much that I get bored and depressed and start thinking about black holes and infinity and the vastness of the universe just because I realize today’s to-do’s happened in the identical order as yesterday’s. I can’t go a day without some kind of new experience – however small. Like that scene in Garden State where Portman goes into a spasm just because she wants to do something that’s “never been done by anyone ever before”.
So, in that way, I suppose I understand how challenging monogamy is.
I mean if this magnetic desire for newness spoke to me from my loins, there’s no telling what kindofa tart I’d be. Mind you, I’m not saying I condone straying from it if you’ve agreed to be someone’s one n’ only, just because you’ve got an inflatable groin finger pointing the way (I mean, I’d like to smash down I-95 south at 5 P.M. on a weekday in a tank with a rocket launcher and a face full’a warpaint so bad that I’m getting convulsions just thinking about it – but I don’t indulge this fantasy either). I’m just saying that I get the visceral pull to crave novelty. Even if it’s not coming from my lady biscuit.
So could the answer be to eschew graphic sexy entertainment? I mean, they do say “where your attention goes grows” (which suddenly sounds so saucy in this context that I’ll never again be able to not think of it as a phallic phrase.) Or is maybe moderating eff films the answer? Maybe a combo of moderating and sharing it with your partner is the answer. First, part of that “addiction” brain scan is the cyclic nature of it. Pumping away like a flesh piston into oblivion by yourself is only fun for so long. Add in a whole ‘nother human, and it’s like finding a secret passageway in your childhood home. So, if a Coolidge Effect can be channeled into other activities outside of sex (case in point: when abstaining or can’t-get-laid men hit the gym, gun range, get shitfaced, or start vandalizing), maybe it can be channeled into activities inside of sex. It’s not such a far reach, is it?
I mean, isn’t that why dudes like rear entry? Never underestimate the power of taboo. You morph your apple bottom into Eden’s apple, and suddenly your shiz chute’s the gateway to nirvana. I’m really not into the adult viddies so much anymore. But I also don’t have a soapbox admonishment about it at the moment. That’s why I say, instead of making porn a taboo like the booty is, maybe the “if you can’t beat them beating off to it…join ‘em” outlook might work as a new approach. Add yourself to the equation of visual inspiration – in moderation (otherwise your new tool gets old fast). This way it won’t only be stripped of its forbidden fruit-ness, but it’ll also be a way to keep your partner boomeranging to your bedchamber by channeling his sex-novelty tendencies back into said bed (Or couch. Or kitchen counter. Or rooftop. But not if it’s the slanty kind.) Especially if every couple’a weeks, you flip up your laptop before you flip off the lights and say, “Look, I just saw this new thing… Wanna try it out?”
Boom. Novelty and better odds for monogamy.
Wins all around.
(Afterthoughts: I may or may not be speaking from the experience of the only long term relationship during which my 007 skills detected zero cheating.)