Standard Deviations — 3/17/11

In honor of losing an hour to the cruel, cruel design of Daylight Savings Time, let me say this — everyone’s clock runs differently. For some of us, this means that we end up an hour late everywhere we go, awkwardly sidling in, smelling of liquor and shame. (Sorry, Professor.)  Others end up sitting in a classroom an hour early, wondering where everyone else is. In sex, this often means that while some people get the urge to merge once or twice a week, others get it every hour of every day.  Including class.  (Sorry again.)

The intricacies of sex drives have fascinated people for millennia, and with good reason — they are often capricious, mysterious things. The market for aphrodisiacs bustles, rife with everything from the mundane (chocolate) to the peculiar (asparagus?  Really?) to the pharmacological (Viagra) to the downright psychotic (Spanish Fly, a.k.a. ground-up bug toxins).  The recent release of Provestra, touted as the “female Viagra,” has gotten all sorts of people talking about whether or not modifying a sex drive chemically is “right,” or even necessary. It does raise one question though, and an old one at that: what do you do if your partner’s drive is vastly different than yours?

For men and women both, desire tends to be cyclical. While everybody probably has at least one friend whose heart seems to pump a potent cocktail of tiger blood, Adonis DNA and meth, back amongst we mortals our drives are a little less manic.  We are buffeted by stress, hormone cycles, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the current lukewarm Lakers season and our professors yelling at us for being tardy all the damn time.

Ideally, you’d want to sync up cycles. In practice, this is often impossible.  Often, someone will want sex more than the other, which makes for an imbalance in the Force and also the relationship.  Unchecked, this can lead to unfortunate things —abuse, adultery, alcoholism, prostitutes, getting elected Governor of New York and sometimes even a break up.  Feelings of inadequacy arise — am I not sexy enough?  Is there something wrong with me?  Am I frigid?  Am I pressuring my partner too much?

If you’re the partner who wants sex more, that last one is probably a concern. One thing that often helps: masturbation. A partner isn’t, and shouldn’t be, the only way for a gent or a lady to get their rocks off. Satisfying the sexual needs of someone all the time is the job for a concubine, not a lover and certainly not a student with a full course load.

Of course, that’s a little bit like wanting a fancy dinner and instead stopping at McDonald’s — the intimacy and elaborate pleasure of sex is often lost when you’re playing whack-a-mole. Have a cuddle afterwards, if your partner is amenable — for that matter, ask your partner to watch.

And for all you saucy lads and ladies who find their libidos flagging, what are you to do when your sex drive is snared in traffic? Relax, for one thing. It happens to the best of us, these slow dry times. Relax, and experiment. Sometimes all that’s needed is a change. Try going out for a long romantic dinner, where you both get dressed up and make time to just flirt and have fun. Try exploring a previously uncharted fantasy. Try oysters, handcuffs, morning/afternoon sex, porn, chocolate, anal, Charlie Sheen, public sex, a different position. Try playing around in bed on a Sunday.  Try laughter, something giggly and fun and seriously unserious — remember (and this can be easy to forget, especially when sex is so rare that it becomes a production) that sex is also just wonderful fun.

And if all else fails?  Yeah, try the asparagus, too.