Written By David Greisman
As the story goes, President Calvin Coolidge was touring a farm with his wife, Grace Goodhue Coolidge, when the two were taken in separate directions.
Mrs. Coolidge was shown a large, prize rooster, a bird that its handlers said would mate several times each day. Mrs. Coolidge asked them to make sure her husband was told that.
President Coolidge saw the rooster soon thereafter. The bird, its handlers said, will mate several times each day. “Is that with the same hen?” Coolidge asked. No, they said. It’s a different hen each time. The president said, “Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.”
Whether or not it is a politically incorrect urban legend, biology and psychology texts nevertheless reference the “Coolidge Effect” with regard to male animals mating with several female partners. The point is emphasized through stereotypes about people: men prefer sex, women favor romance.
But is it completely true?
“Men almost get a bad rap if they’re interested in sex,” said Bob Hollander, one-half of a husband-wife team of relationship counselors based out of Owings Mills and Westminster. “Even if we are wired differently, even if it is true that a man might be more visually aroused than a woman who is looking for more of an emotional connection, there are a lot of stereotypes going around. And both men and women play into that.
“Men are sexual beings and the ones that pursue,” he said. “And women are the ones who are discreet, holding back and being pursued.”
Precisely what men desire from women – and what women want from men – might come from the days of prehistoric humanity.
“What men were looking for was women who could produce their offspring,” said Paul Mazeroff, senior lecturer in psychology at McDaniel College in Westminster. Women “were looking for a male who had resources to take care of them and the kids. And so, back then it was somebody who had a really nice club or their own cave. Today, it’s the right kind of car, bank account, the right kind of house.”
Mazeroff referred to a study in which men and women were asked about jealousy in two scenarios: their spouse having a sexual relationship with another person and their spouse becoming close to another person but not having sex.
“Women said they would be more upset if their spouse became emotionally involved with the other person,” Mazeroff said. “The guys said they would be more upset if their significant others had sex.”
According to one conventional view, if a man’s wife got pregnant with another man’s child, that would prevent him from having a child of his own with her. And if a woman’s husband bonded with someone else, he might not be there for her.
Both perspectives inevitably come down to the connection, the relationship. Men and women might embark on different tracks to get there, but they still end up at the same destination.
“There are many different kinds of love,” said Lori Hollander, who is also a relationship counselor. “There’s the physical, the emotional, the intellectual and the spiritual. And you need to have it all. You need to have erotic love in a healthy relationship, and you also need to have the emotional or romantic love. And there’s got to be a balance.”
A man will know what he wants, a woman what she wants. But those needs might differ, and one might not be in tune with the desires of his or her partner.
“Men often receive love through sexual behavior,” Lori Hollander said. “That is when men tell me they feel most connected, most vulnerable and when they’re feeling closest to the women they love.
“Women will come in and say he just wants sex, sex, sex. Women sometimes don’t get it. If you asked your husband for a hug and your husband said, ÔOh honey, I have a headache. I’m so tired. My arms just can’t get together for you.’ How would you feel? That’s how a man feels when he wants sex and you say ÔI’m too tired.’ ”
Women have an advantage because they are more in tune than men to their own emotions, Bob Hollander said.
“Sex is kind of a brutish, clumsy way of getting close. It’s a conduit to all the other emotions,” he said. “If a woman doesn’t shut a man off, he starts cultivating the other things. There’s a nexus between the sexual feeling and ÔThis is a woman who makes me feel good, and it’s nice to be close to her. I want to make her feel happy.’ ”
For men, sex can be a building block of love. For women, though, the romantic can make a relationship all the more intimate.
“Women generally don’t feel closest to their partner when they have sex. They feel close, but a woman will feel most close when she feels that he does things for her that make her feel special,” Lori Hollander said. “Women feel loved when the man is thoughtful. So if he goes out and just gets her a gift card, that doesn’t take much thought. But if he remembers her favorite chocolate, or if he goes and gets her something and he knows what brands she likes, that’s him paying attention to her and being really aware. And a lot of times men don’t do that.
“For a man, on the other hand, guys don’t really care,” she said. “Guys will tell me over and over that the only thing they want from their wife or partner is just to know that they’re pleasing them. The appreciation. They just want the woman to be happy.”
The goal to a healthy relationship, then, is for both people to know what each other needs. And that requires constant monitoring, according to Alexandra Rickeman, a Westminster marriage and family therapist.
“Partners frequently assume that their husband, wife, boyfriend or girlfriend has their needs met in a specific way, but that isn’t really true,” Rickeman said. “When couples have a chance to sit down and ask each other and truly listen, and then to do it, it’s life-changing for the relationship.”
Those needs might also change over time, Rickeman said. A person in his or her 20s might accentuate the physical aspects of a relationship. Forty years later, companionship can hold more weight. In turn, what starts out as wedded bliss can take plenty of effort to maintain.
“Relationships and marriage require a daily check-in. It takes a lot of commitment to survive. They are going through so many developmental changes,” she said. “Sometimes people stop checking in. ÔAre your needs still the same? Have they changed? Am I meeting them?’ When you don’t do that, sometimes needs go unmet for a long period of time. There’s been months or years of hurt going by the wayside.
“There’s this magical, mystical picture that a lot of people have about love and relationships, about how it should go, about how it will go,” Rickeman said. “A lot of times that picture is unrealistic, and it just leads to people being frustrated in what they have.”
Relationships can become a constant battle between the want to be with another person and the temptation to hold onto individual desires. But overcoming it all can be worthwhile.
“When you’re really committed, you give up things,” said Lori Hollander. “Then you have to consider the person in everything you do, but what you get for that is something that’s much bigger and better.”
Martina Lane, Westminster
Love is neither sex nor romance. It’s more of a deep, committed friendship between two people. I’ve been married for three years. We do romantic things from time to time, but it’s not that on which I base our love. It’s the the small things we do for each other. Helping with the laundry. Having someone to bounce your ideas off of, and that’s neither sex nor romance.
Cindy Lynne Miller, Finksburg
I don’t think love means either sex or romance. Love is really a commitment, a commitment of your heart. And I don’t mean in the sense of going down the aisle. I mean commitment to all the people you encounter in your life span. You have love for people that really has nothing to do with sex or romance. It’s your commitment to those people and your love for them that makes you want to be a good person. That commitment can lead to sex or romance if it’s that type of relationship, but I don’t think that enters into the big picture of what love really is.
Melanie Weltner- Westminster
To me, love is affection, devotion or a fondness toward someone or some thing that you cherish. Love is an act of compassion with no thought for a reward.
Barney Fineblum, Woodbine
You really can’t have one without the other. Romance is what everyone strives for, but for it to continue and grow, the element of sex has to be added to cement the relationship.
Bill McKenna, Westminster
Love is a combination of romance and sex. Sex is better when there’s true happiness, and true happiness comes when there is romance. Romance varies in degrees. Some men might say that romance means good sex. But most would say just the opposite. On a scale they’d rate sex at the bottom. Women are looking for a man who just cares for them as a person; who will treat them nicely, who will love them, take care of them, walk with them. When a woman feels that a guy loves her for who she is, the sex can be even better.
Sven Rivera, Westminster
I think you can’t have true love without romance, and you can’t have romance without sex. Love is definitely a mix of the two. If it’s a relationship based purely just on sex, then it could be just physical. I don’t think that someone who is in a relationship that is just romantic cannot have sexual feelings toward someone else. I think inevitably one leads to the other.
Diane Summerhill, Gamber
Love is the desire to give of one’s self totally, to and for someone else. Sex and romance are such a small part of what love is.
Dean Minnich, Westminster
Love trumps romance. Romance trumps sex.
