Having a healthy sexual relationship is important, but it’s not something we often talk about. Women’s satisfaction especially seems to take a back seat. So how can women get what they need in the bedroom?
Well, we can ask questions. See what your partner is into!
And understanding the science behind why women like what they do is helpful, too. The truth is — a lot of what we believe about female sexuality is wrong. We all benefit when women’s sexuality takes the forefront and is better understood.
On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I talk about female satisfaction with an incredible woman who wrote a book on the subject: Wednesday Martin. A #1 best-selling author and cultural critic, Wednesday shares some profound insights about female sexuality.
In this episode, we talked about the importance of sexual health, how monogamy became the accepted standard in North America, why the plow was the worst thing that ever happened for both men and women, and so much more. Wednesday and I discussed many of the topics that people are always questioning in the new generation of love, marriage, open-relationships, and everything else.
I’m excited for you to learn about this. I hope it helps you in your relationship journey, whether it reaffirms some things you already felt were true about your love life or causes you to learn something new! So get ready to learn about the science of monogamy and how to keep your relationship exciting on Episode 782 with Wednesday Martin!
Who Is Wednesday Martin?
Wednesday Martin is a feminist cultural critic, New York Times bestselling author, and social researcher. Wednesday has written on topics including gender, parenting and motherhood, popular culture, and female sexuality for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, and Harper’s Bazaar, among others.
She was a regular contributor to The Daily Telegraph, the online edition of Psychology Today, and the parenting pages at the New York Post. Wednesday has also appeared on the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, NPR, NBC News, the BBC Newshour, and Fox News as a step-parenting expert.
Wednesday studied anthropology at the University of Michigan and has worked as a writer and social researcher in New York City for over two decades. A diligent student, she went on to earn her doctorate from Yale in comparative literature and cultural studies, with a focus on anthropology, the history of anthropology, and the history of psychoanalysis.
She also taught cultural studies and literature at Yale and The New School for Social Research. Wednesday was so engaging and informative, and she taught me a lot about female sexuality and how the cultural script of monogamy came about. I can’t wait for you to learn from her as well. Let’s get into the episode!
Why Do Women Cheat?
I started off this conversation with a question that is bound to get every woman mad, but Wednesday just remarked with a smile that it was right up her alley. The question is, why do women cheat? Her answer: Because they can.
“It’s the same reason a lot of men cheat. A lot of times we now know it’s about opportunity … there are certain factors that go into a woman making the decision to go against the social convention.” – Wednesday Martin
That social convention, or what is acceptable in society, is that monogamy is easier for women — an idea that revolves around the belief that women seek connection, while men seek sex. This, Wednesday informed me, is simply a cultural script. Women are motivated by sexual desire too. Motivation to have extra paired involvements, or be non-monogamous, is actually very similar between men and women.
“Data is telling us that motivations to step out or to say, ‘I want to be openly non-monogamist’ tend to be pretty similar between men and women … many men are having extra paired involvements because they want emotional connections, and many women are doing it just for the sex. So we can’t just have this simple binary about motivation.” – Wednesday Martin
It’s really not just as simple as society has led us to believe. The motivations for women to choose to be non-monogamous are complicated, and they aren’t only dependent on emotional or sexual desires.
A woman’s decision to cheat is also based on her economic and social status. Does she have an independent source of income aside from her partner? Does she have children that depend on the family structure? Does she have a nearby family network that is supportive if she decides to leave her husband?
These factors of a woman’s autonomy and freedom can directly affect her decision to be non-monogamous. If a woman is in a situation where she has no power or stability, she will be more afraid to step into non-monogamy:
“Women with different forms of security can be more sexually autonomous — if we want to call deciding not to be monogamist a form of sexual autonomy. We also see that anywhere in the world where women have really high rates of political participation, they tend to have more sexual autonomy …. wherever women are empowered politically and financially, they’re more open to making their own choices.” – Wednesday Martin
A lot of women are not in a position to open up their relationships and be non-monogamous even if they wanted to! This can especially be the true when women who are not financially independent are with controlling men who may be violent. In this case, monogamy might be the only safe option for them.
So, all this to say is that the social convention that monogamy is easier for women is incredibly misleading and generates a stigma that monogamy is the only acceptable way in the United States. However, Wednesday noted that one of the revolutionary findings in sex research is that monogamy is harder for women than men!
You may be wondering, how did this monogamous cultural structure occur in the first place? Well, Wednesday had a fascinating answer for us, and it all comes down to the presence of the plow.
