What “Science Says” About Women, Sex and Relationships

Last week…

Someone was sharing with me that they were at their third month “non-masturbation” anniversary and that they were waning thin. They wanted to know what advice that I had to offer.

You know, the thing that’s a trip about Christianity is that we sometimes overlook *just how practical* God is. When we tell people to “pray” it’s not just for spiritual strength, but also so that they can *get answers*. Oftentimes, *very practical answers*. Two of the things that I told her was to be really aware of when she’s ovulating and there are actual foods that studies have proven can “rev up the engine” more than others. After all, we are made up of both flesh and spirit (Galatians 5:16-17) *literally* and so to not pay attention to the “science of things” seems a bit, well, counterproductively ignorant.

And then I “happened upon” (Proverbs 16:33-AMP) an article that referenced some of this same advice. It is entitled, “6 Factors That Secretly Influence Who You Have Sex With“. One thing that really caught my attention was that it used the word “influence” and when the Bible tells us to “guard our hearts” (Proverbs 4:23), personally, I think that what/who influences us plays a big part in that. Anyway, the article was presented in a “romance says”, “science says” kind of way and I thought that these two points, in particular, were interesting:

The Romantic Notion:

“If you truly love someone, know him better than you know yourself and want to spend the rest of your life with him, only then should you get married.”

Science Says:

If she’s been on birth-control pills the whole time you dated, there’s a chance you’re both being tricked into marrying exactly the wrong person by your own bodies.

When a woman is actually pregnant, her body decides, “It’s not like I can get more pregnant,” and it stops doing a bunch of the things it normally does. The pill basically uses hormones to convince a woman’s body that it’s already pregnant. The woman doesn’t want to get pregnant, her body thinks it’s pregnant, everyone’s happy.

Or at least, they would be if it weren’t for that pesky MHC stuff controlling who you can fall in love with. Just as a pregnant woman might find herself suddenly craving food she used to find repulsive, her taste in MHC undergoes a polar reversal. She’s no longer attracted to people with MHC that is dissimilar to hers, and way more attracted to men with similar MHC. From an evolutionary perspective, this was probably so that women would want to spend more time around family members in a protective environment rather than out at a bar trying to get laid again. In a modern context, it’s probably why pregnant women so often want to murder their husbands with a meat cleaver: He no longer smells like her type, and it’s far too late for that.

*****

The Romantic Notion:

“It’s OK, Jimmy — you don’t have to talk to her now. Whenever you get the courage, whenever fate and destiny decide, that’s the right time.”

Science Says:

Whether you end up getting rejected by someone or falling in love with her can be totally determined by the day of the month you meet her.

Whether a woman wants babies or not, her body definitely does. Every month, a woman’s body fires up the baby maker, releasing a fertile egg into the line of fire in case she gets lucky. To help improve her luck, her body also makes sure she looks ripe for the picking by raising the size of her breasts, dilating her pupils and increasing the pitch of her voice. All of this is accompanied by a cocktail of pheromones wafting off her body into the air around her.

Yes, there is a time every month that each woman is basically signaling to the world that she wants to have sex. How good are men at picking up on these signals? One study showed “that strippers who are ovulating average $70 in tips per hour, those who are menstruating and thus unable to conceive make $35 and those who are doing neither make $50.” Women have also reported “that when they’re ovulating, their partners are more loving and attentive and, significantly, more jealous of other men.”

This means that women who meet Mr. Wrong during ovulation are more likely to sleep with him, and he’s less likely to say no. So if Romeo and Juliet had met two weeks earlier, there’s a pretty good chance the play would have been called The Capulets Throw an Uneventful Party.

So ladies, if you’re wondering how you keep ending up with jerks, take a look back through your inbox. Do the emails you send your friends about how you “met the greatest guy at the bar last night” tend to fall around the same time each month? It might be because ovulation actually lowers women’s standards for sexual partners and even goes so far as to increase their likelihood of sex with multiple partners.

That stripper part ws a trip, wasn’t it?

Anyway, what I thought was *even more interesting* is that I was recently telling someone else that I think that speaking against sex before or outside of marriage (Hebrews 13:4) would  be *far more effective* if we took it from a more *practical* point of view. Personally, I know that when I was engaging, the *physical benefits* caused me to overlook a lot of the other *pure and utter crap* that was going on. These days, I liken abstinence to sobriety (2 Timothy 1:7). When people are drunk or high, how can we possibly entrust them to make wise decisions? When people are in a solely physically pleasurable experience (because sex does not always bring about an *actual relationship*), sometimes *the climaxes trump using common sense* (Proverbs 2:6-8-Message); our physical reaction numbs us to being emotionally responsive in a healthy way.

So, in processing all of this information, what do you think about it? Indeed, it’s so easy to read something and be like “C’mon, that’s ridiculous.” That is until you stop being so critical and actually put some *real thought* into it. Like on the timing thing, I used to think it was really weird that I could remember the time year when I slept with certain guys and it would be during that time when I found myself thinking/dreaming about them more.

Hmph. There just might be *a science* to that.

Anyway, can you relate to any of this info?

More importantly, do you have some *practical advice* for how to remain abstinent (from intercourse, porn and/or masturbation)?

If so, sound off…