Wednesday Martin

Lewis: This is episode number 782 with number 1 New York Times best-selling author Wednesday Martin. Welcome to the school of greatness my name is Lewis Howes, a former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today now let the class begin.

Tam France said “Sexuality can be difficult to articulate and we have to be patient and compassionate.” This episode is all about a lot of interesting things, we’re talking about sex and love and lust and infidelity and why nearly everything we believe about women is wrong, and how the new science can set us free. Interesting and controversial topic that some people may love to learn about and a lot of people may not like at all.

We’ve got Wednesday Martin who is a number 1 NYT best-selling author and cultural critic who writes and serves as a commentator on topics like: parenting, step-parenting, female sexuality, mother herded, and popular culture. She’s the author of a number of books and she’s got a new book out called ‘untrue.’ This has been amazing all the new science that can set as free.

We talked about the importance of sexual health, we discussed monogamy and why it is the accepted standard in North America. We talked about why the plow was the worst that ever happened for both men and women, this is actually pretty fascinating. Why parents should start teaching sex education to their children earlier and so much more about love and sex, multiple partners, monogamy, polygamy, and all these things that people are always questioning about these days in the new generation of love and marriage and open-relationships and everything else. I’m excited for you to learn about this maybe it’ll help you in your relationship journey, maybe it’ll help you in your marriage or to reaffirm some things you already felt were true for your own beliefs in your relationships and love life.

Big thank you to our sponsors who support the production and promotion of this show lending club. Now, with lending club you can consolidate all your debt and pay off your credit cards with one fix monthly payment. This would’ve been nice for me back in the day when I was living on my sister’s couch and had 3 credit cards with like 29% interest rates paying off month to month. Since 2007, lending club has helped millions of people regain control of their finances with affordable fixed rates personal loans. So you don’t have to take a trip to the bank and there’s high interest credit cards like I had for so long. You just go to lendingclub.com you tell them about yourself and how much you want to borrow, you pick the terms that are right for you and if you’re approve your loan is automatically deposited into your bank account in as little as a few days. Lending club is the number 1 peer to peer lending platform with over 35 billion dollars loans issued. Go to lendingclub.com/greatness right now you check your rates and minutes and borrow up to $45,000. All loans made by web bank member FDIC equal housing lender.

Also big thank you to trip actions. If you’re frustrated with your company’s travel management program or lack thereof, you need to look into trip actions. They take the pain out of corporate travel with a complete solution that helps businesses save and keep employees happy. The reason trip actions work so well is that it’s the first travel management platform design from the ground up with the road warrior in mind. It’s easy to book company’s business travel from the app or desktop. With 24/7 proactive support around the globe and incentives for employee’s to save on travel expenses, companies large and small see over 90% adaption and save up to 34% on travel spent when they use trip actions. Companies like lift, to Sarah Lee’s frozen bakery trust trip actions with their travel, and trip actions reward travelers for saving their company money and they’ll reward you just for checking them out. You can reshape your company’s business travel today with trip actions make sure to go to tripactions.com/greatness, you complete a 30 minute demo with a trip actions account executive and you’ll get a $100 Amazon gift card, but it’s this month only.

Big thank you to our sponsors and I am so excited about this episode, again make sure to tag me on Instagram while you’re listening. Without further ado Wednesday Martin.

Welcome back everyone to the school of greatness podcast we have Wednesday Martin in the house. You’re in L.A from New York and I thought just ask a question of the start that is gonna get every woman mad.

Wednesday: Great, that’s my brand.

Lewis: So the first question that I thought to be asking is, why do a lot of women cheat?

Wednesday: Because we can. It’s the same reason a lot of men cheat, a lot of times we now know it’s about opportunity and so there are certain factors that go into a woman making the decision to kind and go against the social convention.

Lewis: What’s acceptable?

Wednesday: Monogamy is easier for women, the social convention is this belief that we have lower [?] and that we seek connection not sex, right? That sort of the cultural script. It takes a lot to be female and to go against the social script that cheating is bad or being non-monogamist is bad, and then to go after this other gendered social script that says ‘women don’t want extra pair of sexuality.’ So, I think of women who step out openly are on the deal as kind of double renegades, I’m not there to judge them I’m there to look at how their crossing certain lines and what motivates them to do that. And one of the things that motivates them to do that is sexual desire.

Lewis: Just like men have too.

Wednesday: That’s right. We’ve said all the time for decades [?] bad science and social science about being sexuality, which the flipside of that is bad science and social science about male sexuality. So, we have been really comfortable for a long time saying “Well, women change for emotional reasons and men cheat.” We’ve thought that testosterone and drives of sexual desire refining at all. But what’s really fascinating when you talk to 31 experts like I did, is that they tell you that many of them male and female motivations for extra pair involvement.

Lewis: Extra pair involvements?

Wednesday: Extra pair sex right?

Lewis: Sleeping with somebody else monogamist relationship.

Wednesday: When you’re assumed monogamist relationship. The motivations are very similar, many men they think that they’ve been told they’re dogs and they just want sex, but 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.

Lewis: Some women are doing it for the emotional connection but some women are doing it for the sex, just like some men are doing it for sex or because they’re lacking emotional connection with their partner and they want to feel that?

Wednesday: That’s right. So data are telling us that motivations to step out or to say that I want to be openly non-monogamist tend to be pretty similar between men and women. So, you know that was a surprise to a lot of people to see that. Now, here’s another thing when I said women refuse monogamy because they can, the other thing going on is it’s a lot about a woman circumstances. If you’re a woman in this situation where you’re completely economically dependent, you’re heterosexual and in a relationship with the guy. He has all the earning power, he pays the mortgage then you also have kids together, it’s not just you’re depending on him economically you have economically dependent children. Now, you see how the power relationship is in a heterosexual relationship like this and you can see how the man would be the one embolden maybe and depending on his beliefs about monogamy. You can see how he might feel embolden. There would be very few consequences he controls first strings, although there might be hell to pay if the partner finds out. Now, you can see how it’s different for a woman who’s economically dependent.

Now, let’s imagine a woman who is large and in charge of her finances, has her own earned money. It’s just gonna be a little easier for her to push that eject button on the monogamy contract in her head and in her relationship if she doesn’t have to worry about getting kick out of the house. So, economics plays into in a way, but a woman doesn’t have to be just rich money wise.

Lewis: They want to be non-monogamist?

Wednesday: She could also just have a really great network of kin support if her family is nearby we know that women tend to have more sexual autonomy if they have family nearby looking out for them.

Lewis: Why? Because they feel safer or they have a fallback?

Wednesday: Yeah, worldwide what we see is that there are cultures where women are not monogamist, they have kin to rely on. So there’s [?] maybe try to attack them physically even, their kin is nearby and has their back and can tell them to back off and then she can be in the family compound or be with her family and live with them for a while until she decides what her next move is. So, 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.

Lewis: Really?

Wednesday: Yes, I’d like to say it’s not just this like sensationalistic thing about female sexuality. Female sexuality ties into all these other forms of freedom, wherever women are empowered politically and financially, they’re more open to making their own choices and make sense.

Lewis: Some are monogamist who choose to be that way but some of them aren’t.

Wednesday: That’s right. Women who have true choice about their sexuality in context where they have control over the financial situation and they have kin support and there are powerful female political leaders setting an example about autonomy.

So, it’s funny you know I always say to people ‘how did the midterm elections affect women sex lives in the United States?’ And the answer is well you know if we get to the point where we have really powerful female political leaders. If we have a female president we will see women sexual fates changing as well.

Lewis: You think women will I guess cheat more or say I want to be in a more open relationship?

Wednesday: I think that we see women, when we see lots of females CEO’s when we see lots of female powerful politicians those are context where them having those position of powers is sort of a symptom of gender equality, and the other manifestation of gender equality is usually having autonomy to make your own choices.

Lewis: Why is monogamy, non-monogamy look down upon so much and [?] and in the world in general?

Wednesday: Well, the answer is that and this is the great thing about the perspective of anthropology, what you do is you look at the worldwide and we say ‘how does this happen in other cultures?’ If you only look at the United States you would say “Wow, non-monogamy is really dangerous for women” because women who decide not to be monogamist experience heighten rates of domestic violence, and evenly lethal violence. If they choose to not be monogamist, whether they are hiding it or not if they get found out. Women in this country put themselves at risk for domestic violence.

Lewis: Because men don’t know how to? The jealousy comes out.

Wednesday: Yeah, so and we’re back again now to men having powers. So when we’re talking about why is monogamy stigmatized for women it’s because for a lot of women, a lot of women are not in a position of their privilege to say “You know what “I think I want to open up my relationship.” A lot of women are with men who are more controlling than that and monogamy is the safe, literally the physically safe decision for them to make. So, that non-monogamist are stigmatize for women, it’s dangerous. But the other reason that monogamy in general is the way that we have chosen in this country.

Lewis: As the most acceptable way.

Wednesday: And I get into this in my book. But I tie it as to many anthropologist that fact our history, recent history is that we are a place that practice plow agriculture. And everywhere on the world you see that wherever was plow agriculture.

Lewis: Meaning plow?

Wednesday: Plowing fields of all the weird things a plow is the thing that set gender relations on the current sort of mess up course that they’re on now.

Lewis: Why?

Wednesday: 10 or 12 thousand years ago, we went from being hunter gatherers where women were supplying their band, we live in this rangy kind of community bands and women. A lot of people don’t like the word tribe but.

Lewis: Small community in the woods.

Wednesday: It’s a useful term for a lot of people. So we live in this rangy bands and women supplied sometimes as much as 85 or 90% of the calories through gathering. [?] was the great thing that happened once in a while but it wasn’t totally predictable. That was the basic sustenance and women provided it that gave them a lot of power and a lot of autonomy, they could make their own decisions in many regards and we see that in contemporary hunter gatherer populations they tend to be extremely egalitarian, including a lot of gender equality.

10 to 12 thousand years ago there’s this ship and humans start to domesticate plants they get very good at it, we invent the plows. Now what happens? Men suddenly have an advantage. You know what one of the few advantages consistent across all cultures that men have over women is upper body strength.

Lewis: Yeah.

Wednesday: The plow privileges upper body strength. If you have upper body strength you are out there, and now instead of the nuts and the berries and the seed being the main event you are like the primary producer. Now, women are no longer of gathering, autonomous ranging for miles days sometimes meeting up with a lover and a bush unsupervised basically free. Suddenly, he’s out pushing the plow with his superior upper body strength, what makes sense now is a very gendered labor division in which she becomes the secondary producer in the home, you can’t have kids and be manning a plow or controlling the draft animals. Before, even with pre-plow agriculture women could be out there with their hoes or their digging sticks and the kids could help out, not anymore with the plow right.

So, women are suddenly taken from their kin network, taken from the group into an individual situation their living in the house dwelling, probably with one man maybe his kin. Now, they’re under the watchful eye, they’re not ranging and roaming they’re secondary producers. Also their fertility gets jacked up, they’re more sanitary they’re not ranging and gathering for miles and miles a day. Agricultural settings pretty sanitary, suddenly increased fertility, shorten inter birth [?]. You’re having a kid instead of every 4 years you have a kind of natural birth control going on if you’re a hunter and gather and you’re gathering all the time. So, suddenly all these things have change because of one thing the plow. So, now heighten fertility means heighten dependence, because you have one kid after another now, more fertility more children, and plus with agriculture now we’ve developed this notion of property right? So, women really become the property of men now and we have [?]. So, suddenly men matters to them a lot more that they’re passing down to their offspring.

Lewis: Not someone else that’s right.

Wednesday: So believe it or not you and I have our kind of messed up gender script that we’re living. We have the plow to thank for that.

Lewis: Stupid plow.

Wednesday: You know what my friend Hellen Fisher who’s an anthropologist says ‘The plow is the worst thing that ever happened to women.’ And I want to suggest that it’s also one of the worst things that ever happened to men because men don’t benefit from gender bias anymore that women do really. We’ve reduce men in our culture to their dicks and their wallets and we’ve said that’s all you’re good for. So, I always like to say that Hellen is right that the plow is the worst thing that ever happened to women, but it was no picnic for men either.

Lewis: What are you teaching because you have 2 kids or 3 kids?

Wednesday: I have 2 boys they’re 17 and 11.

Lewis: What are you teaching them about sexual education and self-worth if they choose non-monogamy?

Wednesday: Well, first of all I think the most basic thing to teach our kids is sex and education because we are living still in the shadow of abstinence only that in many schools all you can teach is the abstinence is the best policy.

Lewis: Don’t have sex.

Wednesday: Right, exactly.

Lewis: I remember 1 video when I was 11 it was awkward and that’s all the education I got.

Wednesday: Right, it’s really important parents have to fill in the gaps and parents and honorary parents, because we’re not allowed to teach it in schools. So, I think the most important thing is to just teach your children about sex. So I try to be always open to their questions, I tried when they were little to always use the correct term. So, I think at the most basic level there’s that and now that my kids are older you know they have this kind of cringe moments when I’m talking about how great female sexuality is or I’m showing a 3-dimensional model of the human female internal clitoris. Do you know what it looks like? I’ll give you a tutorial later, I didn’t bring the model but I’ll give you the sex ed later.

Lewis: Sure I’ve seen photos and diagrams but I can’t.

Wednesday: I should have brought one for you today. So they find that kind of cringe and yet I think they like knowing about it, they like looking at 3d computer printed model of the human female clitoris. And also it has come very handy with my 17 year old, I can tell him that you know “If you don’t get good grades in boarding clearly I’m gonna have to come to school and do a lecture about female sexuality.” That gets him right back on task. But I think they think it’s actually kind of interesting but they’re a little bit embarrassed.

Lewis: What made you interested in this topic?

Wednesday: So, this book is so personal for me I describe as a catastrophe in monogamy at my 20’s and early 30’s, just a complete train wreck.

Lewis: So relationships but never truly faithful in relationships?

Wednesday: That’s right and thinking that I must be really highly unusual because I was thought ‘men need to step out but women we don’t have these feelings.’ So, I would be with somebody and then a year to 3 years my sexual desire would drop off and I would say “This is not a trade-off I can make.” And so since I wasn’t a gay man I didn’t have the option like my gay men friends really to say to my heterosexual partners “listen, I really like you a lot but monogamy isn’t working for me.”

Lewis: You don’t have the courage to do that?

Wednesday: It wasn’t in the vocabulary for heterosexuals. I’m 53 years old so this is.

Lewis: Maybe men would be like you know.

Wednesday: I tried it at the urging of my gay male friends, so keep in mind this was like 25 or 30 years ago. And my gay male friends urged me because they’ve been doing consensual non-monogamy for a long time.

Lewis: It’s more accepted in the gay community to have a partner but also have other partner.

Wednesday: I mean consensual non-monogamy is now gaining respectability and understanding but at the time there was none. So, I tried telling one of these guys that I was very into, and then my gay male friends just say the second part. It was so not fine it was a catastrophe and then I felt so guilty.

Lewis: And wrong for your feelings and desires.

Wednesday: So this book is very personal for me because what happened afterwards in the ensuing years, you know I spent more time looking at the anthropology of female sexuality, looking at primatology the science of monkeys and apes and our evolutionary pre-history. And one of the most surprising findings was that in numerous longitudinal studies, one in England of over 10,000 British adults, one in Finland of over 25,000 women, and one in Germany of about 3,000 adults these longitudinal studies all found the same thing which is that for women only not for men a long term monogamist relationship predicts slow desires. Here’s what happens man and woman start in a relationship this is a 90 month study done by a German researcher, he studied people from their 20’s into their 50’s. The other studies that I listed had almost identical findings. We start here in the relationship, the libidos are aligned.

Lewis: Excited, passionate driven by sex and lusting.

Wednesday: Lusting and having such a great time. And by the way the science shows that when we measure male and female libidos the right way they’re pretty much the same. Here we go we start with you and I call it sex and insanity, we’re so into each other.

Lewis: Chemistry is exploding.

Wednesday: The chemistry is incredible we want to have sex all the time, we love it, it is great. Here’s what happens over 90 months for the man: Here we are at the 90 month point your desire hasn’t gone down that much.

Lewis: How many years is that?

Wednesday: I think it’s 7 and a half years. Here’s my desire desirable as you are here’s what happens to me, year 1 my finger.

Lewis: No matter how great the sex is, the sexual desire goes down?

Wednesday: This is natural for women. It is normal for a heterosexual women and for a lesbian we have studies about these too, that within 1 to 3 years her desire plunges. It is a normal thing that happens to most women within years 1 and 3. Let’s put a name on it, let’s normalize that experience, let’s get into mainstream and discourse conversation that monogamy is harder for women in the aggregate than it is for men. That’s one of the revolutionary new findings in the sex research that’s exciting me so much.

Lewis: That’s all in your book called the research.

Wednesday: Think about how we consent women and men like free if they have access to that information. So, I wrote an article about it for the Atlantic called ‘women the bored sex.’ And it got a lot of attention because it speaks to something to women and something that motivated me to write this book, which is ‘am I alone in this experience that I’m struggling sooner than my male partner is with this issue.’ Doesn’t mean you have to step out, doesn’t mean you have to open up your relationship, it’s just something we need to know about women.

Lewis: Just be aware of. Not saying that after 3 or 5 years you should go cheat or have the conversation and ask like ‘can we change? And do something different.’

Wednesday: Just in men, if heterosexual men and women knew that this is a normal thing that happens and this can help lesbians too and bisexual people too. If we just know that this is a normal thing, there are exceptions not all women. But if we know that in general across all these great and well-designed studies the same thing happened.

Lewis: All over the world.

Wednesday: Yes. The same thing happened consistently with women. If we knew that and acted on it I think we could save a lot of relationships and help a lot of women become more sexually satisfied in the relationship because they wouldn’t, here’s what tends to happen. You have this drop-off he has not the drop off right? So what are you saying to me all the time? And I’m saying “I love this guy, he’s great and there’s something wrong with me.” We need to tell women that crisis point, it’s not that you don’t like sex it’s that you struggle more with having sex with the same person over and over than he does. Nothing is wrong with you. Okay, you see the problem we have? That goes against the whole script of what we’ve been taught about men and women. This data kicks the ass and upsets the foundation of the house who built who men and women are, so we have a problem. But we have to get this information to women and men otherwise everybody is gonna be unhappy.

Lewis: So how do we deal with this information?

Wednesday: Okay, the first thing we do is we have to kick to curve what women tend to do. They get to this point there’s the drop-off.

Lewis: He’s desirable by women everywhere or whatever.

Wednesday: Exactly. Now, what am I going to do? Am I going to ruin this relationship or am I gonna start giving service sex? And that’s what most women tend to do, you know what service sex is before I even tell you right? Service sex is and men do it sometimes for women and women do it for women and you know women mostly tend to do it for men. But you get to this point you have your drop-off, he’s still wanting it and what happens is then the woman tends to say “Well, this is about me having a lower sex drive. So, I’m just gonna have sex with him to make him happy.” And then sex goes from this joyous thing where you’re focus on your own pleasure and you’re selfishly seeking.

Lewis: Desires.

Wednesday: Yeah satisfaction orgasm whatever your thrill is in sex, instead of seeking that you’re using sex to service someone. It doesn’t feel good to give it but it doesn’t feel good to get it either, right? So this is the conundrum people find themselves in, what can you do when you realize you’re having service sex? Know that service sex isn’t the answer because it means that you’re basically becoming subservient about your own desires and that will lead to resentment.

Lewis: And unhappiness.

Wednesday: Now, armed with the data how women just tend to be in the aggregate, armed with the term service sex and knowing that it’s not good for either person and it’s not good to give it and not good to get it. Now, have the conversation with your partner.

Lewis: What if it’s another explosion like you had 25 years ago?

Wednesday: It’s worth it, you just blame it on Wednesday Martin and the science in my book and you look at the data together and blame it on somebody else.

Lewis: What if a man who’s just been taught about a belief system of the social norms of what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable, the roles of relationships and what happens when that happens?

Wednesday: What I could say to that man if there’s anybody listening it sorts of identifies that way is “Don’t you want a great sex life with the woman you’re with?”

Lewis: Don’t you want to make the person you’re with happy.

Wednesday: Don’t you want that excitement? That’s a woman’s right and a man’s right to feel sexually excited to not let go, and of course we have to make compromises and trade-offs but there are ways to get [?] and novelty and adventure in the long term relationship without blowing it up. And the first step might be “Oh, I heard this podcast does this speak to you at all?” You can triangulate the discussion so that you’re bringing it in in a relatively neutral way. You know then what a woman and a man has to do.

Lewis: Is it worth being in a monogamist relationship with this person through all the benefits, I guess the price I pay for not having sexual fulfillment or creativity or whatever it is we’re lacking right?

Wednesday: The non-monogamist isn’t the only choice, it’s not like we’re looking this data and the fact of service sex and say ‘that’s it we have to open up our relationship or else we will never gonna be happy.’ There are other things that people can do.

Lewis: Like what?

Wednesday: Well, if you don’t feel comfortable of putting up your relationship which I would say tons of people don’t and that’s okay, know yourself. But you want sexual excitement, you want your girlfriend or your female partner to have that and you want that yourself knowing talking to guys, but there are other things you can do. Here’s a crazy finding from science there’s this thing called misattribution of arousal. You and I don’t know each other, we go on a roller coaster together it’s so scary and so thrilling we get off the roller coaster and we look each other and we have this thing that feels like sexual attraction to each other, it’s a misattribution of arousal that comes from a rush of adrenaline. When you get a rush of adrenaline with another person it flows your body into thinking sexually aroused. You can see how useful this is for people that have been together for a long time.

Lewis: Do something with adrenaline.

Wednesday: If that is not your thing take a risk like go to a ballroom dancing class.

Lewis: Something where it’s going to increase the level of excitement and fear or whatever it maybe.

Wednesday: Exactly and you’ll experience this misattribution of arousal which gives you that new lust feeling. Another thing that we find that really helps people is if they like to watch it and they can find things that you know that don’t bother them. Pornography can be very helpful for people, watching other people having sex. It takes a lot to get people there because it might be a little personal. That can be a way of infusing some excitement, imagining that you are that person and your partner is that person.

Another thing that some people like to do is just talk about. I interviewed several therapist who told me that there’s this concept of third.  So, we’re all like this we know each other and we’re like companion that kills the female libido more than the female libido. So another solution.

Lewis: How can a man keep sexual desire up for a woman if she’s always desirable?

Wednesday: Exactly when she’s domesticated. You need to engineer and Esther [?] is great talking about this and she’s helped so many people. She’s talked about she sort of crossover Martha’s work about how women need distance to feel excited. So you have to engineer some separateness and one of the things that Martha has suggested and Esther has as well is, when you go out on a date night don’t show up together, show up separately, and then she’s looking at you across the room and she’s seeing you how other people are seeing you.

Lewis: She sees how attracted other women are to you.

Wednesday: Yes or she just sees you as separate, she’s not showing up with you she’s needing to you. So try another thing like that.

Lewis: Maybe not every time but once in a while.

Wednesday: Yeah, don’t engineer some separateness. Here’s an extreme version of this. Women like variety and noble and adventure and they need it more than men do.

Lewis: Does science shows that?

Wednesday: Yes and we’ve evolved an appetite for variety and novelty. We used to attribute that to men, a lot of anthropologist and evolutionary biologist now believe that women really evolve for a variety.

Lewis: Why is that?

Wednesday: Well, there could be a lot of advantages and for an early female hominine or an early human female one of the advantages of liking sex and having multiple partners is that you get a great variety of sperm for your cervix to choose from, you up your odds [?] which is the sperm that’s gonna make a really great robust pregnancy and offspring because you’re so genetically dissimilar. Another advantage some evolutionary biologist think for women having been what we might call [?] multiple maters is that suddenly you have multiple males figuring.

Here’s another advantage that female primates get from mating multiply ‘sperm depletion’ they get the sperm and other females don’t.

Lewis: Kind of advantage.

Wednesday: Yeah. So they’re all these exciting theories in the science about why women may have evolve from promiscuity even more than men. We used to think that if men just had sex and ran and had sex with somebody that was a great strategy, for all kinds of reasons it’s not that great. I could go on and on about how it turns out there’s an argument to be made that it’s more advantageous for females.

Lewis: Hey guys I want to take a quick moment from this interview with Wednesday. I wanted to talk about my good friend Joe Marion show. Now, I’ve been a good friend of Joe Marion for about a decade and he’s got a new podcast that I was just on. We got super vulnerable, super deep real quick, and the show is called ‘Born to impact podcast.’ My episode was 18, it is a new inspirational show, one of the faster growing podcast in the last 6 months. Again, it’s called born to impact.

The mission is this, this is the one and only podcast specifically design to move you further towards living the life you were born to live with every episode their goal is to get you clear and actionable steps, no fluffs but real practical takeaways to help you live a more impactful life. A life of purpose, a life where you are making a difference in your family, relationships, career, and around the world. Plus they give out at least 5 iPad to subscribers every single week. So make sure to subscribe to their show. And now let’s get back into this interview with Wednesday Martin.

So 10,000 years ago when 5 men were like supporting a pregnant because they all slept with her.

Wednesday: That would have been like before plow agriculture so we need to go back at least that far.

Lewis: So were all these men jealous? Do you think at the time of like punching each other?

Wednesday: Okay, anthropology has an answer for you Lewis and it is in South America, in some lowland amazon cultures where there is a belief among indigenous people called ‘partible paternity.’ The belief is that it takes many fathers to make a baby. So there’s the father whose sperm created the baby’s head, the father whose sperm created the body and the father whose sperm created the baby’s arms and legs. And these indigenous people have words for each of those different fathers. Now, of course it’s a biological fiction but it’s an important practice, so what happens is a woman wants to become pregnant or discover she’s pregnant, she immediately starts having sex with men other than her husband.

Lewis: Really?

Wednesday: And the man who she whom had sex believe that when the baby comes that they contributed some of the sperm that created part of the baby. Then what happens?

Lewis: They all help raise the baby.

Wednesday: That’s right. So, an amazing anthropologist name Steven [?] studied the people of Venezuelan I believe, and what he found is that if a child had more than one father in a partible paternity culture that child was more likely to survive to age 16 and reproduce himself or herself than a child with only 1 father. So, it’s a biological fiction that serves everyone’s needs, meanwhile what did they believe about monogamist women in this culture? They’re lousy mothers. So, women hedge their bets and they have this reproductive and social strategy that insures that their kids are more likely to survive and the reproductive strategy is what we might call promiscuity. That tells us something about our evolutionary pre-history, we at least had different mating strategies. But we have to look at this traditional cultures and say “Well, that is one way that humans who are super flexible sexual and social strategist can be.” So, are those men ever jealous? Yes there is some evidence that sometimes they get angry, but there’s also evidence that everybody has this belief that the fathers are all equally fathers and that they participate in the well-being of the mother and the child.

Lewis: Interesting.

Wednesday: What’s the optimal number of fathers?

Lewis: 4

Wednesday: 2.4 or something like that. Don’t have too many guys because then they’re gonna say “You know what I’m just the father whose sperm help created the baby fingernail.” So women have to be always pretty strategic about their sexuality in these context.

Lewis: 2 or 3 guys.

Wednesday: Yeah, don’t go crazy. Unless you’re Canella. The Canella people traditionally if a woman, you can imagine that missionaries went berserk about these cultures. They really got involve and tried to stop these practices. But among the Canella people there is a belief that the thing for a woman who is pregnant to do is to have sex with basically all the eligible males in her network.

Lewis: I mean okay so this is 15,000 years ago when resources were slim and people are dying younger but now people have money and it’s a lot safer to live.

Wednesday: Don’t forget partible paternity is right now in the amazon.

Lewis: Now that we don’t have that, I guess concern is much. So, I guess what do we do with all these information and with all the women or men who have been taught a belief system whether it’s a religious belief system, what do we do?

Wednesday: First of all I always say monogamy is a great arrangement for some people. Some people find it cozy, reassuring, a great context for raising kids, and there’s such wonderful things about monogamy, companionship, connections and great things. But what we know is that enjoying true sexual monogamy for our entire lifetime does not conform to any model we have in science about how we habituate to a stimulus overtime. It is gonna be the extremely rare person who can live out a truly monogamist life with zeal. Most of us are going to struggle at some point.

Now, my friend Tammy Nelson in her book ‘the new monogamy’ talks about monogamy as a continuum. She talks about it as a difficult practice like yoga like you have to commit to every day.

Lewis: It’s a difficult choice every day.

Wednesday: Over here in the monogamy continuum maybe in the middle we have “Maybe I really like you, I really value and love our relationship.” By the way women there was a little fun study that Martha did about how much women like having sex in front of mirrors, they like it more than men do.

Lewis: Why is that?

Wednesday: We don’t know why. We could theorize life. Martha she calls the study ‘It’s not you it’s me.’ and she ask a group of women, sometimes science starts as an insight that’s like an intuition. She had this feeling about people that she was talking to about that women, they had this sort of like autonomous piece of their sexuality she had been talk like women really had to connect and be emotional during sex, but she had a feeling that there was this more independent piece that wasn’t about the partner. So, she said “Listen, if you’re having sex with your partner in front of a mirror how much of the time would you be looking at yourself and how much of the time would you be looking at your partner?” The women were looking at themselves a lot more.

Then she asks men and women, the men are saying no. So then she’s like ‘that’s really interesting.’ So then she says to the group of men and women she ask the men “Would you have sex with yourself?” and the men “What are you talking about?” and the women the answer was “Oh hell yes.” We don’t know why women get turned on by seeing themselves having sex with someone else to an extent that men seem not to, but in the aggregate that seems to be a really exciting thing for women until we figure out why let’s just install mirrors.

Lewis: Now can that get every too boring? You know get used to the mirror?

Wednesday: Go to a hotel there’s a mirror there. But that’s one of the things if you don’t want to open up there’s another thing. Back to the monogamy continuum.

Lewis: Yes. Where there were people who are like ‘If you watch porn you’re cheating on me.’

Wednesday: That’s their monogamy contract, then there’s like “I’m bored can we get a mirror.” Now, here’s another end to the monogamy continuum which is [?], Tammy Nelson is defining all of those places on that spectrum as the monogamy continuum. So one solution for people you ask what can we do now in the industrialize west, we have these evolve appetites and preferences that we now set, what something we can do? Well, we evolve to be sexually flexible, and so one of the things we can do is think about monogamy as a continuum. And again when you bring up a book or a conversation or something else it can seem to be less threatening to your partner. So, that’s what I think of what we can do now in the industrialize west where we value monogamy so much.

Lefdwis: What’s the spectrum?

 

Wednesday: Now, let’s blow it out so there’s a monogamy continuum instead of one pinpoint that is the only right way to do monogamy.

Lewis: Yeah, I mean I was in a past relationship where the relationship was ending, it was over we’ve been through therapy and all these stuff. And I flirted with a girl and she called that cheating and infidelity.

Wednesday: But you were flirting?

Lewis: And she was calling it infidelity.

Wednesday: So on her monogamy continuum it’s like. On her spectrum fidelity is don’t cheat with other people.

Lewis: Don’t talk with anyone.

Wednesday: For her to be happy she’s gonna find somebody else who’s at that place in the monogamy continuum, and she might find somebody that way. But if that is a mismatch, if you’re in different places on the continuum that’s a mismatch and one way to approach that is to say no judgement. Listen, there is a reason Yugov study, Yugov is a survey and they do weighted which is pretty much almost as good as the representative samples. And they said ‘let’s talk about affairs.’ In the UK 19% of women and 20% of men adults in long term relationship said that. Now, women are less likely to disclose stigmatize sexual behaviors than men.

Lewis: So you think it might be more women?

Wednesday: I think it might be [?] infidelity in Great Britain.

Lewis: So about 20-25% of women in the UK they’re saying are having an affair in their marriage?

Wednesday: That’s right or their long term committed relationship. So in the U.S I believe the figures are 15% of women and 19% for men. That is not as statistically significant difference, and again women are underreporting and men tend to over report.

So, we have a lot of people men and women alike who are really struggling with monogamy, they’re really struggling with their recently inherited culture grip that monogamy is the baseline of health and happiness and being mentally healthy.

I had a great time when I was writing this book interviewing people who have found alternative paths, whether swingers or polyamory. People are [?] other paths right now and that was an interesting part of researching on true talking to those people, those trailblazers really.

Lewis: The challenging thing is I don’t know a lot of people on open relationship or maybe I just don’t know them openly talking about.

Wednesday: Right, they might not tell you.

Lewis: But the ones I do know. They say it’s the way at least for them. Whitney was not in that belief the first couple of years in their relationship and it’s kind of evolve into that and seems like.

Wednesday: A process right?

Lewis: Yeah, and it seems like that come a long way. The challenge is when we were talking before is like huge high and big lows, where you deal with jealousy and ego. Doesn’t that get messy also?

Wednesday: I mean look, humans are messy right? I know that what Aubrey and Whitney say and what a lot of the people that I interviewed into consensual non-monogamy is they say “This is so much work, it can make me so upset sometimes but the passionate excitement that I feel for my person that I’ve been for 20 years is so incredible that we keep doing it.” What do we know about who does well with this and who doesn’t? There have been studies, thank you psychologist. Thank you to a psychologist especially named Terry Conley who’s at the University of Michigan and she has been studying consensual non-monogamy for a long time.

Lewis: So who does well and who doesn’t?

Wednesday: Your attachment style matters a lot, our attachment style is something that happens when we’re babies. What is our relationship to our primary caregiver? Can we depend on that person when that person looks at us do their eyes get that light just being there were enough? Or was our primary caregiver unreliable, did that person come in and out? Did we feel anxious in the face of that person? Did we not get reflected back to us that we’re worthy? Because that would be an anxious style. So there are these different attachment style.

Lewis: I think I have anxious and avoidant.

Wednesday: Depending on your attachment style consensual non-monogamy could be very hard for you or could be easier for you. What we know is that people in consensual non-monogamist relationships report lower level of jealousy and higher levels of relationship and sexual level satisfaction.

Lewis: People who are in non-monogamist relationship are less jealous?

Wednesday: That’s right they report lower levels of jealousy. The ‘don’t ask don’t tell open relationships’ versus the process of together and monogamist report the highest level of jealousy.

Lewis: Don’t ask don’t tell are the highest level?

Wednesday: So, we have some data about this and we’re gonna get more data about this if sex researchers get it together and stop feeling like they have to answer to monogamy industrial complex and like Terry Conley and Amy and Justina, they start studying what people are actually doing versus what we think people should do.

Imagine being in this position where your trailblazing and feeling sick and a little insecure and then you go to a trusted professional and you get judgement.

Lewis: Then you just feel bad and wrong with everything you do.

Wednesday: Right, we need to give people options.

Lewis: We only have 1 life that we are aware of, I’m not here to judge anyone, I grew up certain beliefs and I’m evolve those beliefs but it’s like as long you’re happy and not hurting people.

Wednesday: A lot of people who are into consensual non-monogamy say that the most important aspect of it is the consensual part, and they say what Amy, Terry and other researchers have found is that people in consensually non-monogamist relationship whether they’re swingers, poly people tend to have really great communication skills.

David Leigh writes about this a lot, he writes about people who are into couple lifestyle and [?] and he writes about how he, as a therapist he felt really judgmental. These people would come into his office and they would say “I’m really into watching my wife having sex with other men.”

Lewis: That’s crazy.

Wednesday: Right that’s what. In the back of his mind David Leigh felt that way and yet he’s such a great guy because he said “I’m letting my script about female sexuality is supposed to be and what male sexuality is supposed to be.” And what he found out is that they had commendable, amazing communication and really high levels of sexual satisfaction after being together sometimes for decades. So, David Leigh is just one of the therapist who, because he had an open mind he gave us data that can help people whether they want to be monogamist or not. So we have a lot of lessons to learn from consensually non-monogamist people, even if we don’t want to be monogamist. If you want to be a monogamist great, we evolve as flexible sensual and social strategist.

Lewis: Now what are you comfortable sharing about your relationship on how you, now that you know the information how do you handle this? How long have you been married?

Wednesday: Yesterday was my 19^th wedding anniversary.

Lewis: Amazing. So, you’re saying the only way you can be married that long and be happy is if there’s consensual monogamy?

Wednesday: It’s not what I’m saying. A mirror is a real fun thing I’m gonna go on record about that, but you know when you spent so long researching a topic as I did, I feel very hesitant to talk about what I do because what if people think I’m endorsing one thing. What if a women who consensually non-monogamist feels like I’m endorsing monogamy and you know that’s weird.

Lewis: So you’re not endorsing anything?

Wednesday: I’m not endorsing anything except if it’s safe for you. For other women who can have a discussion about how monogamy is going for them, I just want them to feel entitled to have the conversation. How many people do you know who got married without talking about monogamy? My husband and I got married we never have a conversation about it.

Lewis: Probably 95%.

Wednesday: So, that’s very personal for me that we never had the talk and this book made us have the talk about things we have never discussed, which has been so much fun.

Lewis: 18 years after your married you started talking about things?

Wednesday: Yes and it really helped us connect with each other in new ways.

Lewis: Communicating about desires, thoughts or feelings or whatever it may be is a powerful way to connect.

Wednesday: It is a really powerful way to connect. I absolutely agree with what you said that even if you said to your female ‘Wow, I read this book about female sexuality on what do you think about X, Y, and Z.’ you find that it might really surprise you.

Lewis: You might be afraid to ask the question.

Wednesday: You might have to ask more than once, women have been socialize to deny like I have been socialize like to protect the man’s feelings at all cost, I think probably in a heterosexual relationship the man might have to ask many times and hit it right by not seemingly like he’s badgering or like he has an agenda, but to just be truly curious just keep asking what true curiosity about what she wants and you could really have a discussion that could change a relationship even if it’s just improving. And even if it’s just knowing your partner in a new way. How exciting will it be you’re thinking that your female partner is just giving you service sex because she’s not into sex.

Lewis: Powerful. Game changer for your relationship. How important sexual health in a relationship for the happiness of the relation, the longevity.

Wednesday: The research says that high levels of sexual satisfaction predicts overall satisfaction with the relationship and there’s data suggesting that high levels of sexual satisfaction predicts just happiness. So, it’s not that sex is everything, it’s not that sex in your long-term relationship has to be perfect, but it is important and let’s talk about what sexual health really is.

When we’re talking about heterosexuals so many women and men believe that sex is intercourse and that intercourse is over when the man ejaculates. That’s sex.

If you’re female how does that definition of sex impact you? It’s like you don’t matter, but if the overall cultural definition of sex is getting your man off and then sex is over, and that everything you like is foreplay or extra, what are we doing? And men that were doing that to them.

So, I really think that part of sexual health for women is feeling entitled to sexual pleasure however you’re defining that. Being selfish in bed is something that is a lesson from heterosexual men and gay men that women could do really well to learn. I love that about men, I love that they are entitled to sexual pleasure and now I just want women to catch up and feel the same way and we know that it’s not happening. We know that lesbians don’t really have that much of an orgasm gap so we know that it is something about heterosexual sex and I’m willing to bet the farm that what it is define as men having an orgasm.

Lewis: That’s one.

Wednesday: So, part of sexual health is redefining sex so that sex isn’t just intercourse. It’s all the other things and what women like isn’t just foreplay and what gets women off is sex.

Lewis: Whatever excited them it might be something different.

Wednesday: We’re so used to be subservient to men in sex, and by the way don’t get me wrong for some women that’s really fun and great and they enjoy it. It can be really fun and powerful if you’re heterosexual to give your male partner sexual pleasure. It’s just that it shouldn’t be service sex all the time.

Lewis: Sure.

Wednesday: So, I want women to get selfish in bed.

Lewis: I think all men should be gentlemen outside of the bedroom as they are in the bedroom or they put the woman first.

Wednesday: Interesting.

Lewis: I think so because.

Wednesday: What does that mean for you putting the woman first?

Lewis: Whatever that gets them off or excited, whatever turns them on or allow them to have multiple orgasm focus on that.

Wednesday: This is one of the most amazing things about female sexuality, in orgasm women have no latency periods that means, the man has a latency period. I mean even if you’re a total stud you need a few minutes, women we can have an orgasm no latency period and that’s one of our clues that women did not evolve to just be monogamist.

Lewis: Because men would probably have an orgasm in 5 or 10 minutes back then.

Wednesday: And women, the people who believe in this theory and this was something that Sarah put out there back in either the late 70’s or early 80’s. This idea that it might that clitoris is there and multiple orgasm exist, so that a female would seek successive copulations so that she can get there. Now, if the male orgasm from intercourse takes whatever 4 to 8 minutes, there’s a range of figures about it and the average time a woman has an orgasm from intercourse is somewhere between 14 and 20 minutes. Being with one male wouldn’t get you there. So, did women evolve to seek out the ultimate reward of multiple orgasm by having successive copulation with multiple partners? That is one theory, some people consider that theory really out there, but if you read Sarah’s work it seems less infeasible and one possible explanation for why monogamy is hard for women as it is for men.

I think one of the great thing about sex is that people feel so turned on when their partners are selfless but also when their partners are selfish, so there can be a whole repertoire you know.

Lewis: Of course.

Wednesday: That’s the amazing thing, that’s where you really see how we did evolve as very sexual flexible strategist all the many different things that can turn us on.

Lewis: I always found like when you have questions like even in the middle of sex and you start asking like ‘do you like this?’ like it may seem uncomfortable at first but I actually find it really nice and at the end of sex let’s have a conversation. I think communicating about what people want more of is a powerful way to build a relationship not make it awkward. And the more you practice it the more comfortable it become and the easier it is.

Wednesday: That’s such a great point. A lot of women are guilty of this for this program to believe like the greatest thing is you just get into a bed with a man who knows how to push all your buttons. So our programming is very deep that we’re just supposed to let men sort.

Lewis: Try to please you.

Wednesday: That you are prince charming and that you know all these magical things. A lot of men are excited when a women is ‘do it like this.’ Like a lot of men have told me when I interviewed them.

Lewis: No guessing just do it.

Wednesday: When you see how much she wants you to get her off or just let her have fun.

Lewis: I want to give people this information and let them get your book called ‘untrue’ where nearly everything we believe about women, lust, and infidelity is wrong and how the new science can set us free by Wednesday Martin.

A couple of final questions for you Wednesday, this is called the 3 truths question. So at the end of every episode I ask my guest the same question.

Wednesday: I’m not prepared.

Lewis: Perfect. You’re not supposed to be prepared.

Lewis: So, imagine it’s your final day many years from now you get to pick the day but one day in this life you got to leave. You accomplish everything you want, every goal, every relationships, and it goes the way you want. But, for whatever reason you got to take your work with you, so any book that you’ve written, articles you’ve written they all have to go with you. You get to leave a note a piece of paper that you write down that are 3 things that you know to be true about all your experiences in life. 3 lessons or 3 truths that you would then share with the world and this is all the world would have to remember you by. So of the top of your mind what would you say are your 3 truths?

Wednesday: You are already perfect. I believe in reading Buddhism, it helps me a lot to reframe all my experiences, I live in New York a really stressful town where all everybody thinks all the time is I have to get to the next place, I have to get the next thing. But the present moment is the perfect teacher and you don’t need to change you have everything right now. So, I think something about the present moment and satisfaction with what you have and who you are is probably a profound truth that I just try really hard to pursue for myself. So, it would be something about that.

Can that be 2 of them?

Lewis: Sure.

Wednesday: Yeah one is that you’re good how you are. So many women tell me like there’s something wrong with me.

And then the second one would be, be in the present moment like this thing right now that you’re doing this is your life.

Now, I need a third one and I think it would be that connection is everything. We evolve to be social. In our evolutionary pre-history being alone meant death. Of course we need alone time but I think that as I age what I see more and more is just the value of connecting with people of having a community of people who really do it for me and for whom I’m useful. So, whether it’s your family and then the other people like become your elective family. Just kin support and community is huge pursue it. I hope to go out feeling really good about my emotional connections to my family and friends.

Lewis: Beautiful.

Wednesday: That was a lot of pressure Lewis.

Lewis: I want to acknowledge you Wednesday for doing all these research and doing the consistent study, the work to help women and men and all humans learn a new way that might be better for them. Whatever decision they want to do in their relationships, you’re just unpacking the research and the science which can be very messy with belief systems that we have, with religion and parents. Whatever social norms we face you’re helping unpack to make it less scary and less judgmental for people to have better conversations and connect better, which you said connection is one of the most powerful things for you.

Wednesday: It is yeah.

Lewis: So, I acknowledge you for the work for you putting yourself out for judgement, criticism constantly and hatred I’m sure by a lot of different groups out there, but also at the end of the day helping a lot of people connect.

Wednesday: Thank you I really appreciate you acknowledging it and I do so much appreciate my readers who just get in touch now you know they can be in touch by social media.

Lewis: What are you on social media?

Wednesday: I’m @WednesdayMartihPhD on Instagram and I’m @WednesdayMartin on twitter, I don’t really do Facebook anymore so you can’t find me there. But I love it when I get DM’s from people just saying “Thank you I feel sane and I feel understood.” It means a lot to me so thank you for acknowledging.

Lewis: Make sure you guys take a screenshot of this podcast or the video if you’re watching it and send Wednesday a DM on your Instagram story. What’s your website?

Wednesday: It’s www.wednesdaymartin.com

Lewis: and they can learn more about your books and workshops.

Wednesday: They can buy a book, they can see where I’m going next, they can read blogpost, and there are links there to my social media.

Lewis: Final question for you is what’s your definition of greatness?

Wednesday: Being comfortable in your own skin and accepting who you are and being happy what you already have is the key to greatness. Not always striving for the next thing, not always focusing on the next moment. If you are happy with yourself and what you have that’s your golden key to happiness and greatness I think. But it takes a lot of work and ambition to get to the point instead of thinking my life would be better if only I had, instead to focus on my life is really great because I have X. So, I think that’s the key to greatness.

Lewis: Thank you appreciate it.

Wednesday: Thanks Lewis!

Lewis: There you have it my friends, I hope you enjoyed this episode fascinating, I’m holding the book right now untrue. Why nearly everything we believe about women about lust and infidelity is wrong. How the new science can set us free. Make sure to check out this and share this with a friend, share with someone who you think could benefit from learning about this.

Again, lewishowes.com/782. Tag me on Instagram while you’re listening and let me know what you enjoyed the most or got out of this the most, and start a dialogue and conversation with a friend of yours. Spread the message of greatness you are a dream maker if you are a listener of this episode and this podcast, because the community of the school of greatness are dream makers. We are out here to manifest our dreams in the real physical world, and that’s what we do we are alchemist making magic happen. So make sure to check this out.

Big thank you to our sponsors who helped us with the production and the marketing of this show lending club. Again, big thank you to lending club, go to lendingclub.com/greatness. You can check your rates and minutes and borrow up to $40,000. Again, this is the number 1 peer to peer lending platform with over 35 billion in loans issued. So you don’t have to worry about these high interest rates anymore, one fixed rate get it done lendingclub.com/greatness.

And trip actions make sure to check them out. Again, tripactions.com/greatness if you complete a 30 minute demo with a trip actions account executive you’ll get a $100 Amazon gift card but it’s for this month only, so make sure to go there if you want to get better travel with your company. Make sure you optimize and save money on your travel expenses no matter if you’re a large or small company check them out tripactions.com/greatness.

And make sure to check out that interview I did on born to impact podcast with my friend Joe Marion episode number 18.

This is your life you can design your life the way you want it to be. Create the environment of love, an environment of inspiration around you from your home life to your family life to your relationships and mission and purpose. Your flourishment is based on or lack of your environment, you will flourish if you create an environment around or if you have a horrible environment it’s going to be hard to thrive. Design your life. Become the alchemist. You are a dream maker my friend go make magic happen. As always I love you all so very much and you know what time it is, it’s time to go out and do something great.