The purpose of it all
Please pardon the delay in me addressing this media story, but I was listening to Dotun Adebayo’s Up All Night programme on Radio Five Live in the early hours of this morning when I heard a segment on new research from the United States of America apparently demonstrating that sex just gets better and better as we age. When I then decided to do some further research on the topic before committing my thought to computer screen for the benefit of National Rust readers I then discovered that this news has already been around for two or three days and I must have just missed seen a reference to it.
Anyway, for those who may not have come across it before, here’s a link to the piece as it was covered by an unnamed reporter on the website of the – DAILY MAIL
I’m not messing about, I want to come straight to the nub of this topic.
Sex, of course, is one of – if not the main – fundamentals of the existence of every animal, fish or bird (probably plant and other things too for all I know, though my understanding of biological doesn’t extend far enough to state this for certain) simply because without it the species would not continue.
Unless perhaps, that is, a species takes the messy bits out of the process and grows itself in a laboratory. Or operates by a system of hermaphrodites.
Thus go the evolutionary ‘laws’ of natural selection and Darwinism – which, until President-elect Trump declares otherwise, is generally accepted as the nearest science comes to absolute certainty on the subject.
Of course, we know there are all sorts of anomalies that tend to be exceptions that prove the rule, if I’m not risking getting on the wrong side of the PC brigade police authorities by stating this.
For instance, although there have been BBC natural history documentaries on instances of homosexual/LGBT behaviour in the animal kingdom, for the most part (take David Attenborough’s Planet Earth II as a relevant recent example) it is impossible to escape the impression, from watching the slightest coverage of 99% of species’ struggle to survive on a day-to-day basis, that the main/only purpose of getting up every day is to grow to learn to hunt well enough in order to survive and remain strong enough (long enough) to be alive when your species’ mating season comes around and thereby become a candidate to have the chance to pass on your genes.
If you can find a candidate of the opposite sex willing to collaborate with you, that is.
Speaking personally and generally, however, I wouldn’t much fancy being a member of the underwater fraternity myself.
I’m thinking here firstly of fish in general, where (as I understand it) the females go off somewhere relatively safe and comfortable and lay their eggs and then the males come along and squirt their sperm over the top to fertilise them; and secondly, of those sea horse things, where after mating it is the males, not the females, which apparently stay behind to sit on the eggs until they hatch. Neither of those sound like much of a life to me.
The next thing I wished to discuss – and I’m reverting to the subject of human beings here – is that we have evolved (thankfully) to the point where sex has become as much a recreational activity as a procreational one.
But there are degrees and issues to be taken on board here.
The above Daily Mail article – and the US researchers involved in the survey featured – have got one thing right. In any human beings’ youth the sex drive is greater and the ability to amass quantity in terms of sexual couplings is (for all sorts of reasons) greater, not least opportunity, availability and general eagerness in society. As we get older and perhaps the flesh becomes less able and willing, the opportunities for sexual activity naturally decrease and – perhaps – via social mores and conventions, less of a priority anyway. [Let’s leave sex toys, aids and performance-enhancing pills out of it for present purposes].
However, to suggest that the average Over-50s have better sex lives – or is it just better sex -than the average Twenty or Thirty-Something seems to me to be a bit far-fetched, counter-intuitive and indeed ludicrous. It implies that quality is better than quantity – well, to adapt the famous dicta of Mandy Rice-Davis: “They would say that, wouldn’t they?”
Arguably, human civilisation and evolution has allowed sexual activity to be a central part of human relationships generally, along with tenderness, love and the sheer wonderfulness of being with someone who understands you better almost than you do (and vice versa) and – if the world as we know it ever was in danger of coming to an end – and you were one of a pair of human beings that had to be sent to a desert island to being the human race all over again – you cannot think of anyone better with whom to understand this vital task.
To cut to the quick, sex can be a beautiful reaffirmation of a human relationship between two people in love.
But it can also be a straightforward and intense urgent to ‘get down and dirty’ and simply bonk, or conduct some kind of shared sexual activity with someone, for nothing more than the sheer devilment of it and because you can.
Both of the above types can be equally satisfying.
I just cannot get my head around the apparent suggestion that ‘sexual wisdom’ – and perhaps spending an hour making love (because you may have to), where two to three decades previously you might have taken just ten minutes but then done it four or five time per night – can be deemed superior in terms of satisfaction. Making love is always great. It’s just that doing it with someone you love is greater, even if it is for a fraction of the frequency.
The bottom line surely is that life is for the living, for adventure, for looking forward and setting your sights on new goals. To that extent – just like as with healthy nutritional eating, walking, sports generally, learning a new language, keeping your brain active by doing the crossword or reading a book, or even attempting to write, paint or compose music – sex in moderation (as with all things) is good for you and will help you live an active, useful life longer than otherwise you might have.
It’s no more, or less, important than that.
