The Need for Sexual Novelty: Toxic Boy vs. Sacred Man

All right, so let me take you back to the 1920s for a moment, a story about Calvin Coolidge when he was president.

So President Coolidge and his wife Grace are touring a farm, and they're doing it separately, different times of the day.

And as Mrs. Coolidge is touring the henhouse, she sees this rooster mating like crazy with the hens, just prolific mating, this rooster.

And she, in essence, goes, "Tell Mr. Coolidge about this." And Mr.

Coolidge, President Coolidge, is touring that same part of the farm later, and the people there relay that story to him, and he asks the question, "Same hen or different hen?" And they go, "Different hens." And he goes, "Tell the First Lady." And this speaks to something that is scientifically backed, as we'll talk about in a moment, and that is the need for novelty.

So kind of what President Coolidge was getting at there was that somehow this rooster was more prolific because he was mating with many hens versus with the same hen.

And this is backed up by studies on lots of different animals.

Many studies have confirmed this effect that is kind of known as the Coolidge effect, and that is that novelty makes a big difference in sexual desire and drive.

So for example, if you put a male mouse in a cage with a limited number of female mice, he will mate with all of them to, quote, "exhaustion," right? He will reach a limit.

And then if you introduce a new female mouse into that equation, he will start up again, and he will start mating more because of the novelty.

Now, interestingly, this actually applies to females as well.

It's been documented the other direction, and it's been documented in other animals.

The reality is that in the animal kingdom, when novelty is introduced, mating goes up, arousal goes up, drive goes up.

This is true for us as humans as well.

Now, of course, as humans, we are more complex.

We have our spirit, our thinking minds, our imagination, all the things that make us uniquely human, and thus we have the opportunity to approach this need for novelty with intention and to choose how we approach it.