- Sexual rejection will be a part of any committed relationship.
- Studies show that how the rejecting partner turns down an advance can alter how the initiating partner views the relationship.
- Desire can lessen over time, but there are ways to, and ways not to, reignite that spark.
You get home a few hours before your partner. You've had a good day, and you're feeling in the mood. You cook a fabulous dinner, uncork a bottle of wine, and even do dishes while your partner unwinds in the bath. Afterward, you begin massaging his or her shoulders delicately, lean in, and whisper about moving things into the bedroom.
Without hesitation, your partner shoots you down; he or she is far too tired to even think about sex tonight. But while you're back there, would you mind getting the lower back, too?
If you've been in a committed, long-term relationship, you've lived some rendition of this story before. While couples joke about it with friends, truth is, sexual rejection is a difficult, natural, and potentially astringent part of our relationships.
Because of this, men and women will at some point sexually reject their partner and be sexually rejected in turn. With luck, it will be only momentary, though it may grow to be habitual. But it will happen, and the results can be painful either way.
The ups and downs of sexual rejection
A recent study—in preprint as of this writing—looked at the emotional effects sexual rejection has on people in committed relationships. The researchers asked 115 couples to keep sex diaries. Every day for three weeks, the participants logged whether they initiated sex or if their partners made a sexual advance. They also wrote whether it led to sex and recorded daily levels of sexual and relationship satisfaction.
Most of the results aren't too surprising. Couples that had sex reported higher levels of sexual and relationship satisfaction. This was true for the participants who initiated sex and those who accepted the advancement. Who knew?
Also unsurprising: Rejected partners felt a stifled sexual satisfaction, a sting that could last for up to 48 hours.
Interestingly, participants who were sexually propositioned enjoyed an uptick in sexual satisfaction, whether they accepted the offer or not. A buzz that lasted for up to 72 hours. The reason is likely that the being propositioned signaled that they were desirable in their partner's eye—a lovely gift to anyone's self-esteem.
This means, the authors note, that being asked for sex is emotionally low risk. Conversely, being the partner who initiates sex comes with emotional risks. As the authors wrote, "These results indicate that making a sexual advance may be risky for romantic partners, which may lead those who feel less sure of their partner's response to an advance to do so less often, therefore missing opportunities to bolster intimacy, closeness, and satisfaction."
Let me down reassuringly
A reassuring rejection mixed with other form of intimate contact can strengthen relationship satisfaction.
Of course, anyone has the right to reject an offer of sex. We're autonomous beings and even the most loving and intimate of couples won't maintain perfectly synchronicity. Sometimes work, children, and all that life clamps down on our sex drives. Sometimes we don't feel sexy or well. And one partner's libidinous appetite may simply outpace the other's.
How can we navigate sexual rejection while limiting the emotional risk to our partners? One study's suggested answer is "reassuring rejection."
The study, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, looked at ways people reject a partner's advances. They found rejections fell into four behavioral patterns: reassuring, hostile, assertive, and deflecting. Writing for Psychology Today, David Ludden, PhD, describes the behaviors as:
- Reassuring rejection: Reassure their partner that they love them and perhaps offer alternative forms of physical contact, such as kissing and cuddling.
- Hostile rejection: Outward displays of frustration to their partners while criticizing other aspects of the relationship.
- Assertive rejection: Explain the lack of interest in a clear, direct manner.
- Deflecting rejection: Pretend not to notice the advance, the "pretend to be asleep" strategy.
Like the previous study, the researchers had couples fill out a surveys for 28 days. The participants reported whether their partner rejected a sexual advance within 24 hours and the degree it met one of the four patterns. They also filled out a survey that measured the sexual desire discrepancy between them and their partner, as well as sexual and relationship satisfaction.
The researchers found that reassuring rejections could improve relationship satisfaction compared to the previous day—a stark contrast to the study results above. Naturally, hostile rejections harmed relationship satisfaction, while assertive and deflecting rejections neither strengthened nor harmed the relationship in the partner's eyes.
"Romantic partners sometimes (or often) engage in sex with their partner for avoidance goals (like to avoid upsetting their partner or avoid conflict)," study author James Kim told PsyPost. "They may do this because they think it would be worse to reject their partner for sex.
"However, our findings suggest that rejecting a partner for sex in positive ways (e.g. reassuring a partner that you still love and are attracted to them) actually represents a viable alternative behavior to having sex for avoidance goals in sustaining both partners' relationship and sexual satisfaction."
Novelty isn't a new toy
These studies looked at sexual rejection in the short term, but maintained rejection is bound to wear on a relationship, whether reassuring or not. It is difficult to admit, especially about the ones we love, but seductive appeal can lessen throughout the years, and this can led to patterns of sexual rejection.
According to relationship therapist Esther Perel points out in her TED Talk, dulled desires result from our requiring partners to reconcile two fundamental, yet incompatible, human needs: our need for security and the unexpected.
We put our partners in the unmanageable position of being our source of dependability and insatiable passion. They must be our best friends and intimate confidants yet remain mysterious and novel. They must remain desirable to us while keeping their own desires for the unexpected in check. And they must continue this balancing act while living longer lives than any other previous generation of humans.
Couples try to reconcile this inconsistency by keeping things fresh—a phrase that typically translates as, "Let's introduce a new toy or lingerie into the mix." But that's a heavy ask of some silicone and gossamer fabric.
Instead, novelty comes from seeing our partners and ourselves in a new light. As Perel notes:
But novelty isn't about new positions. It isn't a repertoire of techniques. Novelty is, what parts of you do you bring out? What parts of you are just being seen? Because in some way one could say sex isn't something you do. Sex is a place you go. It's a space you enter inside yourself and with another, or others.
According to Perel, couples that do manage to reconcile dependency and seduction have a few things in common. These couples:
- Have a lot of sexual privacy and each an erotic space that belongs to them.
- Don't wait until right before the deed to initiate foreplay. It's a daily, continuous activity.
- Understand that responsibility and desire butt heads, so they leave that responsibility outside of their erotic space.
- Understand that passion comes and goes. Rather than grow discouraged, they take steps to resurrect it.
- Don't believe in the myth of spontaneity purported by porn and bodice-rippers.
"Committed sex is premeditated sex," Paral concluded. "It's willful. It's intentional. It's focus and present."
But what about the persistently rejected? Those who find themselves in relationships where their partner rarely wants to have sex and rejects their advances in assertive or hostile ways? Unfortunately, caring intimacy doesn't automatically equate to good or alluring sex.
Relationship columnist Dan Savage claims the vast majority of the mail he receives comes from people in sexless marriages who either don't want to end it or can't afford to. His standard advice—barring circumstances like children—is to end such relationships as they are not healthy for either partner. He writes:
[O]dds are good that rejection and resentment will have curdled the frustrated half of the couple's affections so thoroughly that the relationship simply can't survive. And there's a better than 50/50 chance that the problem isn't stress or work-related, but not-attracted-to-you-related, and how long do you want to hang in there before you find that out?
Obviously, any advice is specific to the couple asking for it, but sexual rejection doesn't have to be a corny punchline in public and emotional weight in private. If we accept sexual rejection as a part of any relationship, engage with empathy, invest in our erotic spaces, and are truly honest with each other, then sexual rejection can be navigated without lasting harm to the relationship or individuals within it.
- 11 powerful Esther Perel quotes on love and sex - Big Think ›
- How to flirt according to science - Big Think ›
- Study of long-term heterosexual couples finds women over-estimate ... ›
Ash deposits of some of North America's largest volcanic eruptions.
The end of the world as we know it
Panoramic view of Yellowstone National Park
Image: Heinrich Berann for the National Park Service – public domain
Of the many freak ways to shuffle off this mortal coil – lightning strikes, shark bites, falling pianos – here's one you can safely scratch off your worry list: an outbreak of the Yellowstone supervolcano.
As the map below shows, previous eruptions at Yellowstone were so massive that the ash fall covered most of what is now the western United States. A similar event today would not only claim countless lives directly, but also create enough subsidiary disruption to kill off global civilisation as we know it. A relatively recent eruption of the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia may have come close to killing off the human species (see further below).
However, just because a scenario is grim does not mean that it is likely (insert topical political joke here). In this case, the doom mongers claiming an eruption is 'overdue' are wrong. Yellowstone is not a library book or an oil change. Just because the previous mega-eruption happened long ago doesn't mean the next one is imminent.
Ash beds of North America
Ash beds deposited by major volcanic eruptions in North America.
Image: USGS – public domain
This map shows the location of the Yellowstone plateau and the ash beds deposited by its three most recent major outbreaks, plus two other eruptions – one similarly massive, the other the most recent one in North America.
Huckleberry Ridge
The Huckleberry Ridge eruption occurred 2.1 million years ago. It ejected 2,450 km3 (588 cubic miles) of material, making it the largest known eruption in Yellowstone's history and in fact the largest eruption in North America in the past few million years.
This is the oldest of the three most recent caldera-forming eruptions of the Yellowstone hotspot. It created the Island Park Caldera, which lies partially in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming and westward into Idaho. Ash from this eruption covered an area from southern California to North Dakota, and southern Idaho to northern Texas.
Mesa Falls
About 1.3 million years ago, the Mesa Falls eruption ejected 280 km3 (67 cubic miles) of material and created the Henry's Fork Caldera, located in Idaho, west of Yellowstone.
It was the smallest of the three major Yellowstone eruptions, both in terms of material ejected and area covered: 'only' most of present-day Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska, and about half of South Dakota.
Lava Creek
The Lava Creek eruption was the most recent major eruption of Yellowstone: about 640,000 years ago. It was the second-largest eruption in North America in the past few million years, creating the Yellowstone Caldera.
It ejected only about 1,000 km3 (240 cubic miles) of material, i.e. less than half of the Huckleberry Ridge eruption. However, its debris is spread out over a significantly wider area: basically, Huckleberry Ridge plus larger slices of both Canada and Mexico, plus most of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri.
Long Valley
This eruption occurred about 760,000 years ago. It was centered on southern California, where it created the Long Valley Caldera, and spewed out 580 km3 (139 cubic miles) of material. This makes it North America's third-largest eruption of the past few million years.
The material ejected by this eruption is known as the Bishop ash bed, and covers the central and western parts of the Lava Creek ash bed.
Mount St Helens
The eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980 was the deadliest and most destructive volcanic event in U.S. history: it created a mile-wide crater, killed 57 people and created economic damage in the neighborhood of $1 billion.
Yet by Yellowstone standards, it was tiny: Mount St Helens only ejected 0.25 km3 (0.06 cubic miles) of material, most of the ash settling in a relatively narrow band across Washington State and Idaho. By comparison, the Lava Creek eruption left a large swathe of North America in up to two metres of debris.
The difference between quakes and faults
The volume of dense rock equivalent (DRE) ejected by the Huckleberry Ridge event dwarfs all other North American eruptions. It is itself overshadowed by the DRE ejected at the most recent eruption at Toba (present-day Indonesia). This was one of the largest known eruptions ever and a relatively recent one: only 75,000 years ago. It is thought to have caused a global volcanic winter which lasted up to a decade and may be responsible for the bottleneck in human evolution: around that time, the total human population suddenly and drastically plummeted to between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs.
Image: USGS – public domain
So, what are the chances of something that massive happening anytime soon? The aforementioned mongers of doom often claim that major eruptions occur at intervals of 600,000 years and point out that the last one was 640,000 years ago. Except that (a) the first interval was about 200,000 years longer, (b) two intervals is not a lot to base a prediction on, and (c) those intervals don't really mean anything anyway. Not in the case of volcanic eruptions, at least.
Earthquakes can be 'overdue' because the stress on fault lines is built up consistently over long periods, which means quakes can be predicted with a relative degree of accuracy. But this is not how volcanoes behave. They do not accumulate magma at constant rates. And the subterranean pressure that causes the magma to erupt does not follow a schedule.
What's more, previous super-eruptions do not necessarily imply future ones. Scientists are not convinced that there ever will be another big eruption at Yellowstone. Smaller eruptions, however, are much likelier. Since the Lava Creek eruption, there have been about 30 smaller outbreaks at Yellowstone, the last lava flow being about 70,000 years ago.
As for the immediate future (give or take a century): the magma chamber beneath Yellowstone is only 5 percent to 15 percent molten. Most scientists agree that is as un-alarming as it sounds. And that its statistically more relevant to worry about death by lightning, shark, or piano.
Strange Maps #1041
Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.
Stoicism can help overcome anxiety
Are you a worrier? Do you imagine nightmare scenarios and then get worked up and anxious about them? Does your mind get caught in a horrible spiral of catastrophizing over even the smallest of things? Worrying, particularly imagining the worst case scenario, seems to be a natural part of being human and comes easily to a lot of us. It's awful, perhaps even dangerous, when we do it.
But, there might just be an ancient wisdom that can help. It involves reframing this attitude for the better, and it comes from Stoicism. It's called "premeditation," and it could be the most useful trick we can learn.
Practical Stoicism
Broadly speaking, Stoicism is the philosophy of choosing your judgments. Stoics believe that there is nothing about the universe that can be called good or bad, valuable or valueless, in itself. It's we who add these values to things. As Shakespeare's Hamlet says, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Our minds color the things we encounter as being "good" or "bad," and given that we control our minds, we therefore have control over all of our negative feelings.
Put another way, Stoicism maintains that there's a gap between our experience of an event and our judgment of it. For instance, if someone calls you a smelly goat, you have an opportunity, however small and hard it might be, to pause and ask yourself, "How will I judge this?" What's more, you can even ask, "How will I respond?" We have power over which thoughts we entertain and the final say on our actions. Today, Stoicism has influenced and finds modern expression in the hugely effective "cognitive behavioral therapy."
One of the principal fathers of ancient Stoicism was the Roman statesmen, Seneca, who argued that the unexpected and unforeseen blows of life are the hardest to take control over. The shock of a misfortune can strip away the power we have to choose our reaction. For instance, being burglarized feels so horrible because we had felt so safe at home. A stomach ache, out of the blue, is harder than a stitch thirty minutes into a run. A sudden bang makes us jump, but a firework makes us smile. Fell swoops hurt more than known hardships.
What could possibly go wrong?
So, how can we resolve this? Seneca suggests a Stoic technique called "premeditatio malorum" or "premeditation." At the start of every day, we ought to take time to indulge our anxious and catastrophizing mind. We should "rehearse in the mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck." We should meditate on the worst things that could happen: your partner will leave you, your boss will fire you, your house will burn down. Maybe, even, you'll die.
This might sound depressing, but the important thing is that we do not stop there.
Stoicism has influenced and finds modern expression in the hugely effective "cognitive behavioral therapy."
The Stoic also rehearses how they will react to these things as they come up. For instance, another Stoic (and Roman Emperor) Marcus Aurelius asks us to imagine all the mean, rude, selfish, and boorish people we'll come across today. Then, in our heads, we script how we'll respond when we meet them. We can shrug off their meanness, smile at their rudeness, and refuse to be "implicated in what is degrading." Thus prepared, we take control again of our reactions and behavior.
The Stoics cast themselves into the darkest and most desperate of conditions but then realize that they can and will endure. With premeditation, the Stoic is prepared and has the mental vigor necessary to take the blow on the chin and say, "Yep, l can deal with this."
Catastrophizing as a method of mental inoculation
Seneca wrote: "In times of peace, the soldier carries out maneuvers." This is also true of premeditation, which acts as the war room or training ground. The agonizing cut of the unexpected is blunted by preparedness. We can prepare the mind for whatever trials may come, in just the same way we can prepare the body for some endurance activity. The world can throw nothing as bad as that which our minds have already imagined.
Stoicism teaches us to embrace our worrying mind but to embrace it as a kind of inoculation. With a frown over breakfast, try to spend five minutes of your day deliberately catastrophizing. Get your anti-anxiety battle plan ready and then face the world.
Jonny Thomson teaches philosophy in Oxford. He runs a popular Instagram account called Mini Philosophy (@philosophyminis). His first book is Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas.
How to get people to want to give you money, literal balls of cash not gaurenteed.
Even the best charities with the longest records of doing great fundraising work have to spend some time making sure that the next donation checks will keep coming in. One way to do this is by showing potential donors all the good things the charity did over the previous year. But there may be a better way.
A new study by researchers in the United States and Australia suggests that appealing to the benefits people will receive themselves after a donation nudges them to donate more money than appealing to the greater good.
How to get people to give away free money
The study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, utilized the Pick.Click.Give program in Alaska. This program allows Alaska residents who qualify for dividends from the Alaska Permanent Fund, a yearly payment ranging from $800 to $2000 in recent years, to donate a portion of it to various in-state non-profit organizations.
The researchers randomly assigned households to either a control group or to receive a postcard in the mail encouraging them to donate a portion of their dividend to charity. That postcard could come in one of two forms, either highlighting the benefits to others or the benefits to themselves.
Those who got the postcard touting self-benefits were 6.6 percent more likely to give than those in the control group and gave 23 percent more on average. Those getting the benefits-to-others postcard were slightly more likely to give than those receiving no postcard, but their donations were no larger.
Additionally, the researchers were able to break the subject list down into a "warm list" of those who had given at least once before in the last two years and a "cold list" of those who had not. Those on the warm list, who were already giving, saw only minor increases in their likelihood to donate after getting a postcard in the mail compared to those on the cold list.
Additionally, the researchers found that warm-list subjects who received the self-interest postcard gave 11 percent more than warm-list subjects in the control group. Amazingly, among cold-list subjects, those who received a self-interest postcard gave 39 percent more.
These are substantial improvements. At the end of the study, the authors point out, "If we had sent the benefits to self message to all households in the state, aggregate contributions would have increased by nearly US$600,000."
To put this into perspective, in 2017 the total donations to the program were roughly $2,700,000.
Is altruism dead?
Are all actions inherently self-interested? Thankfully, no. The study focuses entirely on effective ways to increase charitable donations above levels that currently exist. It doesn't deny that some people are giving out of pure altruism, but rather that an appeal based on self-interest is effective. Plenty of people were giving before this study took place who didn't need a postcard as encouragement. It is also possible that some people donated part of their dividend check to a charity that does not work with Pick.Click.Give and were uncounted here.
It is also important to note that Pick.Click.Give does not provide services but instead gives money to a wide variety of organizations that do. Those organizations operate in fields from animal rescue to job training to public broadcasting. The authors note that it is possible that a more specific appeal to the benefits others will receive from a donation might prove more effective than the generic and all-inclusive "Make Alaska Better For Everyone" appeal that they used.
In an ideal world, charity is its own reward. In ours, it might help to remind somebody how warm and fuzzy they'll feel after donating to your cause.
