According to whatever survey you read arguments about sex are either number one or close to the top of a ‘What Couples Argue About Most’ list.

Advice columns will outline the usual obvious clichéd instructions – ‘communication is the key’, ‘be considerate’, ‘put time aside for sex’, ‘plan time to be intimate’ – none of which actually works all that well if your mindset is not where is should be, because it overlooks that you may be just plain bored to death having sex with the same partner, bored with the same selfish faults (as you see them) in their lovemaking, and putting up with the same dreary routine.

Well guess what – you were not designed by nature to always have sex with the same partner. Human monogamy is as mythical as birds mating for life. All those fairy tail notions about swans and the like pairing up for life are only sort-of true, because certain species do pair-bond together from season to season, but such observations are also interpreted by humans applying their own cultural bent. We assume because they are together and raising a clutch of young ’uns every year that the progeny are exclusively theirs. Not so, daddy swan is an opportunist fornicator and mummy swan doesn’t mind the odd quick fling either.  DNA has its reasons for encouraging this kind of behavior – basically because it keeps inbreeding to a minimum.

Humans bond in a similar fashion to certain ‘lifelong mating’ birds but like them our pair bond has its limits. Expecting a couple to come together and stay happily ensconced for a lifetime, although possible, is mostly wishful thinking. But that is our culture (and if you want to find out why “The Art of Creating Alpha Males” explains our culture) and most people do not want to hear anything contrary to what they have been taught is right, at least not publicly. According to the New Zealand group, FARE (Families Apart Require Equality) after DNA testing was introduced and became affordable for those in family court it was found that 1 in 3 families had children not belonging to the father i.e. usually unbeknown to the father. Similar statistics have arisen from DNA paternity suits world-wide. So neither men nor women are particularly faithful sexually.

Then there are the polyamorous – this is an international non-religious movement toward multi-partner relationships. According to the Polyamory Society’s webpage polyamory is defined as: “…the nonpossessive, honest, responsible and ethical philosophy and practice of loving multiple people simultaneously. Polyamory emphasizes consciously choosing how many partners one wishes to be involved with rather than accepting social norms which dictate loving only one person at a time. Polyamory is an umbrella term which integrates traditional multipartner relationship terms with more evolved egalitarian terms. Polyamory embraces sexual equality and all sexual orientations towards an expanded circle of spousal intimacy and love.”

So what are most of couple’s sex arguments about anyhow? Infidelity? No. 90% of infidelity goes undetected. It’s only when a so-called ‘cheater’ gets caught that there is a big ruckus, usually by a hypocritical (previously unfaithful) partner who is now full of righteous indignation that their partner dared to do the same. Rather, are sex arguments as they are mainly portrayed – randy men getting knocked back by women who are pretending they have headaches so as to avoid sex? Well, of course they are – or a variation on the same theme. Why else would they have become a cliché?

A basic understanding of biology answers the question as to why this is so. Men produce sperm pretty much on demand, and they make it and recycle it every day. They are also programmed by nature to use the shotgun effect with their sperm i.e. penetrating as many females as possible – because this protects their DNA’s chances of survival. So they want to have sex with as many women as possible, and as quickly as possible. It’s what they do.

Women produce one egg a month, and although they are capable of having sex anytime, they, like other animals, have a strong urge to mate when they are most fertile – a small window of opportunity that exists for a few days each month. They also know instinctively that if they have sex they are committing to, at the very least, 13 years of child rearing (before their child’s DNA is theoretically ready to also reproduce). So does a woman want to have sex every day with a long-term, established mate? Of course not, certainly not if she can get out of it by invoking a migraine.

Then let’s add in a few complications – the modern lifestyle, and the fact she may already have children taking up most of her time and energy. Under those conditions a man wanting to make more babies with her is about as appealing as slowly pulling nasal hairs. Then there is the pill. Many women in the West take it. The pill works by telling your body you are pregnant, so wanting to have sex, especially the same sort of sex with the same person you’ve been having it with for years, while your body is also telling you you are carrying a baby, is not that appealing.

And here is the biggest reason. We were not meant to live in a house together, with a yard, with a fence. For the vast majority of the time Homo sapiens sapiens have been on Earth we have existed as hunter-gatherers, living in extended gene pools/families, living in the open, together, meeting other groups often, mixing and mating with them. Living in little fenced-off boxes in suburbia is about as far removed from the lifestyle we are designed for as can be imagined. In fact a zoo cage is about the only thing more restrictive than modern dwellings to a highly-sexed animal like us – perhaps one of the reasons Desmond Morris famously dubbed modern society as “The Human Zoo”. He also pointed out that a lot of our problematic behavior parallels the aberrant behavior of ill-housed zoo animals. In fact, since Morris wrote his book in the late 60’s the fate of zoo animals has vastly improved as enclosures are altered to mimic natural surroundings. If anything, the human zoos have grown far worse.

So, what advice is this column giving? Get back to your roots, go live in the open and mate with everyone? No, the advice is: realize what you are and accept you situation. Just like the swan you can be unfaithful, it’s no big deal, in fact it is not even really important. What is important, like the swans, is the life pair bond you have with your partner. Sure, you’re bored, but you signed up for better or worse. What you have to decide is whether or not you meant what you said when you took that vow for life. Think of it this way – if you just found out that your partner was going to die in under one year, would you devote yourself to her or him completely for the time they have left? Of course you would. Well, you may think you are immortal and nothing will ever go wrong with your partner, but on this planet no one gets out alive, and whether a person has one year or 50 years left they are still going to die, so all you have to decide is whether or not you meant your marital vow. There is no shame in admitting you didn’t at the time, but it’s pretty dopey to stay in the same situation now if you didn’t.

If you didn’t, then no advice column can give you a solution, because you are in the wrong situation.

If you did mean your vow and still do, then consider what such a commitment is, how deep it is, and the implications of keeping that commitment real and alive every day. It needs maintenance, it needs work. Recommit yourself to your vow and then it is not so hard to say yes to sex…or to take some time to romance your partner…or to be patient when it is difficult to stay patient…or to be forgiving despite your pride…or interested only because it matters to them that you are, but mostly…you should be kind. It is your chosen life partner, not just another person. Be kinder to them than to anyone else.