Episode 90 - The Biology of Passion, Love, Lust, and Orgasm (Part Two) with Joe Quirk, Best-Selling Author

Transcript

Dr. Patti Taylor: Welcome to the Expanded Lovemaking show. This is Dr. Patti Taylor of expandedlovemaking.com, and I teach you how to make exquisite love. This is part two of a two-part series. Don’t you love it in movies where you have those plots, two star struck lovers in love, overcoming insurmountable odds in order to be together. You know, she wants coffee, he likes tea, she wants kids, he doesn’t. You know, and what’s so funny is how true this all is. Sometimes I wonder how men and women get along at all. We seem so utterly completely different. And we are. So how does, how are we ever going to overcome all of this? Well, here to explain a little more about why we’re different and how we might be able to improve our chances of working through some of this is our guest today, Joe Quirk. So hi Joe, and welcome back to this show.

Joe Quirk: Thanks for having me back.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Oh, it’s such a pleasure. Well let me tell you a little bit about Joe. He is such a sweetheart. He’s a TV show, talk show darling, and he’s written a book, It’s Not You, It’s Biology, which has been translated into 17 languages. And he has a second novel coming out, Exult, and that’s coming out May 6th. So that’s going to probably be a really great book. That’ll probably be a really great book. I’m very excited about that. So lets just go right into our second show. We’ve already been talking about the anatomy of men and women and why they’re different, so hopefully you’ve heard that show. And we can just kind of go right back into our conversation. We’ve been talking about the clitoris and why that’s kind of a testing ground for “Is this man the right one?”, and I kind of want to stay on that topic a little bit longer and… ‘Cause I think there’s a myth out there that, and I think it’s true in some ways and not true in others, but to some extent women want the richest man, and to some, in some ways that’s true, and I think in some ways though women want the guy that does have the patience to learn how to get them off. So, so in what ways is this true, not true? Can you sort things our her for me Joe?

Joe Quirk: Well what the, what all the evidence is telling me is that women have a dual agenda.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Ah ha.

Joe Quirk: They want a good nest to raise the baby for 15 years, and they want the hottest genes to make a healthy baby, and that these are separable strategies, which is why you see when women have one night stands they tend to go for the strong jaw line, high testosterone type guys. And when they choose someone for a long-term partner they tend to choose someone with good income potential who’s more nurturing, who has a more rounded, what they call feminized face. And there’s a lot of very interesting evidence that women kind of want two different things and they have a sort of torment between the nice safe guy and the hot bad boy.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Huh. Is there any way to get them both?

Joe Quirk: I think there is. You could marry me, but that’s already been done. I think it can be done, but it looks like there’s a trade-off between the amount of testosterone you have in your blood and how nurturing you are. Men with high amounts of testosterone tend to be less nurturing.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Do the men with the high amounts of testosterone tend to be the ones that are making more money?

Joe Quirk: Yes, it’s very hard to measure because if you get, if you have success your testosterone goes up. So if you find a successful man and you measure him and you say, “Wow, his testosterone is high”, you don’t know whether he had testosterone that caused the success or if the success drove his testosterone. By the way, extremely successful women also have high testosterone.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Yeah, they’re like pounding the fist at the boardroom table, going “Fire him”, you know, and then they get in their red Jag and they’re just like going at 90 down the highway, right, and…

Joe Quirk: Right.

Dr. Patti Taylor: women are going, “Ooh”, right?

Joe Quirk: Yeah, so it’s the sign… A lot of guys think women are attracted to wealth, and I think that’s not really true, because money didn’t even exist back in the caveman days. Money is just a modern symbol of something that’s more primal, and that’s the status in the tribe. If you’re male and people shut up and listen when you speak, that means you’re an alpha, you’ve acquired respect among your peers, and women find that sexually attractive. Why? Because hunter, gatherers didn’t have much wealth. Social standing is a way that men control future resources of the tribe that can be invested in babies when a famine hits. Among a hundred gatherers in the 20th century, 20 to 60 percent of children die. So now you know where you get your extreme feelings when it comes to romance. So women, don’t feel guilty if you’re attracted to glamour and prestige. It had survival value in our ancestral environment.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Well you know what’s something that really turns me on that we haven’t talked about? That extreme intelligence. And I think that goes back to what we were talking about ‘cause when I can really explain to a guy, you know, how to satisfy me, I said before, you know, when you keep your person expanded orgasm, that takes a fair amount of patience…

Joe Quirk: Mm hmm.

Dr. Patti Taylor: and probably some intelligence too, because you have to integrate your body, your heart, your mind, your soul, whatever, and, but it does, it takes patience and intelligence. And I think those people tend to be intelligent in the rest of their lives. I need a man that’s very intelligent. I am so turned on. I love intelligence. I’m just so hot and wet, I tell you. Where does that fit in? I mean I don’t care what kind of a home they’re going to make and I don’t how they are in the boardroom, but I’m sure they’re going to be good in the bedroom I see that kind of brains.

Joe Quirk: Well if we think about our brains, and our brains are so extravagantly large, inconvenient and we’re good at things that weren’t appropriate, weren’t practical in our ancestral environment like making music, like using lots of words, never shutting up, you know, making art, none of this has any practical value. What it does have is an ability to impress other members of your own species. You know, in the book I write about the Bower bird, who puts so much effort into building a giant nest full of colors that’s as big as a person. You know, David Ettinbourough went inside it. And its only purpose is to impress the female. It has no practical significance whatsoever, babies don’t need a nest that big. And the idea is that the human brain is like the peacock’s tail, is like the lion’s mane. It’s anything that has evolved over time to impress the other sex. And once we started choosing each other based on our empathy, when women started choosing males based on the possibility that they would be nurturing towards the young and help them raise the young, this lead to the evolution of intelligence as a side of sexual attraction and long-term courtship and loving because we have to bond over a long period of time. It’s not about the sex, it’s about bonding to each other. So the human brain is a giant courtship device. Enjoy it.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Uh huh, so, okay, got it. So, and also you might say that any time anyone has any talent or something that’s extraordinary might be a real turn on for somebody, right. Whether it’s musical ability or even a great painter or something that’s extraordinary. Wouldn’t that be just a turn on for someone?

Joe Quirk: Yes. Artists are sexy all over the world. You know, Picasso was not that attractive a man, but he got lots of girls, and that’s because he painted such wonderful paintings. And the ideas that these kind of, if people in our ancestral environment found creativity attractive, then genes for the urge to create masterpieces would be selected more in our environment.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Right, and also where my mind goes as well, if they’re that creative, you know, in that domain, well then they’re probably just plain old creative in, you know, my mind fills in the blanks. Well listen, we’re going to take a break. So please stay with us. This is Dr. Patti Taylor, and I’m here with Joe Quirk. You can learn more about him at his website, joequirk.com, j-o-e-q-u-i-r-k, dot com. And we’ll be right back. And he is the author of the book, It’s Not You, It’s Biology, so please stay with us.

Dr. Patti Taylor: We’re back. And I would like to talk about orgasms. And I have a question for you. It seems like men and women, it’s just like they have different strategies, you know, egg and sperm. It also seems like they have different orgasmic strategies. Men seem like they’re trying not to cum so fast…

Joe Quirk: Mm hmm.

Dr. Patti Taylor: And it seems like women are trying to learn how to feel more sensation. So, women are, you know, wanting to feel, to have a more emotional story. It seems like their whole orgasms are tied in with their whole, like, biological structure.

Joe Quirk: Yes. It, there is, both sides want to enjoy sex, but there is this tension in the, there’s a conflict in sperm spread as an egg protector, but ultimately the male’s going to be designed a little bit more to get the sperm in there. And the female’s going to be designed a little bit more to choose the best male. And I think that has a lot to do with the tension between me, you know, cumming too soon and women taking longer and men having to learn to last longer to please the women and all that.

Dr. Patti Taylor: I thought that was very valuable information in your book, because a lot of men are really wanting to learn how to spread out their orgasms.

Joe Quirk: Mm hmm. And it’s, you know, I spoke to you before, I try to learn how to do that myself. I find it very difficult. The, so we can train our biology. People, cultures train us to do things differently than our instincts all the time, but there is this just very powerful thing that we’re dealing with, which is, you know, a man wants to orgasm and, and accomplish his goal. So despite that, the training I’ve tried, I’ve never been able to figure out the multiple orgasms thing.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Right, right, and right. So you’re just up against your biology, right. And women too, you know, I think want to, you know, I think just maybe understand just, or appreciate, according to when they read your book, will get an appreciation for why they need to, feel the need to have sex in the context of a relationship.

Joe Quirk: Yes, it’s really interesting how you look at, you look at what males, the pornography…

Dr. Patti Taylor: Not all women, but I mean this is, would explain this. Go ahead.

Joe Quirk: Yeah. So for a male, if, if you look at males, our ancestors, some of them did very well reproductively by impregnating somebody and scidaddling. And no female did very well by indiscriminately having sex with whatever male and then allowing herself to be abandoned. Males can separate the desire for love from the desire for sex. Females are more likely to, for these things to go together because if she’s abandoned on the (unintelligible) of Savannah with a breastfeeding baby, she’s in big trouble. Unless of course she’s pursing the sperm stealing strategy, which we talked about with bad boys, which, you know, certain times of the month during ovulation females are, turns out are more interested in, in one night stands and things like that, there’s a whole lot of interesting studies on that, including the fact that women in nightclubs, believe it or not, expose more flesh when they’re ovulating than, than the rest of the month. Have I answered your question?

Dr. Patti Taylor: You have, you have. Now here’s a question I’ve wondered; does the amount a man ejaculates vary?

Joe Quirk: It absolutely does.

Dr. Patti Taylor: ‘Cause my partners swear that it does. I can’t tell, you know. Does it have to do with how excited they are to see me?

Joe Quirk: Yes. We can talk about the amount of ejaculation…

Dr. Patti Taylor: That’s what they tell me, but you know, I don’t, how do I know they’re not giving me a line, right?

Joe Quirk: Yeah, well, you know, even he is not conscious of what’s really going on here. I mean, everyone should go to my website, and chapter one of my book talks about this.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Which book, It’s Not You, It’s…

Joe Quirk: It’s Not You, It’s Biology…

Dr. Patti Taylor: Okay.

Joe Quirk: And it’s available for free on the website.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Oh, cool.

Joe Quirk: It’s, there’s this uncanny thing where if men haven’t seen their female in a few days, they ejaculate three times as much sperm as they do when they see their wife all the time, or their woman.

Dr. Patti Taylor: So he was telling me the truth.

Joe Quirk: But the, of course, for, in his heart, and maybe he really believes that it’s because, “Oh, I haven’t seen you in so long”, but the funny thing is that this doesn’t occur when you’ve been in his sight for a week and you just haven’t had sex. It only occurs when he’s been gone and then he comes back and sees you. It’s as if he’s trying to produce more sperm to compete with any competing group of sperm that might be in there.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Uh huh. Okay.

Joe Quirk: Men who have, who’ve allowed their female to be out of their sight for a while produce much more sperm the first time they’re with her than at any other time.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Okay, interesting. Now how about women, are they, do they fake orgasms in order to, do you talk about that?

Joe Quirk: Oh I’m a man so I fall for the conspiracy that no woman ever faked an orgasm. They’re all true. That’s what they tell me.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Okay.

Joe Quirk: Of course…

Dr. Patti Taylor: You have no idea, right? You have no comment on that whatsoever.

Joe Quirk: Well I’ve had a lot of women friends tell me about faking orgasms and that sort of stuff.

Dr. Patti Taylor: I would never do such a thing to keep a man around. Okay, we’ll end this topic right away, right.

Joe Quirk: Yes. And of course women can get away with that, you know. I mean I can’t really fake an orgasm. It’s, you sort of know. Yes, women do fake orgasms. I mean it’s, it’s not as simple a process making a woman orgasm as it is for a man. The other thing about women that’s interesting is this huge, huge variation in how orgasmic they are. Some women are just very naturally orgasmic, and some women claim to have never had an orgasm in their entire lives. And there’s everything in between.

Dr. Patti Taylor: That’s true.

Joe Quirk: Yeah.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Well you know what I say; if you fake one well enough you’ll probably start to feel one, and you ought to give that a try, and maybe you’ll actually start to have one. But long-term, you really ought to just learn how to have them.

Joe Quirk: That’s really funny…

Dr. Patti Taylor: And quit the faking.

Joe Quirk: Fake it ‘til you make it, is that what you’re….

Dr. Patti Taylor: Well fake it ‘til you make it, but then quit faking it and actually go out and learn how to have them or tell the truth. You know what I’m saying, short-term, long-term…

Joe Quirk: Yeah. I think it’s funny the lovers I’ve had that have had to concentrate to reach orgasm, you know. For a man a lot of times it’s like the minute you think about what you’re actually doing, you’re going to orgasm, so you’re trying to not think about what you’re doing.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Well that’s, that’s the sperm and egg dilemma, there you go…

Joe Quirk: Yeah.

Dr. Patti Taylor: I have to concentrate sometimes for about, well, forget it. I’m not your typical person.

Joe Quirk: That’s probably why we get along.

Dr. Patti Taylor: That’s why I teach this stuff, someone’s got to be a role model, right.

Joe Quirk: Absolutely.

Dr. Patti Taylor: You know, I hold out hope to all those women that you can have it be real great, so… Anyway, we’re going to take another break. We are talking with Joe Quirk, and the topic is It’s Not You, It’s Biology, that’s your book, and you can find out more about him at his website joequirk.com. So please stay with us.

Dr. Patti Taylor: We’re back, and this is Dr. Patti Taylor, and we’re talking about the biology of passion, love, lust and orgasm. And now we’re finally going to talk about how we can rectify these diametrically opposed goals of men and women who are in the throws of passion and jealousy and lust, and who actually want to live together and make it all work out, and who did marry that nice guy, ‘cause I happen to like nice guys. You know, nice guys turn me on, I’ll be honest with you. I love nice guys. And I, so, what do we, what do we women do, you know, to make it work out?

Joe Quirk: Well, especially if you want a nice guy, that’s good. Because if you want a man to cherish and adore you so much, he wants to control his sperm spreading instincts even when you get old. I said at the end of the last show that beauty will get you attention, but it will not get you love. And if you think about movie stars who are some of the most beautiful wealthy attention grabbing women in the world, they can’t work out a marriage, they can’t stay off drugs, they can’t keep a man, they get done wrong by sperm spreaders over and over. Why? What do men want? These women are so beautiful. Well all those women have is wealth, fame and beauty. What’s missing? Well because of long childhoods, men evolved two instincts; it’s to lust after fertile bodies and to fall in love with good potential mothers. Men don’t know it, but they have a father instinct. So, you ever seen the womanizer sporting a new sex kitten on his arm, and then all of a sudden he turns around and marries a dumpy plain good-hearted loyal maternal good girl?

Dr. Patti Taylor: I haven’t seen that recently, but I’ll take your word for it.

Joe Quirk: What, my buddy Randy in college, what happened? What happened to his priorities? Another instinct in his brain was engaged. He fell in love. And it wasn’t with a sexiness. Men want different things when it comes to a lover and a wife or sex and long-term love. They ran a, Psychotis ran a survey where they asked men in something like 36 different cultures, we’re talking about hunter gatherers, we’re talking about Europeans, we’re talking about African’s, and they ask them to rate potential qualities in a mate, seventeen qualities, put them in order of what you most prefer. And when they’re talking about quick boinks, one night stands, you can probably predict what men want. You know, they want firm breasts, they want signs of fertility, they want, you know, youthfulness, they want robust hair. But when you take another group of men from all those cultures and you ask them, “Rate these qualities, what do you want in a long-term partner?”, the three qualities rated universally by men all over the world, very highly, no close second, are kindness, loyalty and intelligence. This is men talking about who they  want in a long-term partner. Sexiness didn’t even make the list, wealth didn’t even make the list, skinniness didn’t even make the list. Universal kindness, loyalty and intelligence. So if you think of sperm spreaders as not being very choosy, they’ll have sex with anybody, but when you take a sperm spreader and you set him up for long-term commitment, he becomes ultra choosy. And I can’t help noticing that the qualities he’s attracted to are all qualities useful for motherhood and for long-term commitment.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Well, that’s great. Now how ‘bout the other way around? Okay, so, well now let me ask you, how ‘bout the women that think they want the bad boy, what do they do?

Joe Quirk: Well I think women have this dual agenda, and especially younger women are more likely to be attracted to the bad boy as, if you think of these two different strategies, the nest securing strategy and the gene stealing strategy, the bad boy strategy is a strategy for getting the very best genes. And especially younger women, if you can think of them as they can have a baby, because they’re younger they’re more likely to survive and raise it, and then as they get older they have to start thinking about getting a man that’s going to commit for a longer period of time.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Really nice and wonderful…

Joe Quirk: Really nice and wonderful.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Well that’s, that’s not the worst thing that can happen, I have to tell you, you know, as someone who’s really, I’m actually really turned on by the nice loyal types, you know.

Joe Quirk: That’s really sweet. We need more girls like you.

Dr. Patti Taylor: You know what, this is, this is the whole thing about expanded orgasm, you can train a guy to be really sexy and get those hormones just fired up out of no, you know, like you said, let them ring that doorbell and let them in and you got it both, you know.

Joe Quirk: Yeah. I mean it’s certainly helped me women being explicit about what makes them happy in sex, because I’ve just found everyone is very different.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Yeah, you know, send those bad boys running to the books to study up on, you know…

Joe Quirk: Right.

Dr. Patti Taylor: They can’t rely on that jaw line anymore, they got to compete with the good guys, you know, who now how to get in there and really turn a woman on. So anything else… Otherwise I want to just talk a little bit about you and then we’ll close out the show, but any other comments on jealousy, possession?

Joe Quirk: Well one of the things I want to say to men that I’ve learned is self-confidence to not be faked. All the cognitive tests show that women and girls are superior at reading body language, faces and tones of voice, and they pick up on queues that men are not aware of and this is demonstrable. Among all social primates, females are experts at reading the history of a male monkey’s success and how he carries himself, which crucially he cannot fake. So the female detection mechanism must always be more subtle than the males ability to fake it, otherwise any old schlump monkey could fake a strut and sweep her off her feet. So how do you exude the silver back success you haven’t earned yet? I’ll try not to spend too much time on this, but Jane Goodall spent 45 years in Tanzania watching what she called a “chimp soap opera”. And there were two chimps competing for alpha status. They were Freud and Froto. And Froto was big, he was aggressive, he was mean, he was the best hunter in the band, he never shared his meat. And Freud was kind of older, he was laid back, he was an okay hunter, but he always shared his meat and he always scratched the backs of lower ranking chimps. So which male do you think won the alpha spot? It was Freud. Among social primates who survive on cooperation, brawn and aggression isn’t nearly as attractive to females as social respect. The women, the females, not the women, the females chimps preferred the male who had the most confidence and didn’t need to scream and bully to make up for his insecurity complex.

Dr. Patti  Taylor: What a sweet story.

Joe Quirk: Yeah.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Aww. Well that’s great. Thank you. I’m touched by that. That’s beautiful. That’s such a great story for us to think about, especially we’re all working together so much more these days, right.

Joe Quirk: Right. Just remember, being domineering is not the same as being a dominant personality, you know… Steve Jobs, or Barack Obama’s more attractive to women than Mike Tyson.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Mm. Well, whole new, whole ‘nother show just on that, which we won’t do now. But anyway, before we close out the show, I just wanted to, I’m sure our listeners would love to hear just a little bit about you, what you do, you know, what your passion in life is, anything you want to say about you.

Joe Quirk: Well I started out as a non-monogamous novelist. And as a result of working on this book I became a married science writer. When I first came to understand the principles of evolutionary biology, I learned to succeed with women even though I wasn’t broke…, even though I was broke. But as I read more about why the emotions of people with wombs evolved, I came to understand women’s needs more deeply and I came to understand myself more deeply, and I found to my surprise I became a good friend to women. I was like a gay man.

Dr. Patti Taylor: I love, I love gay men, but go on.

Joe Quirk: Yes, women love gay men. Why? Because they have an intuitive sense of how women feel, which straight men don’t have in the same way. And my wife still remembers that when I met her, I said, “Hey, you know, I’m a good lover, terrible boyfriend. Just back off. I’ve never…” And now she says I’m such a good husband. And how did the change happen? Believe it or not, I tell all my fellow geeks it was studying the biology of human nature. It’s, it’s really sublime, it really reveals a lot about us as human beings, and it illuminates the other sex, which is really important. And that can be used for good or evil. So don’t let your mate read this without you reading it first.

Dr. Patti Taylor: Well it’s an amazing book. I loved it. I laughed all the way through it, so… And you’re also a copy writer, right?

Joe Quirk: Yes. I’m a ghost writer and I’m a copy writer and I write for websites and I write all, I just, I love writing so I do all sorts of things.

Dr. Patti Taylor: So anyone would be extremely lucky to, to get you to write for them, so with your amazing insights into human nature. So thank you so much. Do you have a parting thought for our listeners today?

Joe Quirk: The scientific evidence is in, race differences do not really exist, but sex differences really do.

Dr. Patti Taylor: They really do.

Joe Quirk: Yes.

Dr. Patti Taylor: They really do. Okay. Well, thank you so much for coming on our show.

Joe Quirk: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Patti Taylor: It’s been a pleasure. We’ve been talking to Joe Quirk. You can find out more about him at his website, joequirk.com, j-o-e-q-u-i-r-k, dot com, as well as read some free chapters from his book, which, you know, if you just have a little bit of time at lunch or something, they’re just so uplifting and wonderful, I just, go check out some of the stuff on his website and treat yourself. And you also have a book coming out, so great person to meet. So please fill out our survey at survey.personallifemedia.com, so we know who you are. It’ll help me out. So this brings us to the end of our show. Thank you for listening. Please send me email at [email protected]. For text and transcripts of this show and other shows at Personal Life Media, of course, personallifemedia.com. Also please visit me at expandedlovemaking.com where you can join my mailing list. This is Dr. Patti Taylor, and that’s all for now. I remain yours in ever expanding lovemaking. And I’ll see you next week.