Sperm Wars

Full transcript of Sperm Wars on The Dr. Susan Block Show:

Why are so many men excited by cuckolding, even if they're jealous? Well, one explanation lies in evolutionary biology. Scientists used to think that all sperm was pretty much the same, a bunch of runners with one goal, to run to the egg and inseminate it,

with the ejaculation being like the proverbial gunshot, sending all little tadpoles racing to the mothership. Sounds plausible, except it's not exactly true. Looking under a big microscope,

scientists since found out that the egg inseminators only make up for about 1% of a man's sperm. So what about the rest? What about the 99%? Well, it turns out that sperm is less like a bunch of marathon runners and more like an army or a football team, rah, rah, rah.

And the tackles and full backs in there, you know, being the aggressive ones inside the woman's reproductive tract, and they don't even try to run to the egg like the quarterbacks because their objective is to hunt and tackle and kill sperm.

What sperm are they trying to kill? Well, not sperm from the same man. That wouldn't be very good teamwork, would it? No, they are trying to kill sperm from another man

that might be in the vaginal tract of the woman that they're trying to inseminate. The Superbowl of Sex. Sometimes they even use chemical warfare, emitting powerful enzymes that can kill these other sperm.

But, of course, they come up against the defense from the other man's load and that block and protect the quarterback inseminators from the other man's attackers. And the football game is on! Go team, go! Or you could say the sperm war is underway.

So what does the sperm war theory explain? Well, it does explain why some men love football and war That's one thing. It also explains why some men enjoy the idea of being cuckolded.

A cuckold being a man whose wife or girlfriend has sex with another man. That's right, this kind of goes back in human ancestry to prehistoric times when we were not very monogamous and we probably behaved a lot like bonobos or common chimps having sex all at once

or sometimes when there's one fertile female, a bunch of males will have a gangbang with her or maybe just have sex with her over the course of a few days. So the male psyche gets primed to be aroused by male competition. How does sperm wars affect men today?

Well, we don't have so many gangbangs but when a man has sex with a woman he unconsciously considers the odds of whether or not she's had sex with other men or will have sex with other men

and basically whether or not he might be cuckolded and if he thinks she's totally faithful he might love her tremendously he might think she's the most beautiful woman in the world

he might even think she's really sexy but if he thinks she's never going to be with another man his brain sends a message to his testicles that says conserve those sperm

you don't have to send out the whole army or the football team into a field where we have no opposing team if a man suspects that his wife or his girlfriend is having sex with another man

whether or not she actually is if he just thinks that he could be being cuckolded whether he's feeling humiliated by it or vigorated

whether he's very accepting or jealous his brain sends a message to his testicles that says make more sperm we have rivals

we have another football team on the field and we have to send out our full team and he has a stronger erection and a bigger, more copious ejaculation

studies have shown that when a man's wife is away for a little while even if he's ejaculated during the week that she's away or the period that she's away

he will get a more copious ejaculate he will get a stronger, higher sperm count when she's away if she goes out with the girls

or if she stays late at a meeting and he will want to jump her bones when she comes back what about jealousy?

well, sperm works competition is very exciting it reminds a man that his wife who he might take for granted at other times is worth fighting for

and makes his erection fighting hard but yeah, jealousy can kind of creep in and it's all tangled up with possessiveness

and insecurity and fear and yeah, it can just add the wrong kind of fuel to that sperm wars fire

it would take that fun fighting between the sperm and turn it into real fighting between people

well, in those cases it's best to keep sperm wars in the realm of fantasy which can be almost exciting as the real thing and a lot less dangerous

there's a fine art to this the art of balancing love and lust the sperm wars theory is not just a sex geek's delight though it certainly is that

understanding how sperm wars works really helps to keep lust alive in a long-term relationship now, if only we could keep the wars between the sperm

and stop the wars between the people make sperm wars not real wars I'm Dr. Susan Block