This is an interesting talk on love and lust. Probably the most interesting part to me was how to create lust in a long term relationship. It starts at 10:00 minutes into the video:

Newness, surprise, mystery, and arousal producing activities are the three keys to increasing lust. Arousal isn’t just sexual arousal. Scary movies, roller coasters, etc. also produce arousal.

Sex clubs, sex parties, and playing with other couples produce all three and enhance lust in your loving long term relationship.

H/T to Justin J Lehmiller.

Dr. Justin Lehmiller gave his blog post the title Some People’s Brains May Be “Wired” To Seek More Sex. He says:

What these results tell us is that people’s brains seem to respond to sexual imagery in very different ways. For some people (i.e., those with more partners), the brain appears to be highly sensitive to all sexual cues, whether they are mild or intense. However, for others (i.e., those with fewer partners), the threshold for sexual arousal is set much higher, meaning that it takes a strong cue to elicit a strong response. Because these differences in brain sensitivity were related to previous number of sex partners, these findings raise the provocative possibility that the way our brains are “wired” to respond to sexual cues could potentially be a key factor in explaining why some people pursue more sexual partners than others.

But I am siding with the skeptics in the comments. Especially SandraL who said:

The conclusions being drawn here seem to be making unproven assumptions about correlation and causality. Are people more likely to seek out sexual experiences because they’re more stimulated by explicit sexuality, or are people more stimulated by explicit sexual images because their brains have been primed by frequent sexual experiences in the past year?

I know there has been a fair amount of desensitization to my sexual interest over the years. I have seen and participated in so many group sex situations that it seems pretty ordinary and natural to me. This was certainly not the case when I was in my late teens.

I think more research on this topic is needed.

I found the article Why So Many People Care So Much About Others’ Sex Lives interesting. It referenced this study which concluded:

At the individual level, perceived female economic dependence explained significant variance in anti-promiscuity morality, even after controlling for variance explained by age, sex, religiosity, political conservatism, and the anti-promiscuity views of geographical neighbors. At the state level, median female income was strongly negatively related to anti-promiscuity morality and this relationship was fully mediated by perceived female economic dependence. These results were consistent with the view that anti-promiscuity beliefs may function to promote paternity certainty in circumstances where male parental investment is particularly important.

That would imply that people would be more likely to participate in the lifestyle when women are more likely to have their own jobs and able to support themselves. It is certainly true that nearly all of the women I know in the lifestyle have their own jobs. But I don’t know that much about women who are not in the lifestyle. It could be that most of the women I happen to know are capable of being independent.

This is a pretty decent video about sex myths. It has nothing to do with the lifestyle though.

There is a lot of truth in this video:

I found it here after a lifestyle acquaintance posted a link on Facebook.