Polar opposition in the sex-specific areas, then, is combined with resemblance in all other respects. The man will usually be physically stronger than the women, a sex-specific difference that makes them attractive to one another. But as soon as this difference becomes too great — as soon as the woman is so weak, or pretends to be so weak, that the physical difference can no longer be regarded as sex-specific — the stronger partner’s protective instinct may seriously interfere with his sex instinct. He may refrain from sex in order not to hurt his partner. If, in addition to being physically inferior, she is also mentally inferior, the weaker partner tends to become increasingly the object of his protection. The sex act — normally a kind of combat at close quarters — under such conditions involves considerable self-restraint, and loses something essential in the process. Equality on the intellectual level, combined with polarity on the physical, is therefore a condition sine qua non of full-scale love between a man and a woman.
A good guarantee for the necessary resemblance of the partners in the nonsexual realm is their belonging to the same generation. By a generation we mean the time span between the birth of an individual and the birth of its first offspring — about twenty to twenty five years. Sexuality is in any case for adults, but if one partner is more than twenty five years older than the other, and thereby belongs to the generation of the other’s grandparents, the chances for a mutually satisfactory sexual relationship are relatively poor. There are of course cases in which a particular person’s special dynamism can bridge this biological gap for a time, but such exceptions only confirm the rule. The frequent alliances between young women and men who are their seniors by more than a generation are no proof to the contrary; they always depend on the same factor: the wealth or social status of the much older man. If it were a biological mechanism that drove attractive young females into the arms of old men, a poor old pensioner might occasionally have a chance of marrying a rich young girl.
Esther Vilar, The Polygamous Sex, 1976.
November 3, 2014
QotD: Age differences in sexual partners
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