Many sociological studies have demonstrated that for the average couple with no psychological problems, and a life not too cluttered by excessive work pressures, sex occurs an average of two to three times per week. Under this circumstance, sex is likely to occur at any time, unrelated to whether it will lead to pregnancy. But what if you have a very busy schedule and a hectic, crowded life, with both partners working, a tremendous amount of stress, and a sexual frequency that is more erratic than a steady two to three times per week? If that is the case and you don’t know when you are ovulating, you might be having sex at the wrong time.

Why are human beings so different from animals, and what is the benefit of having this totally random interest in sex? It may be related to our family system.

We know that the human mind today is no different physically than-it was forty thousand years ago with the emergence of Cro-Magnon man. But forty thousand years ago, humans were busy learning more efficient methods of hunting and producing primitive art on the walls of caves. Now that same brain is being used to send astronauts into space and to probe the very mysteries of DNA and the genes that create life. How can that same primitive brain be responsible for our incredible civilization? The reason for this is the immense flexibility and capacity for learning that is unique to humans. Other animals are simply born with all the instincts necessary for survival and successful behavior. Humans, however, are born with an enormously educable brain. This requires a family system and a relatively small number of offspring per parent so that the lessons learned in each generation can be passed on from parent to child. If sex in humans were triggered by increased estrogen or testosterone levels timed specifically to when sex is likely to lead to pregnancy, permanent male-female pair-bonding would have been less likely to develop.

It is also worth noting that humans are the only animals that have intercourse facing each other. Throughout the animal kingdom, the female squats in her position of heat and the male mounts her facing her rear end. Only humans face each other during sex, indicating that some kind of communication is occurring other than just a chemically triggered desire for orgasm.

Mommys of fraternal twins