Written by: The Pretender
February 17th, 2015
17 min read
Original published URL: https://www.stickmanbangkok.com/readers-submissions/2015/02/the-coolidge-effect-in-pattaya/
Gentlemen,
In this submission I would like to talk about a phenomenon known as the ‘Coolidge Effect’ and how it applies to all men engaging in the naughty nightlife in Pattaya and how knowing about and respecting this phenomenon is very important.
In the movie Fight Club, Brad Pitt (Tyler) says to Edward Norton (Jack) outside Lou’s Tavern “How much can you really know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?”
In this submission I ask you: How much can you really know about yourself and your true nature as a man and your vulnerability to the Coolidge effect if you’ve never been to Pattaya?
Hold that question in your mind as you read through this submission.
The first time I arrived in Pattaya in November 2012 and walked down Soi 6 I just could not believe my eyes. I was in utter disbelief that such an environment existed in this world and I thought I was in heaven. I was so shocked and excited by what I had seen that I did a lap of the soi and then walked into the Lord Nelson Pub as it looked quite empty and my senses needed a rest. I sat down at the bar to have a drink on my own and to try to gather my thoughts and take in what I was witnessing all around me. As I sat and drank my beer a heavyset gentlemen walked in with his Thai girlfriend and started playing darts. I remarked to him that this was my first time in Pattaya and I could not believe my eyes as to the goings on outside. He didn’t even flinch as he continued to throw darts at the dartboard. It was obvious that he was an old hand in Pattaya and had grown used to the environment in Soi 6. He remarked that I had that newbie look about me and he had seen that stupid grin on the faces of men plenty of times before in Pattaya and then started talking about how Pattaya was Disney Land for western men. The amazed look on my face was very similar to the look on Emilio Estevez’s face in this great short clip from the movie Repo Man: (0:25 – 0:51).
That first fateful trip was over 2 years ago now. I have made another 3 trips since then and I have had plenty of time to gather my thoughts and feelings about Pattaya and I have over the course of those trips and years learned a lot about myself, my nature as a man and the nature of other men.
The very first trip to Pattaya is the one which for me was the most unbelievable as I had never been in such a sexually appealing environment before. I was not aware of the changes that were occurring in my brain due to being present in said environment (which I will discuss shortly). I was however aware of my thoughts and feelings and my thinking can be summed up perfectly with this very apt quote:
“Man – You’ve hit the evolutionary jackpot”
Think about that quote for a moment in the context of human evolution. Back in the day – on the planes of the savannah in Africa – how many times would a human male ever come across so many young, fertile and beautiful women in the one place at the one time? No makeup or cosmetics back then either remember. Our ancient male relatives would never have come across such a situation. If they did they would have gone into a frenzy of mating and had sex with as many different beautiful women as they could. Such is the nature of men – primed by evolution to seek out young, fertile, beautiful and sexually available women.
Thinking about the sexually charged environment in Soi 6 Pattaya – let’s now consider the phenomenon known as the “Coolidge Effect”. In biology and psychology, the Coolidge effect refers to a phenomenon seen in mammals whereby males (and to a lesser extent females) exhibit renewed sexual interest if introduced to new receptive sexual partners even after refusing sex from prior but still available sexual partners. Frank Beach was a behavioural endocrinologist who first mentioned the Coolidge effect in publication in 1955, crediting one of his students with suggesting the term at a psychology conference. It refers to an old joke about Calvin Coolidge when he was President. The President and Mrs Coolidge were being shown separately around an experimental government farm. When Mrs Coolidge came to the chicken yard she noticed that a rooster was mating very frequently. She asked the attendant how often that happened and was told “dozens of times each day”. Mrs Coolidge said “Tell that to the President when he comes by”. Upon being told, the President asked “Same hen every time?” The reply was “Oh no, Mr President, a different hen every time”. The President then said “Tell that to Mrs Coolidge”.
Empirical evidence has shown the Coolidge effect to be true. Experiments were made with rats whereby a rat was placed into an enclosed large box with four or five female rats in heat. The male rat immediately began to mate with all the female rats again and again until eventually he became exhausted. The females continued nudging and licking him, yet he did not respond. When a novel female was introduced into the box, he became alert and began to mate once again with the new female. The phenomenon is not limited to just chickens and rats. It has been observed in many mammalian species. The Coolidge effect is attributed to an increase in dopamine levels and the subsequent effect upon an animal’s limbic system (or paleomammalian brain) – a complex set of brain structures located on both sides of the thalamus, right under the cerebrum.
Graph: Note the time to ejaculation by the ram in the graph above is under two minutes with a different female sheep each time but with the same female sheep each time the time to ejaculation by the ram grows to 17 minutes by the fifth copulation: http://www.heretical.com/wilson/coolidge.html
The Coolidge effect is seen strikingly in farm animals such as sheep and cattle. Rams and bulls are resistant to repeating sex with the same female. Farmers know that for breeding purposes they need to have more than one male to service all their sheep and cows. A single bull can be relied upon to do the rounds of all the available cows and a single ram will eventually service all the sheep in his domain.
Donald Symons (1979) of the University of California, Santa Barbara, has pointed out that the term ‘indiscriminate’ has been applied inaccurately to male sexuality. Male animals do not choose their mates randomly; they identify and reject those that they have already had sex with. In the case of rams and bulls it is notoriously difficult to fool them that a female is unfamiliar. Attempts to disguise an old partner by covering her face and body or masking her vaginal odours with other smells are usually unsuccessful. Somehow she is identified as ‘already serviced’ and the male moves on to less familiar females. W. S. Gilbert’s assertion that ‘love unchanged will cloy’ (Trial by Jury) seems to apply with a vengeance down on the farm.
Despite us men having moral compunctions to deal with – the Coolidge effect is still very much in operation. Before marriage it is usual for men to initiate sexual intercourse at a fairly high frequency with their fiancée. After a few years of marriage however the husbands sexual appetite begins to wane and an apparent reversal of libido may even occur, with the now frustrated wife demanding more love-making than her ‘tired’ husband is able to supply. He, of course, is still perfectly capable of being aroused by his mistresses and office girls and, if fortunate enough to secure an invitation to an orgy, would have little difficulty completing intercourse with two or three anonymous young women in the course of the evening’s festivities. Sex therapists see many men who are reported as ‘impotent’ by their wives but who privately confess to considerable prowess with a succession of mistresses.
In my own case – I became interested in the Coolidge Effect one night after having two ejaculatory sexual experiences in a very short space of time in Soi 6 Pattaya. I picked up a ladyboy, had a drink with her, then went upstairs and had sex with her. Afterwards I showered and dressed and before I made it from one end of Soi 6 to the other I had already picked up another ladyboy, had a drink with her and was having sex again – in the space of under 30 minutes. That was the most extreme thing I have ever done (perhaps tame by Pattaya standards but I’m a white collared geek remember) and it taught me a lot about my nature as a man. I thought I was ‘out of control’ doing what I was doing but I couldn’t shake the thought that there must be a phenomenon to describe such male behaviour because it felt so good and so very natural – hence my research into it and coming across the Coolidge effect. Ten years in monogamous relationships with two different women also taught me that sex with the same woman gets really boring over time whilst (and note this carefully) her negative behaviour such as nagging, complaining and her sense of entitlement – grows significantly.
Men who watch pornography (all of us non liars) do a lot of clicking. Click, click, click – we load up a porn tube site and we are constantly clicking through video previews and opening windows of new and fresh porn, which contains imagery of women that we find the most attractive and sexually exciting.
What is happening in our minds as we masturbate in our porn sessions is dopamine is surging with every click as we come across scenes of new, novel, fresher female mates. It’s a rollercoaster ride between normal and high levels of dopamine until we end our session by climaxing. There is a very good Ted lecture by Gary Wilson titled “The Great Porn Experiment” which is about what happens in the male brain when watching porn. I encourage all of you to watch it.
On the streets of Pattaya in places like Soi 6 – new, novel, fresh females are being ‘presented’ to us in sexually appealing clothing and are available for us to have sex with. This is far more alluring than any Internet porn as this is occurring in real life. This place really exists! With each female presentation we are undergoing a dopamine surge and we become very sexually aroused with our hearts beating hard and fast as we think about how great it would be to have sex with this new, novel, fresh and sexually appealing beautiful and fertile young woman. In our minds we are in Disney Land and we don’t ever want to come down off this dopamine high let alone leave this unreal environment. Remember – our minds are telling us that we have “hit the evolutionary jackpot” and our bodies are responding accordingly. In fact – leaving this environment causes dopamine in our brains to return to normal or even low levels hence the feelings of depression that overcome many of us at Suvarnabhumi Airport as we wait for our flight home to boring, predictable farangland and the months of depression we face when adjusting back into our routine of low dopamine triggering western reality in environments like the corporate or government world where most of us are office drones that rank lowly in the dominance hierarchy or low level blue collar workers in drab manufacturing environments without much job autonomy or creative freedom.
As men – many – if not all of us would be willing to give up everything to stay in an environment like Pattaya where we can experience an unending variety of sexual experiences with new and novel young mates for the rest of our lives. Such is the nature of men with many of us (at least in our minds and if we are honest) willing to live in a cardboard box so long as we could stay in said environment with all its sexual freedoms. Our testosterone driven male sex drive and our lust for sex with new partners is extremely powerful – it can and in many cases does override all reason and logic. What else can explain the phenomenon of Pattaya being full of western men who have given up everything back home to live here but the almost complete absence of western women who have made the same decision (western women don’t seem to suffer from the Coolidge effect phenomenon anywhere near as badly as western men do).
I think it is very important that we recognise and respect our nature as men and our need for sexual variety. We should be especially cognisant of the Coolidge effect and how each of us is vulnerable to it and in an environment like Pattaya, Thailand – this effect is pronounced in each and every one of us and it is affecting our behaviour and our spending patterns. At all costs – we cannot afford to let things get out of hand. Many lessons can be learned from our fallen, broken or crazed western brothers – those men who came before us who have set up shop in Pattaya and ended up losing everything and in some cases even becoming homeless and living on the streets – a shocking and almost unbelievable sight for the Thais to witness. Add alcohol into the mix and Pattaya can get the better of even the best and brightest of us. It’s all a slippery slope (no pun intended).
As you walk down Soi 6 try to imagine yourself as part of a human science project run by cynical businessmen out to make money. The scientists and businessmen have colluded to manufacture the perfect stimulatory environment to make as much money from you as possible by causing you to experience the Coolidge effect again and again over and over. They understand intuitively that the unending male need for variety ensures a constant revenue stream out of your pockets and into the pockets of the bar owners, mamasans, the bar girls and all the associated hangers on. Bless them all – for without them – how much would I have learned about my true nature as a man? The understanding and acknowledgment of which has given me so much more freedom than most of my fellow men that are locked into sexless marriages with moody and aging, bitching and entitled wives.
Now – think about the poor and homeless western men living on the streets of Pattaya. How did things get to a point in their lives where they have lost everything and are living on the streets?
“Alcohol, drugs and prostitutes – it’s a dangerous cocktail that can lead to social suicide for western men. It’s so easy as well to get caught up in it all. You come here the first time and it’s like heroin. You can buy everything and everything is happiness and as soon as you pay someone you get everything you want. Then – to experience that again you come back to Thailand to live here and you never get that high again and people just get stuck here.”
Could these homeless western men be victims of the Coolidge effect? The repeat behaviour of which leads to spending money hand over first over time – the ultimate repeat purchase business for the bar owners, bar girls and their associates.
I ask you to reflect on these questions:
The story is always the same – the homeless in Thailand are all men and it’s our natural drive and instinct for sexual variety, which can be satisfied (for a price) in an environment like Pattaya which can end up costing us everything if we are not careful. Don’t end up poor and homeless like Kotto – the American stranded in Pattaya raving about cigarette butts in the ocean:
Lastly – think about the phenomenon known as the ‘Pattaya Flying Club’. In November 2014 an American man became the latest member of the club and committed suicide after falling 27 stories to his death. His name was Douglas Rex Reinehart and he was 52 years old. Reinehart left a note saying “I’m out of money, I over stayed my visa, quit my job so it seemed a good time to end it all. We all have to go some time, might as well be with a couple of nights of partying in Pattaya.” There is a video here which has animation of the situation before his jump:
How many times have we all heard the expression “No money no honey”?
What about: “No money, no honey, no dopamine high”.
Being in Thailand and having no money left, facing the prospect of the sex tap (dopamine delivery device) being turned off permanently would be a frightening and very depressing situation which would have to lead to a dopamine low in the human male brain which would likely negatively affect decision making over a medium term period of time (days, weeks, months) which can lead to a farang making the fateful decision to commit suicide. These farang are literally walking around in an abnormally low altered abnormal chemical state (just as we farang are in the red light districts in Thailand but with an abnormally high altered chemical state). Studies have been done about the role of dopamine in suicidal behaviour and I believe that members of the Pattaya Flying Club are in a depressed mental state brought on by a variety of factors such as lack of money, loss of large amounts of money, sex tap off and negative thoughts about having to return home to farang land which have combined to caused a cumulative dopamine low – a ‘perfect storm’ so to speak – the occurrence of said perfect storms we will note is particularly common in Pattaya – the suicide rate amongst foreigners living in Pattaya averages one per week according to some reports.
We must as men recognise our nature and at all costs recognise the Coolidge effect and how it impacts dopamine production in our brains and pay great respect to it. We all have to be so very careful in Pattaya – play the game and don’t let the game play you. I have heard that expression a number of times now in my travels in Thailand – no truer words have ever been spoken.
Want to learn more about yourself as a man and your vulnerability to the Coolidge effect? Travel to Pattaya, Thailand and visit Soi 6.
You will learn more about your true nature as a man in 1 night in Soi 6 Pattaya than you have in 10 years in a monogamous relationship back home in the West.
All the best Gentlemen!
The Pretender
Stickman's thoughts:
There is more to life than sex. Much more.
