In David J. Ley’s Insatiable Wives, a book that deals frankly with female-led open marriages, one of the most refreshing moments comes in Chapter 10. There, Ley pauses to critique something rarely challenged in popular science writing: the “just-so story.” The term comes from Rudyard Kipling’s playful tales, like “How the Leopard Got Its Spots,” and it refers to any tidy explanation that sounds persuasive but lacks rigorous proof.

Sexology, like many areas of human science, is littered with such stories. They offer a sense of certainty where evidence is ambiguous, giving us neat answers to messy questions. “Why do men desire this?” or “Why do women avoid that?” becomes the stuff of smooth narratives—stories that reassure us that we understand. But as Ley reminds us, explanatory power is not the same thing as truth, and plausibility is not proof.

This is where epistemology—the study of how we know what we know—becomes crucial. To confuse a clever narrative with scientific reality is to risk building our worldview on sand. And when the subject is as fraught with taboo and cultural baggage as human sexuality, the allure of just-so stories becomes especially dangerous.

“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.” — Mark Twain

The Appeal of Just-So Stories

Why do we cling to neat explanations, even when the truth is more complicated? The answer lies in how our minds are wired. Human beings crave order and coherence; our brains are natural storytellers. When confronted with the chaotic tangle of human behavior, particularly sexual behavior, we instinctively reach for a single-cause, single-effect explanation. It feels comforting. It feels like knowledge.

Psychologists call this tendency a cognitive bias: a shortcut our brains take to conserve effort. As Alexander Swan points out in his work on biases, these shortcuts often lead us astray, luring us into pseudoscientific beliefs and overconfidence. The very efficiency of our thinking becomes a liability.

Just-so stories are compelling because they have narrative charm. They make sense of what is otherwise bewildering, much as ancient myths once explained thunder or eclipses. But in science, explanatory elegance does not guarantee accuracy. A story may line up with select pieces of evidence, yet fail to account for the whole picture.

This problem becomes acute in sexology. Here, the pull of moral narratives—what we want to be true about men and women—often combines with the brain’s craving for simplicity. The result: a landscape filled with plausible-sounding theories that may not withstand careful scrutiny.

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” — Richard Feynman

Sexology and the Taboo Barrier

If just-so stories are seductive everywhere, they are doubly so in sexology. The study of human sexuality suffers from two stubborn barriers: lack of data and layers of taboo. For decades, many questions have gone unasked simply because they were deemed too uncomfortable, too impolite, or too threatening to moral norms. The result is a field with gaps wide enough for speculation to rush in.

In religious and moral contexts, this problem intensifies. Within Christian circles—where I have written before about the silence surrounding sexuality—questions that challenge the accepted moral framework are often suppressed. The reluctance to speak openly leaves a vacuum, and into that vacuum step the “safe” stories, the ones that echo familiar cultural or theological patterns. These narratives are rarely tested against empirical evidence, but they survive because they resonate with values and intuitions.

Whispers in the Sanctuary: Why We Don’t Talk About Sex

Here is where confirmation bias, one of the most insidious cognitive biases, does its work. We are drawn to explanations that confirm what we already believe. When combined with the moral discomfort surrounding sex, this bias creates an environment where just-so stories flourish unchecked.

The tragedy is that by keeping sexuality shrouded in taboo, we prevent the kind of open inquiry that might dissolve the myths. What remains are hand-me-down stories dressed up as science—comforting, perhaps, but often misleading.

“Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.” — Michel de Montaigne

Epistemology — How Do We Know What We Know?

At the heart of this issue is a deceptively simple question: how do we know what we know? Philosophers call this field epistemology, and it wrestles with the difference between believing a good story and discerning genuine knowledge.

One approach is called “inference to the best explanation.” We gather evidence, weigh the alternatives, and then adopt the explanation that seems to make the most sense. It is a powerful method—but it never gives us certainty. At best, it gives us probabilities. A theory can be more likely to be true without being undeniably true.

This is why I resist claims of 100% certainty. When someone insists that a theory explains everything, I instinctively look for the blind spot. Another story, equally plausible, may use the same evidence to arrive at a different conclusion. Thomas Kuhn made this point in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: scientific communities often cling to dominant paradigms not because they are final truths, but because they are the reigning stories. Paradigms shift, and what was once “obvious” collapses under new evidence.

So I prefer to think in terms of spectrums rather than absolutes—whether on a scale of 1 to 10 or 0 to 100. Every explanation sits somewhere on that sliding scale of likelihood. To acknowledge this is not to fall into nihilism; it is to adopt humility. It is to admit that in matters as complex as human behavior, especially sexuality, the neatest stories are often the least trustworthy.

Atypical Christian – Hold Things Tentatively

“The wise man doubts often, and changes his mind. The fool is obstinate, and never doubts; he knows everything but his own ignorance.” — Akhenaten

Keeping It Real

For all the allure of just-so stories, what impressed me most about David J. Ley’s Insatiable Wives was his willingness to call them out. In a field where tidy explanations often masquerade as truth, he “kept it real” by acknowledging the weak spots—not only in other research but also in his own theses. That kind of intellectual humility is rare, and it signals a deeper respect for the evidence.

I must admit, in the study of human behavior, certainty is always elusive. Unlike the hard sciences—where cause and effect can often be isolated, measured, and reproduced—sexology inhabits a softer realm. The forces at play are too complex, too interwoven with biology, psychology, culture, and personal history for any single-cause narrative to hold the field. What we find instead are multiple factors in constant interaction, shaping outcomes in ways that resist simple explanation.

This does not mean we give up on seeking knowledge. It means we approach it with balance, aware of our cognitive biases, cautious of our attraction to easy answers, and humble enough to admit when we don’t know. In that sense, Ley’s reminder is more than a critique of sexology; it is a lesson in how to pursue truth itself—with honesty, self-awareness, and the courage to resist stories that are simply too good to be true.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” — Aristotle

Reflection

What “just-so stories” about human sexuality—or human behavior more broadly—have you encountered, and how did they shape your assumptions before you examined them critically?

How comfortable are you with uncertainty in knowledge? Do you find it freeing, unsettling, or both when experts admit complexity rather than claiming absolute certainty?

Excerpt

Just-so stories offer tidy answers to messy questions, especially in sexology. But explanatory charm is not proof. David J. Ley’s Insatiable Wives reminds us to keep it real—embracing uncertainty, resisting easy narratives, and cultivating humility in the pursuit of truth about human behavior.