Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship (6 page)

The low desire partner always controls sex.

I
n
Chapter 1
we discovered there’s always a low desire partner (and a high desire partner), and the low desire partner always controls sex. Why and how did humans evolve this curious trait, giving the low desire partner control? By the end of this chapter we’ll answer this question and consider what it means for your relationship.

To get us started, let me introduce you to a couple that, like many couples, had fallen out of love. Sitting in my office, Doreen lamented, “Adam says he has no romantic feelings or sexual desire for me anymore. He doesn’t think they can be rekindled. We love each other, but there’s no passion. We used to have sex twice a week. Now we have sex once a month—and only when I initiate it. I miss the way things used to be at the start of our relationship.”

Adam defended himself. “We used to have good sex, but the chemistry is gone. I can’t make myself feel what I don’t feel any more. I love Doreen, but I’m not in love with her.”

I said, “I can’t count the times I’ve heard this from couples. Like them, this upsets you. It makes sense that it would. At least you feel you have something to rekindle. People who never had it to begin with think they’re worse off.”

“Well, that’s not much solace,” Doreen replied. “I don’t feel important to Adam. Besides, he’s the man. He’s supposed to have the higher desire and initiate sex. This isn’t normal.” Adam bristled but said nothing. He felt outgunned in their arguments.

“In half the couples who seek my help, the man is the low desire partner, so you look pretty normal to me. But regardless of who the low desire partner is, couples fear that once passion and desire die it is gone forever. Most clients are pleased to find out they were wrong.”

Adam perked up. “How did you help them?”

“I helped them approach sexual desire problems with an entirely new picture about how things work. You and Doreen think this shouldn’t be happening. But sexual desire problems are natural and inevitable.”

Doreen was primed for verbal combat. “If sexual problems were natural and inevitable,” she crowed, “the human race would have died out.” I paused and gentled my tone, signaling that I would work with her, but I would not argue with her.

“You’re thinking of sexual desire as mating and procreating. It takes a while to get over that. You need patience to stay open and alert to a new way of seeing things. I’ve found sexual desire problems can be the
midpoint
rather than the
end
of a relationship. When you understand this, you’ll stop feeling unloved, and you’ll watch your interactions with Adam differently.”

Doreen eased off, and she and Adam settled down.

“You
can’t
go back to the romantic love you shared early in your relationship.” I continued, “But that’s not the problem. You need to
go forward
. That’s what everyone needs to do: Your sexual desire has to come from an entirely new source. Lots of people find this more satisfying than what they had before.”

This possibility had never occurred to Doreen. “Well, why can’t we rekindle what we had at the start of our relationship? I read ‘rekindling’ articles all the time. If Adam spent more time with me—and we had more sex—maybe that would be enough.”

Adam asked, “What do you mean by a new source of sexual desire?”

I could see from their questions that the process of resolving their sexual desire problems had begun.

Helen Fisher is a celebrated anthropologist and author of wonderful books, including
The Sex Contract
and
Anatomy of Love
. Recently, in
Why We Love
, Helen documented the brain circuitry and chemistry of romantic love and desire.
⁸
Using the latest brain-scanning technology, Helen studied the brain activity of women and men who had recently fallen madly in love. A region deep near the center of the brain lit up when lovers gazed at a photo of their sweetheart.
⁹
This region is located in the most primitive (reptilian) part of your brain (which evolved over 65 million years ago), and produces the natural stimulant dopamine.
¹⁰
The more active this part was, the more madly in love the people were.
¹¹
Another part of the brain lit up as well, which also produces dopamine.
¹²

In other words, the initial madness and irrationality we feel in romantic love comes from the primitive emotional centers of your brain.
¹³
Romantic love involves the brain’s self-reward system, which is why we like to be in love.
¹⁴
We feel energized, aroused, elated, and focused on our new beloved.
¹⁵
Initially, we’re preoccupied with our own feelings, reactions, desires, and insecurities. We feel in love and alive, but we really don’t know this other person. As romantic love progresses, we start to see our partner as a separate person, with thoughts and feelings of their own.
¹⁶
All this corresponds to what is happening in your brain. Helen Fisher discovered that as love relationships lengthen, your brain responds in new ways: People in love for longer periods of time showed brain activity in parts that map other people’s thoughts (mind-mapping) and emotions.
¹⁷
The brains of people who had recently fallen in love did not.

The parts of your brain that
don’t
light up are particularly interesting. Both maternal attachment and romantic love
deactivate
regions in your brain associated with negative emotions, assessing social situations, and mapping out other people’s intentions and emotions. Human attachment employs a “push–pull mechanism” that deactivates your discerning social judgment and negative emotions, while gluing you to a partner through your brain’s reward circuitry.
¹⁸

Romantic love is more than a feeling. Helen concluded that it is a fundamental human
drive
.
¹⁹
“Like the craving for food and water, and maternal instinct, it is physiological need, a profound urge. Romantic love is the instinct to court and win a particular mating partner.”
²⁰
This is why romantic love seems to be universal.
²¹

According to Helen, romantic love is one of three basic drives of human love and desire:

1.
Lust
(craving for sexual gratification, biological horniness)

2.
Romantic love
(infatuation with a particular partner)

3.
Attachment
(a calm, secure union with a long-term partner, including pair-bonding, monogamy, parenthood, and kinship)
²²

Each drive instructs sexual desire and mating differently. Lust is animal attraction, your desire to have sex with any semi-appropriate partner. Romantic love makes you focus on one particular partner. Attachment makes you want to live with a partner long enough to raise a child through infancy (presuming you have a child).

Each drive involves different neurochemicals in your brain. Lust is associated with testosterone and estrogen in both men and women.
²³
Romantic love involves dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. Attachment involves oxytocin and vasopressin. Because of how dopamine, norepinephrine, and testosterone mutually interact, romance can trigger lust and vice-versa.
²⁴
However, testosterone can play havoc with attachment. And attachment’s brain chemistry can suppress sexual lust and romantic love.
²⁵
It’s one reason why lust and romantic love are relatively short-term cycles.

Helen came to a conclusion you probably don’t want to hear: Romantic love is time-limited and doomed to fade. Your brain cannot maintain
this revved-up state for long. “Many of us would die of sexual exhaustion if romantic love flourished endlessly in a relationship. We wouldn’t get to work on time or concentrate on anything except ‘him’ or ‘her.’ … Romantic love did not evolve to help us maintain a stable, enduring partnership. It evolved for different purposes: to drive ancestral men and women to prefer, choose, and pursue specific mating partners, then start the mating process and remain sexually faithful to ‘him’ or ‘her’ long enough to conceive a child.”
²⁶

Having long admired Helen Fisher’s work, I met with her in 2002. Needless to say, we had an incredibly exciting conversation. We spent a delightful afternoon at the restaurant on the lake in New York’s Central Park. I proposed to Helen that humans had developed a fourth “evolutionary strategy” that now drives desire:
Our drive to develop and preserve a self
. When the human self emerged millions of years ago, we embarked on an uncharted path no animal’s sexual desire had ever taken before.

In my clinical experience, issues of selfhood control sexual desire as much as (and probably more than) lust, romantic love, and attachment. How you see yourself, how your partner treats you, and how you think your partner sees you profoundly shape your sexual desire. Struggles over sexual desire and struggles of selfhood go hand in hand in love relationships.

Your sense of self permeates your sexual desire. When, where, how, and why you have sex in an ongoing relationship is determined by more than lust, romance, and attachment. “Self” issues shape sexual desire as much (or more) than testosterone, oxytocin, and vasopressin.
²⁷
Your hormones may be pumping, and you can be horny as hell, but one sharp put-down from your partner can bring things to a screeching halt.

There’s more to romantic love than a dopamine rush from the reward centers in your brain. Loads of selfhood processes are involved. We love being in love because it makes us
self
-aware. We feel tremendously alive in the whirlwind of infatuation.
²⁸
One moment we’re flying high, and the next moment we’re crashing. Our sense of self inflates and deflates in response to a look or a word from our partner. This emotional roller coaster, itself, motivates us to develop a more solid sense of self. And after lust, romantic love, and attachment have run their course, this solid sense of self provides stability in long-term relationships. (We do miss the intensity and emotional excitement nonetheless, and
Part Four
will show you how to get it.)

Maintaining your sense of self is a need, a profound urge, a motivational system that propels you toward (and away from) an intimate relationship with your partner. Just like with lust, romantic love, and attachment, self-preservation, preserving our psychological “self,” is a driving force in human nature. But it is a force that is tenacious and difficult to control.

This is all possible because your brain has the physical capacity to support a complex sense of self. Your self even has a definable pattern of brain activity! The self possesses an incredible drive to preserve and expand itself. At times this dominates all other drives, superseding even our urge for biological preservation. Some people choose to die physically in order to preserve their psychological integrity. (Some lie to themselves to maintain a deluded sense of internal consistency.) For better and for worse, we are driven to preserve our self.

That’s why your ability to maintain your sense of self in your relationship plays a pivotal role in your sexual desire, your emotional functioning, and your connection with your partner.

Just like lust, infatuation, and attachment, the human self has its own underlying brain real estate. Part of it is located in your prefrontal
neocortex (your forebrain), the most recently evolved and unique aspect of the human brain.
²⁹

In three separate tests, researchers scanned people’s brains while they had them think about themselves, other people, and different situations. They found that when you’re thinking about yourself or others (as compared to thinking about situations), two parts of your brain light up.
³⁰
But an additional separate region turns on when you’re thinking about yourself—one that doesn’t turn on in either of the other two instances.
³¹
Thoughts pertaining to your “self” are discernable in your brain from your thoughts about other people. Thinking about your self is so special it occupies a unique place in your head.
³²

As I mentioned earlier, Helen Fisher found that over time, romantic love engages parts of your brain that map other people’s thoughts and emotions. Well, these parts map your own feelings, too. They are central to self-awareness and your sense of having a “self.” In other words, the same neurons that let your partner become a real person in your mind also support your sense of self. This leads to inevitable battles of identity, autonomy, and togetherness.