Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship (7 page)

Your self doesn’t simply reside in an identifiable pattern of neurons and neurochemicals inside your skull. Your mind is the mental space in which your self resides. Stick with me for a few paragraphs while I explain this.

Your sense of self has both a primitive and complex level, just like your sexual desire. Your most basic sense of self comes from your body.
³³
This “primary consciousness” arises from bodily cues. This is your sense of where you physically end and other things begin. Your “body self” comes from your brain’s ability to distinguish self-generated movement versus motion and sensations induced by outside sources.
³⁴

Any creature has primary consciousness if it establishes a connection between what happens in the world and how its body feels, so it can take actions that create pleasure and avoid pain.
³⁵
Your cat or dog—like most animals—has primary (primitive) consciousness.
³⁶

You have this sense of self because your brain constantly maps the state
of your body.
³⁷
Nature built upon these stable gangs of neurons to create your “mental self.” Your mental self is anchored in this continuous sense of physical being, the reference point for organizing your actions.
³⁸

Your self also involves “higher-order consciousness,” which stems from more sophisticated discriminations than “this is me” vs. “this is not me.” Two facets of higher-order consciousness are consciousness of being conscious (self-awareness), and reading the minds of other self-aware beings (mind-mapping, which we’ll cover next chapter).
³⁹

Your forebrain (prefrontal neocortex) holds the “hardware” for your complex sense of self and highly nuanced sexual desire. But higher-order consciousness is not reducible to brain neurons firing.
⁴⁰
The “software” of consciousness is created through our interactions with other people.
⁴¹
That’s why your sexual desire is greatly influenced by what’s happening in your relationship.

Your brain, your self, and your sexual desire are fundamentally social entities. Humans, who possess language and true linguistic capability, have the most complex self—and the most sexual desire problems—on the planet.
⁴²
And if the foregoing doesn’t convince you that your brain is a social organ, perhaps this will: Your brain perpetually rewires itself in response to interpersonal contact throughout your lifetime.
⁴³

You have a socially defined nameable self, a mental construct replete with a past and biographical details (“autobiographical memory”). Your self is not a static image. It is a constant
process
, an identity that is both stable and changeable over time. Your self is a constant barrage of images, feelings, memories, pleasures and pains, beliefs, and moods.

Your self allows you to project yourself into the future and organize your intentions. But it also brings trials and tribulations. For example, feeling put down by your partner involves a symbolic interaction with another self that greatly changes your desire. In the same way, your sense of how your body looks, feels, and functions shapes your interest in sex and your desire. Feeling competent and desirable can rise and fall on your (or your partners’) sexual performance. Your sexual desire
is inextricably tethered to your complex sense of self, which exists in your brain, your mind, and the mental space between you and your partner.

When did our lovely complex sense of self first emerge? When did it hijack human sexual desire?
⁴⁴
It’s hard to say because your earliest ancestors looked quite human. “By 600,000 years ago everyone had a big brain, and by 200,000 years ago people in Africa looked like modern humans.”
⁴⁵
At what point shall we draw the line and say the human self arrived? No one knows.
⁴⁶

Helen Fisher told me anthropologists would guess the human self arrived about 1.6 million years ago. That’s when our cerebral cortex exploded in size and when humans first developed language (required for higher order consciousness). Paleoneurologists also believe this may be when our brain’s oxytocin production changed, enabling relationships based on enduring social bonds.
⁴⁷
Scientists think this is about the time humans and chimpanzees went down different evolutionary paths.

The important thing is that our complex self
did
arise. And you and I have to deal with it. Ever since a complex self appeared in your great ancestors’ minds, sexual desire hasn’t been the same.

Given that complex consciousness is socially embedded, it’s probable that when the human self first emerged, it was a “reflected sense of self.” A reflected sense of self is one that is reliant on feedback from others; and it has controlled sexual selection since it first appeared on the scene. We are more likely to have sex with people who make us feel good about ourselves (read: inflate our ego). This irrevocable development in human sexual desire, like walking upright, fundamentally changed human existence.

Selfhood issues started playing a central role in sexual selection. People mated, fell in love, became families, struggled to stay together, and fought about sex and breaking up. Maintaining a sense of self, and especially their
reflected sense of self
, increasingly shaped the choices people made about why and with whom they had sex.

No gene by itself made your ancestors leave the trees of Africa and set off across the savanna. It involved some measure of choice.
⁴⁸
Your forebears made a self-determining act, an irrevocable decision that had far-reaching impacts: Humans began walking upright and women’s pelvises narrowed. This, combined with our rapidly increasing brain size, led to women giving birth sooner during pregnancy, to pass their babies’ larger heads through their smaller birth canals. Consequently, humans joined a small group of animals that give birth to exceedingly helpless (“atricial”) babies. This, in turn, required forming families and kinship relationships to care for them.

Humans have accomplished a lot through co-evolution: Bipedal posture liberated our forelimbs for communicative gestures and freed us to regulate our breathing and develop a vocal tract that made speech possible. Our forefeet became hands capable of making and using tools. Our teeth stopped being our primary weapon, and our mouths became more refined. Our growing brain supported more sophisticated communication through co-articulated sounds. Human speech and the intricacies of the human kiss came into being.

Human sexual desire changed because what men and women found attractive changed. Unlike other primates, we walk upright and mate face to face. Upright posture changed what people saw in each other, literally and figuratively. It changed what we found sexy and how we signaled sexual interest. But when our reflected sense of self evolved, the
importance
of being attractive and sexy skyrocketed. Your ancestor’s sexual desire and daily life was as irrevocably changed as when they developed hands with opposing thumbs.
⁴⁹

Anthropologist Stephanie Coontz documents how marriage has changed more in the last two hundred years than throughout recorded history. This reflects shifts from agrarian and hunter-gatherer societies to industrialization, voluntary control of conception, and women’s rights to education, to vote, and to own property. But it also reflects millions of years spent developing a complex sense of self. In most modern societies,
desire, sex, intimacy, and love have become accepted reasons for getting married, staying married, and getting divorced. In the process, our sense of self has taken over marriage.

In that light, marriage’s recent dramatic changes are not surprising. Culture amplifies our ability to modify our environment and influence evolutionary natural selection.
⁵⁰
Contraception and Viagra are good examples. What do contraception, Viagra, and mature adult love all have in common? They are examples of our brain bucking its own biology and influencing sexuality and sexual desire.
⁵¹

Accelerating changes in marriage reflect the exponential impact of culture and selfhood. We want to control what happens to us by controlling what’s happening around us. We like to carve out personal space in our environment, bend things to suit us, and construct our own little niche. Niche construction goes on constantly in relationships. Culture is the long-term result of niche construction by large groups of people trying to shape their immediate environment.

We all want to carve out a personal niche, a situation suited to our abilities, temperament, and shortcomings.
⁵²
We renovate our homes or move to new quarters. We create a niche in society through our careers and social activities. We create an emotional niche by pressuring others to adapt our interests, values, temperament, and limitations. In marriage, both partners try to carve out personal space in their relationship. These interactions greatly shape their sexual desire.

For better and worse, we develop some sense of self by successfully modifying the space—and the people—around us to suit ourselves. In the long run this influences how your brain forms and your genes express themselves. Efforts to construct your niche in your relationship greatly shape your life experiences and how your brain (re)wires itself.

This is co-evolution: Your and your partner’s efforts to shape your relationship—and each other—create your selves. Here’s where conflict comes in: One partner’s attempt to establish his niche and maintain his
self collides with the other partner’s similar efforts. That’s why couples fight about the frequency and depth of sex and intimacy, furnishing their home, relationships with extended family and friends, and proper work-leisure balance. It’s why healthy couples with good relationships have sexual desire problems. It’s why these conflicts are important.

My friend, psychiatrist Dr. Jürg Willi, is well-known in Europe for studying partners’ reciprocal criticisms of each other (what he calls “reproaches”) as attempts to construct their “personal niche” within their relationship. He believes criticisms have four important unappreciated aspects: First, your partner’s criticisms of you are her attempts at niche construction. Second, what you criticize in your partner are her attempts to construct her personal niche. Third, partners’ criticisms are often accurate about each other. Fourth, although not always well-intended, criticism is how partners in normal relationships push each other to grow.
⁵³

Your sense of self evolves through your lifetime in the same way the human self evolved. You and your partner impact each other, day in and day out, shaping each other’s personal development through the problems you develop and resolve (or don’t). This is co-evolution.

This is why sexual desire problems, like Doreen and Adam’s, often are signs that everything is going
right
. Co-evolution occurs when you and your partner interact. It occurs big time when you cohabitate, and goes into overdrive when you have sexual desire problems. You and your partner shape your own and each other’s reality and personality through your interactions.
⁵⁴

You develop different abilities and characteristics from coping with the people around you. This was true with your family growing up. It is true with your partner now. Throughout your lifetime, you create your personality, reality, and destiny—and wire the neurons in your head accordingly.

So, now let’s reconsider the fundamental aspect of sexual desire we encountered in
Chapter 1
: There’s always a low desire partner, and the low desire partner always controls sex. But
why
does the LDP always control sex? Why has this come to pass? Why didn’t humans work it out so the
high desire partner
controls sex, and the
LDP
has the temperament to go along with it?

After helping couples with sexual desire problems for over thirty years, here’s what I’ve concluded: Mother Nature (natural selection) gave the low desire partner control of sex because the resulting complex interactions caused our self to grow. The verbal arguments, mind-games, monitoring, strategizing, and self-control issues made our brains develop. We had to learn to tolerate inner tension and interpersonal anxiety as the price of having an ongoing love relationship. Countless couples have participated in this development by falling in love, having sex, raising families, and struggling to stay together. This shaped our psychology, our physiology, and marriage as we know it. It’s made us the most resilient and adaptable animal on the planet.

The low desire partner always controlling sex helped us develop a brain capable of bringing profound meaning to sex. It made human sexual desire the most complex desire on the planet. It fostered the birth of the sense of self and the possibility of mature adult love. Because love relationships are difficult, we developed a resilient and indomitable spirit. It strengthened our species. Now it challenges you to develop your self, too.

This is why normal healthy couples have sexual desire problems. It’s not a sign of something going wrong. It’s the culmination of millions of years of human evolution. Through sexual desire problems we became incredibly adaptive and resilient animals. Once we possessed a brain capable of autonomy and selfhood, as well as attachment, love relationships more strongly propelled human evolution. That’s how we became artful and adventurous. The low desire partner always controlling sex contributed to human
fortitude
.