Robert Augustus Masters - The Evolution of Intimate Relationship

This article from Robert Augustus Masters was the February 12th, 2012, Integral Post at Integral Life. As usual, Masters offers a deeply intimate and spiritual perspective on monogamous relationship - one much needed in our society, and perhaps even more so in the integral community.

This is the introduction to his new (reissued, updated) book, Transformation Through Intimacy: The Journey Toward Awakened Monogamy. I read the original version of this book, and based on that I can highly recommend it.

The Evolution of Intimate Relationship

Posted February 12th, 2012 by Robert Augustus Masters in Integral Post

Robert Augustus Masters shares the introduction to his new book, Transformation Through Intimacy: The Journey Toward Awakened Monogamy, now available for preorder on Amazon.

Intimate relationship has over the last four or five decades evolved so far from its long-established ways—mutating in diverse directions—that its very nature and structuring, once a largely unquestioned given, is clearly up for some deep questioning and reformulating.

Reformulating, revisioning, restructuring, reinventing—how we tend to look at intimate relationship is changing almost as rapidly as intimate relationship itself.

One result of this is that many of us do not have a particularly clear view of intimate relationship and its possibilities. Nonetheless, we have to admit that something is different about intimate relationship now. We look back just two generations, and it seems as if we’re looking back many hundreds of years. Things are shifting that fast.

For a very long time, intimate relationship was viewed and lived, with few exceptions, as an alternative—and not necessarily an equivalent alternative!—to spiritual life. There was the householder, and there was the spiritual seeker, and there wasn’t much overlap between them. As wide as this split was for men, it was even wider for women. Intimate relationship was something you did—or endured—until there was cultural permission to do something “deeper.”

Now there not only is a significant amount of cultural permission—small by conventional standards yet substantial enough to register on societal radar screens—for something “deeper” to happen within intimate relationship, but also an increasing pull toward it. So intimate relationship has, at its leading edge, become less a prelude to spiritual opening and awakening, and more a catalyst or crucible for it.

This is nothing less than great news. Relational intimacy, especially in the form of monogamy, is then not something we have to get past or outgrow in order to spiritually evolve, but something that serves that evolution—and our journey toward wholeness—without any need to bypass or marginalize our humanity.

Grounding our spirituality in the raw material and inevitable difficulties of daily life—as are amply supplied by intimate relationship—is much needed, leaving us more present, more aware, more vitally whole. Spirituality directly lived in the context of ordinary life is spirituality that can have a great impact on the quality of life. Staying plugged into our spirituality during our relationship’s bumpier times provides us with an essential perspective, greatly increasing the odds that we won’t sweat over what’s not worth sweating over.

If we can access our spirituality—and access it at a deeper level than that of belief—during the inevitable trials and challenges of intimate relationship, we can probably access it just about anywhere.

Intimate relationship is perhaps the ashram of the 21st Century—a place especially ripe with transformational possibility, a combination crucible and sanctuary for the deepest sort of healing and awakening, through which the full integration of our physical, mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions is more than possible.

Intimate relationship as a crucible and sanctuary for our healing and awakening—sounds good, doesn’t it? But once our honeymoon with this is over, the real labor begins. The path is not neatly laid out for us, in part because we, through our very relatedness with our intimate other, are co-creating that path, that relational unfolding, as we go, feeling our way—more often than not in far-from-straight lines—toward what really matters. In this, we travel together not only through adventures spawned by our mutual conditioning, but also take up residence in deeper stages of intimate relatedness.

These are exciting—excitingly alive and excitingly unstable—times for intimate relationship. The playing field for men and women has, in far more ways than not, been leveled, making possible encounters and openings not generally available when women were second-class citizens or worse, cut off from their own voice and power. Now men and women have far more of an opportunity to meet eye to eye, belly to belly, heart to heart, without the disempowering ethics of earlier times. A meeting of true partners no longer has to be such a rarity.

However, a level playing field is not without its own perils, for it’s easy to reduce it to a flatland of force-fed equality. Once that women had more rights and a more inclusive cultural context in which to live, they began leaving men, in trickles at first, then in droves—which brought more and more men to psychotherapy or at least to their knees—and men then began to realize that they would have to do more than flash some bucks, be nice for a while, or raise a fist to keep women with them. Many relationships became arenas of negotiation, wherein equality between the partners did not liberate, but rather only fed the status quo.

Transformation Through Intimacy: Monogamy as a Path to Awakening

In this extraordinary discussion, Robert Augustus Masters and Diane Bardwell Masters speak with Ken Wilber about the next evolution of intimate relationships: monogamy as a spiritual path, a crucible for awakening, and a vessel for enlightenment in the 21st century.

Neurotic egalitarianism seized the helm, declaring an across-the-board equality that not only increased comfort and apparent security, but simultaneously dulled and deadened. The husbands typically depicted on television sitcoms—sexless, inept, and often spectacularly unattractive—reflected and reinforced the notion that for men marriage was, whatever its trappings, a trap. And so on.

Intimate relationship shifted for many from barbaric to bland, infecting more than a few with nostalgia for the barbaric, because at least that had some juice, especially for the men. Affairs multiplied. Pornography infiltrated the mainstream, attracting refugees from the wastelands of conventional marriage.

It became essential that relationship move away from the banality and stagnation of such widespread conventionality, but it mostly went backward instead of forward, while often acting as if it were indeed moving forward (as exemplified by “open” marriage and multiple-partnering practices and their accompanying rationalizations). Monogamy started to take more and more heat, getting overly associated with the deadening of passion.

Nevertheless, amidst all this relational upheaval there was something else starting to emerge, something neither barbaric nor bland, something at once deeply passionate, caring, awakened, and rooted in integrity and love—a stage of intimate relationship that I call awakened monogamy (and have elsewhere referred to as mature monogamy). The territory between immature monogamy and awakened monogamy, an ever-shifting yet ever-fertile zone of potential relational evolution, features a remarkably rich mix of landscapes, emotional and otherwise, and can seem overwhelming in its complexity and overlapping concerns.

Awakened monogamy may sound wonderful, but how do we get there?

Read the whole article.

Vicki Larson - Why Men Need to Cheat (Really?!)

I'm sharing this primarily so I can call bullshit on this evolutionary psychology crap that says men are slaves to a biological impulse to procreate as often and with as many different partners as possible. To believe this is to accept that we are essentially unconscious and unable to control where and how we procreate.

This is an interview with Eric Anderson, an American sociologist at England's University of Winchester and author of the provocative new book, The Monogamy Gap: Men, Love, and the Reality of Cheating. The fact that this is based on the responses of college males makes it highly suspect right up front - these are not guys who are known for their desire to settle with one woman. An accurate study would have a much broader age range, education range, and ethnic range.


My take is that a great deal of male cheating is the product of socialization that teaches young men that masculinity is based, at least in part, on getting laid frequently and with many different partners. The fact that women are cheating more often now is likely an element of their adoption of what are considered male freedoms.

I think that men would like monogamy, in general (obviously some men are more satisfied with multiple partners, as are some women - for whatever reasons), but to be monogamous, they must override their conditioning and the subtle (and not so subtle) cues that tell us "men are dogs."

As in so many other areas of our lives, biology is not destiny. 

Why Men Need To Cheat 

Vicki Larson - Journalist, mother, thinker

Monogamy is failing men.

Not only is it failing them, but it's a "socially compelled sexual incarceration" that can lead to a life of anger and contempt, or so says Eric Anderson, an American sociologist at England's University of Winchester and author of the provocative new book, The Monogamy Gap: Men, Love, and the Reality of Cheating (Oxford University Press, $49.99).

Cheating, however, serves men pretty well. An undiscovered affair allows them to keep their relationship and emotional intimacy, and even if they're busted it's a lot easier than admitting that they wanted to screw someone else in the first place, he writes. 

In his study of 120 undergraduate men, 78 percent of those who had a partner cheated, "even though they said that they loved and intended to stay with their partner." Contrary to what we may think, most men aren't cheating because they don't love their partner, he says; they cheat because they just want to have sex with others. And society shouldn't pooh-pooh that.

Monogamy's stronghold on our beliefs -- what he calls monogamism -- brings ostracism and judgment to anyone who questions or strays from its boundaries. That doesn't make sense to Anderson, who wonders why we stigmatize someone who has a fling more than couples who divorce -- throwing away a marriage rich in history and love, upsetting their kids' lives -- over something like sex.

Monogamy isn't the only "proper" way to be in a relationship, and he says it's time that society finds "multiple forms of acceptable sexual relationship types -- including sexually open relationships -- that coexist without hierarchy or hegemony." It's especially important for today's young men, for whom monogamous sex seems more boring than in generations past because of easy premarital sex and pornography.

Dr. Anderson was kind enough to answer my questions by email:

Your study includes just 120 undergraduate men, straight and gay; isn't that too small a sample to really know what's going on for men?

If I were attempting to determine what percent of men cheat, then, yes. Large-scale surveys show us that cheating remains the norm... I wanted to examine the very notion of monogamy, not morally, but rationally. I wanted to know why men want monogamy but nonetheless cheat.

You say men want to be emotionally monogamous, but their "body craves sex with other people somatically." People crave food, drugs, booze, sometimes to disastrous results. If there can be self-control with other cravings, why can't men control their body urges?

Humans are largely lousy at controlling our bodies' desires. We say we don't want to eat that Snickers bar, but we also really do want to eat it. We eat it, we feel guilty about it, and afterwards we promise ourselves not to eat one again; but we nonetheless do. It is this same phenomenon, only with cheating, that I explore. 

The men in your study experienced a sharp decrease in the frequency and enjoyment of sex after two monogamous years. Since no one can sustain the kind of thrilling sex couples have in the beginning of a relationship, isn't it a healthy thing that it decreases?

I wish young men got two years of good sex before it dropped off; it's a lot less than that! It may, however, be good that the sexual desire for one's partner weans; it means that we end up staying with our long-term partners for the socioemotional connection and not for the sex. If a couple is going to raise a family, it is the emotional connection that counts, not the sexual.

Our physical desires don't die; they just change from our partner to people other than him/her. We falsely believe that when the sex dies, the relationship has also died. The reality is the opposite; when the sex dies the relationship has just begun. 

What about the idea that long-term relationships make sex become deeper, more intimate and more meaningful?

The diminution of sex is simultaneous to one's emotional bonds growing stronger. Long-term partners may have more intimate sex (most just have very little) but when men see a guy or girl who turns them on, it's not intimate and meaningful sex they are craving. 

Honesty is a huge part of a relationship. How good a relationship can one have when there's deception, especially since you say after men cheat spontaneously, they are more likely to plan cheating?

Honesty is good sometimes, and horrible other times. There are good reasons to lie; it is an essential skill for keeping community and relationship peace. The reason men lie about cheating is mostly because they know that if they ask for permission to have recreational sex: 1) they will be denied 2) after they are denied, they will be subject to scrutiny and increased relationship policing; 3) they will be stigmatized as immoral, and most likely broken up with. Thus, honesty doesn't meet their desires of having both a long-term partner and recreational sex with others. 

The way cheating men see it, it's either cheat or don't cheat, but telling their partners they want sex outside the relationship, or telling their partners that they actually cheated, is viewed as a surefire way of achieving relationship termination. When men cheat for recreational sex -- not affairs -- they DO love their partners. If they didn't, they would break up with them.

Wouldn't it be less harmful to relationships if we became serial monogamists -- marrying two, three or four times as our sexual needs change?

Rather than marrying 20 times or more in one's life via serial monogamy, we can keep one emotional lover and just have casual, meaningless -- and hot -- sex with strangers. This gives us the long-term emotional stability we desire psychologically, alongside the hot, carnal sex we desire somatically. It makes much more sense than lying and cheating, or the difficulty of breaking up with a loved one simply because you want someone else's body for an hour. 

Infidelity breaks up many marriages, but often it isn't the act of sex that's so upsetting -- it's the deception and lying, clearly problematic for the emotional intimacy you say men want. So cheating for sex may be "just about the sex" for him, but not for his partner.

Infidelity does not break marriages up; it is the unreasonable expectation that a marriage must restrict sex that breaks a marriage up. One of the reasons I wrote the book is that I've seen so many long-term relationships broken up simply because one had sex outside the relationship. But feeling victimized isn't a natural outcome of casual sex outside a relationship; it is a socialized victimhood. I'm not advocating cheating; I'm advocating open and equitable sexual relationships. When both in the couple desire this, when both realize that extra-dyadic sex makes their partner happy, and they therefore want their partner to have that sex, a couple will have moved a long ways toward facilitating emotional honesty, while simultaneously withering at jealousy scripts, which can be very damaging to a relationship. But if one can't achieve this with a partner that's hostile to the idea, cheating is the reasonable action.

Most of the men in your study were OK with sex on the side for them, but not their girlfriends. That seems unfair and incredibly selfish.

Monogamy is culturally compelled, so the decision has been made for us. How much of a chance would a man stand to have a second date if on the first date he said that he was interested in an open relationship? At the point men enter into relationships they, too, think they want monogamy. It's only after being in a relationship for months or years that they badly want sex with others. But by this point, they don't want to break up with their partners because they have long-standing love. Instead of chancing that love by asking for extradyadic sex, they cheat. If they don't get caught (and most don't) it's a rational choice.

But it is indeed selfish for men to want sex with others but not to want their partners to do the same. This however is not just a "man" thing. Women also cheat; they also lie about it; and they also want to be able to cheat without their partners doing the same. Monogamy is a problem for all sexes; it builds in an ownership script regardless of gender. 

You say love is a "long-standing sense of security and comfort." So, wouldn't open relationships potentially pose a threat to that security since, even if couples play by their own sexual rules, there's always a chance one could end up preferring a new lover over one's partner?

People in open relationships structure their engagements as to reduce emotional intimacy. But, yes, of course it can happen. What I find from those in open relationships, however, is that once they have had sex with that person they fancied, they tend to get over them.

If we really want to prevent our lovers from developing the lust of others, or worse, emotional intimacy with others; if we really want to prevent men and women from cheating, we would be best to sex-segregate our jobs, our classrooms and social arenas, too. Emotional intimacy is the real threat to a relationship, not a one-off hour with a stranger from Craigslist. Ultimately, there are no guarantees that one's partner won't find love elsewhere. But controlling one's partner to prevent it only makes matters worse -- it makes them want to leave you. A better strategy is to be open, emotionally and perhaps sexually, too.

The Origin of Monogamy (podcast)

The podcast is from Miller-McCune, the Curiouser and Curiouser Podcast, featuring Dr. Laura Fortunato, an anthropologist at the Santa Fe Institute, discussing the origins of marriage and monogamy with Jai Ranganathan.

However, as the image above (from New York Magazine) suggests, not everyone agrees. Many people think traditional monogamy is obsolete. In The New Monogamy, marriage is less rigid and restricted than most of us would think.

I, however, do not buy into that perspective. I agree with Robert Augustus Masters (Transformation Through Intimacy: The Journey Toward Mature Monogamy, Kindle only, the paperback is available through Robert Masters' site) that mature monogamy is a spiritual path that can transform our lives.

The Origin of Monogamy

Where does the idea of marriage — monogamous marriage specifically — come from? Anthropologist Laura Fortunato has some answers.

Ways of listening to the audio podcast

1. Listen to the podcast in your browser

2. Download the podcast (right-click or option-click)
 

By Jai Ranganathan

With summer here, the 2011 wedding season has finally arrived. But with all of the ill-shapen bridesmaid dresses, Bridezillas and talk of till death do we part, one question comes to mind: Where did this idea of marriage — monogamous marriage specifically — come from?

It may seem like a difficult question to answer, given that people have been getting married since prehistory. In this podcast, Dr. Laura Fortunato, an anthropologist at the Santa Fe Institute, discusses how she got to the bottom of the marriage mystery.

Fortunato, who spoke with Michael Haederle last year about the agricultural roots of monogamy, talks about a recent study of hers, published in the journal Human Biology, where she used current patterns of language and marriage to determine when monogamous marriage got rolling for Europe and much of Asia.

It turns out that this kind of marriage is much older than anyone had thought, beginning 8,000 to 9,500 years ago in what is now Turkey. And monogamy likely established itself for a very modern reason: to avoid headaches with inheritance.

Jai Ranganathan’s travel to the Santa Fe Institute was arranged and paid for by the Institute.

 

Robert Augustus Masters - 8 Delusions That May Be Infecting Your Relationship

If you have been hanging around Integral Life at all (and admittedly, most of the integral people I know do not spend much, if any, time there) you may have noticed that their resident "integral sex" and "integral love" guru, Marc Gafni (shiver), has been unceremoniously deleted from the site. Kudos to the editors for that!

 I'll have more to say about this in the coming days.

More importantly, however, it seems that Robert Augustus Masters will be contributing a monthly column to the IL site.

Editor's Note: We are very happy to have Robert Augustus Masters as a regular monthly contributor to Integral Post. I find Robert's work with intimacy, sacred relationships, and monogamy as a vehicle for awakening to be utterly fascinating, inspiring, and timely, and consider it to be a crucial component to any ongoing Integral Life Practice.

While Gafni is better known (among those who pay attention) as a serial sexual manipulator/addict - a man who seems to conflate power, rage, and sexuality and acts it out with students (while being married) - Masters is better known as someone who holds monogamy as the highest form of spiritual relationship.

Maybe this change reflects a move in the integral community in terms of values? Probably not, but it is a nice change of tone and an enormous leap in the consciousness offered to readers.

Masters's first offering to Integral Post is 8 Delusions That May Be Infecting Your Relationship:

In this post, Robert outlines eight common relationship traps that we've all fallen into at one point or another. I myself have been guilty of many of these in the past (okay, in the present too), and it is remarkable how simply putting words to some of these snares helps me to work with many of my own ingrained narratives around intimacy. This, of course, is the power of Integral practice—shifting your perspective so that deeply-subjectified stories and patterns can be held as objects in your awareness, thus loosening their grasp on your heart and allowing you to step into greater authenticity and authorship in your own relationships. As you read this post, note whichever of these you may have struggled with in your intimate relationships, and let us know how you worked with them as they surfaced for you. —Corey

I believe this is a free offering, so go check it out.

Marnia Robinson & Gary Wilson - Guys: Where Do You Fall on the Monogamy Spectrum?

Marnia Robinson (with Gary Wilson), author of the Cupid's Poisoned Arrow blog at Psychology Today, have posted a look at some new research that suggests that men, perhaps more than women, are interested in long-term pair-bonding. In fact, men with fewer total sexual partners report greater sexual satisfaction in their relationships. Check out Guys: Where Do You Fall on the Monogamy Spectrum?

Oh yeah, it turns out that many men need emotional connection for sexual satisfaction. Certainly not all men are "pair bonders," but many more men are than stereotypes might suggest.

Guys: Where Do You Fall on the Monogamy Spectrum?

New research overturns commonly held beliefs about men.

Published on July 28, 2011 by Marnia Robinson in Cupid's Poisoned Arrow

Regardless how many sexual partners you've had, you may still benefit from figuring out the extent to which you're wired for pair bonding. Being a pair-bonder, by the way, doesn't guarantee "happily ever after." It means socially monogamous: having the capacity to fall in love and the desire to bond, at least for a time. In contrast, most mammal species are like bonobo chimps and rats; they mate and move on. The reasons for the differences lie in brain structure.

Despite our capacity for promiscuity, we humans are a pair-bonding species. It shows up in our powerful hankering for touch and ongoing companionship—and makes perfect sense, as our offspring benefit from parents who hang around with each other for more than one estrous cycle. (For a solid analysis of human pair bonding, see "Your Sexy Brain" in The Compass of Pleasure.) As with any trait, however, there are always outliers (atypical individuals). So how do you know where you are on the pair-bonder spectrum? And what does it mean in terms of finding contentment?

Consider a recent poll of more than a thousand middle-aged or older couples in committed, long-term relationships from five countries. Said the researchers, "The overall levels of relationship happiness were high in this study." So, what did these couples say makes their relationships most satisfying (i.e., likely to last)?

For men, frequent kissing and cuddling and frequent sexual caressing by a partner each increased the odds of reporting relationship happiness by a factor of approximately 3. (Specifically 3.0 and 3.11, respectively. For women the predictive strength of each was only 1.59 and 1.35.) As the researchers concluded, there's a "need for reconsideration of the role of physical affection and its meanings" by gender.

Duration of relationship also had a significant and positive effect on relationship happiness. And men who had had fewer partners reported greater sexual satisfaction. Are some guys just wired for monogamy? Does extended closeness increase satisfaction? What is the link between variety and dissatisfaction? (More in a moment.)

Highly valuing orgasm and frequency of sex were not strong predictors of relationship happiness. However, over all, both spouses rated their partner's orgasm as a more important priority than their own. In other words, those who pair up contentedly over the long haul seem to value affectionate and arousing touch, sexual responsiveness, and, perhaps, a generous mindset more than orgasm itself.

What does your brain say, and are you hearing it clearly?

Monogamy and infidelity often correlate with feelings of contentment or restlessness. These feelings arise in a primitive group of structures in the brain known as the reward circuitry. Wherever you fall on the pair-bonder spectrum, how you get your good feelings can reveal how you are wired. If you are primarily focused on living out your sexual fantasies, and novel partners are your biggest aphrodisiac, you may be more wired for riskier, hit-or-miss sex than long-term monogamy.

In the alternative, you may be a pair bonder whose pleasure response has been numbed by intense sexual stimulation—or even addiction. In this regard, a new study found that significant predictors of male infidelity are: propensity for sexual excitation (becoming easily aroused by many triggers and situations) and fear of sexual performance failure. Both can be symptoms of overstimulation. Novelty and risk may then act as desperately needed aphrodisiacs because they release extra dopamine. Once balance in the brain is restored, extreme stimulation often becomes unnecessary for sexual performance, and contented monogamy is much easier.

In any event, if you find affection, sexy touch and close companionship particularly arousing and satisfying, then you are probably not a restless outlier on the pair-bonder spectrum—even if you have multiple partners over time. Pair bonders adore sex, of course, but for them partner responsiveness and receptivity seem to be especially pleasurable and reassuring. This appears to be true of other pair-bonding primates as well.

Are you wired like the long-term couples described above? If so, you may not be thriving in today's culture. Pair-bonder strengths, such as a need for tenderness to respond sexually, can appear to be a weakness in today's sexual milieu. Here are four areas where the standard advice could backfire for you:

1. 'If it feels good do it' can lead to addiction

Believe it or not, if you have very strong pair-bond wiring, you may be particularly vulnerable to getting hooked—not just on online erotica, but also on other things. The reason is biological. Too much intense stimulation can "hijack" the very brain mechanism that evolved to encourage pair bonding. For example, pair-bonding (prairie) voles are particularly likely to go for addictive substances (unlike non-pair-bonding voles). Yet paired prairie voles have no interest in drugs. It's almost as if the reward circuitry of a pair bonder has a "little hole" crying out to be filled by a pair bond (even if the individual never bonds).

In the absence of contented union, some pair bonders will grab just about anything to fill that "hole." And some won't discover they are pair bonders until they give up their love-substitutes.

As one guy said:

Goal: Within the next academic year, acquire a legit, dependable cuddle-buddy. It's likely that this means a girlfriend. Fine by me! Just want some TLC. God, it's so different for me to talk like this. For years I've been a porn-obsessed, introverted weirdo, who was completely mystified by the fact that people can like each other so much. Now I'm turning into one of them.

Incidentally, a pair-bonder brain can make it surprisingly tough to relinquish a porn harem, even when you would prefer a real partner. Said another guy:

Your brain has to accept that you are saying goodbye to all those girls, never to see them again! It will make you sad, angry, miserable, depressed, horny as hell, numb, null—it will drag you through the worst kinds of hell to get you to go back to your harem, because it loves them so much. [Pair-bonded male voles show the same kind of distress when separated from a mate.]

He also described how it feels to move toward a real mate:

Then, just like when you break up with a girlfriend (well, in fact exactly the same, because it is the same), you wake up one day and the fever is gone. The brain says "OK. I get it. *sniff*. I guess the harem's really all gone and I'll never see them again. *sniff*... Hey - that woman waiting in line at the bank is cute though! Hey baby!" And you are healed. [He soon got together with a woman he loved from his past.]

2. Solo Sex May Produce Less Satisfaction Down the Road

Given the powerful good feelings that pair bonders get from nurturing connection, the popular expert advice encouraging mates to engage in solo sex to increase their quotient of sexual satisfaction can backfire. One husband, who suffered from erectile dysfunction for many years and therefore seldom had sexual intercourse, decided to experiment with giving up masturbation for the three months prior to a vacation with his wife. After four straight days of intercourse with her, he said:

This is the first time I've had intercourse without fantasizing about something else. Basically focusing on my wife is now a turn on! I might have expected too much of myself in the past. I assumed that I should be up and ready to go at a second's notice, no matter what. I expected to get a boner every time I looked at a beautiful woman. Now my expectation is to eventually get erect if I'm relaxed in the presence of a woman I like (i.e. my wife).

On the first night, it wasn't until I started cuddling with my wife that my erection emerged. I'm now starting to "feel" my libido a little bit throughout the day. I believe I'm cured, and I think my problem was a mixture of performance anxiety and too much masturbation. If 4 days of intercourse in a row with my wife don't convince me that my libido is okay, what will?

3. Cuddle Buddies May Be More Beneficial Than Hook-Ups

Pair bonders seem to find affectionate touch and companionship more satisfying than sex that has little of either. Therefore, in between relationships, "cuddle buddies" may prove a better option than online erotica or casual sex. Said a couple of guys who experimented:

I now have a snuggle buddy. We just watch a movie together once in a while, while holding each other. It's a good situation because there is no pressure. And I really have to say, real women are so much better than porn. It feels so great. I think it's what I've been craving for most of my life. It was comforting to know that she wanted to do it as much as I did.

It's possible that some pair bonders are actually built for slower courtships that allow for building trust (and assessing trustworthiness). As explained in "The Lazy Way to Stay in Love," the exchange of non-erotic (but genital-friendly) touch may play a special role for pair bonders because the brain's pair-bonding mechanism evolved from the caregiver-infant bond.

Of course, some men are less sensitive to attachment cues than others. As an evolutionary biologist friend said,

It's likely that brain mechanisms initially selected for mother-offspring bonding have been inherited equally by sons, enabling male-female bonding and father-offspring bonding. Those traits, in turn, have also been positively selected in humans, although less strongly in males than in females—because male genetic fitness is still achieved to varying degrees without these bonds.

4. Sexual Responsiveness May Be Related to Emotional Connection

As revealed in the findings of the couple study summarized at the outset of this post, desire for an emotional connection may be built right into the brain chemistry a pair bonder—whether he likes it or not. Consider the remarks of these guys:

I personally don't like to have a physical relationship if I am not sure that I see a woman being in my life for a while. I think I would be horrible at polyamory. I'm not a one-night stand guy—just not wired that way.

When I am with a girl I've already had sex with, I can have an erection standing next to them. But with a girl that I haven't been with, I don't feel turned on. I have to work to get some feeling in my penis when talking to them or dancing with them.

Today's environment can make it challenging for pair bonders to find their way to lasting contentment. If you happen to be wired for deeper connection and less mate turnover, then today's highly publicized advice about the benefits of casual sex and online erotica won't do it for you. Trying to adapt may leave you feeling empty, or throw you into a loop of dissatisfaction or addiction-related problems.

Regardless of what others are doing, find out what increases your sense of satisfaction. If necessary, restore your brain to normal sensitivtiy. Reach out to real potential mates. Try emphasizing more touch and affection in your connections. Very soothing? If so, connection may be improving your wellbeing in important ways. Said one man,

My wife and I both take medication for high blood pressure. A couple of months ago, our numbers started coming down. I have cut my medication to ¼ of the previous level; her doc just told her she can drop the meds. Interestingly, a few months ago I increased the level of our bonding behaviors. I give her a foot and/or back massage every night. I pulled out my dog-eared, highlighted copy of Cupid's Poisoned Arrow. Sure enough, there it is on page 216: "Massage and other caring touch lower stress hormones and blood pressure," even for givers, it seems.

If you experiment, you will learn to recognize, ask for, and deliver the behaviors your brain is actually searching for to register maximum lasting contentment. You'll also know what qualities to watch for in prospective partners. (And what to forgive in past partners.) Figuring out what is right for you has implications for your happiness, your health, and perhaps even for future generations.

Watch a short video on the neurochemistry of pair bonding

Tags: men, relationships, monogamy, psychology, sex, Psychology Today, Cupid's Poisoned Arrow, Marnia Robinson, Gary Wilson, Guys, Monogamy Spectrum, brain, pair bonders, sex addiction, male infidelity, propensity, sexual excitation, dopamine, wired for monogamy, committed relationships, long-term relationships, happiness, satisfaction