After my previous blog entitled "My Husband is in the Friendzone" I received an outpouring of responses via Twitter and email - both negative and positive. A quick reminder to please comment directly on the blog itself, I welcome and will approve both approving and critical points of view. For those who read it, bear with me as I give a very brief overview. The asker of the question was "Jessica" or whatever her real name might have been. She was concerned that her feelings for her husband weren't the same as those experienced at the beginning of her relationship and with subsequent lovers within the context of her open relationship. I decided to do a follow-up with more discussion about the excitatory and inhibitory processes and some very specific things that you can do to change the structure of your internal wiring.
Jessica's story went something like this; a cycle that may seem all to familiar.
Boy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy. Boy & girl get married. Boy keeps sexual interest over time but girl loses sexual interest.
The gender roles may of course be reversed but the above is the most common as women are generally wired to be incompatible with monogamy; the standard bill of goods we are sold our entire lives. To begin, we should break down the word "sexual interest" above to two terms, sexual arousal and sexual desire. Sexual arousal is the physical arousal of the genitals and sexual desire is the desire for sexual satisfaction or attention. These are not mutually exclusive, one may have sexual desire without sexual arousal or sexual arousal without sexual desire. Sometime one begets the other such as a desire for sex with the absence of arousal so those feelings of desire are never acted upon. It seems too difficult to get into the mood so we often resort to porn or other partners where seemingly effortless sexual arousal and desire are present.
This brings us to the saga of attachment bonds in committed relationships. While it is true that we can mate without bonding, many of us choose to enter into relationships where we bond with mating because it is more socially acceptable. Many of us actively seek-out long term deep partner attachment as the pinnacle of partnering because it is most rewarding and beneficial as a pairing. So the mate without bonding is the one night stand, the bond with mating is the new committed relationship then the third aspect is bond without mating. All are rooted in our evolutionary past. The mate without bonding is essential for women to partner in a very timely manner while she is highly fertile during ovulation. For females with a bonded partner, her body may see a timely mate without bonding partner for periods of her life where her subconscious sees pregnancy with her bonded mate as unlikely. The goal of the human body is of course, the creation of more people and our brains will do whatever it takes to enable human reproduction. This is what creates the allure and excitement of extra-pair mating in long term bonded partners. The long term bonded partner often promotes a bond without mating relationship in the primary with multiple secondary mate without bonding or mate with minimal bonding mating archetypes.
Sexual desire becomes less important among highly emotionally compatible mates because other aspects take over to sustain the relationship after the initial love-bond is created. Less compatible mates or newly attached mates will often require the brain to produce a higher level of sexual desire to be present because sexual attachment is required to satiate the needs of security and love in the pairing. The intense sexual desire may outweigh the need for love and commitment resulting in the desire to maintain a unhealthy and somewhat distant pair bond. We have evolved to reproduce and we are designed to pair off for our well being in terms of safety and support. With a nine month gestation, we are highly vulnerable to predators and our young are completely helpless for years after birth. Proliferation of our species requires us to have the support and comfort of a bonded partner with sexual needs. Those sexual needs are a requirement even if we think we suppress them.…
