Moody Bitches: The Truth about the Drugs You’re Taking, the Sleep You’re Missing, the Sex You’re Not Having and What’s Really Making You Crazy.... Julie Holland
A man with lower testosterone may be a great father and less likely to stray, but he may not have the most chiseled chin. One plus: typically, during the parenting phase, lower testosterone levels help ensure that fathers will focus on their newborn and not stray. So parenthood could potentially help turn a cad into a dad. Not only are men with lower testosterone levels more responsive to infants’ cues but “paternal effort” can lower a man’s testosterone levels.
Longer-term, attached love is sometimes called companionate love. This familiarity and companionship creates feelings of comfort, well-being, a sense of calm, and even decreased perceptions of pain, courtesy of oxytocin and endorphins that are still on board.
While the neurochemistry of committed love may lack the intensity of the early attraction phase, the effect of a long-term relationship on your well-being can hardly be underestimated. But once the chemical dependence of the early days fades away, couples who choose to stay together have to work harder to remain connected. Monogamy can complicate libido in particular and may affect women more than men.
Emotional connectedness is all about oxytocin (and estrogen, which enhances oxy’s functioning) in women and a hormone called vasopressin in men. These are the molecules of attachment and bonding. Vasopressin, in particular, is considered the molecule of monogamy and exclusivity. Vasopressin not only enhances a man’s commitment to a woman but also underlies male bonding (the “bromance”). In the same way that oxytocin and testosterone compete with each other, vasopressin and testosterone are often at odds as well. Vasopressin diminishes the impact of testosterone on competition and aggression, encouraging the defense and protection of progeny and, importantly, preventing promiscuity and infidelity. In monogamous prairie voles given a vasopressin blocker, their testosterone takes the lead; they screw one female and then abandon her for another.
Studies of the vasopressin receptor gene (dubbed the “monogamy gene” in The Female Brain) show two versions, long and short. The longer version of the gene is associated with improved bonding and mating behaviors and more appropriate social behaviors. This version is present in our primate cousins the bonobos, who are quick to hug, kiss, and even have sex to keep the peace. The shorter gene variant is seen in the more aggressive chimp population. Also, interestingly, the shorter gene is seen in autism in humans, where there are some deficits in social and bonding behaviors.
Vasopressin also facilitates clear thinking, attention, memory, and emotional control. In Helen Fisher’s brain-imaging studies, people in longer love relationships show increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (where attention, emotion, and memory interact) and the insular cortex, which processes emotions. So the brain is formulating and filing emotional memories. The early phases of attraction are fiery and passionate. Attachment is calmer, more relaxed, and solidified. Oxytocin is the common chemical in both phases, pulling two people together, lowering their defenses that are suspicious of trusting and connecting, and then keeping them bonded. Eye contact, the “anchoring gaze,” is a powerful way to connect with women, creating intimacy and, often, sexual longing. Looking away, turning away, or doing anything that threatens bonding can trigger stress hormones that get in the way of oxytocin and endorphins.
We are wired to connect and to need other people. In more than ninety countries surveyed worldwide, more than 90 percent of us are married at least once by the time we’re forty-nine. In the United States, we marry, divorce, and remarry at higher rates than in any other country, but half of American adult women over the age of eighteen are unmarried. Since 2000 that number has risen from 45 million to 56 million. First-time marriages end in divorce four out of ten times. The lowest rate, among upper-middle-class couples with college degrees, is one in three. That’s as good as it gets in America.
The Maslow hierarchy of human needs starts with the basics of food and shelter and then moves onward and upward, through safety and security to love and belonging and self-esteem, finally peaking at self-actualization. And so it’s been with the evolution of marriage, from institutional, where marriage started out as protection from violence, assuring that food and shelter were maintained, to companionate, focusing on love and sex, and finally to the self-expressive marriage. Now more than ever, we’re looking for our partnership to foster personal growth and self-discovery. The quality of a marriage helps to predict personal well-being; marital distress is associated with depression and other psychiatric complaints, while the positive effects of a strong union help to keep us healthy and strengthen over time.
You Complete Me. I Hate You.
We naturally mate with someone whose immunity is different from our own because it expands the repertoire of defenses in our children. Just as with the MHC complex and immune status, what is healthiest for our children comes from a union of two opposites. My kids like knowing that they should go to Dad for certain things and to Mom for others. We each bring opposite talents and skills to the table, and that helps to create not only a stronger, more complete team but also healthy hybrids when we procreate.
In relationships, we often want our partner to be the things that we are not. Certain behaviors in others echo long ago, deeply repressed parts of ourselves. As children, we were molded by our parents’ reactions toward us. We put away bothersome behaviors, suppressed our emotional intensity, and hid our needs in order to make their jobs easier. Down the line, we miss those abandoned facets of who we were. We would love to be reunited with our discarded selves to make an imagined whole. That’s where the magic comes in, when two people come together, igniting a spark that shines light on where those repressed parts have been hidden. You complete me. You’re everything I’m not, and we make something bigger and better than either of us alone could create.
In the early stages of love, words of endearment like sweetie and baby remind us of our very first successful love relationship, as a babe in arms. As in early childhood, our need to be securely attached to someone who loves us and cares for us is being met, and all is well. After the magic comes the power struggle, where annoying tics and habits begin to irk us. The very things that drew us to someone are the ones that now drive us crazy. We realize the person we married or otherwise committed to is nothing like us and needs to change or we’re going to need to be committed. As in mental hospital.
The former answer to our prayers becomes a living nightmare as we struggle to continue to get those early childhood needs of love and attachment fulfilled. We maneuver and manipulate, withdraw and intimidate, cry and criticize, but our partner comes up short in meeting our demands. We alternate between screaming matches and dry accountings on an emotional ledger of tit for tat. You won’t do this for me, so I’m not going to do that for you. Eventually, you both realize you can’t change the other or make the other love you the way that you need. At that point, it’s often time for an affair, or a divorce, or a détente of a sexless marriage (very common in my office population), or, hopefully, couples therapy.
Understanding why this phase happens is a crucial weapon in the armory of trying to make love work. Like magnets flipped around, attraction can turn to repulsion. We are repelled by those who remind us of what we are not. Because we were taught to detest those things that we’d hidden away at our parents’ insistence, we end up rejecting those parts of ourselves. So when someone is really getting on your