The Power of Love: How does our love life shape us— mind, body, andsoul? Let us count the ways
Time Magazine, Jan. 19, 2004 IssueOne thing you can say about lust, it sure shows up early. Talk all you want about thehoney-sweet face of an innocent newborn, the fact is, from the moment we appear in theworld, we're not much more than squalling balls of passion. Our needs aren't many: tosleep, to eat, to be held, to be changed. Satisfy these, and there won't be any trouble. Failto, and you will hear about it.Of all the urges that drive us, it's the passion to be held that makes itself known first. Ifa baby is startled fresh from the womb, German pediatrician Ernst Moro discovered in1918, its arms will fly up and out, then come together in a desperate clutch. Holding isgood, and floating free is bad—a lesson that's not so much learned after birth aspreloaded at the factory. In fact, doctors have long known that babies who aren't heldsimply fail to thrive. Not surprisingly, it's a need we never outgrow. In one way oranother, we spend the rest of our lives in a sort of sustained Moro clinch.Physical contact—the feeling of skin on skin, the tickle of hair on face, the intimate scentdrawn in by nose pressed to neck—is one of the most precious, priceless things Homosapiens can offer one another. Mothers and their babies share it one way, friends andsiblings share it another, teams and crowds in a celebratory scrum share it a third. Andof course lovers share it in the most complex way of all.Of all the splendidly ridiculous, transcendently fulfilling things humans do, it's sex—with its countless permutations of practices and partners—that most confoundsunderstanding. What in the world are we doing? Why in the world are we so consumed by it? The impulse to procreate may lie at the heart of sex, but like the impulse tonourish ourselves, it is merely the starting point for an astonishingly varied banquet.Bursting from our sexual center is a whole spangle of other things—art, song, romance,obsession, rapture, sorrow, companionship, love, even violence and criminality—allplaying an enormous role in everything from our physical health to our emotionalhealth to our politics, our communities, our very life spans.Why should this be so? Did nature simply overload us in the mating department, hot-wiring us for the sex that is so central to the survival of the species, and never mind thesometimes sloppy consequences? Or is there something smarter and subtler at work,some larger interplay among sexuality, life and what it means to be human? Canevolution program for poetry, or does it simply want children?If there's indeed much more than babies involved in the reasons for sex, we're clearlynot the first species to benefit from that fact. Even among the nonhuman orders, sexappears to be regularly practiced for a whole range of nonreproductive reasons with a
wide range of community-building benefits. How else to explain the fact thathomosexual behavior occurs in more than 450 species? How else to explain kissingamong bonobos, nuzzling among zebras, literal necking among male giraffes? How elseto explain the fact that some sexually active animals seem to avoid reproduction quitedeliberately, mating at times that are unlikely to produce young or picking partners thatare unable to do so? From 80% to 95% of a species of sea lion rarely or never reproduce,though they continue to couple. And so of course do many of us, chasing sex aspassionately as the most prolific of breeders."How many times in your life do you think about being sexual," asks clinicalpsychologist Joanne Marrow of California State University, Sacramento, "and how manyof those times are you thinking about reproduction?" So what gives? And don't saysimply that sex is fun. So are gardening and traveling and going to the movies, butwhen was the last time you woke up in the middle of the night with your heartpounding and your breath catching because of a dream you were having about a trip toBarcelona? Just as there's more to sex than babies, there's also more to it than fun.Part of what makes touch—and by extension, sex—such a central part of the speciessoftware is that hedonism simply makes good Darwinian sense. It's not for nothing thathot stoves hurt and caresses feel nice, and we learn early on to distinguish between thetwo. "All creatures do things that feel good and avoid things that feel bad," says J. GayleBeck, professor of psychology at the University of Buffalo. "The individuals who learnthat best live the longest."But mastering even so basic an idea can be a slow process, often too slow when survivalis on the line. And so nature provides us with a head start. Before we have a chance topractice our first little Moro grab—before we leave the womb, in fact—our pleasureengine is humming. "Little boys can have erections from the day they're born,sometimes even in utero," says Marrow. "Both sexes get pleasure from touchingthemselves without having to be taught." Once we're in the world, both nature andexperience reinforce that need for physical contact, turning us into full-blown tactile bacchanalians.Nursing alone is a powerful reinforcer. The mechanics of animal nursing can be autilitarian business, with wobbly-legged newborns standing up to drink from Mom as ifshe were a spigot. Human nursing, by contrast, requires flesh-on-flesh cuddling. What'smore, a mother's metabolism ensures that this contact occurs more or less all day long.Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, professor emeritus at the University of California atDavis, points out that human beings produce very dilute breast milk, which necessitatesfrequent nursing sessions and therefore provides loads of opportunities for mother andchild to touch.The whole-body rapture found in Mom's arms lasts only through infancy, but children become expert at seeking the same security as they grow older, and good parents have asixth sense about what the priorities are. A wailing child with a cut knee gets a long hug
first, even though it's the bleeding wound that needs attention. In uncounted thousandsof such tactile transactions, kids learn to use touch as a means of connection at least asexpressive as—and certainly more satisfying than—anything so detached as speech.With the pump thus primed, they are ready for the next, exponentially bigger step: themoment, at age 12 or so, when the glands engage, the hormones flow and a childhoodof simple physicality becomes a lifetime of sexuality.From the moment the bodies of boys and girls are able to conceive, nature is very clearthat it wants these mere babies to go about making babies of their own, and so it makesthe impulse almost irresistible. There's a reason for the fabled sexual stamina of teens:the more frequent the pairings, the more likely the offspring. What's more, the pleasureof sex can often lead to long-term bonding, something else nature wants if babies andchildren—with their long years of dependency—are going to survive into adulthood.But even at this unsophisticated stage of sexual maturation, there's more going on inkids than simply developing an exquisite reproductive itch and learning the wonderfulways it can be scratched. "More and more in our field, we don't even talk about sexanymore," says anthropologist Gil Herdt, director of the Program in Human SexualityStudies at San Francisco State University. "We talk about sexuality. It's something thatinvolves the entire person, the whole life course, not just the sexual acts."Marrow agrees and takes the notion even further with the belief that human sexuality isa form of communication as much as it is of procreation. Nearly all creative acts are atleast in part communicative. Songs are written to be sung to somebody else; pictures arepainted to be hung for somebody else. Is it any surprise that sex—an act infinitely moreintimate than any type of art—is also a creative way of communicating complex ideasand deep feelings? "The biologists think the biology comes first," Marrow says. "I thinkconsciousness is the first part of sex, and exploring that consciousness with anotherperson is one of its purposes." If Marrow is right, it's no wonder that poetry and musicare often included in the business of romance, if only to make that message richer.Of course, artistry—even something as small as a well-chosen greeting card or aromantic setting for dinner—may open the sexual door, but something else must keep itfrom closing again. What sustains a physical relationship after the early romanticrounds end is something more nuanced than seduction and more enduring thanpassion. Often it's something as wonderfully ordinary as stability. Partners whomaintain a robust sex life are simply more likely to remain partners than those whodon't, something almost any couple knew long before the sex researchers thought toquantify it. If it is hard to be physical with a mate you've stopped loving, it can beequally hard to get to that cold point with a person with whom you still share theintimacy, exclusivity and, especially, vulnerability of sex. This is particularly true as theintoxication of a new relationship begins to fade and partners start to notice flaws theywere too romantically tipsy to see before.
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