Sexual Relationships: Basic Chemistry

I think preganacy could have just as much to do with the power of prayer as anything else. First it's "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God." Now you've got God's attention. So God figures you'll ask for what you want. "Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby." Nine months later God answers your prayers.

The species wouldn't make little ones if it weren't programmed for sex, and those little ones might not survive if we weren't programmed for relationship. It might be worthwhile to look into the neurochemical chemical basis for relationship.

Helen Fisher, a researcher at Rutgers University, and the author of a new book on love, Why We Love and suggests it comes in three flavours: lust, romantic love and long-term attachment. There is some overlap but, in essence, these are separate phenomena, with their own emotional and motivational systems, and accompanying chemicals. These systems have evolved to enable, respectively, mating, pair-bonding and parenting.

Lust
On the lust level, we find several primary players, notably testosterone, serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin and endogenous opioids. These substances drive us towards others for the purpose of sexual union and create the basis for bonding or at least mutual addiction. The nasty part of this equation is that the release of these chemicals is independent of the Romantic Love and Long-Term Attachment phenomena and the chemical cocktail acts differently in different people's brains. Hence scenarios such as those depicted in Fatal Attraction.

Romantic Love
Dr. Fisher suggests that patterns of behavior seen in romatic love bear a resemblance to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and may be inhibited through increased levels of serotonin. It is no wonder that Plato referred to this condition as a "grave mental disease."

Long-Term Attachment
Although supported by bonding chemicals such as oxytocin, this phase appears to be a product of many factors from early childhood imprinting to complementary lifestyle choices and seems less reliant on hormonal chemistry.

So now we get to the heart of the question: How do we get love to last? We will discuss various approaches and models in the next installment.