Secrets for a Lifetime of Love, Sex, and Intimacy
Here are the newly emerging facts that are important in understanding, developing, and maintaining a loving relationship that lasts through time. Until I learned the real science of love, like most people, I thought love was a wonderful mystery that blessed us at times and left us at times.
I collected quotes that seemed to express my experience including these two:
“Love is a friendship set to music.” Joseph Campbell
“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals.” Anaïs Nin
But I needed more than beautiful words to help my own marriage and to help me help others. I longed for the key that would unlock the door and show me the way. Here are a few of the things I’ve learned from Dr. Johnson’s book which Dr. Gottman says is, “An absolute must for anyone who wants to understand how Love Makes Sense.”
1. The first and foremost instinct of humans is neither sex nor aggression. It is to connect. The man who first offered us this vision of what we now call attachment or bonding was an uptight, aristocratic English psychiatrist named John Bowlby. But from the wounds of his early experiences separated from his parents, he was nevertheless a rebel who changed the landscape of love and loving forever. His insights are the foundation on which the new science of love rests. Bowlby proposed that we are designed to love a few precious others who will hold and protect us through the squalls and storms of life. It is Nature’s plan for the survival of the species. Sex may impel us to mate, but it is love that assures our existence.
2. Adult romantic love is an attachment bond, just like the one between mother or father and child. We’ve long assumed that as we mature, we outgrow the need for the intense closeness, nurturing, and comfort we had as children with our caregivers, and that as adults, the romantic attachments we form are essentially sexual in nature. This is a complete distortion of adult love. Research by Johnson, Gottman, and others demonstrates that our need to depend on one precious other— to know that when we “call,” he or she will be there for us—never dissolves. In fact, it endures from, as Bowlby put it, “the cradle to the grave.” As adults, we simply transfer that need from our primary caregiver to our lover.
Romantic love is not the least bit illogical or random. It is the continuation of the ordered and wise recipe for our survival. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard women say, “I feel like I have another child in the house.” I found that both men and women fail to realize that our needs for love, care, and nurture are as important to men as they are to women and as important when we’re 40 as when were 4.
3. Hot sex doesn’t lead to secure love; secure attachment leads to hot sex. And also to love that lasts. Monogamy is not a myth. Pick up any men’s or women’s magazine and you’ll find cover lines blaring: “Seduce Him! This Sexy Move Works from 20 Feet Away”; “28 Things to Try in Bed…Or in a Hammock. Or the Floor.”; and “Sex Academy—Get an A in Giving Her an O.” In our ignorance, we’ve made physical intimacy the sine qua non of romantic love. The tragedy is that by focusing so heavily on sex and neglecting love, we fail to get either. In our pain we check out emotionally, which eventually leads to small, then large, betrayals and eventually to a relationship that falls apart. “The growing craze for internet porn is a catastrophe for love relationships,” says Johnson, “precisely because it abjures emotional connection.”
4. Emotional dependency is not
immature or pathological, it is
our greatest strength.
Like most of the people in Western
society, I believed that
“dependency” was something I
needed to avoid like the plague. I
believed that a “real man” was
strong, independent, and self-
sufficient. He didn’t complain and he
never showed his weaknesses. To a
lesser degree women are also raised
to value independence and see
dependence as a weakness to be
overcome.
“Again, this is backwards,” says
Johnson.
Far from being a sign of
frailty, strong emotional connection
is a sign of mental health. It is
emotional isolation that is the killer.
We know that men live sicker and
die sooner than women and the
suicide rate is 2 to 18 times higher
for men than for women. The main
reason, I believe, is that men have
fewer social supports than women
do. We associate manliness with
independence and dependence with
“wimpiness.”
5. Being the “best you can be” is really only possible when you are deeply connected to another. Splendid isolation is for planets, not people. Many of us think of love as limiting, narrowing our options and experiences. Like many men, I grew up being taught that falling in love was a trap. It would mean the end of my independence and ability to explore and adventure. But I’ve found it to be exactly the reverse. When I’ve been out of a relationship or in a relationship where I felt distant and insecure, I was afraid to try new things. I would usually overwork, the routine giving me a sense of safety.
But since Carlin and I have learned about the science of love, we are more connected than ever before. The connection has set us free not tied us down. When I know I can trust her and she will be there for me, and vice versa, it allows us to step out into the world and become the very best we can be. “It is hard to be open to new experiences when our attention and energy are bound up in worry about our safety,” says Johnson, “much easier when we know that someone has our back. Thus fortified, we become imbued with confidence in ourselves and our ability to handle new challenges.”
Love is the ticket to ride the roller coaster of life. It’s more wonderful than anything I could have imagined. Learning to love has helped us create a safe and secure nest for each other and at the same time has given us the key to all that is there for us in the wide wonderful universe.
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