Steer your limbic system to sustain romance and stay in love
“All that we can surmise of humankind’s genetic history argues for a more liberal sexual morality, in which sexual practices are to be regarded first as bonding devices and only second as a means for procreation.” ~ E.O. Wilson
Waiting for a concert to begin at our local county fair, my husband and I checked out a reptile exhibit that included an animal trainer with a live alligator resting calmly on his lap. As we stroked the gator, I asked the trainer why it was so tame. “I pet it daily. If I didn’t, it would quickly be wild again, and wouldn’t allow this,” he explained.
Bonding behaviors
I was surprised. Only months earlier I had begun to grasp the power of bonding behaviors (skin-to-skin contact, gentle stroking and so forth) to evoke the desire to bond without our having to do anything more. I didn’t realize reptiles ever responded similarly.
Bonding behaviors, or attachment cues, are subconscious signals that can make emotional ties surprisingly effortless, once any initial defensiveness dissolves. Bonding behaviors are also good medicine for easing defensiveness. Here’s a dramatic example: Adoptive parents had been struggling for years with a Romanian orphan with reactive attachment disorder. Violent, he put over 1000 holes in his bedroom walls, and as he grew bigger his mother had to hire a body guard. Finally, in his teens, the parents tried daily attachment cues. After three weeks, he finally bonded with his parents and began to form healthy peer relationships as well. Listen to his ‘thank you’ speech for an award.
Bonding behaviors are effective because they are the way mammal infants attach to their caregivers. To survive, infants need regular contact with Mom’s mammaries until they are ready to be weaned. Bonding behaviors work by encouraging the release of neurochemicals (including oxytocin), which lower innate defensiveness, making a bond possible.
Generous
In short, these generous behaviors are the way we humans fall in love with our parents and children. Caregiver-infant signals include affectionate touch, grooming, soothing sounds, nurturing, eye contact, and so forth.
In rare pair-bonding mammals like us, bonding cues serve a secondary function as well (known as an exaptation). They’re part of the reason we stay in love (on average) for long enough for both parents to attach to any kids. Honeymoon neurochemistry also plays a role, but it’s somewhat like a booster shot that wears off. In contrast, bonding behaviors can sustain bonds indefinitely.
Potent signals
In lovers, bonding behaviors look a bit different than they do between caregiver and infant, yet the parallels are evident. These potent signals include:
- smiling, with eye contact
- skin-to-skin contact
- providing a service or treat without being asked
- giving unsolicited approval, via smiles or compliments
- gazing into each other’s eyes
- listening intently, and restating what you hear
- forgiving or overlooking an error or thoughtless remark, past or present
- preparing your partner something to eat
- synchronized breathing
- kissing with lips and tongues
- cradling, or gently rocking, your partner’s head and torso (works well on a couch, or with lots of pillows)
- holding, or spooning, each other in stillness
- wordless sounds of contentment and pleasure
- stroking with intent to comfort
- massaging with intent to comfort, especially feet, shoulders and head
- hugging with intent to comfort
- lying with your ear over your partner’s heart and listening to the heart beat
- touching and sucking of nipples/breasts
- gently placing your palm over your lover’s genitals with intent to comfort rather than arouse
- making time together at bedtime a priority
- gentle intercourse
Do them daily
There are some curious aspects to bonding behaviors. First, in order to sustain the sparkle in a relationship these behaviors need to occur daily, or almost daily—just as the alligator trainer observed. Second, they need not occur for long, or be particularly effortful, but they must be genuinely selfless. Even holding each other in stillness at the end of a long, busy day can be enough to exchange the subconscious signals that your relationship is rewarding. Third, there’s evidence that the more you use bonding behaviors, the more sensitive your brain becomes to the neurochemicals that help you feel relaxed and loving. (In contrast, intense stimulation sometimes causes tolerance to build up.)
Fourth, some items on the list above may sound like foreplay, but in one important sense they are not. Foreplay is geared toward building sexual tension and climax—which sets off a subtle cycle of neurochemical changes (and sometimes unwelcome perception shifts) before the brain returns to equilibrium. In contrast, bonding behaviors are geared toward relaxation. They work best when they soothe an old part of the primitive brain known as the amygdala.
Role of Amygdala
The amygd
ala’s job is to keep our guard up, unless it is reassured regularly with these subconscious signals. To be sure, it also relaxes temporarily during and immediately after a passionate encounter. After all, fertilization is our genes’ top priority. However, regular, non-goal oriented contact seems to be more effective as a bonding behavior. This suggests that loving foreplay preceding a wonderful orgasm is great…but can send mixed messages. Perhaps these contradictory subconscious signals account for the “attraction-repulsion” phenomenon lovers often notice after their initial honeymoon high wanes.
Nurturing touch
In any case, nurturing touch not only creates a space of comfort and safety. It can also be surprisingly ecstatic, as a friend shared:
“Though it was after 11 PM, we cuddled. For about two hours. Ecstatic cuddling. I had experiences last night that I do not have immediate words for. Rich, deep, full. Subtle. Powerful. Moving. Meaningful. Pointing to greater connection with all life. We were in connection. In the same wave, as she put it, like a flock of birds wheeling in the sky as if with one mind.”
Whether or not you experience ecstasy, bonding behaviors are a practical means of restoring and sustaining the harmonious sparkle in a relationship…even with a partner who is snapping like an alligator. Combine them with gentle lovemaking with lots of periods of relaxation (and a minimum of sexual satiety signals via orgasm), and you may find that you can sustain the harmony in your relationship with surprising ease.
Maybe those rare “swans” (couples who effortlessly stay together harmoniously) are largely made, not born. Certainly, I now carefully ponder news stories like this one about a couple married happily for over 80 years. The journalist reported that, “The couple never went to bed without a kiss and cuddle.”
Hmmm…cause or effect?
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Listen: Mice ‘argue’ about infidelity in ultrasound
RELEVANT COMMENTS:
A guy who experimented with bonding behaviors
while on vacation in Cancun said,
The bonding behavior stuff is amazing! She (the gorgeous Brazilian) said to me “I have millions of opportunities, lots of men. But I don’t like them. You are different, feels special. Good energy, I like you.”
I think this is because I wasn’t trying to immediately get into her pants like most guys. The kissing, holding, touching stuff all day was great for both of us.
Another guy said:
Did some eye contact with a lady colleague the other day while speaking to her or when our eyes met casually. Eye contact can be so intense. A whole world without words. I’m hooked. Did it again on the street during my morning jog. Women are so beautiful.
Using bonding behaviors to give up porn
When I gave up porn, I engaged in daily bonding with my wife as never before. Morning and night, probably 60 minutes or more, and lots of hand holding in between. I just gave my wife a five minute massage while she was at her desk and it felt great to me and to her.
This is how I live my life now. With very frequent non-sexual contact but lots of skin to skin and snuggling, massage, stroking, etc. Most of this doesn’t involve kissing or anything overtly erotic.
However, there is something remarkably satisfying with this contact that made it very easy to get over what would have seemed insurmountable before: giving up fantasy and porn and masturbation.
“The Brave Terry Crews Went on a 90-Day Sex Fast to Make His Marriage work“
[This is a great example of the power of bonding behaviors.]
Here’s what he and his wife survived
The average man doesn’t just choose to abstain from sex for 90 days. The average man goes 90 days trying to have sex and repeatedly failing. Terry Crews is not an average man. If you look at the Brooklyn Nine-Nine actor, he’s approximately 99.9 percent muscle. He is in peak shape. He could have sex whenever he wanted to have sex. Yet, despite being a very strong and desirable man, he and his wife chose to hold off for 90 days.
“I found at the end of the 90 days I was more in love, more turned on. I knew who she was,” Crews says. There’s more cuddling, more talking, more being in love. That’s really sweet, Crews. We’re gonna try that, too. Only 89 days to go…
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