Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

by Daniel Goleman

  Then again, biology does not always cooperate with the modern ideal of marriage that combines lifetime companionship and caring with the more fickle delights of romantic heat. Years of familiarity famously weaken desire—and sometimes that can happen as soon as a partner becomes a “sure thing.”

  To thicken the plot, Nature has seen fit to endow men and women with different propensities even for the molecules of love. Men generally have higher levels of the chemicals that drive lust and lower levels of those that fuel attachment, than do women. These biological mismatches create many of the classic tensions between men and women in the arena of passion.

  Culture and gender aside, perhaps the most fundamental dilemma for romantic love stems from the essential tension between the brain systems that underlie a secure sense of attachment and those that underlie caring and sex. Each of these neural networks fuels its own set of motives and needs—and these can either be in conflict or compatible. If they are at odds, then love will falter; if they are in harmony, love can flourish.

  NATURE’S CUNNING LITTLE TRICK

  A woman writer, though independent and enterprising, always traveled with a pillowcase her husband had slept on. She’d slip it onto the hotel pillow wherever she went. Her explanation: having his scent with her made it easier to fall asleep in a strange bed.

  That makes biological sense and offers a clue about one of Nature’s tricks in its drive to continue the species. The route taken in some of the very first stirrings of sexual attraction—or at least of interest—is low road: sensory rather than a formulated thought (or even an emotion). For women that initial subliminal intrigue can stem from an olfactory impression, for men a visual one.

  Scientists have found that the scent of a man’s perspiration can have remarkable effects on women’s emotions, brightening their moods, relaxing them, and raising their levels of the luteinizing reproductive hormones that bring on ovulation.

  The study that suggests this, however, was done under starkly clinical (and decidedly unromantic) circumstances, in a laboratory. Samples from the underarms of men who had not used deodorant for four weeks were blended into a concoction that was dabbed on the upper lip of young women who had volunteered for what they thought was a study of the scent of products like floor wax.5 When the scent was from a man’s sweat rather than from some other source, the women felt more relaxed and happy.

  In a more romantic setting, researchers propose, these odors may also stir sexual feelings. So presumably, as couples dance, their hormonal hug quietly paves the way for sexual arousal, as their bodies subliminally orchestrate conditions conducive to reproduction. Indeed, the study was part of a search for new fertility therapies, to see if the active ingredient in the perspiration could be isolated; the research was published in the journal Biology of Reproduction.

  The corollary for men may well be the impact of the sight of a woman’s body on their brain’s pleasure centers. The male brain contains seemingly hardwired signal detectors for key aspects of the female body, particularly the “hourglass” ratio of breast-to-waist-to-hips, a signal of youthful beauty that in itself can trigger sexual arousal in men.6 When men around the world rated the attractiveness of line drawings of women with varying ratios, most chose women with a waist circumference about 70 percent of her hips.7

  Just why men’s brains are so imprinted has been the topic of vigorous debate for decades. Some see in this bit of neural circuitry a way to make biological signs of a woman’s peak fertility singularly alluring to men, thereby economizing on the placement of their sperm.

  Whatever the reason, these are elegant designs in human biology: the very sight of her delights him, and his scent readies her for love. That tactic no doubt worked well in early stages of human prehistory. But in modern life the neurobiology of love has undergone complications.

  LIBIDO’S BRAIN

  Being “truly, deeply and madly” in love was the one criterion for selecting men and women for a study at University College in London. The seventeen who volunteered underwent brain imaging while looking at a photo of their romantic partner, then while looking at photos of friends. The conclusion: they seemed addicted to love.

  In men and women alike the object of ardor—unlike the friends—elicited fireworks in uniquely linked sectors of the brain, circuitry so specific it appears specialized for romantic love.8 Much of that circuitry, as the neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp has proposed, lights up during another euphoric state: on cocaine or opiates. This finding suggests that the addictively ecstatic nature of intense romance has a neural rationale. Intriguingly, in men none of this love circuitry does much during sexual arousal per se, though areas adjacent to those for romance stir, suggesting an easy anatomical link when lust arises with love.9

  Neuroscience, through such studies, has pierced the mystery of sexual passion, piecing together the mix of hormones and neurochemicals that give lust such spice. The recipe for desire varies a bit between the genders, to be sure. But the ingredients and their timing during the sexual act reveal an ingenious plan, one that adds the zing to propagating our species.

  Lust’s circuitry, where libido stirs, covers a broad swath of the limbic brain.10 The sexes share much of this low-road wiring for sexual ardor, but with a few telling differences. These differences cause disparities in how each gender experiences lovemaking, as well as in how they value various aspects of a romantic encounter.

  For men, both sexuality and aggressiveness are lifted by the sex hormone testosterone acting in connected areas of the brain.11 When men become aroused sexually, their testosterone levels soar. The male hormone fuels a sexual itch in women as well, albeit not so strongly as in men.

  Then there’s that addictive quality. For men and women alike, dopamine—the chemical that injects intense pleasure in activities as diverse as gambling and drug addictions—rockets during sexual encounters. Pleasurable dopamine levels rise not just during sexual arousal but also with the frequency of intercourse and the intensity of a person’s sex drive.12

  Oxytocin, a chemical source of caregiving, permeates women’s brains more than men’s, and so it has more impact on women’s sexual bonding. Vasopressin, a hormone closely related to oxytocin, can also play a role in bonding.13 Intriguingly, receptors for vasopressin are abundant in spindle cells, those superfast connectors of the social brain. The spindle cells are involved, for instance, when we make very rapid, intuitive judgments about someone we are meeting for the first time. While no studies can yet tell us for sure, these cells seem apt candidates for part of the brain system that creates love—or at least desire—“at first sight.”

  In the run-up to lovemaking, oxytocin levels soar in a man’s brain, as does the hormonal hunger driven by arginine and vasopressin (known together as AVP). The male brain has more AVP receptors than does the female, most of them concentrated in the sexual circuitry. AVP, which becomes abundant at puberty, seems to fuel a man’s sexual hankering, builds up as ejaculation nears, and rapidly declines at the moment of orgasm.

  In both men and women, oxytocin fuels many of the loving and delectable feelings of sexual contact. Ample doses release during orgasm, after which a flood of the chemical seems to stimulate the afterglow of warm affection—and put men and women on the same tenderly loving hormonal wavelength for the time being.14 Oxytocin secretions remain strong after climax, particularly during “afterplay,” the cuddling that follows intercourse.15

  Oxytocin wells up in particular strength in men during this “refractory” period after orgasm, when they typically cannot get an erection. Intriguingly, at least in rodents (and possibly in humans), abundant sexual gratification in males spikes a threefold rise in oxytocin levels—a brain change that apparently brings male brain chemistry closer to that of females for the time being. In any case, that clever chemical endgame for lovemaking affords a relaxed time to build attachment, another function of oxytocin.

  The lust circuitry also primes a couple for their next tryst. The hippocampus, th
e key structure in memory storage, holds neurons rich in receptors for AVP and oxytocin alike. AVP, particularly in a man, seems to imprint in memory with special strength the enticing image of his partner in passion, making his sexual mate singularly memorable. The oxytocin produced by orgasm also boosts memory, again imprinting in the mind’s eye a lover’s fond figure.

  While this primal biochemistry stirs our sexual activity, high-road brain centers exert their own influences, not always compatibly. Brain systems that for aeons have worked well for human survival now seem vulnerable to conflicts and tensions that can make love’s labor lost—not last.

  RUTHLESS DESIRE

  Consider a beautiful and independent young lawyer whose fiancé, a writer, worked at home. Whenever she came home, the fiancé would drop whatever he was doing and hover around her. One evening as she was coming to bed, he eagerly pulled her to him even before she had a chance to get under the sheets.16

  “Just give me an ounce of space to love you from,” she said to him—a comment that hurt his feelings. He threatened to go sleep on the couch.

  Her comment bespeaks the underside of looping too tightly: it can be suffocating. The goal of attunement is not simply continual meshing, with an utter entrainment of every thought and feeling; it also includes giving each other space to be alone as needed. This cycle of connectedness strikes a balance between the individual’s needs and the couple’s. As one family therapist put it, “The more a couple can be apart, the more they can be together.”

  Each of love’s major expressions—attachment, desire, and caring—has its unique biology, designed to loop partners together with its specific chemical glue. When they align, love grows robust. When they are at odds, love can flounder.

  Consider the challenge to any liaison when the three biological love systems misalign, as commonly happens in the tension between attachment and sex. This mismatch occurs, for example, when one partner feels insecure or, even worse, nurses outright jealousy or harbors fears of abandonment. From the neural perspective, the system for attachment, when pitched in the direction of anxiety, inhibits the operation of the others. Such gnawing apprehension can easily wither the sexual urge and snuff out affectionate caring—at least for a time.

  The fiancé’s single-pointed fixation on the lawyer as a sexual object is akin to the ruthless desire of a nursing infant, who knows nothing of his mother’s own feelings and needs. These archaic desires play out too during lovemaking, when two passionate adults delve into each other’s bodies with the fervor of infants.

  As we’ve noted, the childhood roots of intimacy resurface in the use of childlike, high-pitched voices or baby names between lovers. Ethologists argue that these cues trigger in lovers’ brains parental responses of caregiving and tenderness. The difference between infant desire and adult, however, lies in the adult capacity for empathy, so that passion melds with compassion or at least caring.

  So Mark Epstein, the lawyer’s psychiatrist, suggested an alternative for the fiancé: slow down enough to attune emotionally and thereby create the psychological space that would let her stay in touch with her own desire. That mutuality of desire—and maintenance of the loop between them—offered a way to bring back the passion she was losing.

  This harkens back to Freud’s famous question, “What does woman want?” As Epstein answers, “She wants a partner who cares what she wants.”

  THE CONSENSUAL “IT”

  Anne Rice, author of a best-selling series of vampire novels—and of erotica under a nom de plume—remembers having vivid sadomasochistic fantasies as far back as childhood.

  One of her earliest fantasies centered on elaborate scenarios of young men in ancient Greece being auctioned as sexual slaves; same-sex attraction between males fascinated her. In adulthood she found herself drawn to friendships with gay men and attracted to gay culture.17

  Such is the stuff of which fiction is made; Rice’s vampire novels, rife with homoerotic subthemes, set the tone for the romantic universe of the Goths. And in her steamy novels written under a pseudonym, she details sadomasochistic activities by both sexes. While those sexual fantasies are by no means everyone’s favorites, nothing in them is beyond what researchers find typifies the erotic daydreams of ordinary people.

  The flamboyant sexual scenes that Rice has elaborated in detail are not “deviant” in a normative sense; rather, they are among the fantasy themes commonly reported by men and women alike in study after study. For example, one survey found that the most frequent sex fantasies include: reliving an exciting sexual encounter, imagining having sex with one’s partner or with someone else, having oral sex, making love in a romantic location, being irresistible—and being forced into sexual submission.18

  A wide variety of sex fantasies can reflect a healthy sexuality, offering a font of stimulation that enhances arousal and pleasure.19 When both parties consent, this goes even for more bizarre fantasies like Rice’s, which would seem on their face to present cruel scenarios.

  We’ve come a long way since Freud’s proclamation, a century ago, that “a happy person never fantasizes, only an unsatisfied one.”20 But a fantasy is just that: vivid imagination. As Rice pointedly mentions, she has never acted on hers, despite being presented with opportunities. Sexual fantasies may not be enacted with another person, but they nevertheless find their uses. Alfred Kinsey’s original studies (which in retrospect represented a skewed sample) showed that 89 percent of men and 64 percent of women admitted to having sex fantasies during masturbation—a shocking finding in that more sedate era, the 1950s, but rather ho-hum today. As the good Professor Kinsey first made glaringly clear, a surprising range of sexual behaviors in men and women are far more common than are publicly admitted.

  The social taboos that reign even today—despite The Jerry Springer Show and the ubiquity of Web porn sites—mean that the actual incidence of various predilections is invariably higher than people are willing to admit. Indeed, sex researchers routinely assume that any statistics that are based on people’s own reports of their sexual behavior underrepresent actual numbers. When college men and women duly recorded in a diary every sexual fantasy or sexy thought they had over the course of a day, men reported about seven daily, and women between four and five. But in other studies where college students answered a questionnaire asking them to recall the same information, the men estimated they had just one sexual fantasy per day, the women one per week.

  Consider men and women who have sexual fantasies during intercourse. For virtually all forms of sexual behavior men tend to have higher numbers than women, but fantasizing during intercourse seems to level the playing field; up to 94 percent of women and 92 percent of men say that they have done so (though some reports range as low as 47 percent for men and 34 percent for women).

  One study found that having sex with one’s current lover is a popular daydream while one is not engaged in lovemaking, but imagining sex with someone else is a more popular fantasy during intercourse.21 Such data have led one wag to observe that when romantic partners make love, there are in effect four people involved: the two actual ones, and the two that exist in their minds.

  Most sex fantasies inherently depict the other as an object, a being created to fit the preferred ardor of the beholder, without regard to what the other himself or herself might want in that situation. But in the realm of fantasy, anything goes.

  Consenting to enter, share, and act out a sex fantasy in vivo is an act of convergence; “playing” the script with a willing partner, rather than imposing the fantasy and so making the other an It, makes all the difference.22 If partners both agree and so desire, even a seeming I-It scenario can create a closer sense of intimacy. Under the right circumstances, regarding a lover as an It—if mutually consensual—can be part of the play of sex.

  “A good sexual relationship,” one psychotherapist observes, “is like a good sexual fantasy”—exciting but safe. When partners have complementary emotional needs, he adds, the resulting chemistry
—like fantasies that mesh—can breed an excitement that counters the usual downward drift in sexual interest among couples who have been together for many years.23

  Empathy and understanding between partners make all the difference between a playful It fantasy and a hurtful one. If both see the loveplay as a game, their very ease with the fantasy creates a reassuring empathy. As they enter the fantasy reality, their looping within it enhances their mutual pleasure and bespeaks a radical acceptance—an implicit act of caring.

  WHEN SEX OBJECTIFIES

  Consider the love life of a pathological narcissist, from a case report by his psychotherapist:

  Twenty-five and single, he easily becomes infatuated with women he meets and is obsessed by powerful fantasies about each one in turn. But after a series of sexual trysts with a lover, he always feels disappointed in her, suddenly finding her too dumb, or clinging, or physically repugnant.

  For instance, when he felt lonely at Christmas, he tried to persuade his girlfriend of the moment—whom he’d only been seeing a few weeks—to stay in town with him instead of visiting her family. When she refused, he attacked her as self-centered and, enraged, decided never to see her again.

  The narcissist’s sense of entitlement endows him with the feeling that ordinary rules and boundaries do not apply to him. As we’ve seen, he feels entitled to sex if a woman encourages and arouses him—even if she clearly says she wants to stop. He will go ahead anyway, even if he has to use force.

  A blunted empathy, remember, stands high on the list of traits of the narcissist, along with an exploitative attitude and vain self-centeredness. So it should come as no surprise that narcissistic men endorse attitudes that favor sexual coercion, such as the idea that victims of rape are “asking for it,” or that when a woman says no to sex, she really means yes.24 The narcissists among American college men tend to agree that “if a girl engages in necking or petting and she lets things get out of hand, it is her own fault if her partner forces sex on her.” For some men, that belief explicitly rationalizes date rape, where the man coerces a woman who has been necking with him but wants to stop.