Mating in Captivity

What makes sustaining desire over time so difficult is that it requires reconciling two opposing forces: freedom and commitment.

When the erotic mind senses criticism, it goes into hiding. No longer private, it becomes secretive.

By making herself indispensable, she has hoped to counteract the vagaries of love.

When the erotic mind senses criticism, it goes into hiding. No longer private, it becomes secretive.

Even more important, he was choosing her again, and it’s the act of choosing, the freedom involved in choosing, that keeps a relationship alive.

It is so complete—and our need to feel safe is so profound—that we will do anything not to lose them.

lived. The evolutionary anthropologist Helen Fisher says that the hormonal cocktail of romance (dopamine, norepineprine, and PEA) is known to last no more than a few years at best. Oxytocin, the cuddling hormone, outlasts them all.

But Lena’s niceness is precisely what turns her husband off.

Paradoxically, ruthlessness is a way to achieve closeness.