Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships

long-term partnership. A. Gentlemen, you are going to get caught sooner or later (probably sooner).

“There seems to be no question but that the human male would be promiscuous in his choice of sexual partners throughout the whole of his life if there were no social restrictions.”27 For most men and many women, sexual monogamy leads inexorably to monotomy. It’s important to understand this process has nothing to do with the attractiveness of the l

why are men and women so different in our desires, fantasies, responses, and sexual behavior? Why are we betraying and divorcing each other at ever increasing rates when not opting out of marriage entirely? Why the pandemic spread of single-parent families? Why does the passion evaporate from so many marriages so quickly? What causes the death of d

“Since Darwin,” she writes, “we have assumed that humans evolved in families where a mother relied on one male to help her rear her young in a nuclear family; yet…the diversity of human family arrangements…is better predicted by assuming that our ancestors evolved as cooperative breeders.”

High-libido sex can just as easily be an expression of the utter absence of intimacy: consider the notorious one-night stand, the prostitute, basic physical release.

as not getting enough sleep can have a dramatic effect on immunity. Sheldon Cohen and his colleagues studied the sleep habits of 153 healthy men and women for two weeks before putting them in quarantine and exposing them to rhinovirus, which causes the common cold. The less an individual slept, the more likely he or she was to come down with a cold

And who does fit this mold? Yes, self-hating gay televangelists and politicians need to come out of the closet, but so does everyone else.

Until testosterone brought it all back. Without the testosterone, he said, “you have no desire.” Phil thought he was in love. Of course he did. As suggested above, one of the few things that reliably revives a male’s sagging testosterone levels is a novel lover.

Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being “in love” which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away… —Louis de Bernières, Correlli’s Mandolin