It’s getting mighty dark out there in Mating Land. Consider this cri de coeur in the guise of a review of several books by youngish women: “Waiting by the Phone: Have our intimate lives taken on the worst features of the free market?”

The review’s brilliant, accomplished author is journalist and Yale Law School grad Anna Louie Sussman. She outlines the difficulties her peers face, and publish about, as they seek life partners and/or casual sex in today’s chaotic mating marketplace. It’s hard not to suspect that Sussman herself is among those affected.

The books she reviews here suggest that, “We’re doing sex all wrong and that contemporary sexual culture neglects the needs of, or even harms, heterosexual women in particular.” In Sussman’s review, brutality and mind-boggling selfishness surface again and again.

Sussman includes heart-breaking scenarios.

There’s a young woman apparently unwilling to tell her boyfriend that she doesn’t like being choked during sex. Sussman observes that perhaps, “she has made a calculated decision to trade episodic sex for … [the hope of] daily companionship”. After all, there aren’t nearly enough educated men to go around.

Will the young woman survive her chosen mating strategy in working order? Strangulation that cuts off blood-flow returning from the brain is surprisingly perilous. Helen Bichard PhD reported that strangulation can lead to stroke and arterial dissection, loss of consciousness (indicating at least mild acquired brain injury), as well as seizures, motor and speech disorders, and paralysis. Some of her research revealed a 10-15 fold increased risk of stroke among young female intimate partner violence survivors, with three-quarters of these women having experienced strangulation.

Another of the books Sussman reviews is Tamara Tenenbaum’s The End of Love. Its account of a lover whose sexual satisfaction trumped his lover’s bodily needs shocks Sussman. Yet is she chiding both Louise Perry (The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century) and Christine Emba (Rethinking Sex) for diagnosing today’s sex and dating culture without emphasising “the liberatory possibilities of sex, or its potential for simple physical pleasure—for women as well as men”? Sussman waves her “sex positivity” flag by devoting a fair chunk of her review to Nona Willis Aronowitz’s steamy first-person erotica (Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution).

Sussman concludes that Perry offers no solution, but rather a mere “entreaty” for better male behaviour. Yet Sussman is short on solutions herself. So were the sexologists whom she polled on an academic listserv before her article appeared publicly.

Her wistful concluding lament?

There’s something terribly poignant and frustrating about reading books by sophisticated thinkers who all conclude, in various ways, that we just need to be nicer, in bed and out of it.

“What is sex for?”

Sussman also suggests that humanity needs to answer this question. She’s right.

With sex, we reap what we sow. We may have the freedom to choose what we sow, but that choice determines what we reap. Much of today’s mating confusion and distress comes from ignorance about certain biological realities.

We know how sex makes babies. We know how to produce orgasms. And many of us have thoroughly learned how to prioritise pursuit of “hot” physical gratification above intimacy (often with the doubtful assistance of internet porn). But we don’t yet grasp the costs of such priorities.

We need to know why sexual choices matter, so that we can sow what we want to reap. Let’s start with the good news.

Study after study has found that a close, trusted mate is one of the most important determinants of human happiness. In fact, loving feelings, affectionate touch and trusted companionship are powerful medicine.

We evolved as tribal pair-bonders, and our nervous systems thrive best under those conditions. Sadly, one cost of today’s fraying intimate relationships is that many humans are not tapping some of the best health insurance available to them. And it’s free – even in the States!

What bonds us?

Here’s the unwelcome truth. It’s not hot sex. Hot sex can set up a temporary “addiction” between lovers. It can trigger a lot of intense honeymoon neurochemicals that make us reckless (and help get sperm to egg). But, generally speaking, the hotter the sex, the more swiftly it leads to sexual satiety, habituation, dissatisfaction, and attraction to novel partners.

Sometimes there’s an interim phase first during which lovers attempt to keep the fires burning with more extreme sexual practices. Eventually, however, separation (emotional or physical) follows recurring sexual satiety.

Yet, it’s evident that lovers do fall in love. In fact, many have formed life-long bonds. What accounts for these phenomena?

Well, our mammalian brain (limbic brain) doesn’t just urge us toward fertilisation and novel partners. In humans, as in a small percentage of other mammal species, it also governs emotional bonding, known as “pair bonding”. We could not fall in love without changes in a specific part of our reward circuitry.

The capacity to pair-bond arose from an even more primitive programme: the one that bonds us to both our parents—and our children. In most mammals this bonding programme simply keeps infants close to their mother’s mammary glands until they are ready to be weaned.

In us, an exaptation of this infant-caregiver bonding mechanism helps form and sustain romantic relationships…at least for a time. But as we’ve seen, passion is not glue, so here we’ll focus on the underlying bonding programme. Tapping it consistently is the key to sustainable harmony.

So, how does the bonding programme work? It operates on specific behaviours, signals that activate a subconscious part of the brain and soothe our innate tendency toward defensive separation, making love and mutual caring possible. Said differently, these signals turn down the selfishness of the “ego”.

Union then registers as safer, more comforting and more rewarding. Or as scientists would say, these specific, comforting attachment cues tend to produce a neurochemical cocktail that soothes the primitive amygdalae, structures in that limbic brain associated with defensiveness. A defensive brain is not good at empathy or generosity. It’s out for Number One.

Bonding behaviours

So which behaviours strengthen bonds? Such things as eye contact, skin-to-skin contact, comforting touch, wordless sounds of pleasure and contentment, attentive listening, and so forth. Things lovers used to do a lot during courtship, and still sometimes do during the initial phase of romance.

Anyone can use these cues (preferably daily) to strengthen emotional bonds at any time in life. However, as these behaviours decline, and are not used almost daily, bonds typically weaken. And all of this happens subconsciously. Too often, we “wean ourselves” from our lovers without realising we’ve done so. Or we don’t form a bond in the first place because we focused only on producing fireworks.

As you’ve no doubt already figured out, it’s our pair-bonding programme that makes contented monogamy possible. However, it is equally evident that this bonding programme alone is no guarantee that a couple will remain contented, or sexually exclusive.

That’s because our pair-bonding programme is up against the evolutionary pressures we’ve already discussed, namely the genetic programme that urges us to (1) sexually satiate ourselves, (2) fall “out of love,” and (3) find novel partners appealing. Evolution has little use for monogamy. Diverse mates mean offspring with diverse genes…and better odds of genes surviving plagues and changed conditions.

The upshot is that our current emphasis on “hot”, edgy and novelty doesn’t just encourage jollies. It can scuttle pair bonding. The feelings that follow sexual satiety often leave us less enthusiastic about engaging in those potent bonding behaviours. We no longer feel like “fetching his pipe and slippers”…or “massaging her feet while curled up on the couch”. As a result, romantic bonds tend to weaken (if they have even formed), and novel partners to look more alluring.

Bonding behaviours are associated with a hormone called oxytocin. When produced by loving interaction, oxytocin naturally counters stress, anxiety, depression, and defensiveness. Oxytocin has also been found to soothe cravings. It is probably the main reason that close, trusted—and especially, harmonious—companionship is associated with increased longevity, faster healing, and lower rates of illness, depression, and addiction.

“Because I don’t fertilise you I still think you’re cute.”

We can do much to keep our bonds from weakening and gain more of the benefits of intimate union, when we do two things:

(1) consciously use bonding behaviours frequently to keep our subconscious bonding programme activated, and

(2) avoid sexual satiety as often as possible by learning to make love mindfully, with lots of generous affection—without the goal of orgasm.

These two tactics allow lovers to stop sending the “I’ve had enough” signal that triggers habituation, while still amplifying the signals that strengthen their emotional bonds.

In short, lovers can learn to ease sexual frustration through extended affectionate intimacy. If you stay with this approach, you’ll see that sexual frustration transmutes itself into a flirty energy that flows between you all the time. This is more enlivening and satisfying than phases of intense arousal followed by phases of bored satiety or even repulsion.

Yes, but…no orgasm?

That’s right, and here’s more on the wisdom of experimenting with this unconventional approach: The moment of climax is not the end of the neuroendocrine cycle of orgasm. Orgasm is the merely the peak of a much longer cycle of subsequent changes deep in the brain. Alas, what goes up must come down. And the brain may need days to return to homeostasis. During this period, things can get decidedly rocky.

“Where’s the evidence of a cycle after climax?” you ask. Well, it has been slow in coming, and it is still very incomplete.

Those who typically research sex hail from professions that have prioritised the commendable mission of freeing sex from shame. Consequently, they have been very slow to do research that would reveal toxic feelings that arise – perfectly naturally – during the part of the cycle that follows climax.

Recently, however, a few researchers have begun to ask some of the right questions. At the same time, neuroendocrine experts searching for new sexual enhancement drugs have turned up some relevant hard-science discoveries.

Let’s start with the first group of modern researchers. There are now several studies showing surprisingly high rates of post-orgasm distress in both men and women. One of the most recent is a 2024 study from the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy. A researcher from Nottingham-Trent University measured rates of post-orgasm blues (sometimes confusingly called “post-coital dysphoria” even when non-intercourse orgasms are being counted). Specifically, the study asked about tearfulness, sadness, depression, anxiety, agitation or aggression after climax.