YES! This paper is long. And needs your attention. But problems in love & relationship might well be the biggest single cause for unhappiness in our lives. So I suggest you read it.

Content

On Love and Relationship

  1. Introduction
  1. Why Love is not exclusive
  • The function of “Socio Erotic Bonding”
  • The function of a “spousal relationship”
  1. Relationships in Today’s world
  • Reality Check
  • The “Exclusive” in “Spousal Relationship”
  • Understand the feelings
  • Expect the breakdown
  1. Overcoming possession
  • Why we act possessive
  • A spousal relationship starts with an honest commitment
  • Coming from a mindset of abundance
  1. Conclusion
  1. Annex
  • In case you choose the possessive model

 

  1. Introduction

Our hearts want us to connect with other human beings. And the heart does not make distinctions nor limits itself in the way it is bonding, whether it is mentally, emotionally or physically. Just remember how we automatically feel and express love and affection when we see a small child or an animal that we relate to. This innate desire for connection is not limited to just one child, one animal or one person. In fact if we show up as the loving person we are, we will easily want to connect with many other loveable people in our lives.

At the same time we have learned how incredibly rewarding and beautiful our lives are when we commit to a long-term spousal relationship, where we share and grow with our chosen partner and through the joined experiences develop this deep feeling of belonging together.

Here comes the fuck up. Society tries to tell us that once we enter a long-term relationship we should no longer have the desire to connect with other human beings, in particular not of the opposite sex. Of course our desire and heartfelt wish for connection does not suddenly disappear, just because we are in a long-term relationship. The scientific evidence that we are meant to continue to bond with more than one person is overwhelming. Notwithstanding the scientific facts, a simple and honest look at the state of most relationships will do. We see an exceptionally high breakup rate, many unhappy relationships with partners that have resigned into settling or have chosen secret affairs on the side. Where we still find stable and happy relationships the partners have often consciously decided to no longer pursue their emotional need for bonding with other people, in particular of the opposite sex.

The starting point for a happy and balanced emotional life is to understand and accept that we have in fact two needs that are not in contradiction with each other: to connect and bond with many people while at the same time share our life with a partner in a meaningful way to create a deep feeling of belonging and togetherness.

This paper is going to explore WHY that is and how we can successfully navigate through the pitfalls of Love & Relationships.

  1. Why Love is not exclusive

2.1      The function of “Socio Erotic Bonding”

For most of human history people used to live in small groups of 50 to 150 as hunters and gatherers. Most likely those people were all you would ever meet during your entire lifetime! From a sexual point of view the name of the game was variety. Evolution would (and still does) favour those people that mated with many different partners, producing a different combination of genes each time and therefore increasing the odds that some of their offspring had real high survival value. And we are all offspring’s of those people, so we too carry the preference for sexual variety. But intimacy was by no means limited to reproduction! Forming close and intimate bonds with most of our tribe was an essential strategy to ensure mutual support in the fight for survival. Remember that as humans we have no sharp teeth or claws, are not particularly strong and can not run fast, so survival depended (and still depends) on cooperation. To ensure that cooperation people in the tribe would bond with each other to create a connection of mutual support and caring. The funny term for this is “Socio Erotic Bonding”

This is who we are and how we have lived 95% of human history:

  • Humans seek sexual variety (which is the reason why novelty is so attractive to us and sexual attraction wears off with time)
  • Humans are hardwired to mentally, emotionally and physically bond with a small number of people to make us feel loved, supported, taken care of and belong

2.2.     The function of a spousal relationship

Life has changed drastically since then, but WE have not. Societies have transformed from tribes of 50 to 150 people to villages of thousands, hundred thousands and millions of people. While today we meet more people on a single visit to the local mall than our forefathers have met in their lifetime, the relationships with people in our life became increasingly superficial as we are now living in anonymous crowds. Most people are starved of their emotional need for closeness and connection. Never before have humans felt so lonely, … living among millions of people. With the tribe no longer providing the deep and intimate connections we are all longing for, the idea of a spousal relationship has become appealing to many people as it has become an answer to feeling loved, taken care of and sharing their lives. Given what we know from history, a spousal relationship might not be totally congruent with our natural being, however in the context we live in today it is probably a very good substitute for our need of belonging, intimacy and sharing that otherwise a tribe would have provided.

However our idea of a spousal relationship comes with a flaw that threatens the very purpose of it and easily leads to estrangement, loneliness and ultimately breakup which is what unfortunately we can see all around us.

 

  1. Relationships in Today’s world

3.1      Reality Check

It doesn’t matter how great your love and how good your intentions are if you try to build a long term relationship on a model that does not work, failure is very likely. Please have an honest look into our society today and you will find:

  • relationships and families breaking apart
  • partners becoming depressed, frustrated or indifferent in the relationship
  • partners having secret affairs on the side
  • and in those rare relationships that we would usually describe as „happy“ we will find partners that have voluntarily compromised and have consciously or unconsciously renounced their emotional need for connecting deeply with people other than their long-term partner.

While nearly all of them have started of with overwhelming love and good intentions, they have obviously followed a relationship model that is not working very well and has brought them the above outcome. In fact the model that we are trying to follow in our society these days is just that: a model. It is a relatively recent model, while most of human history and most of human cultures have followed very different models. Our current model is mainly based on possessive, patriarchal, and religious principles. And a simple look around will tell you: It is NOT working.

3.2      The “exclusive” in “spousal relationship”

To understand that, we need to know that the idea of an exclusive spousal relationship was initially introduced for very different reasons than those of intimate connection, love and belonging. In fact, our relationship concept is probably only 10.000 years old. It was introduced with the invention of agriculture and we will look further into this at a later chapter. In essence it had nothing to do with today’s ideas of romantic love. Instead it was meant to be the answer to the need of men to secure that the offspring they were raising were there own. With agriculture for the first time people acquired property that they wanted to pass on to their own sons and daughters. So the concept of spousal relationship was introduced as a tool to ensure sexual exclusivity for the sake of parental certainty. And this element of possessiveness, emotional and sexual exclusivity in a spousal relationship has survived up until today.

So while the need of deep connection and belongingness that is inherent in a long-term spousal relationship is perfectly congruent with human nature, the idea to fence it off against other people is not. The challenges we see in most relationships today are rooted in the fact, that spousal relationships were initially introduced for the purpose of possession and not for love. No wonder the current model is so incredibly unsuccessful!

3.3      Understanding the feelings

In order to navigate through the pitfalls of love and relationships it is essential to know your biology and to understand what your feelings mean (and more importantly what they don’t mean).

Let us start with the obvious: masculine energy has to find feminine energy attractive and … feminine energy has to find masculine energy attractive. Without this attraction and the consequent bonding on an intellectual, emotional and physical level, reproduction would not be happening and none of us would be around to read these lines.

Thanks to modern brain scanning technology, neuroscience has made breakthrough discoveries about „Love“ in the last two decades. Today we know that there are three different brain circuits involved, sometimes operating together, sometimes operating separately.

  • Sexual desire and attraction: This brain circuit and its associated hormones are responsible for our initial attraction and our desire for physical contact. We are attracted by members of the opposite sex that display signs of good genes and high reproductive value. The associated hormones create desire and have us experience pleasure if we follow through with regards to our attraction. This desire is not exclusive. On the contrary, its purpose is to bond and be with as many suitable partners as possible.
  • Romantic love: This brain circuit and its associated hormones are responsible for us falling in love. The purpose is to narrow in and focus on just one partner so that reproduction is actually happening. In fact the „falling in love“ stage is designed to last for a maximum of four years, just about enough time that is needed to raise the offspring to a point, where the mother does no longer depend on the father to raise the child
  • Feeling of attachment: This brain circuit and its associated hormones are responsible for us getting attached to a long-term partner. It creates the feeling of belonging together and this special bond that is based on having been with each other for a long time, having shared many different experiences together.

All three brain circuits serve a different purpose and can operate separately from each other. It is possible to be in love with one person, while having deep feelings of attachment for another and being sexually attracted to yet another.

While it is generally a good thing to allow for these feelings to flow and develop freely and enjoy the rewards and pleasures associated with them, it is very useful to distinguish the different forms of love and understand their purpose. Without understanding why we are actually experiencing these feelings, we easily draw wrong conclusions, destroy perfectly happy families, enter unhealthy relationships or mess up our emotional life. Also these brain circuits have developed many thousands of years ago and were designed to operate in a very different environment than the one we live in today. Understanding what and why you are feeling a certain way, enables you to consciously make decisions to act upon these feelings or not, depending on what you consider to serve your best interest.

With all that in mind …

3.4      Expect the “breakdown”

The Hollywood Happy Ending model ignores that relationships move on from the „romantic phase“ to the „attachment phase“ while at the same time our innate desire for connection with a variety of people does not miraculously disappear. Compared to the Hollywood model, real life relationships do not measure up and we tend to think something is wrong and break up valuable relationships instead of acknowledging that relationships are evolving and celebrating this evolution as the next step forward into fulfilment and happiness.

Perfectly happy relationships and families break apart because we are not prepared for the following basic truths of human nature:

  • Romantic love is supposed to last for a maximum of four years! There is nothing wrong in our relationship if we are evolving from the romantic phase into the attachment phase
  • Sexual attraction is linked to the concept of novelty! Our genes do not care about our desire for long term relationships. They will always encourage us to seek new sexual partners as it increases their chance of successful reproduction.
  • Be prepared that you will most probably fall in love with other people and that might happen over and over again. Don’t take it serious. It is simply your hormones doing what they are supposed to do. Georg Bernard Shaw rightly said, „falling in love means grossly overestimating the difference between one woman/man and another one“. In particular it does not mean something is wrong with you, your current partner or your relationship. When you allow yourself to see the „romantic phase“ for what it is, you will soon realize that this new person might certainly be wonderful but not so special after all.
  • Know that there are many amazing people out there! If you plan to replace your current partner every time you think you have found someone „better“ you will have many, many short lived „relationships“ ahead of you. Truth is, that there are probably an infinite number of potential partners out there you could create lasting and fulfilling relationships with. The value of your current relationship lies in what the two of you have created already. Given you keep investing into your current relationship, then this is a value that no potential new partner can make up for. It is about the value you have already created and that you will want to hold on to and grow further.
  1. Overcoming possession

4.1 Why we act possessive

Possessive relationships are based on fear and insecurity. Fear that the love might be taken away from us, that there might not be enough love. The mindset is that of scarcity so we have to protect, control , be jealous and possessive.

Needless to say that a context based on fear and scarcity is less than ideal for a relationship, yet this is the context most of us are living in. That comes to no surprise as our society and its economic system is based on creating a context of scarcity. The constant marketing and advertising messages we are exposed to keep stressing that „something is missing“, that “we are not enough” or “we don’t have enough”.

Yet by far the largest part of human history we were living in a very different context of freedom and abundance. The simple life of hunters and gatherers might not seem appealing to you now but it might not have been so bad after all. For a nomadic lifestyle, the concept of property was unpractical as property would have been more of a burden than anything else. The tribe would freely share whatever food was available that day. The very survival depended on everyone sharing freely: You share what you have today and the group will share with you, if you come back empty handed tomorrow.

When it came to paternity, chances are that for most of human history nobody ever made a connection between one of the frequent sexual encounters between tribal members and a newborn baby many, many months after that. The concept of paternity was unknown and the whole tribe took responsibility for any newborns.

Sexuality shifted from mere reproduction purpose to an effective method for social bonding. While other species will only engage in sexual encounters when the female is fertile and usually keep the copulation to no more than a few seconds, human beings will have sex at times when reproduction is literally impossible, spend far more time than necessary on the interaction, with many of the sexual practices making no sense whatsoever in terms of reproduction.

Possessiveness in a relationship is probably as recent as 10,000 years ago. With the event of agriculture humans stopped sharing and started to accumulate property. Suddenly passing on that property to their offspring became important and the only way to ensure paternal certainty was by „possessing“ your partner and making sure that she would not be able to mate with anyone else. In turn women would watch jealously over their men as suddenly they needed to make sure that his resources were not diverted to other women and their children.

So here we are today, creatures that would normally live in a context of freedom and abundance, constantly being exposed to today’s messages of scarcity and taking these messages into our relationships. The mindset of scarcity and fear is responsible for most of our unhappiness, restlessness, depression, stress and illnesses. It is not „just“ about relationships. It is about your life. Peace of mind, happiness and fulfilment come from a mindset of trust and abundance. And remember, that is who you as a Human Being have been throughout most of human history.

So let us now look into what that means for a spousal relationship!

 4.2  A spousal relationship starts with an honest commitment

A spousal relationship starts with an HONEST and realistic commitment. Make the commitment to spend the rest of your life with your chosen partner instead of a promise that you will never ever find anyone else attractive, drawn towards or even fall in love with. Know that our biology will encourage the intellectual, emotional and physical connection with many different people throughout our life and be honest about it. To allow this desire to develop freely and bond with a variety of people will enable us to fully express who we are and to completely immerse into being alive and emotionally fulfilled and healthy. This is something you might want for yourself and for your partner. Understanding the biology behind this desire will ensure that you put your feelings into perspective and help to interpret your feelings correctly so you can easily keep your commitment for a long term partnership of deep belonging and togetherness.

4.3 Coming from a mindset of abundance

A mindset is just that. The way we set our mind. If you want to overcome fear and scarcity you have to change the way „you set your mind“. Trust that the love you have inside of you and the love that every other person has inside is not a limited resource. In fact, you might have noticed that the more you share your love the more love you tend to feel inside of you. A person expressing love will NEVER run out of love. It simply is nothing you can run out of by sharing it. Are you getting this?

That is why intellectual, emotional or physical connection to other people in itself, does NOT take away from your love and relationship to your spousal partner.

What does take away however is that we tend to misinterpret our feelings for others as a sign that something is wrong with us, our partner or our primary relationship. THIS leads to estrangement and distance in our spousal relationship and ultimately takes away from it.

If we know our biology and are prepared for what is supposed to happen in the many decades throughout our lifelong relationship, we can easily navigate through all those feelings that will surely come up without doubting our spousal relationship. By showing our commitment and expressing our love on a daily basis we reinforce our relationship as well as our partners mindset of abundance and take away any fears that (s)he might have. Allow yourself to see him/her as a new person every day, falling in love with new facets of his/her personality and holding the space for your partner to grow, inside and outside of your relationship.

  1. Conclusion

Nothing defines humanity more than being a “social” species. As a matter of fact we are not very impressive when it comes to our physical strength or our speed in running. So in order to survive we became social, cooperated and relied on each other. Connecting to other people, bonding on all levels is the very core of our nature. So let us be human! This is neither wrong nor shameful nor something we need to overcome as most societies during the last 5% of human history have tried to make us believe. In fact the ever rising statistics of people becoming isolated and lonely while living in the midth of hundreds of thousands of other people is a direct consequence of us alarmingly disconnecting to an extend that is slowly destroying our emotional, mental and physical health.

This paper is neither a plea for polyandry nor for casual sexual encounters (it also has neither an opinion nor a judgement on either). Instead it is a plea to accept, express and enjoy the whole spectrum of our human nature. And as humans we are meant to connect with each other. Connection can take many forms, can happen on a mental, emotional or physical level. It can be for just the blink of an eye or for a lifetime. It can remain static or can evolve from one form to another. Whatever the connection may be between two people, it is unique in as far as there is no other connection being exactly the same and can insofar not be compared to any other. During a lifetime you hopefully connect with many people, some of them becoming more important than others. The value lies in the value you create with each other and that is entirely at the discretions of the two people involved. The value is neither defined nor restricted by those connections not being of a spousal nature. In fact some of the greatest friend- and relationships in history and may be in your own life have not been of spousal nature. Instead they are defined by a promise of total honesty, intimate trust and contribution to each other and the only restriction is whatever both parties feel comfortable with at any given time.


  1. Annex

In case you choose the possessive model

Let us be clear. The choice is yours. Many people may actually want to make the conscious decision to accept a possessive relationship. They might be in an incredibly beautiful relationship where their partner is simply not willing or capable to let go of possessiveness. And they are totally happy to sacrifice intimate connection to other people as this may be the only way to remain in their primary relationship. This is a perfectly valid trade-off and might well be a very good choice. It is absolutely essential though to own this choice and be aware that it is you who is responsible for any consequences.

Unfortunately most people fail to do just that. Instead they start to put responsibility onto their partner when the initial romantic phase cools of and they feel restricted by the possessiveness and a perceived lack of freedom. This in turn leads to resentment against their partner, the feeling of missing out and estrangement in the relationship. With that happening, a relationship becomes more and more likely to end in a breakup as the bond between the partners continue to weaken.

So if you accept to be in a possessive relationship, you also need to

  • accept full responsibility for the choice that you made and be perfectly happy to make the trade-off that is part of a possessive relationship
  • be aware of what is supposed to happen and expect your relationship to evolve from the romantic stage to the attachment stage
  • know your biology and are able to interpret any future feelings and experiences correctly without questioning your partner or your relationship

Remember this is still a trade off, but nevertheless a perfect possibility to create a happy and lasting relationship within the possessive model, if that is what you are choosing.

 For more insights: Torsten Lueddecke