Love is Not a Liquid Asset

Sex is love's fast-forward button. If you're normal, sooner or later, you're going to fall in love with the person you're sleeping with, or they're going to fall in love with you, whether you like it or not. "Passionate love," as Jonathan Haidt rightly observes in The Happiness Hypothesis (2006), "is a drug. Its symptoms overlap with those of heroin . . . and cocaine . . . . Passionate love alters the activity of several parts of the brain, including parts that are involved in the release of dopamine. Any experience that feels intensely good releases dopamine, and the dopamine link is crucial here because drugs that artificially raise dopamine levels, as do heroin and cocaine, put you at risk of addiction." The feelings we develop for someone we're sleeping with are powerful. This is largely a function of oxytocin, a hormone normally associated with mother-infant bonding. In most mammals, oxytocin is released solely during breastfeeding, where it helps to forge a powerful bond between mother and child. But in certain species, large quantities of oxytocin are also released during sex, where it helps to forge a powerful bond between lovers. In Blueprint (2019), Nicholas A. Christakis maintains that these modifications of the oxytocin reflex are nothing short of astounding: "a set of physiological experiences that originally evolved to facilitate mother-child bonding" have, in our species, evolved to facilitate and support pair-bonding. "The neural circuits that light up in a woman's brain are similar whether she looks at her baby or her partner." Evolution seems to have selected for human neediness. This explains the voracious nature of human sexuality. Unlike tigers, bears, and salamanders, who only have sex during the mating season, we have sex all year round. What's more, we have a great deal of sex that's clearly not going to result in pregnancy (e.g., gay sex, straight sex after menopause, etc.). Sex's primary purpose has long since transcended procreation. Sexual desire renders us needy. It takes us out of ourselves and into the world, making hunters of us all. If the greatest friendships fall into our laps serendipitously, like the treasure you find buried in your own backyard, the greatest loves of our lives are like spoils we bring home from the field of battle.