He Comes Next by Ian Kerner Page B

have been together for years and confess that a particular problem in their relationship was always present, but they ignored it, believing it would naturally work itself out.) Sometimes, looking back, couples aren’t even sure if the sex was ever really that “hot” because being in love made everything seem so great at the time.
    According to Psychology Today , one factor that may prove unifying or divisive to a couple is the degree to which their nervous systems are naturally inclined to pursue novel and stimulating experiences. Some of us are natural thrill-seekers, constantly seeking new and exciting stimuli while embracing a sense of risk, marked by a spirit of wanderlust, a love of danger, a hunger for adventure. Others of us are more content with the familiar, reveling in quiet domestic rhythms, intimate rituals (like always celebrating birthdays at the same restaurant), and the joy of knowing someone or something inside out. Nowhere are these differences between “thrill-seekers” and “familiarity-lovers” more apparent than in the area of sexual compatibility.
    More than likely, you have some attributes from each of these categories, but you’re probably more firmly anchored in one. If you and your partner are both situated at either end of the spectrum, you have the best potential for sustaining a fulfilling sex life together over the long haul. But if you’re a sexual thrill-seeker and you’re paired with a familiarity-lover, then you will need to work harder to find a happy medium that will simultaneously allow you to get your fix of novel excitement, while enabling your lover to take comfort in familiar routine. Often this differential in your natures will be masked in the beginning of the relationship, when you are awash in the sense of newness. Says Marvin Zuckerman, a psychologist at the University of Delaware, “A person’s inherent need for sensation is not necessarily obvious in the early stages of a relationship, when love itself is a novelty and carries its own thrills—it’s when the sex becomes routine that problems occur.”
     
    Candy Is Dandy
     
    In the early stages of a relationship, our brains bathe us in potent sex chemicals that predispose us to fall in love. We like to say that love intoxicates us, but little do we realize that we really are operating under the influence.
    The chemicals that are released during infatuation are the same chemicals triggered when we cheat, which, interestingly enough, are also the same chemicals released when a drug addict gets his or her fix. Says anthropologist Helen Fisher, “Romantic love is an addictive drug. Directly, or indirectly, virtually all ‘drugs of abuse’ affect a single pathway in the brain.”
    So what are the euphoric-inducing chemicals that feed great sex and leave us craving more?
    As mentioned previously, Ogden Nash wrote that “candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.”
    Well, dopamine leaves both in the dust.
    In her book, Why We Love , Fisher and her team studied the brains of prairie voles, little mice-like critters that, like humans, have a tendency to mate for life. In fact, the prairie vole is among the 3 percent of mammals that remains monogamous. Once they’ve selected a mate, prairie voles copulate like mad (over fifty times in two days— talk about hot and wild ). Then they set about the business of bonding for life: nesting, mating, protecting, and nurturing. In fact, they go through the same stages we do: lust, romantic love, and attachment.
    In contrast, the montane vole, a close cousin of the prairie vole, only engages in one-night stands and has no desire for monogamy, despite the fact that they are more than 99 percent genetically similar to their happily married cousins. So what is it about that 1 percent makes them behave so differently? What makes the prairie vole so hot and heavy at the outset, as well as committed for the long haul?
    According to Fisher, during that initial frenzy of copulation,