TEDxSalford

How to maintain desire in a long-term relationship

Anthropologist Helen Fisher, in her 2006 TED Global talk ‘Why We Love, Why We Cheat,’ tries to get to the bottom of romantic love with an MRI brain scanner. How does she check that her participants are madly in love? By checking for obsession and craving, because that’s what romantic love is. She asks them questions like, ‘how often do you think about your partner,’ and ‘would you die for them?’

Fisher says that romantic love is not an emotion or even a range of emotions – it is a drive and it activates the same region of the brain as a rush of cocaine. Helen Fisher calls this  ’romantic love’ and sex therapist, Esther Perel in her 2013 TEDSalon NY  talk, ‘The secret to desire in a long-term relationship’ calls it desire but they both agree that it’s an intense wanting.

Fisher tells us that this incessant craving is much, much stronger than the sex drive. If someone doesn’t want to have sex with us, that’s usually fine, we can write that off, but if we’re in love with someone we become obsessed and irrational. It’s a craving for that person, for the emotional as well as the physical connection. You want them to call you, to invite you out, to be thinking of you and also to be physically close to you. When Fisher asked her in-love participants if they would die for the other person, they answered, yes. When she asked them how much they thought about the other person, the answer was, all day and all night.

The evolution of romantic love within marriage

Sadly this feeling of romantic love, of desire, of wanting, doesn’t often last throughout a partnership or a marriage.

These two speakers tackle marriage at different stages of its history. Perel says that until recently marriage was for social status, for raising children and for companionship. Romantic interest played very little, if no part in the arrangement.

There have been two key shifts in recent history that could explain the rise of cheating. We’re more likely to choose a partner for romantic love and we’re living longer. So now we need know how to sustain this desire for longer than ever before. With these two crucial changes in what we want from a relationship, I would argue that the institution of marriage is an anachronism.

As an anthropologist, Fisher goes back in time to pre-industrialisation, to women in the grasslands of Africa. For millions of years, they brought home 60% to 80% of the food and the thriving double income family was standard. Women had the same economic, social and sexual power as men until industrialisation took away women’s role as collectors.

Finally women are regaining parity as we move into the job markets around the world. As women move towards equality, they have never been so interesting, educated and capable. With economic and social autonomy for both genders, we are returning to an ancient form of marriage, the marriage of equals.

But how does equality influence desire? In Perel’s definitions of love and desire there is an apparent paradox. Love (or attachment in Fisher’s terms) is security, stability and responsibility. Erotic desire is risk, independence, mystery and surprise. The great mystery of a successful long-term partnership is how can you have both? How do you nurture both security versus risk; responsibility versus autonomy; long-term companionship versus surprise and mystery? So it’s no easy task, to feel attachment and erotic desire for the same person when they are inspired by such opposing feelings.

Where love meets desire

Perel talked to couples who manage to maintain desire in a long-term relationship to see if there were commonalities. She found that they felt the most desire for their partner when their partner is in their element. Whether it’s on stage, holding court or in the studio, when their partner is radiant, confident and passionate, they are attractive and it’s no coincidence that they feel attractive.

In Perel’s sessions as a sex therapist she turns the question, ‘what turns you off,’ on its head and makes it instead, ‘when do you turn off?’ No matter what a partner is doing to stoke the relationship, if the person feels unattractive and their self-esteem is low they are not going to respond to their partner’s efforts. So she puts responsibility back onto the individual to question whether they feel desirable.

Perel is blunt when she labels neediness as a universal enemy of erotic desire. In an unequal relationship one partner, usually the woman, is dependent on the other partner for security. In an equal relationship there is no economic and social neediness, both partners have their own autonomy. With the rise again of dual income households there is less chance of one person falling into economic and social dependency.

These two speakers walk us through the history of changes in gender equality and the knock-on effect this has on relationships. They both claim that dependency throws cold water on erotic desire. When women lose their place in the economy they become less interesting and desirable to men who held all the cards (economic, academic, social, legal). Even marriage discounted desire, becoming instead a contract for capitalist interests like inheritance.

But thankfully in the final chapter of this story, things are looking up. We have almost come full circle back to a marriage of equals. Dependency is replaced with autonomy and partners can enjoy the comfort of attachment while fires of desire are stoked by their partner’s character, passions and individuality.

Watch or listen to these TED Talks 

Esther Perel: The secret to desire in a long-term relationship

and

Helen Fisher: Why we love, why we cheat