Introduction

Sue was furious. Admittedly, she had asked them for a male baby with dark features, a strong nose, and movie-star looks, but this was ridiculous
.

T
oday we are confronted with sexual situations and circumstances that our ancestors never encountered. We can alter our fertility with hormones, artificial insemination, and IVF; we can meet new partners through dating agencies and the Internet; we can improve our appearance with cosmetics or surgery; and we can create new life in a dish. No other species can do any of these things.
As humans, we are experts at studying the mating behaviors of other species. We can predict their actions, even modify them, and we can genetically alter them to change their appearance. When it comes to choosing a mate for ourselves, however, few humans seem to have much success, let alone any real understanding of the process through which it happens.
Most animal species seem to have little problem when choosing mates and dealing with relationships. For them, the female goes in heat, the male mates with her, and it’s all over.
Humans are the only species that is confused about the mating game
.

The state of our relationships with our partners—or our lack of partners—is a constant source of human discussion and one of the prime topics of female conversation everywhere. Few things can give us such joy and elation yet, at the same time, can produce so much pain and despair. Love has always been the most common theme in music, soap operas, romance books, literature, movies, and poetry. People in every culture experience love, and every culture has words to describe it.
So what is love? It’s a question that has been asked for thousands of years. Researchers from almost all disciplines have tried to discover the nature of love and convince others of their findings, but none of the answers ever proposed are conclusive. Because of its elusiveness, love constantly calls for definitions and interpretation.
Why do we even have sex? What drives men to search for sex constantly? What compels women to demand commitment from men? We will answer many of these questions in this book. We will show you why sex, love, and romance began, reveal the science that says where love sits in the brain, and, importantly, tell you what to do about it all. We have used scientific studies, surveys, case studies, and humor to make it easy to remember.

Looking for “the One”

Most of us are raised with the belief that one day we will find “the One”—that special person with whom we are meant to spend eternity. For the majority of people, however, real life fails to live up to that expectation. Most people who get married believe that it will be “till death do us part,” but divorce rates in many countries are now in excess of 50%, and the rate of extramarital affairs is estimated to be 30 to 60%, with women being in the lower range and men in the top range.
Divorce rates among those who have lived together and then married range from 25% in Canada and Spain to over 50% in Sweden, Norway, and France
.

The failure to make a relationship work is seen as a personal failure by most people and sends millions of us to therapists, but conflict in relationships is the norm for almost all species, including humans.
Sex is like air: It’s not important unless you aren’t getting any
.

In the 1980s, it was generally believed that much of human behavior is learned and can be changed, but we now know that most of it is hardwired into us. In fact, since the end of the twentieth century, researchers studying human behavior have uncovered a mountain of scientific knowledge to demonstrate that we are born with circuitry hardwired into the brain that influences how we act. We also know that cultural factors and myriad environmental forces, such as our teachers, friends,
parents, and employers, influence how we may think or act. The result is that nature and nurture are inextricably entwined. Imagine that your brain has an operating system like a computer. You’re born with it, and it has default positions that it retreats to when it’s under stress—that’s the nature part of us. The nurture part is our environment, and our environment is the software that runs on our hardware.
Nature = our brain’s hardware
Nurture = our environment

This is not to say that we are all at the mercy of our DNA. The human brain developed frontal lobes to allow us to choose our actions, but it is important to understand that we come with baggage from our ancestral past. The development of the cerebral cortex—the part of the brain that collates information from all of the sensory organs and holds memory and thought processes—has allowed us to think, to make choices, and to rise above our inherited nature in most things. When it comes to sex, love, and romance, however, our ancient hardwiring still compels us to have the same preferences and choices our ancestors did. And as you will see, there’s no escaping it. Your brain has an operating system with default positions. If your computer is stressed or crashes, it operates from its built-in defaults—and so does your brain. The artificial environment of so-called equality that we have created, in which we are expected to pretend to one another that we all desire the same things, is nothing more than politically correct software.
As men and women, we still want different things from sex and love—not better or worse,
different
—and these are largely dictated by our hardware. We can make conscious choices about what we think we want, but our hardwiring will still urge us to go where it wants us to go.
This book will show you how women are just as interested in sex as men are—or “making love,” as women describe it—and will explain how men’s and women’s sexual urges are triggered by different circumstances, conditions, and priorities. We’ll examine what men and women really want, look at casual sex and affairs, and reveal things about sex and love that most people don’t know. We’ll also give you strategies to increase your market value in the mating game.
What’s “making love”?
It’s what a woman does while a man is bonking her
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How the Western World Got So Screwed Up About Sex

Much of the Western world’s current hang-ups about sex can be accredited to Britain’s Queen Victoria and her husband, Albert. Victoria’s reign, between 1837 and 1901, was characterised by strict moral values, sexual repression, and low tolerance of crime. The existence of female homosexuality was denied, and male homosexuality was illegal. Thanks to the British Empire, Victorian values were spread around the world.
At the height of the Victorian era, it was common to conceal furniture legs, such as those on pianos and tables, in order to prevent sexual arousal. Bathing suits at the time covered almost the entire bodies of both men and women. Victoria even decreed that in polite society a chicken breast was to be called a “bosom,” and she banned advertisements that revealed ladies’ underwear. Then, as now, much of society considered nudity and sexual arousal to be synonymous.
Victorian prudery deemed it improper to say “leg” in mixed company; instead, the word “limb” was preferred
.

Victorian women were taught never to invite sexual advances or give in to fantasies and to live in quiet devotion to husband, family, and country. A man’s social success was based partly on his wife’s passiveness, and it was assumed that a woman had no sexual needs of her own. Popular wisdom of the time was that women didn’t like sex and that the male sex drive compelled women into “giving in.” Books available at the time suggested that a decent husband wouldn’t expect sex from his wife more than about once every six months and advised men on things to do to suppress their urge to have sex more frequently. In essence, the popular advice to women of the day was to lie back, close your eyes, and “think of England.”
How does an Englishman know his wife has died?
Sex is still the same, but the dishes are piling up in the sink
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It’s likely that your grandparents or great-grandparents were born in this era and that some of these Victorian attitudes were handed down to you from your parents, whether you realize it or not. If you ever feel awkward when sex is mentioned or feel embarrassed by sexual jokes and try to change the subject, you can probably attribute your discomfort to the influence of Victorian values. This is why English-speaking countries, especially Britain, have so many more sexual hangups compared to those European countries which
weren’t
influenced by Victorian morals. If you have no cultural connection to the Victorian era but still feel awkward when
discussing any aspect of sex and sexuality, then you’ll probably be able to trace these attitudes back to religion or to leaders who exerted power by insisting that their followers adhere to their own twisted sense of morality.

The Statistics

Today, there is a 50% chance a marriage will fail and about an 85% chance the wife will be the instigator. It is estimated that every day in the United Kingdom alone three men who are facing crippling child-support payments commit suicide. The system works on the principle that the more you earn, the more you pay. These men feel it’s impossible to get ahead and get their lives back. Being in a relationship and having children can make your life wonderful, but when a relationship ends badly, it can make you ill or even suicidal. This is why it is so important to understand how your brain chooses your partners for you.
In Europe, for every marriage there is now one divorce. This means fewer people are getting married and past marriages are ending. Around 30% of all second marriages also end in divorce
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This book is based on current research and not on folklore, myths, the stars, romantic notions, or politically correct ideals. Most of what we will discuss is evidence-based. We have drawn from a wide array of research, ranging from empirical studies and scientific experiments to relationship surveys from many sources, including our own, and from other data collected about why we behave as we do or why we think the things we think. If what we analyzed did not have some scientific or credible evidence base, we disregarded it. Most of the research data we refer to are listed in the back of the book.
During the six years it took to write and research this book, we (the middle-aged authors) gave birth to two children through IVF, dealt with prostate cancer and all its downsides, and encountered many of the obstacles that can stifle or end any couple’s love life, so we will be drawing here not only on research but also on our own personal experiences, observations, and strategies, as well as those of others we met on this journey.
Enjoy!
Allan and Barbara Pease