Definitions of sexual desire are broad and understandings of sexual desire are subjective. However, the development of various ways of measuring the construct allows for extensive research to be conducted that facilitates the investigation of influences of sexual desire. Particular differences have been observed between the sexes in terms of understanding sexual desire both with regard to one’s own sexual desires, as well as what others desire sexually. These beliefs and understandings all contribute to how people behave and interact with others, particularly in terms of various types of intimate relationships.

Sexual desire and love

It is believed by many that sexual desire plays an important role in romantic love and that it may be an extremely important factor in strengthening the interpersonal dynamic of romantic relationships; recent studies have supported these theories and have also provided further insight into the various neurobiological substrates that influence the development of various types of relationships.

Sexual desire

Sexual desire has been described as a “longing for sexual union”, it associates with certain behaviours that are more linked to arousal and states of fear, concern and enhanced attention to others,[8] and sexual cue displays such as lip biting and touching. In keeping with the correlation between sexual desire and arousal, sexual desire is mediated by gonadal estrogens and androgens

Enhanced focus, concern and attention toward the desired other has not only been associated with increased arousal by means of testosterone, but also with elevated concentrations of central dopamine and norepinephrine, and decreased levels of central serotonin. Other forms of physiological arousal associated with enhanced levels of dopamine include increased energy, exhilaration, euphoria, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, trembling, pounding heartbeat, and accelerated breathing. This same increased arousal is also a feature of attraction, and is the suggested cause of feelings of exhilaration, ecstasy, intrusive thinking about the love object, regarding them as unique [9] and a craving for emotional union with this partner or potential partner. Feelings of anxiety, panic and fear in the presence of a beloved may also occur, as well as susceptibility to abrupt mood swings. If a relationship should suffer negatively, this may cause the attracted individual to fall into feelings of despair and brooding, which could translate to behaviours and situations outside of the relationship.

When sexual desire is experienced in the context of a passionate romantic relationship, the brain is also affected such that chemical changes lead to the activation and shut down of various areas. Using fMRI brain imaging techniques to monitor the neural activity of participants who scored high on self-reports of passionate love on the Passionate Love Scale (PSL), passionate love was associated with parts of the brain associated with critical thought.The increased attention on one’s beloved accompanied by this decrease in critical thought may reduce negative criticism or evaluations of the individual towards whom sexual desire is directed, however this also may result in false appraisals of the individuals by overseeing one’s potentially negative traits.

Since sexual desire increases attraction to the object of one’s desire, this motivates prolonged closeness with the other individual. By extension, proximity increases the likelihood of stronger affectional bonds to form between sexual partners as opposed to platonic friends;however, due to the functional independence of sexual desire and love, humans may mate without bonding or may bond without mating. Affectional bonds are generally a product of high levels of proximity and physical contact with individuals over time. Sufficient time spent together, and forms of touch allow for the development of this pair-bonding, and though sexual desire may promote closeness, alone it does not characterize romantic love. Affectional bonds are characterized by feelings of infatuation and emotional attachment

Love

Described as “a longing for union”, love is a state that is strongly associated with behaviours that are approach-related, linked to happiness, and self-reports of love correlate to affiliation cues such as smiles and gesticulation. In keeping with an association to happiness, love is associated with the stimulants dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin

Research has shown that parts of the brain activated when viewing pictures of partners of individuals with whom they are in love, as compared to pictures of friends, are the same areas that have been associated in previous studies with positive emotions, opioid-induced euphoria, attention to both the emotional states of partners as well as one’s own personal emotional states. Heightened activation was found in the middle insula and the anterior cingulate cortex, as well as deactivation of the posterior cingulate gyrus, the amygdala, and the right prefrontal, parietal, and middle temporal cortices. The areas deactivated in the viewing of loved ones are those associated with sadness, fear, aggression and depression. Notably, these areas affected by exposure to loved ones did not overlap with brain regions typically activated during arousal, further emphasizing that distinct neural-systems exist for emotion-motivating systems of lust and romantic love.

Heightened activity has also been found in the right ventral tegmental area and right caudate nucleus, dopamine-rich areas associated with mammalian reward and motivation. It is suggested that the activation of dopaminergic pathways are what contribute to the arousal component of romantic love

Different types of love

Over the course of history and across cultures, a number of different types of love have been described. For example, Sternberg’s Triangular theory of love illustrates various types of possible loves, outlining the dynamics between passion, intimacy and commitment in the development of Romantic Love, Infatuation, Companionate Love, Liking, Fatuous Love, Empty Love, and Consummate Love . However, here we will look specifically at two of the most popularly discussed types of love: Passionate Love and Companionate Love.

Passionate love

Passionate love is a state of attraction and increased preoccupation with a specific person and may be described as obsessive love or infatuation. Passionate love is defined as “a state of intense longing for union with another”, and may also be commonly described as being in-love. This intense feeling is characterized by the experience of great emotional highs and lows, and when it is reciprocated through union with the beloved, it can lead to feelings of euphoria, exhilaration, fulfillment and ecstasy; however, if passionate love is unrequited and union is not achieved, the absence may lead to feelings of emptiness, anxiety and despair.

Although passionate love is generally accompanied by intense desires and strong urges for emotional and physical closeness, resistance to separation and highs when attention is granted by the individual of interest, passionate love is often described as a temporary state. It is not uncommon for passionate love to turn into companionate love.

Companionate love

Companionate love is a much less intense form of love, where desire for proximity and resistance to separation become less urgent. This form of love is influenced by feelings of attachment, commitment and intimacy, but is much less anxious than passionate love, and typically nurtures feelings of security, care, comfort and emotional union

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Chapter X: LOVE AND SEX

Love and sex

When we take under consideration the higher, truer love of one sex for the other, that is, an affection which is not simply a friendship, but has a sex basis, we realize that it may be a very noble emotion. There is no manner of doubt but that the normal human being feels a great need for love. Sex in love and its manifestation in the life of the soul is one of the first conditions of human happiness, and a main aim of human existence.

All know the tale of Cupid’s arrow. A man falls in love with a face, a pair of eyes, the sound of a voice, and his affection is developed from this trifling beginning until it takes complete possession of him. This love is usually made up of two components: a sex instinct, and feelings of sympathy and interest which hark back to primal times. And this love, in its true sense, should stand for an affection purified from egoism.

When, among the lower animal forms we find individuals without a determined sex, egoism develops free from all restraint. Each individual creature devours as much as it can and feeding, together with propagation by division, “budding” or conjunction, makes up the total of its vital activities. It need do no more to accomplish the purpose of its existence. Even when propagation commences to take place by means of individual male and female parents, the same principle of egoism largely obtains. The spiders are typical instances of this: in their case the carrying out of the natural functions of the male spider is attended with much danger for him, owing to the fact that if he does not exercise the greatest care, he is apt to be devoured immediately afterward by his female partner, in order that no useful food matter may be lost. Yet even in the case of the spiders, the female spider already gives proof of a certain capacity for sacrifice where her young are concerned, at any rate for a short time after they have crept from the egg.

In animals somewhat higher in the creative scale, more or less powerful feelings of affection may develop out of their sex association. There is affection on the part of the male for his mate, and on the part of the female for her young. Often these feelings develop into a strong, lasting affection between the sexes, and years of what might be called faithful matrimonial union have been observed in the case of birds. This in itself is sufficient to establish the intimate relationship between love in a sex sense and love in a general sense. And even in the animal creation we find the same analogy existing between these feelings of sympathy and their opposites which occur in the case of human beings. Every feeling of attachment or sympathy existing between two individuals has a counterpart in an opposite feeling of discontent when the object of the love or attachment in question dies, falls sick, or runs away. This feeling of discontent may assume the form of a sorrow ending in lasting melancholy. In the case of apes and of certain parrots, it has been noticed that the death of a mate has frequently led the survivor to refuse nourishment, and die in turn from increasing grief and depression. If, on the other hand, an animal discovers the cause of the grief or loss which threatens it; if some enemy creature tries to rob it of its mate or little ones, the mixed reactive feeling of rage or anger is born in it, anger against the originator of its discontent. Jealousy is only a definite special form of this anger reaction.

A further development of the feeling of sympathy is that of duty. Every feeling of love or sympathy urges those who feel it to do certain things which will benefit the object of that love. A mother will feed her young, bed them down comfortably, caress them; a father will bring nourishment to the mother and her brood, and protect them against foes. All these actions, not performed to benefit the creature itself, but to help its beloved mate, represent exertion, trouble, the overcoming of danger, and lead to a struggle between egoism and the feeling of sympathy. Out of this struggle is born a third feeling, that of responsibility and conscience. Thus the elements of the human social feelings are already quite pronounced in the case of many animals, including those of love as well as sex.

In the human animal, speaking in general, these feelings of sympathy (love) and duty are strongly developed in the family connection; that is, they are developed with special strength in those who are most intimately united in sex life, in husband and wife and in children. Consequently the feelings of sympathy or love which extend to larger communal groups, such as more distant family connections, the tribe, the community, those speaking the same tongue, the nation, are relatively far weaker. Weakest of all, in all probability, is that general human feeling which sees a brother in every other human being and is conscious of the social duties owed him.

As regards man and wife, the relation of the actual sex instinct to love is often a very complicated one. In the case of man the sex feeling may, and frequently does exist independent of love in the higher sense; in the case of woman it is quite certain that love occurs far less seldom unaccompanied by the sex inclination. It is also quite possible for love to develop before the development of the sex feeling, and this often, in married life, leads to the happiest relationships.

The mutual adoration of two individuals, husband and wife, often degenerates into a species of egoistic enmity toward the remainder of the world. And this, in turn, in many cases reacts unfavorably upon the love the two feel for each other. Human solidarity, especially in this day, is already too great not to revenge itself upon the egotistical character of so exclusive a love. The real ideal of sex in love might be expressed as follows: A man and a woman should be induced to unite in marriage through genuine sex attraction and harmony of character and disposition. In this union they should mutually encourage each other to labor socially for the common good of mankind, in such wise that they further their own mutual education and that of their children, the beings nearest and dearest to them, as the natural point of departure for helping general human betterment.

If love in its relation to sex be conceived in this manner, it will purify it by doing away with its pettinesses and it is just into these pettinesses that the most honest and upright of matrimonial loves too often degenerate. The constructive work done in common by two human beings who, while they care lovingly for each other, at the same time encourage each other to strive and endure in carrying out the principles of right living and high thinking, will last. Love and marriage looked at from this point of view, are relatively immune from the small jealousies and other evil little developments of a one-sided, purely physical affection. It will work for an ever more ideal realization of love in its higher and nobler dispensations.

Real and true love is lasting. The suddenly awakened storm of sex affection for a hitherto totally unknown person can never be accepted as a true measure for love. This sudden surge of the sex feeling warps the judgment, makes it possible to overlook the grossest defects, colors all and everything with heavenly hues. It makes a man who is “in love,” or two beings who are in love, mutually blind, and causes each to carefully conceal his or her real inward self from the other. This may be the case even when the feelings of both are absolutely honest, especially if the sex feeling is not paired with cool egoistic calculation. Not until the first storm of the sex feeling has subsided, when honeymoon weeks are over, is a more normal point of view regained. And then love, indifference, or hatred, as the case may be develops. It is for this reason that love at first sight is always dangerous, and that only a longer and more intimate acquaintance with the object of one’s affection is calculated to give a lasting union a relatively good chance of turning out happily. One thing is worth bearing in mind. Woman invariably represents the conservative element in the family. Her emotional qualities, combined with wonderful endurance, always control her intellect more powerfully than is the case with man; and the feelings and emotions form the conservative element in the human soul.

This Article is based on works of Henry Stanton’s 1922 book Sex – Avoided Subjects Discussed in Plain English

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