Your Body is Betraying You

We all know the premise behind hooking up is the idea of "no strings attached," but what if I told you it is never possible to have sex without attachment? Not just for spiritual reasons, but also for very significant scientific reasons- namely, the way our brains are wired to respond to sex.

Most of us don't have a clue that the whole time we're telling ourselves it's "just sex," our brains are busy forming attachment bonds with our partner.

The culprits of this sinister malefaction are dopamine and oxytocin. According to neuroscientific discoveries in the last decade, both of these neurochemicals are released or become elevated in the brain during sex. 

Dopamine, which induces feelings of pleasure as well as a desire to repeat the act producing the pleasure, becomes dramatically elevated during sex. In fact, according to the authors of Hooked: New Science on How Casual Sex is Affecting our Children, sex is one of the strongest generators of dopamine reward. Because of this, we can literally become hooked or addicted to sex with our partner. While this is good news for those in monogamous relationships who desire to stay together for the long haul, it becomes troubling for those who are faced with the possibility of a string of casual sexual encounters.

Meanwhile,  oxytocin, a neurochemical that active primarily in female brains during four specific times, two of which include intimate touching and orgasm, results in feelings of emotional attachment. It's important to realize these feelings are not just something we can choose to ignore. They are the result of a real physiological process going on in our brains and create an actual, not just perceived, bonding effect. 

In fact, oxytocin is the very same chemical that creates a bond between a mother and child and is released by the brain during labor, and, more tellingly, during breastfeeding.

If that doesn't show us that our brains are wired to make loving, long lasting attachments as a result of sex, I don't know what does. As you can imagine, this is a big reason why we can't help but fall for that guy we've been hooking up with, or start to feel confused about that friend with benefits, or struggle with feeling hurt and used after what's supposed to be a simple casual sex encounter (or, on a whole other note, why guys who view porn and masturbate are selfish sexually- they're bonded to themselves through the neurochemical vasopressin...but that's a whole other post).

Something to seriously think about the next time you go for the hookup...

Welcome to the Sexual Devolution

The pursuit of erotic pleasure. Free love. Sexual liberation. All selling points of the sexual revolution of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Promising happiness, abandon, and sensuously abundant lives. Flash forward a few decades and now we have hookups, friends with benefits, and one night stands. It's intriguing how the terms for casual sex no longer carry any romantic undertones. Maybe it's because the romantic type of casual sex propagandized by the sexual revolution was smoke and mirrors all along...

Did the sexual revolution really make things better for generations to come? Do you and I actually enjoy the abounding sexual fulfillment and freedom our parents or grandparents sought to achieve as they bucked the mores of antiquated sexuality?

We girls, if we are honest, deep in our heart of hearts, have to admit that despite feeling free to do most anything sexually, our sexual encounters have often left us feeling confused and empty, even ashamed and angry. Why is it that no matter how hard we try to turn our feelings off, things still end up messy? If we like the guy, we have to ward off feelings of jealousy and ambivalence. If we don't like him, we can't help but be irritated and even begin to resent him. Of course, this is on top of the mixed feelings we have about ourselves in the process. Why does regret sneak in an hour, a day, a week later, or sometimes before it's even over?

Why can't we just experience invigorating physical pleasure without all the other junk mixed in? 

It's because there is no such thing as casual sex! There never has been and there never will be.

You see, some argue the sexual revolution was an era of truly casual sex. For the first time in history, pregnancy could be prevented, or even legally terminated if so desired, and sexually transmitted diseases could easily be cured with a dose of antibiotics, unlike today where incurable illnesses like HIV/AIDS and herpes threaten to dampen the ecstasy of our sexual adventures, leaving us with a lifetime of regret. But did these factors truly dissolve the constraints that make sex a binding act between two human beings? As you will see throughout this blog, the answer is no.

Free "love," though cheap, is never free. It costs us our souls, and often the health of our bodies. 

When outward restraints are removed, yet indivisible inward constraints remain, a downward spiral of confusion and self loathing begins to develop.

This is something our parents and grandparents did not foresee in their fight for sexual freedom. Something confirmed by science and studies and personal stories...and wisdom.

Oh sure, we're good at using defense mechanisms to shake ourselves free from the grip of sexual fallout. Often we justify our actions by saying, "It's just sex. It's a normal part of life. We're wired to be sexual creatures." Or we tell ourselves, promise even, we won't do "that" again (whatever "that" happens to be), or we drink or get high to remedy that nagging in our conscience. Sometimes we just simply embrace the notion that we're only doing what men have been doing for eons, becoming indignant toward anyone who tries to throw any kind of shame or caution our way.

Despite all this, as you will see, there is no denying we have a huge problem. We can see it in society. We can see it in our own lives. Sex is no longer the beautiful, intimate, and mystical act it was created to be. Instead it's degrading, carnal, and base because, as a result of the Pandora's box opened during the sexual revolution, we are now in the throes of a sexual devolution.

de·vo·lu·tion \ˌde-və-ˈlü-shən also ˌdē-və-\

     2:  retrograde evolution :  degeneration