Ralph Brewer examines whether couples can keep their sex life alive across a lifetime. He covers the biological reality of declining libido, menopause, andropause, and stress, plus why many people end up in serial monogamy instead. He suggests looking at a partner's family background to predict long-term relationship behavior.
Chapters
Here we go. Alan starts with the question of all questions. Do you think a couple's sex life can be sustainable over a lifetime from age 25 to 95? But that's a lifetime with the wear and tear of life or multiple people forming new couple as they go through life. Is it possible? Yeah, people do it. Here's the kicker though. I think it's a relatively small portion of us that can successfully do that. I mean, think about everything that has to be in line here. You both have to be sexual people. You both have to endure a honeymoon phase and then watch as the honeymoon phase dissipates over time, which it does for all of us, and then be cognizant of that and say, oh, we better do work to stay connected. We got to have our date nights. We got to have our fun little kinky secrets, you know, life on the side apart from the kids, apart from the family, apart from jobs. And we have to do— you both have to be of a certain mindset. Well, that's tough right there, right? That eliminates a bunch of people. And then to endure that through life, disease, stress, aging. Thank you, menopause. Thank you, andropause. And just trying to do all you can to fight against that. You can fight against it medically. You can fight against it, you know, via longevity stuff such as exercise and other things and eating right. And even then, your libido will dissipate. Well, then do you stay together? What if you have What if one partner is, you know, libido's here and the other one's, thanks to age, disease, and everything else, is here? Well, you have to endure. You have to be able to endure that, right? Um, that's tough. Really tough. Uh, what we have seen is a typical— I am not— what was the word? Uh, I'm not pushing this. I'm not saying this is, this is the thing to do, but just if you study human behavior over the years and over generations of people, cross-culturally, you will see that people have come to a solution, which in today's day and age, it is a solution that is— society overall gives it a thumbs up. And that is what we call serial monogamy. We pair bond, we have a honeymoon phase, we have kiddos, we have a family, and then over time, we naturally, you know, grow apart, become resentful, and we divorce. And then we go out and do it again with other folks. Men are more apt to go out and do it again with other folks, start a whole new family, new kids, new wife, everything else than women are. Um, much more likely men are. Could be, there's a whole host of reasons why. If we could go down the rabbit hole of why is it that men remarry so much more than what women do and starting kids and everything. Well, if you wanna go down some not so nice stuff, that's kind of in our, uh, our genetic makeup, if you will. We are, uh, engineered to be a polygynous species, I'm sorry to say. Then what do we mean by that? I as a man have an innate need to go out and procreate with more than one woman. Oh, that's evil. No, it's not evil, it's natural. But we put some societal constraints over that in the terms of morals and religion and our customs as a society, where we say, not a good idea, don't go around knocking up a bunch of women, that's not good. Get you one woman, commit yourself to her, have some children, and you have this beautiful thing called a monogamous marriage. It's tough, but if you make it work, it's a good thing. Well, even with that, we still have a lot of infidelity. We have this thing, men, you know, divorcing— rather, it's women divorcing men more often than not. Again, whole other rabbit hole we can go down. And then men remarrying and all kinds of stuff. So this whole concept of Can we make monogamy work? Yes, but it's tough and it's not for everybody. It's not for everybody long-term. It's not for everybody long-term in terms of trying to keep it sexy. It's tough. You got your work cut out for you. Can you do it? I don't know. Only one way to find out. And maybe part of that to make your job— easier is not the right word— to help maybe kind of mitigate some things and to try and figure things out without jumping in headfirst into the deep end maybe is to look at your family, your background, the background of your potential spouse, Um, as much as I hate to say it, and as much as it makes people mad, and, you know, people clench their fist and yell at the sky when I say this, um, the biggest predictor of, uh, the behavior in an individual is just to take a timeout and say, let's go meet mom and dad. Let's go see, um, where they came from. Let's go see what their, their childhood was all about. Let's see what kind of emotional tools they have in their toolbox. Let's get to know them for a period of a few years before I commit 100% of this person via marriage and long-term monogamy. A lot of people go, years? And what does it matter if my mom and dad are psychos? You know, I'm not them. They have a point. I don't come from a perfect family. I have a lot of dysfunction in my family. But, um, if you're a betting man or woman, got your money on, uh, you know, what's the best way for me to determine how this is going to end up? Is this person going to, you know, cause a lot of chaos in my life? Well, look, do they come from chaos? Chances are higher. I'm sorry. So again, I just blab on and on about this. As you can see, this is topics that are near and dear to my heart.
