In this YouTube commentary, the speaker answers a viewer’s question about whether marriage or cohabitation reduces physical affection and sexual desire in long‑term relationships. He argues that familiarity naturally dampens sexual energy, especially for women, citing the “honeymoon phase” as a period of high desire that wanes once partners move in together, have children, and age. Biological factors such as testosterone levels in men and menopause in women are mentioned as contributors to differing experiences of desire over time. The speaker acknowledges that this decline is not a condemnation of marriage but a human‑nature phenomenon, and he offers several “tricks of the trade” to rekindle passion: maintaining separate residences so time together feels like an event, using the “absence makes the heart grow fonder” principle, and, for some, adopting open or polyamorous arrangements to introduce sexual tension. He also references a book titled The Dead Bedroom Fix as a resource for men seeking to improve marital sexuality.
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Alan says, so in your conclusion of Romantic Dynamics, maybe he's got me— or you have me confused with somebody else, because you're capitalizing Romantic Dynamics as if this is like a book or a course. I, I do— if you're referring to a specific thing, book, course, something, that, that's not me. But I'll continue on. In your conclusion of Romantic Dynamics, do you think that marriage/cohabitation cranks down the physical affection sex in a relationship? "Or separate residence and dating for a long time the only way to keep— is residence and dating— or separate residence and dating for a long time the only way to keep the fires burning?" Well, let me take your second question first. Is that the only way to keep the fires burning? No. There's all kinds of tricks of the trade. I don't know romantic dynamics, but I have a book called The Dead Bedroom Fix maybe you wanna check out, and I outline some stuff that you can do as a dude to crank up the old, sexiness in the marriage. But do I think that marriage cohabitation cranks down physical affection? Yeah. And I think any therapist worth their salt, psychologist, whatever, will tell you the same thing. That is not a condemnation of marriage. It's not a condemnation of women specifically. It's human nature. What's the term? Familiarity breeds contempt. That's a really I guess extreme illustration of the point. The point is that when you are with somebody, this is your long-term monogamous partner, and everything is safe, secure, you guys are going to be together forever and ever. At least that's the insinuation, right? Naturally, for men and women both, but we notice that it seems to be more acutely so for the woman, um, the sexual energy knob gets turned down for sure. Um, sticking with the ladies, we notice as men, wow, in the honeymoon phase, at least if we're a proper match, the sexual energy is just— it's like a 10, right, with the women. And, uh, it takes almost virtually no work on our part as men to get that engine going. And we get spoiled, and we, we want that again and again. And sure enough, when you're in the honeymoon phase, you get it a lot, and it's wonderful, it's amazing. And who doesn't love that, right? And then we notice, as soon as you commit, move in together, the knob starts cranking down. You get kids, it really gets cranked down. And then the old Father Time kicks in, and yada yada yada. We got menopause, and everything else. And again, us men are not immune to this, but it seems to be not as drastic for us. Thank you, testosterone. That helps keep us at a certain level. Not all of us. Some of us aren't blessed with high testosterone. But for those of us that are, yeah, we're like, "I'm 55 years old. I've been with this woman over here for 30 years," whatever it is. "I still love her to death, still think she's amazing, still lust after her more than day one." And when you ask the lady, she's like, "Hmm, not so much." Again, human nature. It's not the old bait and switch like a lot of guys say. It's not evil. It's not conniving. It's not planned out. It's just the way it is. So you need to know some little tricks of the trade to keep the spark alive, as they say. So one shortcut method may be, hey, we're not gonna get married. We're not gonna get hitched. We're gonna stay separate. You have your little independent life. I have mine. And when we get together, it's kind of an event. And absence makes the heart grow fonder. We all know that one, right? So maybe that is like a shortcut cheat code for keeping the spark alive. For some, they will say, yep, that's it. For us, we've discovered that some people take it to the extreme extreme and say, no, we're committed, we live together, but guess what? And we have an open relationship. We've introduced some of the, oh, that sexual tension, whatever, via other people. And that keeps things alive for us. Yeah, best of luck. You're introducing all kinds of potential drama there, as we know. Uh, swingers, open marriage, poly-whatever, whatever flavor of that is, those people all claim that that's their key for unlocking that sexy code, if you will.
