The Future of Modern Relationships

Hi, I'm Alex Goldman, and this is Hyperfixed. And this week we have a very special guest episode from a podcast called Smart Girl Dumb Questions, which is hosted by Naeem Raza. And Naeema is here with me right now. Hi, Naeema. Thank you so much for having me. I'm a huge fan of Hyperfix. Welcome. My God. I feel like I'm hijacking your feed. What's going on? I love it, honestly. I love using the opportunity to introduce people to shows that I'm a fan of and uh my audience may not have heard of or listened to. So I want to do that right now. Um I'm curious if you could just describe for our audience what smart girl dumb questions is about the K so Smart girl dumb Quonsesti is really a show where I ask the questions I think a lot of us have about topics, and the idea is that like the dumbest thing you can be is a know-it-all. So I came from traditional media. I was at the New York Times. I used to produce a woman named Kara Swisher for a long time. I used to um co-host a show alongside Ben Smith at Semaphore, and I thought there's so many questions that I have that sometimes I wouldn't feel comfortable to ask out loud. A big example of this would be in the pandemic when I was going to get my vaccine, I actually did pull over to the side of the road and think mRNA sounds a lot like DNA. Will this affect my ability to have kids? Now I had produced a New York Times interview with like the couple that created the bioentch vaccine, but I still had that question. I still thought about it as a woman of childbearing age. And like I think we have created an ecosystem where it's sometimes hard to ask questions out loud. And so, no, this is not an anti-vax podcast, don't get excited out there. But it is something where like nothing's off limits, and I want to ask the questions we all have and just be like in a world of hot takes, I think the hottest thing you can be is curious. I love that, first of all, because I am a huge fan of asking incredibly dumb questions because often they end up giving you incredibly surpr ising and much more layered answers than you'd expect. Yeah. And I think people are like excited to answer them because like I interviewed Jeffrey Hinton, who is the godfather of AI, who helped create like these the like kind of understanding of the neural networks, won a Nobel Prize for it. And I asked him, How many people who are interviewing you actually understand how AI works? And he was like, Not many. And I said, Well, how many ask you? And he says in his very English accent, very few. You know. So it' its like's like I I think the idea that we're all pretending to understand things because we have this thing in our pocket that has all the answers in the world. And so instead of having a fight at a dinner party, we're just like chatting with ChatGPT and getting our answers are now Clawed because everyone's canceling chat GPT, but yeah. Hope they're not a sponsor. I they're not. Don't worry. Whoever you're going to disparage in this intro, I assure you they're not a sponsor. Uh it's interesting that you say that because I, you know, I was a tech journalist for twelve years and I understand conceptually how AI works, but it still like is very elusive because it's actually really complex. So people are like, oh well you put it in the a computer has all the information in the world and it gives you an answer. It's a lot more complex than that. And like the how is it different from search? Like I really didn't know. And he just very much articulated and ex explicated to me and we started off the conversation there, like how do you how do your eyes work? How does your brain work? And we start from there and then we end on like, should you have kids in an AI world? So yes, that's what the thesis is. And I I do think you also do a great job of asking those questions. Like thank you. Um, so like what are some some of the questions that you have tackled on your podcast and what has asking the quote unquote dumb questions illuminated for you? Oh my gosh, that there's so much I do not know that is what it's illuminated for me, and that there's so many people who also don't know them and I am not alone in my not knowing. That's what it's done. Um in terms of questions I asked, I started with like a conversation with Mark Cuban about can billionaires save us and why can't the US government be more like the NBA? Like why, can't we have more fairness in how the US economic system works? Like salary caps and revenue sharing and all kinds of things that are done in the NBA. So that's one um route. How AI works was another one. I asked two 11-year-olds what they do all day. And because I don't have kids yet, it was a super illuminating conversation about how they're on FaceTime with each other without talking. And they told me they feel closer to their friends on FaceTime than real life. That is so nuts. Yeah. And then I asked them why they think that. And this 11-year-old girl Sophie, now 12, says, Well, when you're on FaceTime together, you're doing stuff together, you're playing Roblox together, you're um Wow. That's so bizarre. And profound. It's true. Amazing dystopia we've created. Yeah. And like I I interview theseed two dwarmen and asked them like kind of what people are like when no one's watching and how can you tell if relationships are gonna fail. So it just you know, i th they're fun conversations with everyone. I had Neil deGrasse Tyson on. I asked him how would we know if we're in a simulation? By the way, he did not rule out that we're in a simulation. Okay. Well, if we get shut off today, it was really nice knowing you. Yes. Yes. Well he didn't say that we are in a simulation. He just told me how you would test the edges of the universe. Got it. Okay . Um, so what is the episode that you have for us today? This episode is with Dr. Justin Garcia, who's the head of the Kinsey Institute for Sex Studies at University of Indiana. And the big question I had is, are we really not having sex anymore? You know, we hear about the sex session, the um, the end of sex, et cetera. And I was curious to understand what that's like and also where sex came from, if human anatomy has always been this way. And yeah, I just wanted to have a sex ed class, you know, at an adult age. I found I don't want to get I don't want to spoil anything on this episode, but I do feel like it's full of things where I was just like, oh my god, that I can't believe that this is not a thing that I thought about because it seems so obvious. But hearing someone say it out loud, which I think is probably like the thesis of smart girl dumb questions, right? It's like the things that feel that only feel obvious once someone has told them to you. Like I can maybe scoop one, which is like kissing. Like I like the idea that like not everyone kisses when having sex or something or was interesting to me. Or like what animals do. It's just like kind of wild. So Yeah., that's crazy At the end of the day, it reminded me that we're all just animals. Yeah. Um, so uh how where can people find you aside from on every podcast app, of course? On every podcast app, you can find me at smart girl dumb questions. And you can also find us at smart girl dumb questions on social media, on Instagram, on TikTok, where we're very small, on YouTube at smart girl dumb questions. And you can slide into our DMs there. You can also call us at 1855-My Dumb Q and tell us what you think of the show or leave us questions you think we should ask. Taking a hint from you, Alex, because you're so good at the user-generated questions. Well, thank you so much for sharing an episode with us, Naeema. We will include links to your show and your social media in the show notes. And for our audience, please enjoy this episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions with Dr. Justin Garcia . Is falling in love a brain response or a body response? Both, which is why touch can be so um electrifying. They put people on an FMRI brain scanner and they were romantically in love, and they found that a part of the brain, the VTA, which is the powerhouse of dopamine, would light up, which would mean the brain was pulling more oxygen-rich blood. And they've done a series of other studies. They put people who had been romantically rejected also in an fMRI brain scanner. And what happens to their VTAs? Their brains look remarkably like someone going through cocaine withdrawal . Smart girl . Dumb questions . Out here, pizza cravings can pop up anywhere. After a while, even the divider line starts to look like a string of melty cheese. And those clouds, just a view of hot hand-placed pepperonis waiting for you at pilot. So satisfy your crav ings. Get two slices of pizza and a Pepsi for just eight bucks. Now that's a deal definitely worth the stop. Only at Pilot and Flying J. See Out here. Available at participating locations through 5526 Terms Apply C store for details. Justin, thank you so much for being here. I'm thrilled to be here with you as always. We were introduced originally by Esther Perell. That's right. We met in the pandemic in twenty twenty because I was writing a piece about dating in a pandemic and then we went for a walk and I told you I thought dating apps were over. Yeah I, still remember it. And you said they weren't. I know. And I still don't think they are. You don't think they're over? I think people want to be in real life again. I do, but I think uh so okay, so it's a big question, right? We know that people are struggling with the dating apps. Um and people are struggling with dating. But I think we have to be cautious about where we put that blame. Is it the app and are they dead? And I don't think that's the evidence. So for the last 15 years, we've run our singles in America study um with uh looking at about five thousand singles every year. And apps and the internet are still the most common way singles are meeting uh other par uh potential partners. And I wanna say as a disclaimer, you are a consultant for Match.com. Is this your commercial line or this is your philosophical line or both of the above? No, I think it's uh so I've we've been really fortunate to have a long relationship with Match um and they uh fund the singles in America study. But we also are quite critical of where are people feeling burnout and dating, where are their challenges with the apps. I'm not personally um vested in a particular product. I'm an evolutionary biologist by training as you know. And so my questions are, well, what's changed from courtship four million years ago or 10,000 years ago during the agricultural revolution? What has happened to the human animal in our courtship patterns? And does technology help that? Does it make it more complicated? For instance during the pandemic when we were when we when you did your piece and I still remember what we talked about, it was about first kiss after the pandemic and we have data on kissing we could talk about it. There's a wild study out of out of is it the SUNY Albany study. That was fifty percent of people who think they're attracted to someone after a first kiss will be like, nope, wasn't it. Yeah. Yeah, they just know there's this notion of instant chemistry. And well what's so interesting about that, I did a study a few years ago with two colleagues at the University of Nevada and we looked at uh cross cultural patterns of kissing and we take for granted that kissing is part of our courtship routine, that we just do it, that you should kiss someone if you like them. And it's important, like you said, for fifty percent of young people that kiss, that spark is important. But we shouldn't assume that it's the case all over the world. And that's somewhat true of all of our data. We found that a little round forty-four percent, I think was the number of societies engage in romantic or sexual kissing. For a lot of places in the world, the idea that you would say, I like you, so I'm gonna spit in your mouth, is is obscene to people, and particularly in places that don't have modern um oral hygien Okay. So there are countries where people do not kiss. Can you name some of these countries besides Julia Roberts and Pretty Women? Well, even that I think is interesting. This idea that kissing also is reserved for certain types of relationship. What we found in the data was that uh in some cases parents will pre-chew food, they pre-masticate food. So kissing can be more symbolic. You kiss maybe a baby on the mouth or maybe you're you're passing pre-chew food or maybe you kiss a religious figure. So if I'm remembering correctly, we had certain patterns in Oceania and through the Pacific Islands. And in some cases, actually also in parts of Central Africa, I remember one case that two anthropologists wrote that um they were doing research and they would they would kiss each other it was a married couple and they wrote in one of their uh uh papers that uh the people would say like why are you doing that why are you doing that to your wife? Why'd you why would you why would you sp it on on her? Um and they were like no in the you know in America this is a sign of affection and we care for each other. So this is like very so you're saying like if I hook up with a guy from the Federated States in Micronesia, he's gonna be like, What are you doing? Why are you trying what are you doing to me my mouth? Well, it depends on how westernized they are and how and um but yes, very likely in a lot of places and it's also we know people have all sorts of rules about kissing, like do you kiss on a first date, do you kiss on a third date? Yeah, how soon? And what we were interested in is that are all there are all these scientists who have made these claims about oh we're passing hormones from each other. Well, the trick is if you pass hormones, yes, you might have testosterone and estrogens in your saliva. We know that because we can measure it. But just because I dump it in your mouth doesn't mean that your brain is receiving it. And more than likely it's going into your stomach. And there's no receptors for those hormones there. So this idea that it's really important for the sexual and erotic script, I think tells us that uh there's so much variation in the world that what we take for granted as part of courtship or relationships varies and across place and time. Okay. I'm gonna say something that I probably shouldn't say on a podcast. But I the the reason I know this is because my first boyfriend, who I did for years and you know, was dating him in college, he had a foot fetish. Then when I was with my second boyfriend, it was like, you know, the the second guy I'd like kind of like been with in my life. And I'd be like putting my like foot near his mouth. And the guy's just like, get that. Like what is he's like pushing away. So this is how I know that P like how you've how you hook up date kiss early in your talking about kissing dating life is not how everyone is gonna hook up kiss and date, which is a wild lesson I learned the awkward way. Yeah. We did some studies on fetishes too. I can't let that go by. Um so we um found actually foot fetishes are one of the most common for for what it's worth. And there's one argument that it has to do with where sensory information for feet occur in the brain is very close to sensory information for the genitals. We did a study years ago um with one of my uh uh graduate students that was working with us from Australia at the time, Giselle Reese, and she was asking people, there's like clinical criteria for a diagnosis of fetishism. But it turns out that a lot of people have this sort of subclinical, you know, fetishism. There's things that they really like. The challenge is that when you use the word fetish, um, most people assume Yes. And you brought up a great part. The other piece of that is you have to negotiate it with your partners. So a lot of times people will say, okay, I have a leather fetish, but my partner says, you know, we can't we can't do this in the summer, it's too hot. And so so all sorts of ways that they're negotiating these things. I can I'm just like mentally picturing the guy in my mind who has a leather fetish and the woman like the wasp who's like, no, no, it is very warm in Martha's vineyard this time of year. We cannot do that, Jim. Seasonal. This is seasonal fetishism . What's the wackiest or you wouldn't say wacky? I wouldn't what is the um most esoteric fetish you have observed? Oh gosh. Um That's a good question. The term itself is pretty broad, so it includes some folks will consider and now we're getting into the weeds. So some researchers debate on what's the big umbrella of the thing. How did you take such a sexy question? I know I'm sure fetishes and take it to the weeds and like what's the hottest fetish that you know about. And I'm like, ah it's a technical because there are some folks that would say like, you know, if we look at the big umbrella of kink, like what is BDSM? Is that consider is it a fetish? Is it a is it a lifestyle? Is it Tuesday? Is it Yeah, exa exactly it depends on uh what city you're in. And so there's um things like that. But people we see sometimes fetishes are for objects, um shoes, uh leather, latex. Um sometimes it's for a particular part of the body, um, and sometimes it's for something entirely different. Like it has to do with like ice cubes or it has to do with um uh any number of things. Do you have a fetish? Can I ask you that? Um sorry I wasn't expecting that one. I know. So um I I I how do I answer that? Uh not according to any clinical guidelines. Oh, excellent. Thank you for your very boring answer to my very friendly question. Okay, I want to take this all and make it a little PG. Yeah. You studied evolutionary and biocultural foundations of romantic and sexual relationships. Did I get that right? Yeah. Wonderful. Are you like a Darwin of sex? Yeah. Well, that's exactly what we try to do. We use evolutionary theory to understand the human animal and how that relates to all of our romantic and sexual behaviors and experiences and desires. And the Kinsey Institute, where I'm the director and senior scientist, that was founded by Dr. Kinsey who was also a biologist. And in fact, a lot of people know when they think of Kinsey, they think of the Kinsey scale for sexual orientation. Just like is everyone a little gay? Yeah. And that concept of sexuality on a continu um, I think, was because Kinsey was a biologist. If you're a biologist, you can't help look around at the natural world and see everything happens on a continuum. There's so much variation in the natural world. And our and our I know there's a Instagram feed called openly gay animals, but are animals gay too? Yeah. So it depends on how you define gay, but yes, short answer is yes. It depends a little bit on how you think of sexual orientation. So when we think of what does sexual orientation orient is what um a paper that my colleague Lisa Diamond wrote many years ago. And one is an identity, right? So is the is the gay penguin from Central Park, the one that a lot of people knew about. Um and they got upset when they introduced new penguins and they had a divorce and they repartned to an opposite sex partner, but a lot a lot of drama in penguin world. And so one is your identity. Well, how do you define yourself? Um and that's how we often think about sexual orientation in humans. But when we're thinking about um preferences and behaviors, that's different. And we just certainly see that in the animal kingdom. And sometimes it's very purposefully responding to an ecological situation. So for instance, some birds, sometimes female birds will sit, will partner and sit on a nest together. So they mate, they quote unquote heterosexually mate. They hang. Yeah, but then they get back, then they have a female-female bond to sit on a nest together. Aaron Powell But they can't make a egg. No, so they'll still they'll sexually reproduce with a male and then they kind of partner with a female. And so so we see all sorts of variation in the animal kingdom and sometimes it's um what we all call facultatively responsive. It's adapting to a particular ecology. And actually, the same is true for human relationships. We see all sorts of relationship variation and sexual variation and gender variation. And often that um with that evolution ary lens we could say it's adaptive to an environment. Like I'm often so curious about um marriage patterns. But marriage is a sort of social cultural legal contract that's really tries to contain the biology of reproduction and love and family units. When did marriage start? Aaron Powell That's a great question. And it depends on I mean, a lot of traditional societies have some version of marriage. There's ritual around love. If we go all the way back and we could talk about the work of our friend Helen Fisher, the biological anthropologist who we sadly lost, great friend of mine and colleague and mentor, Helen argued that about four to four point four million years ago. So for the anthropologists, it's between Artopithecus and Lucy that our ancestors started having these patterns of romantic love, of deep, what we call pair bonds in the sciences. And that those pair bonds helped humans respond to the environment and help them really disperse around the globe. And then though, about so the agricultural revolution is anywhere between 10 and 14,000 years ago, a lot of uh anthropologists would say about 12,000 years ago, we saw another change, and that was with being more sedentary. So more farming, different sort of uh subsistence lifestyles, that marriage took on a different role because then you had different resources you were trading. You had uh land and property. So it changed what was at stake with marriage. So what happened to marriage then? Sometimes I love when folks will uh talk about romantic love and they'll say, well, it's a Victorian era phenomenon. And I go, no, it's not. It's millions of years. It's baked into our physiology.. Lucy Yes, yes, exactly. Okay. And then 10,000, 12,000 years ago, when the hunter and gatherers are going out and getting the stuff, like what did the marriage change? Before that, people uh partnered for love. And what we saw is that as resources changed and the politics of resources changed, marriage became more um arrangements. They became political arrangements. Now we know like Stephanie Kuhn's work on marriage, we know for instance peasants always married for love because they didn't have resources. Trevor Burr Eusven in any kind of Shakespearean play, often like the most uh pure love is what you see happening with like the maids in the house. Trevor Burrus So these sort of financial resources uh and the challenges they can bring um has tinkered with our love lives for a very So capitalism is the reason we're not getting laid? Or we're not we're not sleeping with the right person. All right, let's take a quick break . If you like this show, please tell your friends about smart girl dumb questions. They can find it on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or you can just share a link with them so they can check it out right now. Also, you and they may really like our TikTok, our Instagram at smart girl dumb questions. We're doing a new street series where we kind of go around New York and Paris and find out the last questions people ask their phone because they were afraid to ask them out lo ud. It is super fun and makes curiosity cool and communal again. All right, so that was all the capitalism that is ruining our sex lives, and now back to the episode with Justin. Okay, it was always from romantic love. 10 to 12,000 years ago, agricultural revolution happens. People start getting together, you know, not marrying necessarily and but in having some kind of ritualistic monogamy which is required for preserving and appropriating resources and distributing resources. And then when's the next shift? Aaron Powell So I think the one big one was about four little a over four million years ago, then the agricultural revolution, and then I think the rise of the internet. And I do think, to your point, it's probably where we agree a little bit, I do think the rise of the internet uh it didn't change what's baked into our brains. It didn't change the desire for love, the capacity for love. I mean, we take for granted sometimes that that we can even fall in love. Only 3% of mammals form these intense pair bonds, about 15% of primates. This isn't a universal that all species have the capacity to form these intense pairs. Really? Not everybody has this capacity to fall in love. So the internet So about ninety percent of bird species form pair bonds, but often for a breeding season. Pguenins are known often for uh lifelong pair bonds. What is interesting and what Yeah, but the challenges that I think could sometimes upset people is the natural world sees parabonds and what we would call romantic love in humans, it also sees separation and divorce. So sometimes pair bonds dissolve, just like us. And sometimes you just say, uh, you know, people will say, I've had enough of this person. Well, animals can do the same to each other, especially animals that have what's called preferential sociality . And um if you've ever been around uh someone who has a lot of pets or if you've been to a dog park, they don't um act the same towards all other individuals. That's a hallmark of a social animal. We tend to be a little bit more social with our family members. Right. That's part of what a romantic bond is. It's preferential that you treat your romantic partner differently, you feel differently, you want to be around them more. Yeah, ideally better, but in some cases worse.. In some cases In some cases worse. Okay, sorry. But I want to let you finish your thought. You were saying that your big sweeping claim was that the third arc of this was the internet and that hasn't changed the falling in love, but it's changed some of the and you didn't finish that thought. Yeah., thank you You've always been good with getting me back on track. Yes. So the other with the it with the internet is um that I think it changed the the capacity for pe way people can connect. And I do think the internet and all the apps that have emerged, they have given us an unprecedented, an evolutionarily unprecedented opportunity. That opportunity also comes with a lot of challenges. And because just like we can pick up our phones and find someone to play pickleball with at So the Internet did initially I think the internet allows us to find people. It's an opportunity to connect with people for the things we're looking for. Sometimes too much. Too much opportunity. Exactly. The challenge is that it's so much choice the human brain isn't isn't really able to thoughtfully deal with it. And then our minds start playing all sorts of tricks because we think there's this abundance of resource that one of the challenges is we don't hone in. So when we look at our data about singles today , um what we find is it's not that there's an absence of wanting to be in a relationship. It's there's an absence of people going on first dates and actually trying to establish relationships. Something about jumping from the app to the real life is where people are struggling. Aaron Powell, I I want to push back a little bit on that because there's also been research that now I think it's 30 percent of men and 40 percent of women no longer see romantic partnership as critical to a fulfilled life. That's not from your study. That's another study. But have you seen that data in 12 hours? So there's been a lot of um work on this question of uh singlehood, on the rise of singlehood. We know that over a third of the adult population in the United States is single. Uh, and that's true of a lot of developed countries. We're seeing more and more people who are single and more people are getting comfortable with that. They're getting comfortable with a single life. And maybe they're going on dates, but they don't want to go too far. Um, maybe they're hanging out with their with their buddies or their girlfriends or their family. And there's a lot of richness to a single life that we're seeing reported more and more. But I think there's a caveat in that data. And I my take is that just uh at the same time that we're seeing people say they're comfortable in their singlehood, they still are interested in these romantic bonds. Even if they're saying I'm kind of fed up with trying the find one or I'm a little discouraged on trying to find one . It's this thing that the human animal desires, that romantic uh connection. Even we could talk about sexual connection. We know from our studies and plenty of other studies, people don't even want just sex. They want sex in the context of a relationship. It's better. Both men and women say it's better. Exactly. It's not just that the sex is better, but the rel the relationship is better because of the sex too. I was just that it's a preferential relationship for a reason. The desires of the intimate animal that we are. Trevor Burrus So you're leveling that there is this cognitive dissonance. People are reporting that because they feel they're fated to that, maybe in some way. And the technology is part of why they feel they're fated to that. Because I think that one of the this is my conjecture here. I think that just everything is a dating app now. So the the primacy, like if you're talking about preferential relationships, like preferential apps, I'd rather spend time on an app where I could get a job or I could , you know, uh catch up with my friends, or like look up the name of my friend's baby who's turning one, so I can write the card. And also just like serendipitously on that app, have some, oh wow, that's interesting. I met somebody on Instagram, right? I can know a lot more about them or an app where I'm like spending time commenting or a Reddit or wherever it is. Like these have become almost physical places on the internet. Yeah. And so we and I think you and I talked about that when we went on the walk in the park in COVID, where I have this romanticization of IRL relationships. And then you told me something really interesting there, which was that people think something unexpected or risky is sexier. Like if you are they did a study where people walked on a shaky bridge. Did I remember that correctly? So what tell us that study. Yeah, so it's called um uh misattribution of arousal is what psychologists call it. Missattribution of arousal. I love that term. In this study. I thought I liked having sex with you, but I was really having sex with you and thinking of Brad Pitt. Well that happens too. That's a whole other and but the uh on the shaky bridge study, people walked across this bridge and uh or either a solid one or a shaky one. At the end a uh a Confederate, someone who worked on the study would say, Here's my number, let me know if you have any information. And when men walked across the bridge, if it was a shaky bridge , they were more likely to call the woman afterwards to ask her on a date or to sort of try to connect with her. And it was the same woman. It wasn't like a hotter woman on the shaky bridge. It was the same woman. And because this idea that your heart's pumping and you're a little anxious. Because the physiology of falling in love is actually awfully like an anxiety response. So you have um uh sort of a rise in dopaminergic responses, you can have plummets of serotonergic responses, you could have butterflies in your stomach, clammy hands, you're losing your words. In another context, if you were sitting in an exam and you had that, you'd say, Holy, yeah, I'm having an anxiety attack. But in the context of a first date, you might say, Oh, I really like this person. So the context of our physiological respons es um matter. And part of that that excitement is a little bit of risk. Now not too much. You don't want too much. You don't want um you know most people don't stop to kiss in a burning building, right? But a little bit, a little bit of risk and excitement um can help. We are meaning making animals and so we apply that romanticism to our preferential relationship. Yeah. And it becomes part of a story. It becomes part of our love stories . And um I think one of the challenges that a lot of us have, and um and something you and I have talked about, something I think you're good at, is framing the positive aspects of those love stories. And that just because a relationship doesn't last forever, um, doesn't mean it was a failure. I hate that term. I hate when people talk about relationship failures. There are some that are characterized by abuse and conflict and trauma. That's its own issue. But so many people have relationships that ends and they're not failures. They were good for what they were. They were wonderful s hot summer romances and they they are part of our stories and our experiences. So many of our relationships can be successful, but they sometimes they end and we move on to something else. And we can be in a different chapter of our life and sometimes we want different things. Yeah. And I I do definitely think that. I have like very warm feelings about most of the people I've been in relationships with, if not all I mean in some way in all of them, right? You had to, because at some point you did. Yeah. And barring that, you know, horrific experience, it is just becomes part of who you are. Like I think it changes your physiology in some way, falling in love. So I want to talk about that. So because as you mentioned, Helen Fisher, the late, great Helen Fisher, who's your longtime mentor and friend, and and I have to say a sexy woman. Mm-hmm. I thought. Um she she married late in life, right? She married late in life in her 70s, yeah. So Helen Fisher uh had done early on, and I think this was the early aughts, a kind of study of the brain, right? And what happens to the brain when we fall in love. So that's very different to like what you're saying, clammy hands, the like shaky the you know, the the feeling of getting off that shaky bridge and seeing a you know a hot woman that seems hotter when the bridge is shakier. Yeah. Is falling in love a brain response or a body response? Bothoth.. I think b So the uh insofar as the brain connects is the sort of central um command station for our physiology, that um it is part of the body, which is why touch can be so um electrifying , especially if it's someone that you're interested in or you're attracted to. And what Helen Fisher and colleagues found is they put people on an fMRI brain scanner and they were romantically in love. And they found that a part of the brain called the ventral tegmental area, and a lot of parts of the brain, but one in particular, the VTA, which is the powerhouse of dopamine, would light up, which would mean the brain was pulling more oxygen-rich blood so it could do its thing. And um and they've done a series of other studies. They put people who had been romantically rejected also in an fMRI brain scanner. Yes. The dumped stuff . And what happens to their VTAs? Their brains look remarkably like someone going through cocaine withdrawal. Um which also tells us if you've ever been through a breakup and you are depressed or you feel physical pain, it's not I mean it is literally in your head, it's in your brain. Yeah. Um that those are real bodily reactions we have to relationship loss. And what's the cure for that addiction? Oh I mean Mother Nature uh overdid herself, right? And it's in some ways the one of the things I've argued is that it's the cost of pair bonds to love so intensely and deeply that we have that capacity means that when it gets pulled away, it hurts, it stings. And in some ways, in the short term, it was probably an adaptive to keep us in bonds, at least for several years, maybe through rearing of offspring or to deal with major challenges. I've come to believe that pair ponds involved in part to allow us to weather uncertainty. So the story of the anatomically modern human animal is that we have survived so much uncertainty and different environments and different diseases and different access to resources and different predators. And I think that we had a teammate in our in our ancestors had teammates. That's what has allowed us to um be this dominant species on the planet, for better or worse. That's what's allowed us to get the collaborative aspect of human society. So sorry, you said something that I just my mind went to a dumb place that I have to articulate, which is you said mod anatomically modern human animal. Did humans always have penises and vaginas? Ah, I love that you brought this up. Because it turns out that there's a lot about our genital anatomy that also tells us something about our story of uh relationships. So the fact that um so we if you've ever watched uh a nature show, you'll know that a lot of animals mate uh male behind the female. Um so and there's sort of technical terms dorso event. Sometimes human animals do that too. Sometimes human animals do. It's one of the top three most common sexual uh uh positions that people engage in. But the idea that we have sex face to face, missionary style, as as uh some people will call it, that um that is something else that's part of our evolutionary story as a parabonded animal. Not many animals engage in sex face to face. You're incredibly vulnerable. Um you're facing each other 's entire sensory information with the face. So you could see each other, you can hear each other, you could taste each other, you can follow each other's breath. That that is part of what makes sex so intimate . Um, that that aligning of sensory experience or synchronization. Now, I'm not trying to say the only way to have sex is missionary and to breathe the same way. That's not at all what I'm saying. But that we have that capacity. That's a human spec that's a special human. Yeah. And that has to do within males that the penis was moved forward, of where it is in terms of our anatomy. So evolutionary, like the penis actually moved? Well, and also we have relatively smaller testes. And the reason we have smaller testes compared to gorillas are So gorillas have um quite small testes given their body mass because they have a harem mating system. There's no sperm competition. One male for all these females. So he's like having to spread it around all the time. So it's well there's not his sperm isn't competing with other sperm in the reproductive tract of females. Whereas chimpanzees have multi-male, multi-female, they have large testes for their bad body mass because a female might mate with several males. So the larger the testes, the more the sperm. Aaron Powell So you can produce more so it can compete. Got it. So if you're ever on a farm, you could tell what the monogamous animals are on how big their balls are. So should we be like judging men by the size of their balls and not by the size of their penises? No judgment. No, no, but I'm saying you know how I okay, fine, but you know how they say like size matters, doesn't it? And there's all sorts of different penis morphology. There's animals that have corkscrew shaped penises and shaped penis? Um alpacas. Um uh certain birds. Actually, ducks also. If I just say animals, can you tell me about their penis? I don't now I feel I'm on the spot. I don't know. Let's see. Okay. So alpacas have a corkscrew type penis. And then the females have a corkscrew corkscrew reproductive penis. What about a bear? Oh I, don't know. See, it got me stomach. What about a giraffe? Um just tell me animals you do know, Justin. Which animals? What's interesting is I don't you didn't, but when we think about um like livestock, because they've been artificially bred. Um you know a lot of livestock actually d don't mate. I mean like cattle because farmers will collect the ejaculate and then artificially inseminate because it's safer because sometimes the heavy weight of the bull can injure the cow. These farmers are creeps. Yeah. And speaking, oh my God, now you're getting me excited on farming. There was a study years ago that orgasm might be a social media. I'm like a city boy. I've always wanted to farm, and I never knew I could do all these sex ological studies there. Okay. And um uh oh, we'll talk about China and Tandas in a second. And but first on pigs, there was a study on pigs that they if they orgasm that it's associated with um better outcomes on their litter so that they have like one more uh piglet. So there have been some cases now of farmers, pig farmers who will uh hop on top of a uh fee a female and manually stimulate them to orgasm. Oh my god, that is so creepy. I'm sorry . No. But in humans the d there's still huge debates about the actual purpose of organ. Sorry, they're doing that also just to make more pork for humans to eat, probably. Well yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's the that's right. That is so weird. I mean I was not gonna date a pig farmer before, but now I'm definitely never dating. But they know a thing or two about the biology of orgasm. I d uh you know, it might be worth uh uh lunch. And so but we know that that uh the science of orgasm is so complex . Sorry, just booking flights to uh you know Kentucky as we I I can't I cannot wait for this that podcast. And so but we know that the science of orgasm, there are these debates about does orgasm have an evolutionary um function? And in males, the idea is that orgasm is associated with ejaculation, it promotes mating. But in females, the relationship between orgasm and fertility is researchers had a hard time finding clear evidence that women who orgasm have are more likely to get pregnant or they uh get pregnant sooner or the pregnancy is uh more likely to last. Yeah. There's also a lot of the men who are uh most likely to make you orgasm are the least likely to want to have children. Oh interesting. Tell us more. I'm just drawing a relationship between fuckboys. Yes. So what's interesting though is that there's some evidence that partners that help women orgasm or if uh we don't use the word achieve often in the literature 'cause there's so much variation. But having partners that are like more empathetic or or funnier or um it seems to be associated with better orgasm outcomes for women in a heterosexual context. Oh yeah. Oh interesting. Okay. This is this is all fascinating. I I it's like I've like unconscious . Yes, pandas and pandas end on pandas. You wanna tell me about panda penises. You're so excited because panda mating. So Michelle and I were in China last year. Lovely window. Yeah, so we're visiting family in China and uh everyone knew I wanted to see the pandas. And um it turns out that pandas have the females have a relatively short window for reproduction annually. They're only um receptive to mating for about two, three days a year. Oof. Um Exactly. So if the males aren't um interested in mating in that particular window, a whole year lapses. And part of the challenge for the panda populations is how do we get them to mate? So researchers get the pick farmer out there. Yeah, well, so they've created panda porn. So there's researchers who have created videos of pandas mating with the idea that if you show them to the pand as like right the cup weeks leading up to the female being receptive, reproductively sexually receptive, that maybe they'll know what to do. Because sometimes has it worked? Uh there's a bunch of pandas in like one of these like sperm donor facilities like all like sitting and like watching pandas . Yeah you made it much more sterile sounding but um they're just in the wild and they bring like what they put like they put like yes they, put screens up in the in the particular we just went to a regular like thank you. Did you show did you did you like wake wake nudge nudge a panda and show him a little panda porn on your phone? Yeah, it's like where where I want to see like what are you doing? What's the role? Um, and does it okay, so we don't know yet if the porn makes the There's evidence. I mean, folks, researchers are working on this, but it also tells us something about conservation and mating that we're not the only species that has sort of really um every organism we look at has a interesting story about reproduction. So this is also wild. Okay. I just I I see the moment to process, but give my listeners and viewers a moment to process too. Okay. So they see the porn. The pandas are watching the porn. First of all, like is the panda porn, but this is okay. Why this is breaking my brain is because like male pandas don't just want to have sex all the time. Yeah. I think one of the things that we're told as a society is like men, this this masculine desire to spread seed and to kind of always be on. I feel that is something that affects male female relationships. You're saying these men, these panda men's don't want to fuck all the time. Yeah. And so is that so wait, are we just wrong when we say men want to fuck all the time? Yes. We are wrong. And I'm so glad you brought it up because we have these deeply held beliefs about how men and women. I'm so glad you told me about panda points I could bring it up just. Yeah, I think this is you've you've made you've made connections here though thank you now . Yes. And and so but we have these beliefs about how men and women should uh experience their sexual lives or what is it really what is a what does it mean to be a man in terms of your sexual urges. And so much of it, so much of it is kind of dangerous and troubling bullshit. And right, we have this idea that okay, this is what all men should want. And that um now certain cultures put that on because of their notions of masculinity or femininity. But we know that for instance, when we ask people what are the things you most desire in a romantic and sexual partner, um, yes, people want someone who's attractive, but more than someone that they're physically attracted to, they want someone they can trust, and they want someone who is humorous, and they want someone who they can confide in. They want someone who's empathetic. So when we look at all these traits that people really want and what really makes a partner hot, yes, physical attraction is one small piece of a bigger of a bigger um puzzle of what we're looking for in partners. But then okay, but fast forward to right now, like by the way, I think I have all of these qualities in spades that you just said empathy, humor, what was the other one? Uh someone you can trust, someone you can confide. Yeah. But I do think that we live in a world where men are kind of socialized to want to fuck Instagram models. Yeah. To want to see a particular kind of body, face, et cetera. And we focus a lot on visual information. So years ago, one of the dating apps took um photos down for a 24 hour period. And what they saw is that it ramped up messaging. Which which app was that? I think it was OKCupid that did it. If I remember correctly, I don't even know if it was done purposefully. And it was just it was that photos were down and people started messaging more. And we know there was a study by Elizabeth Bruch at the University of Michigan, great study, that people um they first um connect with uh folks on an app that are about twenty five percent higher in mate value. Mate value is this assessment of like like one to ten. Where are you? Yeah yeah we we know what that means. Yeah so we tend Yeah, exactly. So we tend to have we or aspirational. And exactly if we're on these apps all the time, we have these aspirational bids for our romantic and sexual partners. And we think um, you know, I think always that song that like looking for a guy that's uh was it six five finance blue eyes? Yeah. Um one demographer looked at how many people are there like that in this country. I think there were two. I think there was like a thousand something, but I remember that. And whether it's two or a thousand, well we're talking about over a hundred million singles. That's a real unreal istic expectation of that we have for these that you and also people vary. We know that, you know, men don't always want to have sex. They're they get tired. They get ate too much at dinner. They have too much on their mind. Um there's they're having stress. They don't they don't feel it this night. But the more they work out, like the more testosterone they have. You know, they should get these pandas to work out. I think that porn. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Like I I don't watch a ton of porn, I have to say. I'm not I don't find it that interesting. Sometimes I watch it because I'm like, what's everyone up to? I'm kind of curious. Yeah. A lot of Americans just incidentally watch it. It's not there's a subset that watch it very routinely, but it's not that many. When humans watch porn, are they more likely or less likely to have sex? Aaron Powell It depends. So there's some studies that people watch porn as a couples. They watch it together. So it depends on like what your purpose is. A lot of people are watching porn. It's they only watch it for a few minutes because they use it as a masturbation aid. So are you watching it um because you're masturbating, are you watching it because we're with a partner? Are you watching it to get very good. Are you watching it to get ideas? Yeah. Um, or are you watching it just for entertainment? 'Cause the storylines are funny. Um it depends. I always watch porn for the excellent B plot. You know. I can't believe that they did that. They ordered pepperoni. Yeah. We'll take a quick break and we'll be back with less on pandas and more on marriage and social expectations . Okay, you're a sex scientist. Is there anything that makes Schwartkings anatomically better sexual partners or emotionally better sexual partners because they're working hard for it, or is it like they're reaching a certain part of your body? Yeah. Um, so uh possibly. So we know that like the whole notion of a short king and often when it's used in sort of popular culture, it's a guy that's maybe shorter than average, but they tend to be fit. They tend to be highly fit. And one argument is that some people who if they're below average in height, that maybe they find other ways to compensate because of social expectations. So maybe they work out more, maybe they're more fit. But there's human variation all over the map. In terms of the sort of uh anatomical nuts and bolts as was it were of sexual activity, um we can accommodate a lot of different sizes. The challenge is that it's a fairly consistent bias though that we see that in most societies, on average, women tend to be attracted to men that are taller than them. Right. And even as women get taller, their preferences for men just get even taller. Right. Um and uh actually it's interesting things also in uh socioeconomics that we know that um uh women tend to be attracted to men that have uh some form of resources or wealth. And as they have more, it's the the goalposts moves. Yeah. This hypergamy reality. Yeah. Which I think is part of the reason that we're seeing so much singledom in America and you're I think your singles in America study would show that the average woman has exceeded the average man in terms of education in some cases, in some cities in terms of average income, et cetera, in some fields. What is the solve for that? Like if we are an evolutionary species ? Can we evolve to absorb this radical shift of you know what is it, feminism social change in our life? Or is the answer to like have a bit of a swing back, which is seems to be what we're on the trajectory of. Yeah. And there's sort of these movements of this idea of returning to um, you know, a the a way that we used to be in terms of our relationship And I think we have to be really cautious of that. One is um I mentioned Stephanie Koontz earlier. She um all talks about the nostalgia trap. And we have this Stephanie Koontz is a researcher at the Family Studies Center. Is that what it's called? She's the Council on Contemporary Families. Yeah, Council on Contemporary Families. And she's a social historian. And she has what she calls the nostalgia trap. And it's this idea that we think it was better. In in my world, when someone talks about co urtship, when it was better, and I think when do you think it was better? You think it was better when you when a young man had to go to a young woman's home um and get permission from her parents before he could leave the parlor with her, um when domestic violence was okay and there was no regulation against it, when people weren't able to make free choices, when women had nine pregnancies throughout their life and spent most of their life either lactating or pregnant. Oh my god. Um, you know, what when do we think it was better? Um when we had more disease, when more people died from maternal when um Okay, we get it. Really killing the buds. But yeah, sorry, sorry, okay, we'll get back to we'll get back to animal sex. So so I think we have to be cautious about this idea that our romantic and sexual lives at some point were better than they are today. We have more opportunity today in our intimate lives than ever before. Um so uh but one of the things that we're seeing is is that this tendency there are overall sex differences in what men and women want in their romantic and sexual relationships, and that tendency is moving as we move, exactly as you said. So okay, what's the solution for the But how do you yeah, like is there a direction change? Like uh is there a world I'm asking like you we talked about Lucy and the hunter-gatherers and ten thousand and then we talked about the internet. Do you fast forward and see a world in which women are like all of a sudden short men who earn less are dating tall women who are, you know, the breadwinners or hunter and gathering in some modern technological society. And by the way, when we make the social clip, we're going to use like Google VO2 or VO3 and make it all. But yeah. Yeah. I think that we're the now that we're seeing more popular examples, right? So there's like Zindaya and Tom Holland, or there's and there's been a lot of uh examples, celebrities. The more that we see that, the more that we can model those famous cases, the more normalized it becomes. But when it comes to income? Uh so I think that one is still uh I several years ago I was doing a study and I interviewed a woman who was an executive and asked her about her marriages. We were talking about marriage and her relationships. And she said she really liked this idea because she was breadwinner in her family by far a breadwinner. Um her hours were demanding, and this idea that of having a partner who could be a kind of stay-at-home dad and help. And she really this really appealed to her as a concept because she said, Well, we're just flipping the gender script. Yeah. But she couldn't stop cheating on him with men that were in her industry. She couldn't stop as much as she had this guy at home, she didn't Now I'm not saying that's the way things should be. But we're that they're always gonna be that way. Or that they're always that person. We are committed more than we like to admit to gender roles and and and for her, as much as she valued having this husband and I think she loved him that at home and helped raise her family and helped helped her have the career she was having. Now that happens with men all the time, right? All the time. But what it suggests is that there was still this desire for her to be around sort of high-powered men. Right. That that she wasn't really attracted to her husband anymore as this sort of stay-at-home dad. And there's been studies on like how couples uh distribute household chores, which hint at some similar things going on. Yeah. And you know, there's a lot of critics who want to come out, cultural critics who want to come out and say, why should women have to make their their the guys feel safe in their relationship. Why should I shouldn't have to tell a partner. Well certainly the men necessarily didn't necessarily do that. Yeah. For women. Well I think that in some ways they do, more than we more than we like to acknowledge. That in our relationships part, of a long-term relationship is that notion of psychological safety. Yes. And that it is incumbent on all of us to try and cultivate that. I mean, I think all the time, yeah, you and I both travel for work. If you're in a long-term relationship, it can be easy to have an affair. It can be easy to cheat. You have to, I think that if you don't want to cheat, you have to put not put yourself in silly situations. When I'm traveling on business, you know, sometimes I'll get food. I don't stay at the bar until it closes. Talking to every woman at the bar. You don't put yourself in those compromising. Right. Or you come up with rituals like oh the like nightly phone call and long distance. I always hate uh like I'm such a long distance , but like I don't want to check in every night. I don't want the man to feel that he needs to check in with me every night. And you find a balance. But part of that balance for relationships is how do you cultivate psychological safety in it? And I think there's a lot of people, um as you just said, who can be really res istant to this, like I'm not a child, I don't want to check in, I'm an independent person. But you want to make your partner feel safe. But I think any time you create one thing that feels like work, it actually in my mind increases the prospect that somebody feels constrained. What the best way to, I think, create psychological safety is to create some psychological freedom in a relationship, which isn't necessarily like an invitation to polyamory, but is a sense that like you're here because you want to be here and you could vote with your feet , that makes it feel like a choice and positive, I think. Yeah. But but at the same time, while we let uh partners know that we appreciate them, that we're thinking of them, that you we, you know, it's um do you go on a business trip for a week and you barely check in or you're you know especially now in a technological level. You send a picture, here's where I am, look, here's Nay M and I recording, or whatever it is, you you you make them uh you pull them in even through um into your life. And that takes um I hate saying that relationships take work, as you know, as an expression I don't like, but it takes effort. Yeah and it takes cultivating. Um it's like having a garden. You can't just throw the seeds out there and expect they're gonna do great. You've got to cultivate. You've got a weed, you gotta fertilize, you've got to water. Um that's part of what that that's part of the magic. It should be part of the fun of our intimate relationships. Okay. I want to do a very quick lightning round of a bunch of questions. Very quick things. Okay. So what role does sex play in falling in love? And is that different for men and for women? It's bi-directional. When we're in love with people, we want to have sex with them. And if you have sex with someone, it can trigger the physiology of falling in love, particularly the oxyto cin systems, the bonding systems, so that sexual activity, particularly if it's good sex, um or feels good, it can make us feel more connected to another person. Okay. Is that m is that more true for women than men? Because I think there's something very intimate about having somebody inside of you as a woman. Sexologists have argued whether there's sex differences in that. Um it's unclear. Um I men value sex with a romantic partner more than people think. And in fact, men at higher rates than women will say that the best sex they've ever had is someone that they love. Aaron Powell And is it better to wait and to have more anticipation in when you have sex? Is there like, you know, one, two, three,, eight fifteen, twelve dates? What's the right thing? Yeah. A lot of people have rules about when they have sex. Now I think rules can be good if it helps you feel calm and it helps you feel that you have a game plan. Yeah, but what is this? But for uh there's really mixed evidence. There's some people that have the kind of uh sex interview, you have sex with them, you hook up with them and then it turns into a relationship in our studies about one in three Americans have at some point had a hookup turned into a romantic relationship. Mm-hmm. You learn a lot about with someone when you have sex with them. You learn if they're hygienic, you learn if they're funny, you learn if they're empathetic, you learn if they're uh attentive, you learn if they're ambidextrous. I mean, you learn a lot about them. And so uh You learn if they had a long career as a pig far Yeah, so you can learn a lot. So for some people, um the sex early on is really informative. For other people, um, they want to wait. We also know that the script of sex has changed. It's what sexologists call the hierarchical reordering of sexual activity . So for instance, our parents and our grandparents' generation, oral sex was something very intimate. You did that later in a relationship. While young people today are having s oral sex before intercourse with a new partner. Okay. I know why Doggy Style is called Doggy Style. Why is Missionary called Missionary? Um I forget. I remember reading a paper about this, and I for I forget the answer to that. Um but there is an answer. Someone has written about this and I can't remember what it is. I shall ask Pope Leo. I'm gonna like I'm gonna send you a text later tonight and hope that your date doesn't see it and be like, why is someone text texting you about missionary? But it's academic. It's academic. It is academic. Um okay we talked about the Kinsey scale for sexual fluidity. Yeah. You know, is everyone a little bit gay or is it just Barry Diller? We don't know. Um the love Barry Diller, love Barry Diller, great book that he's just written. Like thousands of years ago or hundreds of years ago, men were having sex with men. Right? Women were I mean sex w we that we think like the times of Alexander the Great, it seemed like men were with men. So we know that um we know that sexuality can occur on a continuum, including uh so sex researchers often break up when we ask about sexuality into three pieces, three components. There's your sexual um behavior, there's your sexual preference, and there's your sexual identity. So your identity could be gay, straight, bi , um uh fluid, and then there's your preferences. So you say all things being equal, uh these are the types of partners I want to have. But for any number of reasons you might not. Maybe because um of social pressure, maybe because you're in prison and you're only around people of the same gender. Maybe um because you're uh castaway on an island. Who knows? Um and so you have preferences and then you have your actual behaviors. Right. And sometimes your behaviors don't sync with your identity. So for instance, if we in surveys of people's sexual behavior last year.'s There many more men who have had sex with men in the last year than who identify as gay and bisexual. Interesting. So behaviors don't always identify okay. Is there also a um Kinsey scale or some kind of spectrum of monogamy. Because I saw that you guys have done a lot of research on polyamory of late. Yeah. So is everyone a little poly? So in one of our studies, about one in five Americans have at some point in their life had a what's called a consensually non-monogamous relationship. Some people say negotiated non-monogamy. It's really about even consent. Who's consent? So there's a lot of terms. Well, there's a lot of terms, and they all mean something different. So one in five people have done it. Does everyone have an inclination to do it? Or are some people because I feel like I am so monogamous. Like I could not cheat if I tried. I'm seriously monogamous. I'm very monogamous. I even hate that I live in New York City and I date multiple people at the same time. I don't like it. Yeah. But it's the culture that I'm part of. I don't like to be physical with more than one person at a time. Yeah. Yeah. Um so we know that there are people who would try it, but we also know that a much uh lower number, about one in five, have tried it at some point, a lower number actively in um uh kind of consensually non-monogamous relationship. So it doesn't work for everyone. There are some people who it does work with. It takes um the evidence would suggest that it takes a lot of discussion and conversation, as any relationships do, but you're just amplifying it 'cause you have two people people, you have three then or four people in a relationship. Um I think that you nailed it. There are some people for whom this is a desire and it works well. I mean the the biggest sexual fantasy is actually threesomes according to Justin Laymeller's uh research. So and even that I think is telling about it opening up a relationship. But at its core, you still have a pair bond. You have a core relationship and you're and you're allowing someone else in, or you're seeing other people. Yeah. Some people this this is is em important and they want it, but what the data suggests is for a vast majority of people, um this doesn't really work. So it's not to say that it's good or bad or it's but the pattern is still tends to be forming intense pair bonds. But we know there's variation of that. There's there's a lot of variation in what people what works for them and what they want. Aaron Powell I I'm thinking back to our conversation about hypergamy and also men feeling that they don't want to have sex all the time, but feeling like they should have sex all the time. Women feeling like they need a partner who's a powerful man, more powerful, more better earner, more intelligent, more funny than they are. Yeah I feel so much of what keeps us trapped in singledom is this expectation.. Yeah Like our societal expectation. And I one of the big best movements I've had in my dating life is when I stop thinking about what my partner says about me and when I start thinking about like what my experience with my partner feels like and is like and is going to be like through ups and downs. And how do we as like a culture knowing that that's a very simple thing I'm saying that and people are like that's not wise. That's just like basic, it's normal. But but uh really there's a trend toward it. So how do we pull ourselves out of that? Especially when I think there are people , you know, like I know there are brown men who do not date brown women. There are black men who do not date black women. There's probably the other way around, right? There are people that have such internalized trauma and a desire to prove themselves to society that they, in this very personal, very intimate, core part of who they are , are like struggling to negotiate that with themselves. Yeah. What yeah, how do we get out of that? Partly what we know is that people have preferences, but we also have to be cautious about not being prisoners of those preferences. And we are never prisoners of our biology. So part of what the human animal also has the capacity to do is to flex, is to uh experience things that make us feel uncomfortable, um, to make our own decisions. We have this huge prefrontal cortex that evol ved. We have the capacity for decision making and agency. And so we have to be really cautious about these ideas. And that's why you've heard me sometimes I'm really concerned when people say, well, men should have testosterone and men should do this and women should do that. And it's the natural quote unquote natural way. And I was like, Well, we are not a species that's locked into a natural way of anything, particularly when it comes to love and sex. And so I think we also have to be empowered about what it is that we want and what we don't want. And we should feel empowered that we have that capacity. People have preferences, and that's okay as long as they're consensual and they're safe and they're but how we can And also be cautious about sometimes what we think that one person is going to bring is too much. I know our friend Esther Perell will sometimes say a healthy relationship is someone whose faults you can live with. And I love that because it's a reminder that sometimes we expect our partners to be everything. We expect them to always be beautiful to us. We expect them to always be smart. We expect them to always be an earner, always be positive. Um and it's uh what uh Eli Finkel wrote in his book called the all-or-nothing marriage, the academic term is the suffocation model of marriage. And it's this idea that we expect a lot from partners. You want the same person to you want to wake up and be desired by your partner and desire them. And when you have food poisoning tonight and you hold their hair back and you say, you still want to have sex with me, honey, is they're vomiting over a toilet. These are yeah, these are these are unrealistic expectations that we are our lives have these ups and downs. And sometimes it's within a day or within weeks, within months, within years. And that relationships are about, I think, in the best case, about finding someone to navigate those ups and downs with not always be on um and that and I think we've set our expectations unreasonably high. There's this meme that's been circulating that's like either you're his type or you're wasting your time. Something like that. Is that true ? Do we always date our type? No. Um sometimes we uh date people that are outside our box, and sometimes it's a disaster, and sometimes we each experience something new and exciting. So we have to be really cautious about this narrow box that humans have a diverse romantic and sexual uh style. So I want to have a whole conversation with you about sex recession because I feel like no one's having sex anymore, or maybe everyone's having sex. Are you having sex? Uh yes. I uh um uh we're in the process of reproducing. That's great. That's great. That's a very good thing. Um very quick question about it. Are Americans having less sex right now? On average, yes , but it's a pretty complicated answer. So on average, we're seeing a decline in sexual frequency in big data as researchers have um has have witnessed this in several different data sets that we're seeing declines in sexual frequency. But that doesn't necessarily mean that satisfaction is down and it depends on in what groups. So sexual frequency has declined in partnered people, but not as steadily in single people. Um so there's a lot of nuances to that answer. Yeah, and your data showed, or I think was it your data or someone else's data showed that like millennials and Gen Xers are having sex five times a month on average, versus Gen Zers and boomers are having less sex three times a month. Yeah. So we we know that as we age, we tend to engage in less sexual activity. But part of this so-called sex recession is that young people, it's not it even that overall sexual frequencies have decreased a little bit, it's the number of people who are just not having sex has grown. There's more zeros. So there's more virgin. Exactly. And they're weighing down the average. And then your research has also shown that like the 40s are the new sexual problem. Right? So it's like no more 40-year-old virgin. It's like 40-year-old In our schools in America study we're seeing that people in their 40s are feeling a new peak of uh their sexual lives. And they're also saying that sexual chemistry is really important to them when they're in dating relationships. This was a sample of singles. This is for men and women. Yeah, over 90% said that sexual chemistry was um critical, not just it's something that they would like to have. So we're also we have new expectations. We're seeing Americans have new expectations for sex in their intimate life. Is sexual chemistry a leading indicator of emotional compatibility? Um there's some evidence that I'm gonna reframe it. So it's sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction are the terms that researchers, the kind of constructs that researchers use. I'm reframing it because I don't have a good answer to your question. Oh. And so so I'll answer a different one. Good dogs. And so so what we know is that romantic and uh relationship and sexual satisfaction sort of feed on each other. They're sort of bidirectional. And as one goes up, the other goes up. So it's um it's a it's an exciting two-way street. So can you have a good relationship with someone with whom you have bad sex? Good romantic relationships? Um it it it can be quite challenging. Yes, you can have a good relationship with someone that you have a low sexual satisfaction. So it depends on like what do we mean by bad sex. Trevor Burrus But you can definitely have good sex with someone with whom you have a bad relationship. Oh, absolutely. Sometimes even better. Yeah. Well, what's so interesting is that just because someone is a compatible sexual partner doesn't mean that you can have a happy and healthy and satisfying relationship with that person. Yeah. But we do know from our studies the more happy, healthy relationship you have, the better the sex becomes. Got it. The last question I'm gonna ask you, I ask every guest here. What do you, someone who knows so much about panda proclivities and pig sex and um you know corkscrew penises of Ardvarks, what was the animal? What was the animal? Alpacas. Alpacas. Alpacas, they're so cute. And now we know. What do you not know? What is something that you are dumb about that we could go and find the answer for you? Oh my gosh, there's so much I don't know about. You know, for the longest time I think I get the Sunday uh New York Times and we had a change in the delivery person. So now it's double bagged and and it's wonderful. And I really thought, how on earth does this paper get to me every Sunday? Like what's the whole process? Where is it printed? Who bags it? How does it get here? How do I get that paper? Like I know the j brilliant journalists who produce it. How does it end up on my doorstep? Well thank you on behalf of uh the uh somewhat brilliant journalists. Um that's a great question. Okay. Well no one gets the paper anymore, Justin. So that's the answer to the question . It's just you. Evolutionary biology. Evolution is gonna just take out the paper and everyone involved in the delivery chain. Thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate it. Thanks. All right, if you're like me, you need a moment to decompress from like pig farmers and corkscrew penises and all of that jazz. But I totally love Justin Garcia's non-judgmental, curious, open, safe view of sex and all things relationships. He has a great book that's about to come out called The Intimate Animal, which you can pre-order now, and I highly recommend it. I've seen the cover, I've seen some proofs, I've read some stuff from it. It's gonna be great. And I just want to say I really appreciated his kind of optimism about the world of internet dating, his long view of history, and above everything, this idea that we need to make our partners feel safe in relationships. I think there is such a temptation in our new independent world to be super cool about these things, chill, oh I don't need anything. But the reality is that we are these needy, comfort seeking animals and security seeking