Hug the Monkey

The Oxytocin Gap

I'm reposting a reply I made to Gila's thoughtful and interesting question: If neuroplasticy lets the brain change, couldn't the pain of broken premarital relationships weaken or harm the oxytocin response?

You raise good questions, Gila. Certainly, neuroplasticity goes both ways. The example of an adult who develops PTSD following a traumatic experience is a good example of negative live experiences causing a change for the worst.

Can broken premarital relationships adversely affect the oxytocin response? I think it is possible. You could think of the oxytocin response as a habit, a learned response to stimuli. Certainly habits can be broken or changed. When we encounter a painful stimulus, we learn to avoid it in the future.

That said, Dr. Keroack's theory seemed to be more that the oxytocin response could be used up: Bond with too many people before marriage and your marriage bond won't be as strong. This really does not make sense. If you can love, you can love many people. Your oxytocin doesn't get used up when you have your first child, for example.

I agree with you that there is a hormonal -- or neurochemical -- explanation for some women's and men's ability to hook up without feeling bonded.

During the first three years of life, our brains undergo rapid and intense development, with patterns laid down that tend to stay with us throughout our lives. They certainly can be modified and changed later, but it's much harder to change a neurochemical habit formed as a baby than one formed as an adult.

The oxytocin response, which I define as the release of oxytocin into the social centers of the brain in response to physical and emotional stimuli, is one such habit. In order for a baby to learn to release oxytocin in times of safety and intimacy, she needs to have a close physical connection with one primary person; she needs to be mothered, whether by her biological mother or another person.

So many things in our society make it difficult to provide this: medicalized birth that can overdose the baby with artificial oxytocin, possibly making her brain less sensitive to it; the need or desire of both parents to get back to work quickly; understaffed daycare centers; our distracted, multitasking lifestyle; and our general lack of awareness about what a baby needs.

I think that many of us become adults without a strong and healthy oxytocin response. I don't think you can successfully work as a prostitute if you have a strong oxytocin response, it would be too painful.

I think the hookup culture we're seeing now may be a reflection of a widespread inability to bond, for all these reasons. You could call it the oxytocin gap.

It should be noted, there is wide variation among individuals, and, nurture and early brain development aside, it's likely that some individuals never will bond strongly. In the monogamous prairie vole, for examples, small variations in the gene for vasopressin, an oxytocin-like molecule, seem to cause some males to not form pair-bonds.

Some background on the Keroack kerfluffle, in case you've forgotten: In 2006, President Bush appointed Eric Keroack to oversee Health and Human Services, and there was a lot of discussion of Keroack's theory that premarital sex could sort of use up your oxytocin supply. Rebecca Turner, the scientist on whose work he based that theory, repudiated his conclusions.

Here is what Dr. Turner said about Dr. Keroack's statements: "Due to concerns about health and emotional development, I certainly would not promote the idea that teenagers should engage in multiple sexual relationships. However, the cautions we give to teens should be based on honest concerns about health and values, not misinformation such as the statement that they will never be able to bond with a partner or have loving attachments in later life. In fact, other research by colleagues in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at UCSF* implies that teens are more likely to heed advice when it is seen as believable."

Your Neurochemical Dating Timeline

Your dating, romance and love timeline may be governed by your brain chemicals. Nature seems to have designed us to move through three stages of love; lust/attraction, romance and committed love. And each stage is governed by a different neurochemical mix.

Lust and attraction is a powerful cocktail of testosterone, which fires sexual desire in women as well as men, and dopamine, the chemical of seeking and reward. If your lust and attraction are returned, you quickly move into romance, an excited and focused state in which your brain's reward centers are flooded with dopamine. This is the state we call "in love," and it's very different from the final stage, committed love, or true love, when oxytocin, the neurochemical of bonding takes over. Once the oxytocin bond grows strong, couples can stay together and weather the inevitable bumps in the road.

Nature's design seems to be that we stay in the first stage until we find an appropriate mate. When we do, we move into romance, the highly rewarding and exciting stage which typically lasts about two years -- long enough for the woman to get pregnant and have her baby. By that time, the oxytocin bond has grown strong, so the exciting neurochemicals die down, allowing the couple to concentrate on raising baby, instead of making goo-goo eyes at each other.

Now, everyone is different. Some women fall almost instantly into an oxytocin drunk, just knowing after a couple of kisses that he's the one, while others can never quite make it past romance. When the sparks go out, they move on.

When you understand the different phases, and how each of them can cloud your judgment, it's harder to get hornswaggled into a bad relationship.

Is Love in My Head? Video

Deborah Harper of PsychJourney posted this fun art video exploring the tension between thinking about, talking about and feeling love.  (Oxytocin plays a starring role.)

Click here to watch Precariousvicarious by D.V. Dubler.

Change Your Love Style

Getting Back to Love, by Joseph and Sarah Malinak, is a book about changing the love styles we learned during infancy and childhood so that we can make the kind of love connection we want. In The Chemistry of Connection, I described how our early experiences of mothering influence our brain development and neurochemistry. I see Getting Back to Love  as a sort of sequel to Chemistry. In their book, Joseph and Sarah Malinak explain how these early, pre-conscious experiences play out in adulthood.

In the book, they describe syndromes they call Mama's Boys and Daddy's Girls: People who never grow up into adult men and women.

"When a man depends on a woman for his worth as a man, he is invariably disappointed, because his worth as a man can only be sustained if it comes from within." (The same goes for women who define themselves by their worth to a man -- and, although the Malinaks don't mention this, I think it holds true for a gay man or woman who defines him or herself by their worth to a potential lover.)

Daddy's Girls are taught that the man is the most important thing in their lives, while Mama's Boys learn that their power comes only from women.

Mama's Boys and Daddy's Girls are created, according to the book, through lack of connection with their same-sex parents. Around puberty, boys and girls need to spend more time with fathers or mothers, who help initiate them into not necessarily gender roles, but rather, into the essence of femininity or masculinity. Michael Gurian, author of The Wonder of Boys and many other books, writes about this as well. And, of course, in this era of single-parent families, that can be especially difficult for boys.

The Malinaks certainly put some things in my own relationships in a new light. I am definitely a Daddy's Girl; this makes sense, because I always had a very hard time with my mother, and never felt that she loved me or cared for me (in the literal sense). For example, the way they described the dynamic of my struggles with Mike around housekeeping and maintaining our house helped me see it in a new way.

According to Getting Back to Love, the problem is my underlying belief that men can't be counted on. I know my mother felt this about my father -- and for the first 40 years of my life, I unconsciously pushed away any sweet and caring man who showed genuine interest in me. Moreover, they write, I unconsciously attracted Mama's Boys who tried to finagle me into taking care of them one way or another.

Okay, so how do you get out of this crazy dance? Their advice is to try to become conscious of these unconscious feelings and beliefs and then, when you do notice them, refuse to act on them. Their example felt a bit unrealistic to me: If you've each agreed to do your own laundry, but his just piles up in the middle of the floor, don't do it for him. Just ignore it. It's his responsibility, and he'll take care of it eventually. I have this problem with the dishes; Mike leaves his all over the place. It's pretty hard to ignore when I'm trying to make lunch and our very limited counter space is covered with dirty bowls and forks. Many times, I feel that he tries to maneuver me into nagging him. Because I learned hyper-critical behavior from my mom, it's easy for him to do. So, I guess I would have to give up being able to use the kitchen counters in order to have a healthier relationship? Durnit!

 After we become adults, it's equally important to spend time with same-sex friends, as well as opposite-sex friends and lovers, they write. Our friends "refresh" our femininity or masculinity, according to the Malinaks.

They also share their own love story -- and it illustrates how a healthy, oxytocin-based relationship develops. They met in a self-development program, and liked each other without feeling that intense, nerve-wracking romantic excitement (based on dopamine and norepinephrine) that characterizes romantic love. Instead, as they spent time together, Sarah one day realized that when love songs played on the radio, her thoughts drifted to Joseph. Then, as she moved more consciously toward him as a lover, the excitement came.

Then, they "did something neither had done before , either on a date or at the start of a romantic relationship. In clear recognition of their feelings for each other, they laid it all out on the table."

Ultimately, they remind us, "It's all about you." If you continually find yourself in relationships with someone who demands to be taken care of or bosses you around, it's because of the way you relate to others. Another way of saying this that I've always liked is, "Instead of trying to find the right person, try to be the right person."

Roisin Murphy on Oxytocin

Ezekiel in Madrid sent me a link to this song. Being tragically unhip, I was unaware of it.

It's always fun to see the power of oxytocin penetrating the zeitgeist.

Chip August's Sex, Love & Intimacy Podcast

Charles August, or Chip for short, has done 90 podcasts covering all aspects of sex and love for Personal Life Media (a company founded by internet wundergrrrl Susan Bratton). Chip co-facilitates, with his life-partner, a relationship workshop for couples called Passionate Relationships. Chip is also a certified Instructor of PET (Parent Effectiveness Training) leading adult education workshops to teach listening, conflict resolution and communication skills to parents.

I was honored to be Chip's 90th guest recently.

We talked about how the way we're mothered influences the way we love as adults, and how that plays out in our relationships throughout life.

You can listen to the podcast via iTunes or here on Personal Life Media. If you're an old-fashioned readerly type like me, you can also read the transcript when you click on that link.

Thanks, Chip!

Love Styles and Oxytocin

I use the phrase "love styles" to refer to the concept of attachment styles put forth by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Ainsworth developed a test, the Strange Situation, to see what kind of relationship babies had with their mothers. They came up with three: Secure, anxious or avoidant attachment. Some psychologists have create subcategories or changed these a bit. But the basic theory is, you can be securely attached to your mother, you maybe anxious that she's not going to be there for you, or you can be so scared or hurt that you withdraw into yourself and try not to need anyone else.

I believe that you can also look at these as oxytocin styles. Because the way our brains release and react to oxytocin is shaped by our earliest experiences,  these love styles are likely the result of the way that the  oxytocin response developed.

I'm fascinated by this kind of thing, because understanding it helps me understand myself and my relationships.

This is a long-way-round introduction to my interview with Deb Harper  of Psychjourney. Deb creates podcasts with authors, psychologists and thinkers on psychological topics. We talked about attachment styles and oxytocin in the wide-ranging interview. The conversation was very interesting for me, and I hope you'll think so, too.

CORRECTED: You can download the Chemistry of Connection podcast here.

Oxytocin Better than Beer for Hooking Up?

Okay, I am being facetious. But a new study found that inhaling oxytocin made study subjects feel more positively about strangers.

ABC News reported on the study by Angeliki Theodoridou, a psychologist at the University of Bristol, UK. This makes sense, because oxytocin has previously been shown to reduce activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain that makes pre-conscious, friend-or-foe decisions. Oxytocin seems to act as a trust signal, letting us gradually approach other people.

Theodoridou was on the team led by Eric Hollander that found oxytocin reduced symptoms of autism and increased adult autistics' ability to detect emotional meaning in speech.

Oxytocin Cools Marital Spats

Inhaling oxytocin helps couples fight fair, a new study shows.

When couples sniffed oxytocin and then engaged in a mock argument, those who'd inhaled the good stuff showed more positive communication and engaged in less negative behaviors. They also had lower levels of cortisol, indicating they didn't get as stressed out by the fight. The study was led by Beate Ditzen under the aegis of Markus Heinrichs, the University of Zurich scientist who did the original human oxytocin studies.

I reported on an earlier study by Bitzen that showed the same results: Oxytocin Keeps the Lid on Spats. Also, Adam Guastella in Australia, is studying the use of oxytocin inhalants as an aid to couples therapy.

The article is "Intranasal Oxytocin Increases Positive Communication and Reduces Cortisol Levels During Couple Conflict" by Beate Ditzen, Marcel Schaer, Barbara Gabriel, Guy Bodenmann, Ulrike Ehlert, and Markus Heinrichs. Authors Ditzen and Ehlert are affiliated with the Department of Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. Ditzen is also with the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia. Schaer, Gabriel, and Bodenmann are from the Department of Psychology, Institute for Family Research and Counseling, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland. Heinrichs is affiliated with the Department of Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. The article appears in Biological Psychiatry, Volume 65, Issue 9 (May 1, 2009), published by Elsevier.

Luckily, Elsevier's PR person gave this a better title: Love Potion #1?

Take the Passion Poll

Passion coach Eryn-Faye has posted three polls on her blog.

How often do you go on a date with your spouse?

How often do you and your SO talk about sex?

Who initiates sex more often?

All good questions anyone in a relationship should be thinking about. Go to Eryn-Faye's blog and take the passion poll, then see how other people answered.

I think my basic answer is "not often enough."