in love is awash with the feel-good hormone
dopamine. In fact, love activates the
same pleasure center in the brain
that cocaine does, says Helen
Fisher, Ph.D., a biological
anthropologist and research
professor at Rutgers
University.
But why would humans
choose mates while they’re in
such a compromised state?
“The human animal has not
evolved primarily to be happy,”
says Fisher. “We evolved primarily
to spread our DNA.”
So when Rose and I met and fell
in love, we really were feeling something
bigger than both of us: a primordial
drive to mate. Instead of
acting with our heads, we acted with
our, well, genitals. Bad choice.
This drive didn’t care a lick that I was
just fi nishing grad school, or that I’d previously
decided that I’d never settle down before
my career was humming. It was equally indifferent
to Rose’s upbringing in a nice Jewish
family where a central tenet is that a husband
provides fi nancially for his wife. That made
hitching her wagon to a penniless fi lm student
not necessarily the wisest choice.
We had kids as newlyweds
Right after we were married, my wife’s biological
alarm clock began ringing. Not that I wasn’t
complicit in heeding it—it meant having a lot
of sex. Great work if you can fi nd it, right? And
it was both of those things—great and work.
Trying to conceive can feel like you’re having
a ménage à trois with a fertility chart. What
should have been the most intimate of experiences
was now something we were sharing
with doctors and our families. “Looking forward
to meeting our grandson!” they’d say.
The thing is, making a grandson for somebody
is not very hot. “The most unique aspect
of a romantic relationship is not love, but intimacy,”
says relationship expert David Deida,
author of The Enlightened Sex Manual. “We
love lots of people, including our families and
friends. But what makes a relationship truly
unique is the intimacy you share with your
partner alone.”
While we were trying to conceive, we
called sex “trying.” As in, “We’re going to try
this month.” All that trying yielded two
beautiful boys who are the most important
things on earth for me. But it
also complicated the physical relationship
between Rose and me for
the rest of our marriage.
A couple’s memory of their
passionate early years helps orient
their deepening romance in the
later years of marriage, says Deida.
While other couples can look back
and say, “We’ll always have Paris,” we
got stuck with “We’ll always have that
funky motel off the turnpike where we
had to meet to do it during your
ovulation window.”
We busted gender stereotypes . . .
uncomfortably
Rose earned more money than I did. And not a
little more. Often I felt like the miscellaneous
expense line in her budget. And although a
third of wives outearn their husbands these
days, I’ve never felt comfortable with it. “For
many men, identity and self-esteem depend
on doing well at work,” says Brenda Shoshanna,
Ph.D., the author of Why Men Leave. “So when
a wife earns more, the husband can feel he’s
really not the man in the family.”
A further complication was our decision to
work from home so we could both take care of
the new baby—a great idea that broke bad on
us. When her work line rang, I’d get stuck
changing diapers, enviously watching her do
big busi ness. Meanwhile, of course, as she was
stuck on the phone, she’d enviously watch me
change diapers. It was almost funny. Almost.
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