Peace Between The Sheets
When it comes to making love, we may not be aware of the dangerous situation we are getting into. According to Peace Between the Sheets author Marnia Robinson, most people are severely addicted to the dopamine release that follows an orgasm. The downside to a dopamine release (which feels great), is that it is followed by a release of Prolactin. Prolactin release typically follows dopamine and is associated with the withdrawl/hangover phases of using drugs like alcohol or cocaine. Prolactin release is thought to be associated with lower libido, weight gain, hostility, anxiety, prostrate trouble and a general decline in hormone production.
A scientist, Robinson presents research in her book that suggests that the reason people often feel very disconnected from each other after sexual climax is because of the frequency of orgasm in a relationship as well as the quality of sex leading to the orgasm (furious or uncontrolled sex being associated internally with a drive towards an unhealthy chemical crash). The result is that couples can feel as terrible as a hangover for a few days after every climax. And often enough the negative feelings can be projected onto a person’s partner, causing conflict in other areas of the relationship.
Robinson suggests a scientific understanding for the basis of practicing controlled or delayed orgasms in a relationship. Much simpler and less packaged into an exclusive cosmology than tantra, Robinson’s suggestions are like a contemporary guide to making a sexual relationship less of a co-dependent thing.
If we, as a society, have religiously idolized sex while placing it on a restricted, Victorian pedestal, and if our backlash has been to make sex compulsive, wild and unrestrained, then the balance might be found in managing our big O’s and finally finding peace between our sheets.
Tweet- 6-29-07
- Adam Elenbaas's blog
- Login or register to post comments
- Printer-friendly version
Comments
Peace between the sheets
Absolutely! haha Adam
Makes sense!
"The only thing constant in life is change" -François de la Rochefoucauld
thanks
The Chemistry of Love (and Confusion)
“If we, as a society, have religiously idolized sex while placing it on a restricted, Victorian pedestal, and if our backlash has been to make sex compulsive, wild and unrestrained…”
Is this what we have done? Sex is made so many things. We’ve removed it from its biological function by several hundred yards. We’ve chemically sterilized (the Pill) generations of girls and young women, in order to ‘free’ them from the burden of their biologies.
We can have sex, and release – male into female ejaculation – without incuring the wrath, or blessing, as you’ll have it, of child-making.
This is an odd, odd function. To be able to “finish” without consequence. I wonder at this often.
I have found this to be the most jarring aspect of sexual experience.
I find that this act creates such a bond, it is such a primal, archetypical act – the female absorbing and consuming the male, the male penetrating and entering deep into the female – and we neuter it.
But the spiritual biology doesn’t know it’s being fooled, and I end up feeling a great connection taking place. Too much, really, because with the pill, there is a chemical barrier to the act.
It’s a very strange set of circumstances we’ve woven ourselves into, and I’m not really sure what to make of it.
Our modern conception of ‘female’ is based, in large measure, on chemically-induced liberty from biological function.
It’s a hell of a thing.
As to Victorian sidling next to Pompeian – yes, that’s us. We’re both. You can see, in every commercial, every titilation, that Christian prohibition, “It’s a sin!” coupled with that Roman lust for life “what happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas”.
We end up with that tittering, giggling in-between idealization of “sex is naughty!”
And that’s about where we live. Between the Judeo-Christian notion of enforced eternal chastity, except with that one person, till death and even after do you never part…
And then the reality, which enters the public imagination through every oriface – every movie, television program, book, poem and song –
every public airing of our psyche wrestles with our suppressed desires. Of men to impregnate as many women as they can, and to desire conquest of others through hunting and war (or commerce),
And of women to feel more attached to her children than to any particular man.
It becomes the butt of every joke, because it’s truer than our institutional arrangement.
Addicted to Love