Earlier this week I posted about my inability to be attracted to metrosexual guys. My writing unexpectedly climaxed in a large question: Is it the ‘we have stuff in common’ friendship or the primitive ‘opposites attract’ sexual tension that keeps couples together?

Which is truly the glue?

The physical or the intellectual?

Both involve a complex bundle of emotions.

Thus, we embark on part two of this discussion, a discussion I’m almost hesitant to take on. This is a real enigma. Nobody start reading this expecting answers. This question’s so daunting since it holds a real world weight. Everyday in our interactions with the opposite sex we’re choosing when to make decisions with our head and when to make decisions with our lust (also called heart). Is there such thing as ‘the best’ balance or combination? If lust is the glue keeping couples together in the long run it means we should give into it without putting our minds through such emotional turmoil!

A guy friend of mine claims that more often than not, that in-and-out of your life person you have a powerful sexual connection with ends up being the one you settle down with years later when you’re finally in the right place at the right time. I said that no one ever moves from a bedroom buddy to wife material.

He disagreed.

“You have to be crazy to get down on one knee,” he said. “The things that make people crazy? A unparalled sexual connection with this person. Someone who makes you laugh so you’re always having a good time together. If you then work to cultivate the marriage, even post-children, even after horrific fights, that fun and sexual attraction will still be there. That’s the only thing that will keep someone from leaving.”

A female friend of mine supported this outlook. Her mother took her aside and advised she feel ‘sparks’ with the person she’s going to settle down with as it’s the glue that’ll keep them going through thick and thin. Her mom (now in her 60s) claims to still have out-of-this-world sex with her husband of 30+ years. It’s why they’re not divorced.

I have a bunch of problems with the ‘sex as the glue,’ theory. While I agree we’re animals driven by pheromones and other bacteria in our body propelling us to reproduce with candidates with the physical traits that will best ensure the survival of our offspring, I don’t buy that these elements keep us together over 10 or 20 years.

Intense attraction like this is fleeting.

And how much is true attraction and how much is just excitement?

Once you’re married to the person (i.e. have them for life) and all the excitement of losing them drains away, even the most physically beautiful person in the world to you can seem uninteresting, especially if you’ve slept with them 200 times before.

Also, there’s no scientific evidence that we were ever meant to mate for life. Many researchers believe our hormones work to keep us attracted enough to stay with someone for around 7 years, long enough for our offspring to run around and defend himself, before we’re driven to reproduce again, perhaps with a stronger biological candidate. Since we were physically never built to be monogamous creatures, how could sex be the glue that keeps couples in lasting relationships?

Furthermore, I’m one of those people that believe fantastic sex and love don’t necessarily have anything to do with one another. At times they can, and that’s great, but most of the time, what gets us deeply aroused is never that simple. Who read that article about female arousal and sexuality in the New York Times?

Woah!

The things that get women turned on couldn’t be more confusing or conflicting. To me, Love = Great Sex is such a drastic oversimplification it seems comical. Powerful Emotions + Adrenaline = Great Sex, combined with 20,000 other factors, but how powerfully emotional or excited are you going to feel on a routine Thursday night with your husband of 12 years? Even if you once thought he was the sexiest man in the world? Even if you still do?

So it seems I’ve come towards the conclusion that the intellectual side must be more powerful. After all, a marriage is more like a small business partnership than a weekend spent locked up in the Honeymoon Suite of a spa. Being married to your very best friend, someone who ‘gets you’ and is always a person you want to see, may be the best way to go if forever is what you have in mind. In a marriage with my closest childhood friends? In a choice to leave or stay, I’d always stay.

So now we’re asking if true friendship is a stickier grade of glue than sexual attraction. And I think the answer is yes. We weren’t build to be monogamous, inherently implying that we can have a great sex with more than one person pretty easily, while statistically the odds of finding someone who really cares about you, wants to stick around, and knows you through thick and thin seems light years lower.

And is it perhaps nuts to make your sexual fulfillment 100% the problem of your life partner?

Might that put a major strain on the whole ‘best friends’ part?

Hence why relationships with someone of the opposite sex are always 50 times more complicated than the relationships with your same sex friends.

And now, we’re not even in the land of monogamy anymore.

Leave your two cents below.

PhotoCredit: http://www.stuff.co.nz