Dr. Justin Garcia: On the Intimate Animal

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Christopher Walling: Good evening, everyone. Good evening, Justin. How are you?  

Justin Garcia: Hi. It's great to be with you. I'm doing well. I'm glad to be here tonight, and thanks for everyone who tuned in. It's always fun to be in conversation with you about anything, but especially about love, sex, intimacy.  

Christopher Walling: Yeah, it's wonderful. I wanted to say, first off, how much I've been looking forward to this conversation. I mean, when I read The Intimate Animal, I think what struck me right away is that it's one of those books that makes you pause and reflect on your own life while you're reading it. And I think as I was moving through preparing for tonight, I just kept thinking about how strange and beautiful it is that human beings organize so much of our lives around intimacy. I think you and I share an appreciation of that. And I'm sure you've gotten this question on the road so far in the last few months a lot, but I wanted to begin our conversation by kind of giving the audience a chance to get a sense of what made you want to write this book? Maybe we start there.  

Justin Garcia: Sure. We have so much to talk about. When I thought about writing this book, most of my writing is academic articles, and I think a lot about what we call bench to bedside, which is in the, particularly in the biosciences, when, how do you take research and make it accessible? Whether that means turning it into innovation, turning it into maybe drugs for treatment, turning it into products that people can use. And for me, when we study issues of sexuality and sex and relationships and intimacy and connection, there's so much in the academic literature, but a lot of it doesn't translate to our real lives. And relationships are so critical to our real lives. So there was a part of me that said, how do we get this research more accessible? And particularly being at the Kinsey Institute, and I know you co-curated a fantastic exhibition with Rebecca, our head curator. And I often think, she has an image hanging downstairs of Dr. Kinsey lecturing at UC Berkeley in the 1950s. And I often think of that photo because he's lecturing and the joke at the time was, Kinsey filled the men's gymnasium more than any sporting event did, and there's people up to the rafters. And it reminds me that our institute has always been decidedly public facing. Part of our mission has been how do we take all this research and make it accessible to wider audiences? And especially in the case of sex and relationships, I really worry that in the absence of talking honestly and accurately about it, we create so much mythology around sex and love and connection. And it's so easy to find that mythology everywhere, I mean, Chris go on, I was just watching something on social media about a half hour ago and thinking, this is pretty bonkers. And it's just everywhere. And part of why, what I wanted to really do was try to gather my interpretation of the research and help all of us kind of wade through these academic papers and think, how does this apply to my real life?  

Christopher Walling: Yeah. You begin the book with these deeply personal stories about relationships and building a nest. And I'm curious, when did you first realize that everyday choices that people make about love and partnership and home were actually these windows into something much bigger about biology and culture and evolution?  

Justin Garcia: Yeah, and I’ve, it's funny. I think there's sort of two layers to that. And one is, as a person, as you know, I'm relatively private as a person. And I often don't think about anecdotes or personal stories in my everyday academic writing. And I distinctly remember us being at an event and a colleague of ours talking about, like, when do you position yourself in your own work or think about personal stories? In this project, I really thought that it helped bring alive the science. And we really said, how does this impact real people? And when I first started thinking about that, I was actually in graduate school, and I was interested in the evolution of monogamy. Like, what is social monogamy in primates and, well, in mammals and primates and humans, when our hominin ancestors first started practicing what we think was social monogamy. So I was interested in these theoretical questions. And then I remember at the time, in the 2000s, being on a college campus and saying, how does this jive with what's going on out there? There's movies about one-night stands and friends with benefits and hookups. And people were just starting to write about hookup culture and hookup behavior. There was a casual sex literature, largely in public health, but people were not really, like, sociologists were just starting to write about casual sex. And I had this moment of just thinking, how does this theory, like, how does this jive with the world around us? That was my entry point of really starting to think about how do we think critically in this academic sense about our relationships and our sex lives and reproduction, but then also all the choice and variation going on in the world, and how do we make sense of that? So that's been a theme I've had in my own thinking for a long time. And in fact, then when we wrote about hookups, I was into asking questions about, like, how people navigate intimacy and hookups. When do they turn into relationships? Do you want something more than is on the surface in these interactions? And the other was for me, as I was saying earlier, so I'm private, but part of my role at Kinsey, at the Kinsey Institute means people often share personal stories with me, often deeply personal stories. And I do really try to honor them. And sometimes folks have asked me, like, oh, do you get bored or do you get annoyed when someone says, I said no, I love it. I think it's an honor. And how do we really honor those moments that are a window into something that we don't always see in our big data sets, that when we have a validated measure, there's an important place for that. I will defend a validated measure to the end. But then also, how do we also make sense of these anecdotes, these stories, is how people are trying to interpret their own intimate lives. So what I try to do is mesh all of that together in some ways to help us think through, how do we understand, how do we situate ourselves, all of us, in these larger trends and patterns that we see in the data.  

Christopher Walling: Well, speaking of your sort of hookup culture days, let's maybe start a little bit from the human search for connection. You know, you describe a lot in The Intimate Animal about how singlehood, it's not simply a waiting period before partnership. It's an important developmental social stage. What does research in evolutionary psych or anthropology tell us about why humans spend such a significant portion of our lives unattached?  

Justin Garcia: Yeah, that's a great question. And in some ways, what we see today is unprecedented evolutionarily. So we do spend portions of our lives unattached. And I think I want to take a step back as I answer that because one part of that is what we see today in terms of patterns of what I would say, like, let's say, I was going to say life history development. And that includes things like puberty and first sex and first birth. And those patterns are radically different from what we saw generations ago, from what our ancestors experienced. And what I mean by that is in the United States today, average age of monarchy and puberty are in the low teens. Some data saying hovering around 12. I think the number is coming down further. Now, hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago, a lot of estimates by demographers and anthropologists would put monarchy, puberty in females close to around 19. So that's a pretty shocking difference of what the body is doing, how the body is maturing and responding to its environment. So what we see today is that age at maturity, and I mean reproductive maturity, not importantly, not psychological maturity, but we see monarchy and puberty lower than ever before. We see age at first birth later than ever before. So we're seeing these unprecedented gaps of period of time where people are figuring out who they are and what they want. Now, that always happened to your question, Chris, that always happened that there were these periods that emerging adulthood, late adolescence, early young adulthood, these are periods of experimentation. We've figured out the boundaries, the borders of what we are, of who we are, of what we want, particularly sexually, intimately, socially. And we often take more risks. It's a period of increased risk taking. It's a period of dispersal from the natal home. But there's so much in our current moment that those demographics look so different that we don't live in nuclear families, for the most part, most of the westernized world, certainly there are places in the world people still do, but we see more dispersal from nuclear family. We see a larger period than ever before between reproductive maturation and end if someone even decides to have reproduction. And we also have more freedoms to experiment in those moments. So I still think that's an evolutionary story, just, it's a different one. And for me it's one of how are we adapting to this new landscape? So what's really important for me as an evolutionist is to always remember that rarely, and particularly when it comes to, let's say, I'm going to use the word mating for a moment, but really when it comes to mating, are we static? Is an adaptation just this is what happens, does it matter what's going on in the environment? We're always responding to ecology. That's why we see differences in different cultures and different historical periods. So we have general adaptations and they respond to ecology. They respond to the physical and the social environment. And our environment now is just so different. In the United States, for instance, we have more single adults than ever before. We have well over 100 million single adults, about 40% of the adult population. Some of that are people moving in and out of relationships. And some of it are people who are perpetually single, who decide they want to be a solo life. And we're learning more and more that there were a lot of assumptions about people who are solo, about their psychological well-being, and that were probably wrong. And partly because of the methods that researchers were using and partly because of our own bias. I remember this one study on what Bella DePaula calls singleism. And she gave people vignettes about people who are partnered who are single and have them rate them on different characteristics. And the people who were single, so it was the exact same vignette, but the person was either single or partnered. And the people who were single were rated as more narcissistic, as more selfish, as ugly. Here's the best part of it, there were no pictures, it was just what you were imagining these people to be like. And so we have all this bias that goes into singlehood. But what we're seeing now, and this is true, it's happening in more and more places. So we're seeing similar issues in China, in Japan, in the UK, in Australia. Many researchers were seeing it as a North American issue, but now we're seeing it globally. There's more and more singles. And I'm cautious to not call it a problem, although many governments are calling it a problem, that there's more and more people that are single. Because there's concerns about replacement fertility and marital patterns. And I think there's a false assumption that it solves these loneliness issues, which doesn't, being non-single. So I've been really interested in thinking about how, when there's more singles, I think that's what opens up some of our understanding, like hookup culture. I think that was possible as a particular moment. And a moment, we're still sort of in, because there were more singles. Because if we went back a few centuries, where people having casual sex, they were, but most of them had a spouse back home when they were having casual sex. The idea that you're single and not attached and having casual sex, that is a new evolutionary story for me.  

Christopher Walling: I mean, that brings me to my next question, because nowadays, in my own clinical practice, I hear from so many patients their ambivalence about modern dating. And it does indeed seem to be the case, to your point around how the ecology of singlehood has changed, that so much of our lives, if we are single as human beings, is determined by apps and algorithms. That kind of are interfacing these very old mating instincts. Do you, you know, I know you've collaborated with Match.com, and that's a part of your research profile, and so I don't want to get you in trouble here, but do you think these technologies amplify our evolutionary psychology? Are they hindrances? I mean, they're certainly reshaping, to your point, the ways that we interact. But is it helping or hurting us?  

Justin Garcia: Yeah, and I think both is the challenging answer to that. And there's evidence that it's both in different ways. And I'll start optimistic. You know me, I'm always optimistic at first, and then I spiral. But I'll start off optimistic. And I think that the apps, one thing I try to really keep in mind are the apps are a really extraordinary opportunity that they present for anyone who's dating. And never before did we have the opportunity that we could download an app, often multiple. The average dater is on three apps at a time because they have different flavors and different ways of connecting. You can find someone with the same hobbies, with the same kinks, with the same allergies, in the same region, in ways that are so evolutionarily unique for us to be able to do, but just opens up such extraordinary opportunity. We know that that's especially true in certain places where, I think we take for granted, I'm a New Yorker, you're a West Coaster, we could take for granted that if you're LGBTQ, you can go into a bar and meet someone. There are many places in this country, and indeed many places in the world, that that is just not safe if you're queer. And in fact, what we see in our data, that people who are LGBTQ use the apps at a slightly higher rate. And part of that, it seems like it's about safety, that you have more control. We also recently had some multinational data, and women in countries that were characterized by less gender egalitarianism felt safer using apps than meeting someone in person at a bar or a club. So I think there's a lot of positive with this technology and opportunity that it brings. And the bottom line is that it's the most common way people are meeting. Over 40, around close to 40 percent of people, depending on if you say internet broadly, if you focus just on apps and websites, it's a little bit smaller. But apps and websites are the most common way that singles are meeting a date, meeting their most recent date, more than friends or a bar or club or church or school. And that, I think, is interesting. So we could debate whether they're good or bad, but the reality is it's the most common way singles are meeting. And then there's this opportunity. Okay, now I'll start to spiral. But then there's the problems, then there are the very real problems. We've published some studies, for instance, on sexual harassment on the apps, which remains, like unsolicited genital images is our technical term, but things like dick pics getting sent. That continues to be an issue. Some apps have tried to address it legislatively, like creating either on the app you have a penalty if you do it, or it's an actual sexual harassment crime. And that's not what people think when they're doing it in our studies. So particularly straight men and gay men thought it was playful, and heterosexual women were reporting, like, no, I find it gross and offensive. So it's what we call a sexual misperception bias. And so there's the issues of harassment. But then there's the issue, and I think this is what you're getting at now, the big issue is it's too much data. I frankly think the issue is we have too much data for the human brain and not the right kind of data. So for millions of years, we evolved invoking all the bodily senses in courtship. You could hear someone's voice, you could see their body language, you knew their social network, you could smell them, you could feel them, you could taste them. You invoke these senses. But that's all information for the brain that we're making decisions about and assessing people on. Now we're looking at a picture or a small bit of a profile and making an assessment. So one, it's new, it's new territory. Again, is that good or bad? That's an open question, but it's new territory. The problem is that it's so much data. What the brain says is, well, I can swipe 2,000 more people before dinner tonight. So I can look at your profile and we're quick to discount. So two things are happening simultaneously. One is we're aspirationally dating. The average person looks for someone who has a 25% higher mate value than them. There's a study out of University of Michigan by Elizabeth Brutch that we tend to punch above our weight, as it were. And maybe we should. It's mating. They're important decisions. But that's happening. But then we have so many, so many options. We meet someone or you stumble on a profile of someone and you go, well, they're interesting. But we look for reasons to discount. We say, they're interesting, but they made a grammatical mistake in the third paragraph. And, you know, I really need someone who can speak and write properly. Now, on its surface, the idea that you see one mistake of where a comma is and you say no to that person as a date, that's crazy on the surface. But it's not when you have a sense of an unlimited resource, because our brain is doing the same thing we would do if we were foraging. And you're looking for berries. And if you're hungry, you eat the berries. But when you have a sense that you're in this unlimited berry patch and you find one and you go, ah, this one has a bruise, I'm not going to eat that one. And so it gives us this sense that we can just keep swiping and swiping until we find this perfect person, this perfect partner. And what happens is we don't really focus on the people that we meet. You could have a profile of someone who you could have a great relationship or a connection with, but we're quick to discount because we're just saying, well, I'm sure there's something better in that berry patch. And that is, I think, a huge problem that no one's quite figured out. I don't think the apps have figured it out. I don't think the millions of singles or people in relationships or have open relationships, millions of people who are looking for partners have figured out how to grab biology by the horns and say like this, this part doesn't work for me.  

Christopher: Yeah, I don't even think that we on the clinical side of this equation have even figured out how to best sometimes support people around it. Because what I'm noticing in working professionals, for example, in metropolitan areas, my practice is in Los Angeles, is that sometimes people come off the apps only to hire a matchmaker who then essentially is just limiting the selection criteria. That then somehow shifts sort of that over abundance of possibilities equation, which then feels more sort of less complicated, I would say.  

Justin: Yeah. And matchmaking is on the rise, I think, for that…  

Christopher: It is.

Justin: I think it’s exactly for that reason.

Christopher: It is. So let's move to going back to your nest metaphor. Let's talk about the forming of that nest and sort of bonding and intimacy itself in the relationship. So in the book, you describe this shift that many couples experience around like two or three years into the relationship from this, like, the clinical jargon we use around this is things like early cathexis or limericks phases of sort of attachment. And then from that intensity, you're talking about something that's like quieter and more stable. Why do you think our culture often feels so uncomfortable with that transition in years two to three, even though it might signal a deeper bond?  

Justin: Yeah. And it's a period that a lot of people break up when that happens because they're like, well, the spark is gone. And then it's like, well, is the but, and then they'll describe the breakup as being so terrible because they love the person so much, but the spark feels gone. It's like, well, you could be just moving into this other phase, that you want to sit on the couch. At some point, you have to be able to sit on the couch long enough without making out, but you can make it through a movie. And that comes with that feeling. Right? Comfortable.  

Christopher: So true.

Justin: And that's deeply evolutionary, I think. I think it's adaptive that we can have bonds, that we have this sense of passion, this limerence, but then also someone that you feel the safety with, that you can navigate the world, that you can navigate uncertainty, that you build that sense of trust. Part of what we're experiencing in that 18 to 36 months into a relationship is that trust is deepening. Early on, you're still learning a lot about someone. You're still figuring out, how are they going to respond if I screw up, if they screw up, if the world is uncertain, when there's a pandemic. How do we get through these moments? And I think you're right that we do, people really do struggle with it. One, you start relating in a deeper way, an emotionally deeper way that can be a challenge and can be difficult and feel unusual. But then I think the part that a lot of people are uncomfortable about is that as that early passion starts to fade, typically, most people, it starts to fade, you then, if you want to keep that, we have to cultivate it in different ways. And we have to, I think it's a case where you really have to water and fertilize the garden if you want everything to keep blooming. And that's the part that I think for so many of us early in a relationship, it just is so natural. You see the person, you're excited. You want to physically touch each other. You have high levels of arousal. Sexual frequency is higher. And that starts to change over time. And we feel like there's a problem. And then the idea that we have to put effort in, it's like, oh, well, is there something wrong with my relationship? I have to put effort in? And it's, in fact, our studies of long-term passion. We did these with my colleague David Frederick at Chapman University, close to you. We did these studies on what keeps passion alive. And we looked at heterosexual couples, gay men and lesbian women couples. And what we found were a couple of consistent things. And a lot of it was around communication. There were also particular behaviors like kissing and oral sex. But the thing that I love the most in the data, was that it was really about intention. So things like lighting candles and mood setting and music. It wasn't the particular smell of the candle or the particular type of music. I mean, maybe that's a different research question. But what we were really finding was it was about the intention of saying, you know, we're both home. We're going to focus on us and our relationship tonight. And that's the part that really kept that fire burning long-term. But it takes effort. And it can feel like, well, if I have to put effort in, all of a sudden there must be something wrong. And I don't think there is. It's actually, I think, a sign that a relationship is deepening when you start to feel that transition.  

Christopher: I think that's probably the biggest myth-busting element that I see clinically is, to your point, folks do show up for couples therapy at years two and three and in that range going, are we broken? Without realizing, like, no, it's just time to actually do some work.  

Justin: Yeah.

Christopher: That's it. So your research suggests that sustaining intimacy over time is less about novelty alone. I mean, a lot of folks think, oh, novelty, novelty, novelty, like we've got to find toys and do all these interesting things. And you've discovered it seems that it's more about communication and emotional connection. So was there a moment in your own research career where you were like, oh, this isn't actually about sexual technique. This is actually a story about relational intimacy.  

Justin: Yeah. And it's a good question. I don't remember the moment, but I remember we were doing a series of studies on the role of sex in different relationship contexts, whether you're single, whether you're in a short-term relationship, in a long-term relationship, and thinking a lot about these questions of what were people getting, like what was the meaning of sex? What do they want from the sex that they were having in different relationships at different point? And as we were doing these different kinds of studies, interviews and questionnaires, and looking at sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction, I think we started to, and I say we because there was a whole research team of a group of us looking at these studies, and realizing there was something about the connection and the relationships that were shaping the meaning we were putting around sex and also how it was, how it was the satisfaction we were getting out of it. So that's not a great answer to your question. Sorry.  

Christopher: It's okay.  

Justin: But like what I'm, as we started to tear it open, and really what I mean by that is thinking about like what does sex do? What does sex do early in a relationship? Well, we know early in a relationship it can give you a sense of, is it, are we passionate? Do we have this notion of chemistry? In fact, in one of our studies, we found that close to 90% of people today say that chemistry is really important for a relationship. But there's this assumption then that it just, it's spontaneous, that chemistry is just there and that you can't cultivate it. And I think our realization was that particularly for long-term relationships, you have to keep cultivating. You have to have moments that you carve out for the relationship. And for me, the aha moment there was when I really started to think of, every relationship has three entities. There's me, there's you, and there's us. And when we can cultivate, there are times I need to focus on me, there are times you need to focus on you, there are times we need to focus on us. And that was for me this moment of saying, okay, if we think of these different balls we're juggling and then can say, what are we doing for the relationship? And maybe it's novelty. Novelty does help in a lot of ways. Maybe it's just, you know, we need 20 minutes every morning over coffee where we talk. Maybe the novelty is not jumping out of a plane together. The novelty is, let's have a real conversation where I learn something from you, not just how was the weather, how was work, what did you have for lunch? Now, those are fine fillers, conversations to have, but where are we really having, you know, when was the last time you turned to your partner and said, you know, what do you think your purpose is? And like, where we are really having conversations, these are conversations you and I have. But like, what are, when are we having moments that that conversation, it's not just talking, but you're really trying to open up and learn from each other. That was the moment for me when I thought, okay, we've got to cultivate this us. And it's not just about sharing words. It's about experience and moments and taking a walk at night together or having coffee moment together or a ritual that you, in some ways rituals aren't about novelty. It's about consistency.

Christopher: That’s right.

Justin: But having something that you really honor the relationship is so critical.  

Christopher: So let's start to play a little bit with how we might expand, I think, folk’s conceptualization of the nest of sort of even the relationship, I think, you know, you argue that the nuclear family is not the timeless norm that a lot of people have assumed that it is. And I'm curious to hear about, like, maybe what surprised you most when you began to see just how adaptable human affiliative structures can be, and how adaptable and morphogenic they've been like across history and culture, like, maybe you could share a bit about that myth of the nuclear family.  

Justin: Yeah, and I think there is and there's so much that we think about when we think of families. And I think actually why the notion of chosen families that we see a lot of particularly in LGBTQ communities, or broadly in other communities, but is a really, really powerful because I actually think it's insight into something that deeply explains human behavior and has for millions of years. And part of it is that our ancestors grew up and when I say our ancestors, I mean, over millions of years of what we see of human patterns, our ancestors really had a social living that were characterized by somewhat smaller communities. You often were aware of who was in your community, maybe around 150 people, some anthropologists have argued. But there's also this argument that anthropologists say that it takes a couple to raise a child, it takes a family to raise a couple, it takes a village to raise a family. And it's this reminder that we're nested in these layers of, and we could dissect what a couple means too, we can get there in a minute, but just in general, it's this reminder that there's this nesting of social layers that we've lived in, that have characterized human evolution. Now, the family piece has looked different in different times and in different places. But one thing I will say, I'll start at the end, I'm going to answer this backwards at first. The thing that's so interesting about our modern moment is that we really have separated from almost any notion of a nuclear family. So you're right that they have looked radically different in different places in the world. But what we see today is something that is more isolated from family, particularly in the West, particularly in what we call WEIRD cultures, Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Developed, than anything we see in the historical, anthropological, evolutionary literature. And so, okay, so now to get to the first part of your question is that we know that there's cases of, what anthropologist Sarah Hrdy calls, cooperative breeding. And that's this idea that there were these families, these communities that were involved often in collectively raising young and children, collectively engaging in food, whether it was food acquisition. We know, and there's so many things in there about myths. So we know, for instance, that historically, women did more gathering. This idea, there was long been this idea that males did more hunting and meat acquisition. But in fact, we know that the gathering was much more important. It produced more calories, it was more important for survival, it was more important... So there's all sorts of interesting things about gender and about the sex differences and gender differences that are in those evolutionary stories that are also important to me. But when we think of the family units, we also start to see very quickly that this idea of family, of a nest, of a collection of people was important for survival and for thriving. If we want to use the note, now evolutionists typically aren't too interested in thriving. Well, I shouldn't say they’re not interested. It's not the level of analysis we do in evolution. We focus more on survival and reproduction. But we have the capacity to thrive, and particularly in our relationships. And when we look at that…

Christopher: I've seen you do it.  

Justin: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And so much of that is about having the emotional resources, the human capital around us, to allow for that to be possible. And there's so many great examples of even how relationships are structured differently. So yes, we have this pattern of social monogamy of forming a relationship, often with one person at a time. But there are plenty of places where we see polygyny, where we see men that take multiple wives. We see places where, less common, where women take multiple husbands. So traditional women in the highlands of the Himalayas practice what's called fraternal polyandry. They marry brothers. And then there's examples of these larger family networks. An example I love are the Fa'afafine in Samoa. I love this work. My colleague Paul Vasey has done this, and his research team. And where the Fa'afafine is a culturally recognized third gender. It directly translates into the, in the manner of a woman. So they're natal males. They live life as feminine. And it turns out, these are questions often evolutionists have for decades been asking about variation in sexuality, variation in gender. And is it adaptive? Or is it just variation? The bread and butter of an evolutionist is variation of trait. It's diversity of trait. It's one of the things for me, as you know, I started my career in a gender studies department. And I always thought people would often say, like, well, how do you think about evolution and feminist and queer theory? And what I wrote about for the early part of my career was, well, you're often actually asking the same thing. You're asking about variation in diversity of trait. They're not as antagonistic as we might think. And so in this case of what Paul's work found with the Fa'afafine was that family units that had a Fa'afafine had better reproductive and survival outcomes. And you go, well, how? How is that possible? You have this non-reproductive kind of queer auntie in your family. Ah, because having that Fa'afafine meant that you had another caretaker. You had a large, you were expanding the family. And there's dozens of examples like that across the academic literature that are kind of buried in these silos of academic, particular areas or methods. But when we start to pull it together, we realize, oh, here's a story about social connection, about family units, about it taking a village to really see positive outcomes in terms of survival reproduction. And I think thriving. I mean, we are through and through a social primate. And we need that sociality to develop, to make it, to weather the world. And for me, those romantic relations are at the core of that, that they're important centers of those social networks.  

Christopher: So let's talk a bit about sort of the overall life cycle then of some of those networks and those relationships themselves. Your book talks a lot about how pregnancy and parenting and shifting roles all reshape intimacy. And I think when we take a step back and look at the full arc of our relational lives from meeting and bonding and nesting and maybe raising children, maybe not, sometimes betrayal, sometimes separation. What does this life cycle reveal about the pressures that shape intimacy for us? What have you learned?  

Justin: Yeah. And I like the life cycle frame, as we can think about when we're starting out, when we're single, when we're searching for a partner, we're trying to maintain our partnership. And I think that there's a lot we can learn. And in some cases, it's that there are similar patterns. And a lot of it, one of the things we find in our study of singles, or we ask people, what's the most common thing you're looking for in a partner? What's the most important thing? I shouldn't say common, what’s the most important thing you're looking for in a partner? And yeah, attraction is important and humor is important and intelligence is important. But the number one thing singles in our data set, North American singles, are looking for is someone they can trust and confide in. And no gender difference in our data on that as being the most important. And I think that issue, this idea of someone you can trust and confide in, you can rely on. I mean, we talk a lot about vulnerability when we talk about couples, and I think clinically we talk about vulnerability. At its core, it's this idea, can I trust and rely on you? And when things get tough. And for me, so much of pair bond relationships, their evolutionary story is about finding someone to weather the storms of life with, finding someone to navigate uncertainty with. And when we think of this big life cycle of these different moments, so many of the pressure points that relationships have are really at its core about this question of trust. Can I trust you? Can I rely on you in this moment? You know, we're having, I'm pregnant and I feel vulnerable. Can I rely on you to be there, to stay truthful, to stay honest, to be by my side? I have sickness. Can I trust you? Can I rely on you? I'm getting old. Can I trust and rely on you? Those become these pressure points, and a lot of it is about, and I think that's what the value of communication is. If we peel back the layers of that onion, what does talking really do to make you feel, to be so powerful in a relationship, to increase passion, to make you feel safer? It's partly about reminding us that, okay, you're still there, and I'm still here. We can still trust each other. We're still here for each other. So that, we can see these patterns that exist throughout life in our relationships, whether you're 18 and falling in love for maybe not the first time, but one of the more profound times, to being 85 and finding love maybe again at a later point in life where it's different. And maybe we're trying to recapitulate our old experiences, but those similar demands, and two parts of it, I think, thinking of that life cycle. One is this desire, this intimacy, instinct, this deep, deep desire that we have for feeling connected to other people, particularly romantically and sexually. And then also this idea that the pressure points on them are the same, on those desires. For me, it's really powerful.  

Christopher: It brings to mind this question, I had the privilege of being trained by the late Sue Johnson when she was alive on emotionally focused work. And she used to say, it's, do you see me? Do I matter if I reach for you? Will you be there? She would attachify, a lot of those questions that I think you're naming that are really the crux of the life cycle. But as ever, what I notice clinically is people come in because things get fragile. And some of the most dramatic stories in your book involve jealousy and betrayal and this instinct to defend the bond. Why did you decide that it was important to include those intense moments alongside all this science?  

Justin: Yeah, and alongside some real sweet, lovely…  

Christopher: There are, there are.

Justin: …moments. And I think the intensity for me, I've never answered, I've never been asked this. And for me, of course you'll ask me things no one else has asked me, Dr. Walling. And for me, the intensity of those are an important demonstration of what, I think, especially as a sexologist, when we think about sexuality, we often think about people do wild things for sex, they do silly things for sex. But we do much more intense things for love. And I'm using love in this broad sense, but for deep emotional connection for, I mean, people, they create art and culture around love. They engage in acts of violence for love. And I think that intensity, understanding it's not just trying to find it. All the things we do that can seem wild for establishing it, but also when it's taken away, the extreme pain. In fact, one study of people on fMRI brain scanners going through romantic rejection, when someone's going through a breakup and they tell you it hurts, they're not kidding. Actually, parts of the brain associated with pain, physical pain, are activated. And I mean, people commit suicide after breakups. Actually, men are more likely, much more likely to commit suicide after a breakup than women. And so when we think in that sense, for me, the intensity is also honoring what people experience in their relationships. That they, the uncertainty, the concern, the pain, the confusion, but also the extreme joy, the seesaw between whether it's limerence or great satisfaction, but also the pain of feeling like you're out of sync with a partner, a romantic partner, is so intense for people. And in some ways, I think it's mother nature's pound of flesh, that we evolved the ability to form these intense bonds. And when they're challenged, I was going to say troubled, but when they're challenged, that can feel so existential. It can feel so, you know, what's going on, is the world crashing, and we build so much of our lives often about our relationships. Sometimes it's simple things, like we have a house together, and someone could say that's not simple, it's really complicated. But in the grand scheme of things, that's simple. But the emotional connections that come with our relationships, your friends, their friends, your family, their family, the homes, property, finances, social life, that when that feels like it's disrupting, it's not just disrupting the love I have for you, you're disrupting a whole world when there's a challenge in a relationship. And for me, that whole world is part of the adaptive story, that evolution is not about nature and nurture. Evolution is about both. It's about the process by which things transmit culturally, genetically, biologically, and in multiple ways. So for me, those intense stories are a window into what people really feel in their relationships and experience, and we have to honor those.  

Christopher: Yeah, and they can be points, I think the reason, I'm asking is they can be points of incredible growth for some relationships. They don't always mean the end. It brings me to the other side of that equation, which is that, you know, I clinically work with a lot of folks in the consensual non-monogamy space. And so, you know, across cultures, I think you've written that, you know, we as a species, we see enormous variation in bonds and sexual exclusivity. And I'm curious, after both writing the book and doing the research you have, do you think humans are fundamentally monogamous? Why? Why not?  

Justin: Yeah, yeah, it's such a great question. And I think when I think of non-monogamy, and whether we say consensual non-monogamy, the term used to, as you know, the term used to be ethical non-monogamy, then consensual non-monogamy. Now some researchers like negotiated non-monogamy because our notions of someone's ethics or consent is kind of challenging. For me, my answer to that complicated and charged question is, I think we have a tendency, we have a natural history of forming intense pair-bond relationships. And what that means is that we need to rip apart the notion of monogamy and think of two different parts. And this is one of the things I write a lot about in The Intimate Animal is, we can think of social monogamy, which is the pair-bond relationship. That's the relationship structure. And then we can think of sexual monogamy or fidelity. And if we understand them as different things, and actually when biologists write, if you read an article about animal behavior, they'll say social monogamy and fidelity, they're really talking about two different things. We tend to not talk about it that way in the human sciences or in psychotherapy. We often just say monogamy. And it's like, well, what are we really talking about when we say that? So I think we have this tendency for a relationship structure, which is social monogamy, often intensely loving one person at a time. But I'm going to put a pin in that because there's more to say about that. And then there's this question of fidelity. Now, there are some people who, in a relationship, they have a pair-bond relationship and they are looking for something, whether it's novelty or more attention or notions of excitement or just sexual fulfillment. So that's when we see infidelity. And that is, for me, that's the betrayal. That's where it's a problem because then you violated that first rule of trusting and someone you can trust and confide in, and then you do damage to the relationship, to each other and to the relationship. Some people have found this wonderful way of thinking about consensual non-monogamy. And they say, okay, here can we balance it? We can have the pair-bond relationships, but then also have that sexual novelty. But even in there, as we know, there's also questions of jealousy and questions of there can be infidelity and non-monogamy because there can be violations. There can still be betrayal. And then there are the people like those ones that we studied that were married for 30 years and still had high degrees of passion. And they say, we have a pair-bond relationship and I'm going to take my desire for that novelty. I'm going to pull it into my relationship and we're going to have our coffee dates every morning. We're going to kiss every night. We're going to take vacations. We're going to read books to each other. We're going to do things that make us feel stimulated in the long. We're going to have conversation and light those candles. Those are the things that are in the long term. So I think that we see these different outcomes. Now, the question of non-monogamy, I think that's so interesting, is people can structure their relationships in different ways. What some of the evidence suggests is that of people, we found about one in five single Americans have at some point tried consensual non-monogamy. Much lower rate are currently in a non-monogamous relationship, according to much of the data. But that doesn't say, to me, that doesn't say whether it's good or worse or better or worse. In fact, a wonderful new study by Joel Anderson just found that rates of satisfaction are exactly the same in socially monogamous and non-monogamous relationships. There's a big meta-analysis looking across a bunch of studies. What I think is so important about that is that cuts both ways. It's not that suddenly if you're non-monogamous, you've found some way to solve the challenges of relationships and you're more satisfied. No, the data doesn't say that. It also doesn't say that if you are in a monogamous relationship, you've found the evolutionary secret to our ancestors and suddenly you have satisfaction. No, every relationship structure has its own challenges, particularly around what you were asking me earlier, around issues of jealousy, which are what we would call mate guarding in the biosciences, of questions of betrayal, of questions of passion maintaining, particularly in the long run, whether you have one partner or multiple. At its core, I think that even in non-monogamous relationships, we still see patterns of social monogamy. We see patterns of a pair-bond being important. The challenge to that, though, is polyamory, polyamory with this idea of plural love. And what I've really come to think is that in polyamory, and when we think of the numbers and what we see happening, the people who practice polyamory and are satisfied with it in their relationships, they've found ways to hold multiple pair-bonds at once. So the idea that most people have only one pair bond at a time, that isn't a rule, that isn't a biological destiny. It's just the pattern that we tend to see in most of the anthropological, cross-cultural historical record. Holding two comes with different challenges. Again, not better or worse, just different kinds of challenges of how do you balance those two or three or four relationships? What do you want from those different relationships? Are you trying to get the same thing? Now, we can learn something in cases of societies where men are polygamists. There are often rules around if you buy your one spouse a watch, you have to buy them all a watch. If you spend one night here, you then have to spend another night. Now, that's really trying to navigate jealousy and connection and still fertilize those relationships. So my view is not that, what we naturally are, is it possible to have multiple relationships? Of course it's possible. We look around. People are polyamorous or people who have open relationships or people who have throuples and they're happy and they're thriving. They come with different challenges. At its core, the part for me that's universal is having those deep connections. Typically, we fall... Limerence, we typically have one at a time. But again, what we started talking about, that doesn't stay forever. That's why even in consensual non-monogamy communities, people talk about new relationship energy. That can be a distraction from longer-term bonds. But all the other stuff, we can maintain. It just takes different effort.  

Christopher: I think this is a common critique I'm seeing a lot in my own field, particularly in psychoanalysis is, there's this invitation and a lot of our theorizing, both in the clinical psychology and in psychoanalysis itself, that says we might need new geometries in our theory making that pair bonds, exclusive to the pair, aren't quite the same as a matrix of interdependent relationships. So we might need to reimagine some of our theories. I think one of the most remarkable features of human attachment is our ability to love again after heartbreak. I'm just curious if you could speak to maybe what you have found in the science of bonding that suggests about our capacity to form new nests after an old one collapses.  

Justin: Yeah. This was one of my, in some ways, favorite chapters to write, and in some ways because I was doing the life cycle, it was also towards the end of the book. Our capacity to love again, and this is also from animal studies, so studies of prairie voles, which our colleague Sue Carter has worked on, and Will Kenkel and Alison Perkeybile and others. I'm going to start with animals, then move to humans. Prairie voles that we know form socially monogamous pair bonds and have been studied for their looking at particularly oxytocin and vasopressin and the physiology that underlies the pair bonding behavior. I mean, we sometimes take for granted that we have the capacity to pair-bond. Only 3-5% of mammals do this, 15% of primates. The very idea that we can fall deeply in love, that we have the architecture in our brain to do that, that most people do, and some people are totally aromantic, but that most people do, is really a powerful insight into human evolution and into our species and into our social structures. So, we know that in voles that they can re-pair bond if something happens to a partner. They can also divorce. In the animal literature, we'll talk about divorce sometimes, that you can break a pair bond. And there's some things, like one of the stories I love are gibbons. I remember being in Thailand, in the rainforest in Thailand with our colleague Amanda Gesselman, a social psychologist and one of my closest collaborators. And we went looking for these socially monogamous gibbons. And it was so funny because we were there and the tour guide said, oh, you're American, you must be here for the elephants. And then they were like, no, you're the ones that, the other guy was like, no, they're the ones that are here for gibbons. So we trek into this Khao Yai National Forest. And what's interesting about gibbons is they form these socially monogamous pair bonds. They're the only other ape that does. They're a lesser ape, not a great ape. But when they develop a particular chorus, when they have a pair bond, they develop their own kind of love song. Okay, I know I'm anthropomorphizing, but I'm going to just lean into it for a minute. So they have their own love song. And then if the pair breaks for any number of reasons, typically it's because an eagle depredates one or they fall out of a tree. And if they pair bond again, they don't sing the exact same tune with another because they develop a melody with each other. So I think there's so many insights from the natural world about these bonds that we can, we have the capacity, that our animal cousins have the capacity. Okay, now really to your question about when we, sorry, I was circling around. We have the capacity to love again. And I think that's so important that we can form deep bonds with people. Now I'm convinced, we're actually doing a study on this now, I'm convinced that if we ever love, it stays with us in a way. And at first I was thinking of it as scars on the mind. And I thought that's really not, maybe that's not the right way. But it is, I think that love relationships stay with us. And sometimes that's a problem because sometimes we'll say, why did you look up your ex on Facebook from 10 years ago? And I think when we put on our cap and say, well, love stays with us, it's a different way to appreciate that. Are you looking them up because you're still in love with them? Are you looking them up because you're curious and because they stay with you? They're an attachment figure. They were an attachment in your life. And you never fully shake that. I think that's, for me, it was a different reframe of how we think about if we've ever had these intense bonds. And we see that when people do it again, that sometimes we look for someone who's exactly the same. And sometimes we look for something new because there's two things that happen. Often when we're finding relationships again, we're older. So we're at a different point in our life. So there's, it can be hard and the academic literature has really struggled with this. How do you say, okay, I'm looking for my second great love of my life and I'm 65. Is what I want now because I've already loved? Or is it because I'm 65, not 25? And so there are kind of two things going on. And often as we get older, we look for different things in our relationships, particularly more focused on companionship, particularly more focused on someone who not necessarily to experience so many new things about life with, but to enjoy life in different ways with. Because often you've had experiences when you're later in life. So I think one, the capacity piece is big, is important for me. But then let's get down to brass tacks. I think then for me, there's also this question of, and I keep saying for me, because I know because you're training as a clinician, I'm thinking of being cautious that I'm not giving clinical advice. Explain my tic of why I keep saying that.  

Christopher: That’s smart.

Justin: Yeah. And that we, as we get older, we also want to be cautious about not wanting the exact same things in a relationship. Because what can happen is we can say, I'm trying to repeat a relationship, but you can't. Because you're not the same person you were in your last relationship. And you'll never meet someone who's exactly the same. And that's the part I think that is so challenging for people loving again, is this, how do you imagine a new course? Because we could take the pieces that we love, like I really like that my partner made breakfast every morning, or they were a good cook, and how do I find someone who's a good cook again? But really appreciating that each relationship brings its own expansion of self, its own window into the world, its own joys. How do we think of that in entirely new ways with new partners? And sometimes, because people do stay with us as attachment figures, we can feel like we're cheating on someone who's not even there. And that's a real thing. Maybe your partner is deceased. Maybe you broke up. But you still feel like you need to honor them in ways. Or how does this relationship fit into what they expected of you? And that could be a challenge. That's where we get into, I think, the clinical space of trying to work through that. I think the part of breakups that we don't appreciate enough that impacts loving again is that relationship dissolution is grief. It is bereavement. And if we can have more kindness to ourselves and those around us, more compassion for appreciating that, for those that do love again, we can also then say, okay, you're looking for the pleasures of love, but you're also doing it in the shadow of grief. Even if it's many years later, even if it was a small grief, even if there was joy that came with your breakup, mother nature takes that pound of flesh when a relationship ends.  

Christopher: After spending all these years studying love and desire and relationships and human intimacy, what has changed most in how you understand relationships? Not just as a scientist, maybe. Here's where your own subjectivity matters, the analyst says to you. But as a human, what has changed in how you understand relationships?  

Justin: Yeah, I think I have a much deeper appreciation, but also respect for the influence that relationships have in our lives. And what I mean by that is we could do all these studies about what we're looking for, what we experience when we break up, how to cultivate passion. And that's telling. But I think the part that only came together when I was writing The Intimate Animal and I was thinking of all these stories of talking to people were, okay, but then also I picked up and moved across the world for love. I changed my career for love. I followed a spouse for love. I made risky decisions for love. I have an incurable disease that love saved me or love made it worse. And I think that there's so many more dimensions that there's so much we take for granted. I remember recently talking to someone who worked with domestic violence survivors and they were talking about this common educational program that says, well, love is a verb. You have to act love. Now, I like that. That's true in some sense. But also, it's not really accurate in another sense. Yes, it is a verb. It's an action. But you can also love someone and treat them terribly and abuse them. And you can be loved by someone who abuses you. And what I mean by that is we're not talking about love in that sense as an action, but as a neuropsychological state. And that is also a part for me of really kind of taking the blinders off to see the power of relationships that we often don't talk to people, for instance, survivors of sexual violence and say, we often think we want to say, okay, you need to recognize that partner was bad. But we don't often say we need to recognize that you in fact were deeply in love with someone who treated you awfully. And one could argue that maybe that's not a good therapeutic technique. But for me, it's recognizing what happens to all of the ups and downs, the good and the bad, the satisfaction and the pain that comes with this exploration and hearing people's real stories and honoring that and trying to make sense of all that noise. And including in my own life. When I first started writing the book, I was single, I was on the apps, I was dating. And I mentioned in the book about when I met my now wife, Michelle, and that experience. And for me, that experience as I'm writing a book, like as I'm writing about what we know about early dating, and then like, okay, I got to plan our third date. And it was a little bit surreal. But it was, made it fun.  

Christopher: So to finish our conversation, I think for tonight, I want to go back to The Intimate Animal. If someone walks away after reading The Intimate Animal thinking that the book is only about sex or only about relationships. What deeper question do you hope they're actually wrestling with?  

Justin: Oh, thank you. I really hope the reason, part of the reason I wrote The Intimate Animal was really thinking about what makes us human and the role of love and sex and connection in that story. And even if it's the absence of love, even if it's the absence of sex, that how we wrangle with that in our lives. One of my good friends and colleagues is a leading expert on asexuality and so much of our own data is about how people navigate their social life, and they, how they navigate, well, they want a partner, but they don't necessarily want to be sexually active. And maybe they then engage in compulsory sex because they want a social connection. So it's not about prioritizing or it's not a story, I think evolution is not a story about what we should be doing or ought to be doing romantically, sexually, or how relationship structure should be formed. Rather, it's about, how do we all navigate that from where we are, from all the great diversity and what we want? How do we navigate love and sex and connection? And that is a story of what it means to be human across time and place. And my hope is that when someone reads The Intimate Animal that we can see, where do we situate ourselves in that grand story, that grand evolutionary story of our pursuit of love and sex and connection. And the highs that come with it and the lows that come with it. And that if, if we arm ourselves with a little bit of evidence, whether it's here or whether it's anywhere. I mean, in many ways, for me, this is an invitation also to just start thinking about the science and the research. If we arm ourselves with more knowledge, can we spend more time in the fun and the exciting and the pleasurable parts of love and sex and less time in the worried, concerned, lost parts to curate through all that noise. So that's my big hope.  

Christopher: Well, on behalf of all of us at the California Institute of Integral Studies, I want to thank you for spending time with us tonight and for sharing and if you don't have a copy of The Intimate Animal, I highly recommend that you go out there and get it. And thanks again, Dr. Garcia.  

Justin: Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. And thank you, Dr. Walling has been so fun, as always.  

Christopher: Thank you.

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