Intimacy Constraints

The social dimension of sex

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It’s common in romantic relationships to feel an intense and pleasurable “buzz” early on. Overwhelming passion. Which slowly dissipates over time. At least to some degree.

What explains this?

A few years ago, I saw Rolf Degen on Twitter describe The Social Dimension of Sex as “the most profound and stirring book about sex ever written.” Degen posts a ton of interesting stuff online, so I immediately looked up the book online to buy it.

At about $50, though, it was a little too pricey for a second-year PhD student. Fortunately, I found a copy in the Cambridge University library. According to the library stamp inside the book, I was the first person to check out the book since 2005.

In The Social Dimension of Sex, Roy Baumeister and Dianne Tice cover a lot of ground on sexual psychology.

One of the most interesting sections discussed the idea of resource constraints on intimacy. And how this might also lead people to interpret natural phenomena as proof that their love for their partner has dissolved.

By resources, Baumeister and Tice don’t mean material possessions or money. They mean that intimacy itself is a limited resource.

Think of intimacy as a kind of knowledge. Intimacy in this context doesn’t mean sex.

It means the disclosure of personal and sensitive information about oneself. This intimacy leads people to bond with one another.

But there’s only so much we can learn about another person, no matter how interesting they are. When you first meet your partner, it’s apparent how much you don’t know about them. Our curiosity about this mystery is exciting.

Budding relationships often involve conversations that can last for hours well into the night. Lots of sharing of personal feelings and memories and important experiences.

This usually doesn't last.

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The authors describe this aspect of intimacy:

“Although it may seem that the person you love is an unlimited source of fascination, in reality the source is actually limited. For example, people have only had so many interesting experiences in their lives, and once they have told them to you, the supply is exhausted. Likewise, people may have all sorts of interesting ideas and opinions, but gradually you will have heard all of them too.”

Which is why intimacy usually levels off over time. Even in an ideal relationship, intimacy may rise to a certain point but typically doesn’t increase much more after that.

There’s a kind of diminishing marginal utility for intimacy. You might reach a very high state with your partner. But rarely does it get much higher than that.

I wonder how often relationships are thwarted by this misunderstanding about how intimacy works.

Some might believe that because they don’t feel the same level of curiosity and excitement about their partner as they did before, this means the love is gone.

In the early stages of the relationship, they’d stay up all night talking. Then, after extracting all the interesting stories from them, mistakenly believe they no longer love the person.

Older people seem to get it. People who have been married for a long time know each other so well that they can often finish each other’s stories. But they don’t believe this means that the love has faded. Often, they take it as evidence of how close they are.

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Interestingly, if we take this idea of intimacy as a limited resource seriously, then it might be wise to withhold divulging too much too early on.

“Less history, more mystery,” as Dr. Drew and Adam Carolla used to advise their teenage callers on Loveline.

Disclosure is important to develop love and establish trust. But too much too soon might hasten the inevitable feeling that the relationship has lost its luster.

At the same time, it’s important to understand that even if this happens, it is not necessarily evidence that our feelings for the other person have changed.

If we make this mistake, then we will only ever feel that a relationship is “working,” during the early stages, when the buzz as at its highest.

In season four of Mad Men, Don Draper tells his girlfriend, Dr. Faye Miller, that he has fallen for another women. Dr. Miller tearfully (and astutely) replies, “I hope she knows you only like the beginnings of things.”

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There are likely sex differences in how relationship resource constraints are experienced. Men in relationships may experience more desire for sexual novelty. Like the kind they experienced with their partner early on. And interpret their desire as evidence that their feelings for their partner have dissolved.

Women, in contrast, may experience a greater desire for intimacy. Like the kind they experienced with their partner early on. And interpret this lack as evidence that their feelings for their partner have dissolved.

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Another interesting passage from the book is about how natural romantic preferences give rise to inequality.

A thought experiment:

“Imagine forming a close friendship or business partnership with someone of your own gender. Imagine that this person is four years older than you and also has a couple more years of education. Imagine that this person has more money…And, for good measure, imagine that this person is physically larger (taller and stronger). Most of the time you two might well operate as equals, but if there were a question or disagreement, the odds are that you’d be inclined to defer to your friend’s judgment. Then imagine the reverse: Your friend is four years younger than you are, is less well educated, has less money, and is physically smaller. If there were a question or disagreement, probably you would be more willing to insist that your view should prevail. As a general rule, it would seem reasonable to assume that you would know better than your friend about most things.”

Now consider:

“People marry in ways that preserve inequality between the sexes…Typically the husband is about four years older than his wife. Husbands tend to have a higher salary and be slightly more educated. Of course, they are also taller, heavier, and stronger. Who do you think will end up being the boss?”

It’s true that nowadays, women often have more education than their male partners. But women still tend to enter relationships with men who are older, taller, stronger, and earn more than themselves.

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Occasionally, when I share interesting findings, people reply with “Didn’t we already know this?” Or “No shit sherlock.” Or “Did we really need a study for this?”

The idea is that psychologists spend their time studying things people “already know.”

Plainly, this is dumb.

Here’s an example of why. In World War II, researchers reported that “Men from rural backgrounds were usually in better spirits in their Army life than soldiers from city backgrounds.”

“No shit sherlock,” someone might reply. Rural men in the 1940s were used to hard living conditions unlike soft city men. Of course rural men performed better.

But actually, the real result was the opposite. City men adjusted better to army life. But if someone had been told that in the first place, they could have replied that this is because city men are used to working in crowded conditions with different kinds of people.

This is the point. When every answer is “obvious,” then something is wrong with the idea of “obviousness.”

It’s important to test intuitively plausible claims.

Here’s another example. Suppose researchers find that low-status males are more likely to commit sexual assault. You could easily reply that this is obvious because low-status men lack options.

Or suppose that researchers find that high status males are more likely to commit assault. Again, you could reply that this is obvious because high-status men feel a sense of entitlement. This is actually what studies find, btw.

Often, once we know the outcome, we want to feel smart, so we pretend we knew it all along.

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Person A: *Describes psychology finding*

Person B: "I could've told you that. Why do we need a study for what we already know?"

Person A: "That's called hindsight bias. When we learn something new, we think we could have predicted it."

Person B: "I could've told you that."

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So here are a couple of counterintuitive findings.

If the results had gone the other way, people would likely reply with some variation of “pfft we already knew that.” Again, it’s important to test intuitive beliefs.

There is a stereotype that women are more romantic than men. Often, stereotypes portray men as romantically vacant and uninterested in emotional entanglement.

But this is wrong.

Several studies have found that men fall in love faster than women. Nearly twice as many men (27%) compared to women (15%) report that they have fallen in love with their current partner within 4 dates.

Men, on average, are ready for an exclusive “couple” relationship after 2.5 months, compared with 6 months for women. Men are also quicker to reach the point of expecting the relationship to lead to marriage.

Another study found that 88% of people believe that women fall in love in a relationship first.

But when asked about their most recent relationship, men reported falling in love faster.

Who says “I love you” first?

19% of women in relationships reported that they said “I love you” first.

64% of men in relationships reported that they said “I love you” first.

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One reason for the gap in stereotypes versus reality might be due to the fact that high-status men are less likely to say I love you first and are less interested in romantic entanglements.

In a recent podcast, evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller said, “There’s a delusion that goes, ‘If you’re good enough to get a guy to have sex with you, but he doesn’t commit, that’s his issue. That’s his inadequacy. What’s actually happening is guys who can have lots of short-term partners are going to be choosy about who they commit to.”

Women may be more likely to believe men are less romantic because high-status men loom larger in their minds and hold disproportionate sway in how women make their judgments about who is more romantic.

But why would men hold this flawed belief that men are less romantic? It might be a form of self-deception. Many men may think that prominent men are less romantic. And might aspire to be such a man. So they live under the delusion that they are less romantic than they really are.