Oxytocin and infidelity – By Laurel Dewey

When it comes to fostering long-term relationships, men and women are very different. No matter what your sex, sticking around in a relationship is a challenge. Temptations occur. What, with all of the hot men and women walking, driving, skiing, windsurfing by, how does the average girl or guy manage to maintain a solid relationships at all?

According to the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology, not very well. Their statistics indicate that 50% our first marriages, 67% of our second and 74% of our third marriages end in divorce. No surprises there.

A group of researchers at McGill University in Montreal were inspired to design a study to learn more about this phenomena. They put together a study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in which 150 heterosexual men and women were asked to imagine a hot conversation with an attractive member of the opposite sex. They were then asked to play a fill-in-the-blank word game. When shown the word “THR_AT,” women who’d been asked to think about handsome, sexy, men tended to fill in the blank with an e creating the word “threat.” Men asked to visualize gorgeous sexy women were more likely to see the word “throat.” When offered “LO_AL” women saw “loyal,” and men saw “local.”

The point being that the mere thought of an outside flirtation was enough to trigger beware bells in women’s brains, but not in men’s! “It’s an amazing outcome,” says John Lydon, professor of psychology and leader of the study. “The same things weren’t coming to mind for the men.”

So, our researchers bumped the experiment up, bringing in some serious temptation in the form of very good-looking actors and actress (pretending to be other participants signed up for the same study) who were adept in the subtle arts of flirtation. The researchers also brought in a group of unattractive subjects who were also boring.

After spending some flirt time with the hot actresses, men began to see them as viable alternatives to their current mates, and, (and this is a big AND) felt somewhat less committed to their current relationship. Dogs! On the other hand, women put in the same situation, though they clearly saw the hot flirtatious guy’s as attractive alternatives, but as threats to their current relationship and pushed them away. No, not literally.

Because they make more oxytocin, women inherently more able to distance themselves from threats to their relationships. Of course society has also encouraged them to do so from a very early age. “Men don’t have those strategies built in,” Lydon says, “but they can be trained.”

How do we get men to change? For starters, you must never ask them to suppress these wandering thoughts. It won’t work. Suppressing unwanted thoughts of any kind will only backfire. (Don’t think about pink elephants! “Don’t!” You are thinking about pink elephants. Ok, stop! . . . you get my point.)

You need to inspire them to release their oxytocin and feeeeel the love. Yes, love. Because when they feel more love they will release more oxytocin which will make it way easier to just not see distracting stimuli. I’m not making this up, there are many studies that support this phenomena. Notice, I didn’t say anything about desire. Desire is good. Desire is a start. Desire gets their attention. Desire is first base. For all of us. The hot actors and actresses proved this, but desire is not a home run. It is not the long term solution. It is not the oxytocin connection. It is a quick fix stop gap. When men (and women) are truly in love with their partners, and making oxytocin they are much more able to ignore stimuli from attractive members of the opposite sex. Get this, even more so than women! This was proven in a recent UCLA experiment with tempting pictures.

Conclusion: Women naturally make more oxytocin then men. We are little oxytocin factories. The mere act of talking induces us to release oxytocin. Men are not as adept at producing oxytocin as we are. They make a little but not nearly as much as us. Men make lots of testosterone. But, testosterone isn’t about commitment, testosterone is about fornication and only lasts a few minutes a day for a few weeks or months. By the way, the pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin we all release in the early stages of love are good for about a year. Again, these hormones are about mating, not marriage. Oxytocin is about commitment. Alas, don’t fret, men can be taught how to release more of the big O. And, they should be, because when they are truly in love life is simpler for them and when life is easier for them, it is easier for us. N’est-ce pas? Practice your oxytocin releasing protocols with them! (see chapter ?) You know, look into their eyes, sing to them, get them to sing along. If the drag their feet spray some Oxytocin Accelerator under their tongue and try again.

Oxytocin is an FDA controlled substance!

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Tags: Oxytocin, Love+Trust+Bonding, Without+Oxytocin+just+sex