Why Humans Are Wired for Love but Struggling to Connect | Dr. Justin Garcia — EP 745

Hey, it's Howie Mandel and I'm inviting you to witness history as me and my Howie Do it gaming team take on Gilly the King and

wallow two six sevens million dollars gaming in an epic global gaming league video game showdown four rounds multiple games one winner

Plus a half-time performance by multi platinum artist Traviem McCoy watch all the action and see who wins in advances to the championship match

Against Neo right now at global gaming league dot com. That's global gaming league dot com everybody games

Coming up next on passion struck. We know that the from studies of FMR I brain scan of people who are recently romantically in love and people were passionately in love

It is a very much parallel to addiction in the brain and in fact romantic rejection studies of people who have gone through breakups

They the brain looks remarkably like someone going through with drug withdrawal particularly cocaine withdrawal

Which helps explain why breakups can feel so intense and emotionally physically. It's why people feel physical pain with breakups that

I'm always a little cautious of calling it an addiction, but it is very parallel to addiction and I'm part because we're so used to addictions being negative and love is

Positively balanced one for the most part

Welcome to passion struck. I'm your host John Miles

This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters

Each week I sit down with change makers creators scientists and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and

Uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning heal what hurts and pursue the fullest expression

The who were capable of becoming whether you're designing your future developing as a leader or seeking deeper alignment in your life

This show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention

Because the secret to a life of deep purpose connection and impact is choosing to live like you matter

Hey friends, and welcome back to episode

745 a passion struck throughout this life beyond the script series

We've been exploring what happens when the assumptions we've lived by about identity

success health and purpose

Stop working, but there's another script most of us inherit without ever questioning it the script about love about

Relationships about what it means to feel connected in a world that has never been more digitally

Lent yet often feels profoundly lonely earlier in this series

We've explored how biology shapes resilience with Dave Asprey

emotional strength influences physical health with Dr. Tara Nourula and how technology is reshaping entire systems of care

With Dr. Robert Wackter today we turn to something even more fundamental

intimacy because beneath achievement

Stannis and productivity most people are searching for one thing to feel seen to feel chosen to feel like they matter to someone

My guest today is Dr. Justin Garcia

Evolutionary biologist executive director of the Kinsey Institute and author of the new book the intimate animal

The science of sex, fidelity and why we live and die for love in this conversation

We explore a provocative idea humans didn't just evolve to survive. We evolved to bond

Justin explains how pair bonding touch sexual desire attachment and connection are deeply rooted in our biology

And why modern life is disrupting those systems in ways we're only beginning to understand we discuss the evolutionary roots of romantic love and

Parabonding we go into why Gen Z is both craving connection and delaying relationships

How technology is reshaping dating attraction and intimacy the underlying paradox between commitment and novelty and why touch

deprivation may be one of the most hidden crises of modern life as Justin explains

intimacy isn't a luxury it's infrastructure for human flourishing before we dive in a quick ask if this episode

Resonates with you sure it was someone who might benefit from it

You can also watch the full conversations on our YouTube channels and if you haven't yet leaving a rating review on Apple podcast or Spotify

Helps more people discover these conversations now. Let's dive into my conversation with Dr. Justin Garcia

Thank you for choosing passion struck and choosing me to be your hosting guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters now let that journey begin

Have you ever looked up at the clock and realized it's noon and you've had nothing but coffee

That was me recently the morning just vanished

Meetings emails everything and suddenly I was starving and completely off track

That's why I've been keeping a cool black edition on hand

On days when I'm sprinting out the door I grab a ready-to-drink bottle

It's a complete meal with 35 grams of protein

27 essential vitamins minerals no artificial sweeteners and it actually keeps me full for hours and it's under five bucks

Then when I'm home and want something more customizable

I use the black edition powder blend it with ice add fruit or nut butter

Same complete nutrition just the different vibe

Honestly, this combo has become my insurance policy against chaotic days

Limited time offer get fuel today with my exclusive offer of 15% off online with my code passion at

Hewll.com slash passion new customers only. Thank you to Hewll for partnering and supporting our show

I am absolutely thrilled today to welcome Dr. Justin Garcia on passion strap Justin

It's so great to see you today. How are you? I'm great. I'm thrilled to be with you

I we're going to get to talk about a lot of important parts of what it means to be human

We're here today to discuss your brand new book the intimate animal the science of sex fidelity and why we live in dye or

It love and when I got the book one of the first things I realized is that it features a blurb from a mutual friend Emily Morse

You know Emily

Everyone should know Emily. She's such a brilliant sex educator and has done such a good job at helping

Everyone of all walks of life and particularly the public really understand what we do as sex researchers and how we apply that to our lives

Which is a long time friend. We've had some opportunities to events together and someone who's work

I really respect and admire. It's not easy to always talk about sex and sexuality and

public spaces and to do it in a way that

Honors that honors the complexity of our sex lives and treats it with respect and Emily does that better than anyone

Well, Emily and I are both huge Michigan fans

So that's one of the ties for us

But I remember when she was telling me when she got her doctorate

It was one of the first doctorate's ever in the study of sex or intimacy

Yeah, which was really interesting to see over the past 15 to 17 years what she has done with it

So and it speaks to a larger I think Pat on even still today so many people who study sex and sexuality

I have colleagues if they're only one in their department who studies sexuality

They're the only one in their college on their campus that studies sexuality

We're in a really fortunate position here at the Kinsey Institute

I run up and down the hall and we're probably the largest concentration of sex and relationship researchers in the world and

There's historians and psychologists and biologists and physicians and we bring all this just in different disciplinary

Perspective to bear every one of their own theories and methods and

But it could be hard to study sexuality it hard difficult to get funding difficult to get jobs difficult

So it's a still a

Complex and misunderstood part of the scientific arena. Well, it certainly is another thing

I just wanted to throw it at you as you probably don't talk to too many podcasts host who's

Two siblings both went to IU. Oh really. I hope you were celebrating the football game this year

My brother was at the semi-final game and we were definitely celebrating and there's a lot to be said about relationships and connection and fandom and

So these are questions somewhere in there

Justin recently because of what you were just talking about I've

tried to do a couple episodes that are deep diving relationships

I want to be as was Paul Eastwick and

Another one I was lucky enough to get Harry Reese and Sanyu Levermeersky to come on together

Which was cool to have the preeminent expert in happiness and relationships come on to discuss it

But we went in to kind of how

compatibility forms and relationships and how

Responsiveness actually makes people feel love what I wanted to ask you is from an evolutionary perspective

Why would the human brain and body

be designed to depend so deeply on intimacy at all?

I love John you jumped right into the deep men and I think it's such a big question and for all of us this idea that

We understand the role of intimacy of connection of love in our lives

It's a profound people do intense things for our romantic and sexual desires and our relationships

people around the world live and die for love and

But why as an evolutionary biologist the question is why is that and I think there's a couple of ways we can and shouldn't answer that as we unpack it

The one part of that is that a lot of researchers have argued

that

We have patterns of what we call social monogamy or pair bonding that we're a pair bonding species

So what that means is that we form these intense

Romantic bonds and when biologists talk about pair bonds if we're talking about other species we say

Mutual territory defense mutual nest building mutual raising of offspring that mutual part is really important that you have a

Close partner that you're weathering life with and typically as evolutionists were thinking about survival and reproduction

So the evidence would suggest that our species our ancestors hominins were engaging in

pair bonding behavior for over four million years and

a little bit more in some

according to some anthropologists and

so for us what that was about was survival and reproduction and I think it's important to remember both of those

So on the one hand on reproduction

We know that as humans continue to evolve and to what we know is

Anatomically modern humans that having a pair bond partner to defend offspring to be

We just date for nine to ten months it takes years and years for to raise children to the time to be able to do anything on their own

That is part of a

Natural history that pair bonds helped us to invest in development and growth

As a species only about three to five percent of mammals engage in that pair bonding behavior

So it's also relatively unique

That's the one lever is about reproduction

The other is about survival and one thing I argued in the instrument animal is I

Think more and more we can understand that pair bonds also evolved to allow us to weather uncertainty to respond to changing environments

social environments physical environments

We had a partner co-pilot to go through life with to manage ups and downs and predators and resources and in many ways

That's what's allowed our species to really dominate the globe

So I think there's a couple of different evolutionary pieces that play there and then the next live levels

Then we start to see the mechanisms. What's going on in the brain and Marba physiology that all back up this idea that we have that our deep

Sense of connection to others is biological

Yeah, why love that that topic because it's one that I've been studying myself now almost two decades and

I have my own book coming up coming out on this in October

I titled the mattering effect, but I really trace

This this loss of shared connection and its consequences and then go into kind of how do you rebuild it?

But something I saw in your book and something I've been studying really connected

I started looking at loneliness helplessness

People burned out people disengaged people broken and I said there has to be something in common with all of these

And for me that commonality is

mattering but you saw that a connection is also there with 40% of U.S. adults being single

And these things on the other side rising globally

What's the connection point?

Yeah, I love that and I like this idea of mattering and I think we're

Talking about different facets of the same diamond here, which is exciting that

The part for me intimacy is this idea of being seen and heard and known that but sometimes researchers talk about the

Need to belong that we young we have a pretty good understanding from biologist psychologists

Lot of social behavioral scientists that humans have a need to feel connected to others

We are a social primate through and through we we want to feel connected

But it's not just the having connections in many ways

We are more connected than ever before in our evolutionary history

We can log on to social media there's thousands of people

We can be on a subway and interact with thousands of people

You've been a restaurant and interact with hundreds of people

But we also have more people in our phone or on our social media

But it's the quality of those connections

And I think for me the paradox in all of this what you're talking about John and loneliness and is

How are we more connected but we seem to be struggling with loneliness?

So it's not

How is it that people are have psychological loneliness when they wake up in a bed next to a partner every morning or

They have all these people that they're talking to on social media

That is for me an issue of quality. It's the nature of the relationships. It's the depth of the connections

To use a word that you just use

Do those connections matter in their life to them?

Do they feel like they are someone that you could actually rely on in a time of need?

Do they feel that you're someone you can rely on on a time of need?

Parabond relationships in the best case

Well, when they're highly satisfying in terms of romantic and sexual satisfaction and

Relationship quality

Our partners are people that we think are going to catch us when we fall that we feel that we feel that there's a depth to those bonds and connections

That's what I think is our big issue as I talk about it as an intimacy crisis

But it's almost thinking of it as a level above this loneliness epidemic

It's well, what's going on that we're that we just don't feel connected to all the people around us

And that's my sort of entry point to a lot of that. I'm curious. What do you think too? I can't wait to read your book

I've been trying to really get my arms around this because what I'm saying is that

mattering is breaking down in our families in our intimate relationships in our work environments in our communities

So it is a common throughput and when I think about intimacy

When we say connection that's what a lot of people think of mattering

But I recently had a really interesting dialogue with Rebecca Goldstein

I'm not sure if you're familiar with her. She's a

Philosopher she just came out with a book called The Mattering Instinct

But she and I both believe

Something that's a little bit different than what most people are saying when I think of connection

I'm thinking of

The relational aspect that you have with someone else when I am thinking about mattering

I think about our own human operating system and what I think is happening is

mattering is the foundation for connection. It is the foundation for meaning

But when people don't feel themselves like they matter

I think that's where this

gap

That I call the mattering gap starts if you don't feel like you matter to yourself

If you don't feel like you are seen

Etc. How are you ever going to feel that you could be intimate with someone?

How are you going to connect with someone else?

And so I think where this starts breaking down is

In how we ourselves have lost mattering via a series

It's decades worth of micro collapses that end up happening to us. So it's not like we just wake up

And we suddenly feel this it's almost burnout. It happens gradually. What do you think about that?

Yeah, I really I like that and I think and I'm gonna if I can build on that what I really like about that is

This idea that if you're in a power bond relationship if you have a romantic paper now you can also have best friends and family that

Romantic bonds aren't the only source of this

But inherent to a romantic relationship is that you rely on each other you lean on each other you at times need each other

And I think sometimes I hear folks say well, I don't want a partner that needs me or that I need them

That's unrealistic. That's the part of if you're in a long haul with a close romantic bond

There will be days and moments that you need you rely on each other and you benefit from each other you grow from each other

that

Knowing that there's a beauty, but there's also a deep satisfaction that comes with

Knowing that I could show up from my partner that I because I matter for them

It gives a sense of a sense of purpose now. It doesn't mean that you live only for serving them

Like couples sometimes joke about that my wife and I's been joke about that. They watch your purpose

This is taking care of you honey, and you don't want that should be the only purpose

But to know that you're there to support to be each other's best self

Something you said John, I really like though it makes me think of this new data we have and I'm curious

Maybe we can work think on this puzzle on this together. We have a new study

That we did in partnership with match group

We found that about 80% of Gen Z say that they want romantic love in their life

But 45% don't think that they're ready. They think that they have to work on themselves more

That and then we ask in different areas. They have to work on themselves

And what I'm making of that of what you just said in that news this new study we have

I think somewhere what's getting lost particularly for young people is

The translating the how-to part of that if saying that they think in order

I worry that too many people nearly have think that in order to have that mattering

They need to just go work on themselves in isolation

And I don't think that that's actually the answer

I don't think that's the path to get there that we need to work on yourself

That relationships can be a vessel they for

Figuring out who you are and what you want in the best cases and thriving together and experiencing the world together

So I'm curious the jump between I think you nailed it. There's this piece of feeling connected

A feeling needed of having purpose

But I worry that too many especially among the young and I think this is where we're seeing burnout in relationships and dating

As they think they need to go solve this mystery somewhere on their own on the peak of amount

and in fact

Dating and connecting with people are a place to learn that before we continue

I want to pause for a moment one of the central ideas and the life beyond the script series is that transformation

Isn't only about changing what you do. It's about understanding what you need as a human being on the united life.net

I'm publishing companion reflections and articles for every episode in this series designed to help you examine your own life

Because awareness creates insight but intentional action creates change

If you want to explore the reflections for this episode visit the ignited life.net

And I also want to thank our sponsors for supporting the show their support makes these conversations possible now a quick break for our sponsors

You're listening to passion strap right here on the passion struck network

Now let's return to the discussion with Dr. Justin Garcia

So a couple things I was not aware of that study and I find it interesting because I have two kids who are Gen Z

Oh, okay

both who find

Dating now very complicated especially the older one who's 27

But it's really interesting because when we grew up there was much more of you just jump into it and figure it out

Right

Then trying to make yourself perfect and I think

Oftentimes you get years into a relationship and then realize you need to do some of that internal work

But if you keep delaying it because we both know how difficult it is for people to do that work

It often keeps getting put off until it's never done

It really does delay that inception point

When you feel like you're ready to be in a relationship now you can look at this from my own perspectives

I was married for over two decades and we ended up getting divorced and I went through a phase where like many people

I dated a lot because I was trying to figure out

What type of mate do I want to have in my life going forward and I knew I didn't want the same thing I had before

But I reached a point where I realized I needed to take some time

For myself to figure a few things out or the relationship I really wanted

Wasn't going to happen until I worked on a couple of core pieces

So I do think that had I not done that I probably wouldn't be married today and one to have met the woman that I have so I see the need for it

but

It does beg a real big question of if you keep putting that off

How long are you going to keep putting it off for and where you do it how we work on ourselves

I worry that particularly for the young they

don't see

interpersonal interactions and relationships and dating it as that

That's a context within which we work with ourselves and relationships we grow together you expect to grow together

not to just show up preformed and

Hit play and that's it

Just one of the things that you describe in the book is a core paradox

We as humans are wired for pair bonding but not necessarily strip sexual monogamy

How does that tension shape modern love?

Yeah

Thanks for the opportunity to talk about this because I think it really is one of the key tensions

That explain so much of the ups and downs in our relationships

So one of the arguments I'm making into an animal and my colleagues and I've made an academic articles

Is that humans have this tendency for pair bonding sort of what we call so maybe let me take one step back as a biologist

We don't I don't talk about monogamy

We don't typically talk about a species that's monogamous in the same way that we tend to in the human sciences or in the public

And what I mean by that is we talk about two different pieces of monogamy

There's social monogamy which is the pair bond that's the relationship structure

And there's sexual monogamy which is fidelity that's your mating behavior

And that they actually have two different mechanisms in the brain what's going on in terms when we form a deep romantic bond to someone and our interest in sexual variety are different mechanisms

And in some ways they're different evolutionary pressures different levers in some sense

That we had this pressure

Evolutionary selection pressure to form pair bonds is good for survival and reproduction

But then also pressure for sexual variety and diversity because that can be helpful if there's disease or if they have more variation

Maintains levels of competition

What the way I think of relationships is when people say are we monogamous?

This is a complicated question. We have an actual history a tendency to form intense pair bonds typically with one person at time

Although not everyone was interesting work on polyamory for instance most people tend to form one at a time

and

There's always variation as a new evolutionary biologist I've read and butter is diversity of traits is always variation

and

Then this question a sexual novelty

And I think in many relationships we can come to understand that tension as I have a primary relationship

And then there's infidelity occurs or I feel like it's going to work or I'm worried about it occurring

And all the management of jealousy and make guarding and all the stuff that goes into this infidelity stuff

But in fact what can happen you're in a primary relationship you the drive for sexual novelty can pull us towards infidelity

Or for some people it pulls them towards opening up their relationship and we're talking more and more about that and

publicly about different ways that people are expanding relationships or trying to open relationships

consensual non monogamy polyamory and

That's another way to address that tension the other way to address that tension and the one that I think when we understand we can harness as we could say

Okay, I have a desire for sexual novelty

But I also have this long-term pair bond

Well, we can take that desire for sexual novelty and pull it into our relationship

So then we say let's do things in the context of our partner better new and exciting that activates the dopamine systems in the brain

And I don't necessarily need to be pulled elsewhere to get that

I can do it in my relationship

But it takes some effort and it takes understanding that seeing it and working towards it as a couple

To do new things whether that's in the bedroom sexual novelty or it's taking vacations taking cooking classes

Walking around a different parking your neighborhood

There's also there's a big range of ways that we can get our sense of novelty in our lives

It really is interesting especially for someone with my background who I grew up in a very

religious Catholic family want to

Prokyo schools for my entire school and through high school and was taught since I could breathe that being in a monogamous

Relationship is the only sanctity of God and I'm sure a lot of the listeners probably share some of that core

That core background I do so how do you

Like differentiate between spiritual core like that and

What some people are now experimenting with that seems to be on the opposite side of that

I think the interesting thing about when my work what I really enjoy is that we can understand that we have

Evolutionary tendencies or motivational systems, but they're always subject to any ecology. They're always subject to

Social context ecological context whether that's religion or whether that's a particular country or or culture or

So people structure relationships in very different ways around the world sometimes it's based on resources sometimes it's based on

Religious edict for instance, there's multiple religions that allow people to have multiple spouses

But in there you often see things about

So for instance in the Quran you can have multiple wives, but you need to be able to provide for all of them equally

So it's not that it's a free rate, but it's a swinging party. It's actually a

Religiously influenced way that you can expand the family

But you have to honor that there's multiple families there there's multiple pair bonds there's multiple children

So when you dig when we dig into how different religion structure these things I think there's often

An interesting story and for me that's different from I'm on the one hand thinking about the biology of love bonds

And then everything else is about how

Culture religion marital agreements all of those things give us guidance on how to structure

That those desires structure those so

In the cases of I think the in the cases of religious groups or that

Really phone in on marriage and monogamy

Well, then the question is okay, but where are we getting on that's a great example of okay

But are we cultivating a desire for novelty and that relationship

And at times when you turn the screws so tight about so much regulation and people's intimate lives

They sometimes can develop what my late colleague Helen Fisher would call frustration attraction

So you tell them they can't do somebody tell someone they can't do something and we start to get more interested in it

So that there's paradoxes there for instance

Some of the highest consumption of sex toys and pornography is in the us Bible belt in the country

So the region characterizes the highest religiosity

I don't say that as a moral statement one way or the other what is the data tell us about when you're very restrictive about information

Sex education

Thinking about people's diverse romantic and sexual lives people start seeking it out

And they start they have almost a greater craving for that seeking. I'm always cautious about when we

Think about how we regulate aspects of people's romantic and sexual lives

On the other hand to the point of your question that I didn't answer yet

I'm sorry about

The part about our spiritual selves and how we bring them to our relationships

There's also a whole lot of satisfaction that can come for people when they think about well

How do I think about my romantic and sexual life?

And is it part of a spiritual experience and journey and is it important that we align because

With what social sciences call homophily we tend to be attracted to people of with similar backgrounds as ourselves

Sometimes it's based on religion sometimes race

Increasingly we're seeing in our data. It's political orientation

So it's your your party of our political party affiliation

But we tend to look for people that we can understand

With religion and spirituality. They're often super ordinacles. It's about like our purpose in life and a realigning on that

That can add a lot of depth to our romantic relationship

And it can also add a lot of depth I think to people's sexual experiences

But we have to do it within the confines of what makes us comfortable

And if you're coming from a religious or spiritual background

Sometimes some thinking of some of that

That capturing that novelty can make us uncomfortable really uncomfortable

Now if we're uncomfortable particularly if we don't feel safe

Psychological safety

Then you shut down all the mechanisms for mating for connection for sexual interest

So we have to balance that desire for newness with a sense of feeling safe and connected

So since I open the door to marriage

I want to talk about modern families for a second

One thing that I interpreted reading the book is that humans evolved as cooperative breeders where

Care is shared across our groups that we exist in throughout history and in modern families

What I think ends up happening more and more is that one person

Seems to become the fixer or the emotional rock that's carrying everything in the relationship

Does evolutionary science suggest that this kind of one way investment that ends up happening

Is a distortion to our natural design and impacts the vitality of that family unit or that intimate bond

Is an important question and gets at how we structure our relationships

And in some ways I know you mentioned Paul Eastwick's wonderful work

And in some ways he's thinking about these notions of compatibility and his work really nuanced ways that I enjoy

And so my take on this is particularly I remember watching Renee Brown give an interview once

And she said that her she and her partner will sometimes say as my cup fills today

Like how much can I bring and it's I've only got 10% in my cup today. So you bring 90%

and

I think that for so I want to start with that because that reminds us that relationships are dynamic and sometimes our efforts

Are situational they're not necessarily always now if you are in a relationship that's always lopsided

That for some people that can work sometimes someone's more much more of a caretaker month more of a caregiver

That sometimes can work

But by and large what we know is that long term that can create problems that creates resentment and creates jealousy

It creates frustration

But the part that is more complex that researchers are questions researchers continue to understand

are that when

those

distributions of effort or investment that they are situational so my wife and I friends has had a baby recently

That there are days that one of us has more energy than the other there are days that you know some of us that they're

Especially probably say these my wife's recovering and now that's an intense life experience and you're balancing that

But there's all sorts of things there's you get a new promotion. You do a reorganization at work

You are writing a book something you

Check out your both right thinking about you're in the final stages of finishing that book

You're not always functional at the dinner table at night and when we can understand that our relationships are dynamic

And then our lives are dynamic that there are moments and sometimes it's not just a day

It's a season sometimes things are intense at work for three four six months and how you navigate that

And then the best case the couple the relationship becomes your source of hey

Can I need to lean on you a little bit more right now because I trust and confide in you

It's actually the thing that we see in our studies over and over though

Then people most want their romantic partner is someone they can trust and confide in

For exactly these reasons. Okay. Here's I'm in the season that I need to trust and confide you. I can't go up fully

But in the best case it's with the promise of but I'm coming back as soon as I get a handle on work

As I turn the book in as I get over the surgery as I'm not so sleep deprived whatever it is that that then

We get back

So I think that it can be

Unhelpful to think of relationships is needing to split your effort

That there's some formula that we have to follow because it doesn't leave us the reap the real the it's that

So divorced from the real world of the push and pull that we all experience in our lives that we show up with in our relationships

but

When it's when it feels permanently sl as tilted or that there's no way forward

There's no working together towards a goal to get back to it

That can create a frustration now. There are exceptions like there are to everything as you can know

They're I think in up cases of relationships like sugar baby cut cut relationships that

There's something built in those the sort of transactional aspects that are present in all relationships

That maybe the what one is providing is different

So maybe it's one is providing more financial resources and others more domestic resources or emotional resources

And when we start to think of that it gets complicated quickly

But I'm hesitant to say that the literature the available academic literature tells us

A clear story of whether that's good or bad

I think we're understanding more and more that it can vary and that there's a lot of nuance to when it plays out in the real world

But we do know that permanent

Lopsidedness of effort that will create on a relationship real fast if there's not a sense of it's the same thing as long distance relationships

If you're a long distance for two years where you're working on your masters. Okay, we have a plan

We can figure it out if you move to the other part of the world and who knows when we're gonna see each other

There's no end site. There's no end inside for both of us. There's no goal that we work towards that really is a challenge for a relationship

Yeah, I spent a number of years in the military and I was just reading this article on there's a current

Carrier task force that was deployed last June

And they were the ones who were down in South America when we were down there

And supposed to come back home they were already overdue and now they've been sent to the Middle East and they're not even there yet

So by the time they're done whatever they're doing and then have to transverse the whole way home you can him you can

I understand how for the five six thousand people that this is impacting how difficult that could be

for their relationships and the social support that they're gonna need when they're back home and they're

I love that you bring this up junk because I think in so many areas of our life whether it's physical health now

I'm in now I'm in your territory. So

Correct me, but I think in our physical health and our mental health and our careers that knowing that

Our relationships can be a source of our flourishing of our thriving

But I think one of the things I tried to deal with in the book was

To when we understand the science of our romantic and sexualized can we honor it?

Can we respect it? Can we cultivate it?

Because exactly that's a great case of people are away and then they get moved around again and moved around again

Hey, they got to get back to their relationships and be present for them because in the long run

We know that having that support that emotional support is better for everyone's

Health physical health psychological health their performance at work their ability to focus their ability to thrive

So I think we need relationship prescriptions to really focus in on our

Relationships because there's such a source of our well-being and when they're disrupted

They can be such a source of distraction and pain and heartache

For us

For sure, I know when I was in those

deployments were tough on their relationship

Especially when they happened in quips succession or when they went way over do

And your mind is expecting it to be a certain duration and that's what you're preparing for and then it keeps getting elongated

It doesn't help well. I want to go back to the relationship angle

And we were talking earlier about Gen Zs and how

More and more of them are waiting to get in these relationships, but oftentimes

We get into a relationship and then one of the things that really fascinates me is mate guarding

Why does that happen so early in relationships even in so many cases before

exclusivity is even defined in the relationship

And I think that is it's evolutionary and we know that a lot of animals do this and some do it more intensely than others

I remember this example I was watching Red Wind Blackbirds in a nature reserve in upstate New York and

A male and female that were a pair bonded birds about 90% of birds will pair bond at least for breeding season

And another male came one male flew off and then another male came in tried to mate with the female

And then the first male came back and the two of them grappled and they fought each other

Then they fell into the reeds around this pond and only one flew out

And it's why we sometimes say mother nature is red and tooth and claw and

When we invest in a pair bond we invest

Now we in humans humans we talk about emotional investment romantic investment

But all of us that any species that when you invest in

And courtship and you invest in a partnership

But also to the question you really ask often before you've really said it

We actually a couple what's going on here where I'm make guarding ready one you psychologically and emotionally start to invest

You start thinking of a future with someone you start hoping for more connection with someone

You we can activate all those make guarding mechanisms

And then we try to protect our investment and when I say protect part of that means making sure you're saved

We do that when we care about people typically not always

We also know that there are people who are in unhealthy relationships and that they make each other less save

and

But so part of it is

Connecting you but then the other is protecting the relationship and what comes with that is jealousy

Make guarding it's trying to keep other people away because I've already built this connection this emotional connection

So I want to keep everyone else away who thinks that they can build a connection

And pull you away from what I've already started thinking and dreaming and hoping and desiring

And I was also going to say I think there's also a component of this that romantic love does resemble

Addiction or anxiety on a neurobiological level

So I think that comes into it too because you can get addicted to a person

Very quickly

Exactly and there's a lot of evidence that romantic love what goes on

So we know that the from studies of FMRI brain scan of people who are recently romantically in love and people are passionately in love

It is a very much parallel to addiction and the brain and in fact romantic rejection studies of people who have gone through breakups

They the brain looks remarkably like someone going through with drug withdrawal particularly cocaine withdrawal

Which helps explain why breakups can feel so intense and emotionally physically. It's why people feel physical pain with breakups

that

I'm always a little cautious of calling it an addiction, but it is very parallel to addiction and I

And part because we're so used to addictions being negative and love is

A positively balanced one for the most part

But part for people who study sex and relationships

We're always cautious about the notion of sex addiction

So then when we talk about love addiction and so I said wow it's something different

And but you're right it really is I really do think of it as an as like an addiction. We it's a repetitive reward

It's we like being around the beloved we fantasize with them

It's the way that psychologists describe romantic love. It's focused attention and trusive thought obsessive thinking

So there's euphoria that comes with that, but there's also a craving that comes with it

Just one of the things I've been spending my time on recently is in addition to you

I've recently interviewed bearish warts talking about relational choice theory and I've got Alvin Roth coming on where we're talking about

Choiceology as well and when I think about our choices. I think about agency and when I think about love

I realize it's partly chemical

So how much agency or choice do we really have in choosing it?

Yeah, this is a great question and I think actually we do have a lot

I think we have a lot and that so we know that

One way we can look at that is what do we understand first for people who choose their partners versus arranged marriages

And in the studies on arranged marriage about three years in the satisfaction levels are fairly similar to what we call love marriage

Someone where you pick your own partner yourself

Now there's a lot that's to unpack there though and most cultures that practice arranged marriage one

It's culturally understood that it's something that you do

But also people for the most part and that's probably the written a lot about this you can reject a partner

You maybe your families are setting you up and you go no way it's not gonna happen

I think that sometimes in particularly in the North America

We have a view that arranged marriages. Oh someone just got plucked out of nowhere

And you're gonna meet them tomorrow and marry them

And that's not real people plays out in cultures the practices

and

The so that tells us something that satisfaction can grow

I also think in our singles in America study that we did with my colleague Amanda Gesselman

We've asked people

Things about like love at first sight or if they are attracted to someone when they fall in love with someone

We found that over 70% of people have become deeply attracted to someone that they initially didn't think they were

And over a third of fallen in love with someone that they wouldn't have initially predicted

That's why I'm a big advocate of second dates and third dates

But I think it's also a reminder that when we talk about attraction and we talk about love

Yes, there's a biology to it and there are some people were attracted to more than others

But a lot of that attraction takes time to build that that chemistry is dynamic

That the biology of love as you fall in love with someone

It's not just how they look or how they smell or how they

sound it's also

Again, is it someone you can trust and confide in is it someone who is nice?

Is it someone who's funny?

It's someone who you think listens to you and hears you and sees you back to that intimacy piece

You could be across table from someone who's handsome or gorgeous and is there this person doesn't even know I'm here

And those are the relational dynamics that take time

So I think that as much as it is a biological process that doesn't mean it's instantaneous

Doesn't mean that you know right away

In fact, all the evidence suggests that love takes time to cultivate and to pull all those things out of someone

so

I think in that case it's

We shouldn't let the biology drive our decisions

We should make our decisions and then enjoy it and as we understand what we're experiencing

Understand the craving that comes for a person understand that it takes time to really activate some of those

Because we're looking for information about trust, health, kindness that can take time

So for me, it's understanding the biology makes the whole process richer and more pleasurable

We shouldn't just wait to be hidden ahead with feelings of

Limerons adds not necessarily the best driver

When I think about mating and intimacy

evolutionary wise

for millennia

We have, as humans, been able to find partners without technology

And when you think of modern technology

The internet really came online in the mid-90s

And dating apps came in line much after that

But when I talk to a lot of gen

zears now and even millennials

And you ask them about going out and socializing and finding a mate

A lot of them tell me that's not even where it happens anymore

You have to do it online

And it just leads me to shaking my head in many ways

Because when I think of dating apps

They've expanded the possibilities globally

And you talk a lot about this in your chapter 3

But as we were just talking about choices

They also introduce decision overload

Unrealistic expectations, instability

And in some ways, I think it's made it worse than what we once had before

But how do you think they're in some ways expanding connection

But in other ways, industrializing rejection

And people not being able to find mates

I love that you bring this up because I think at its core

They're doing both and that's the challenge

I think there's so many of us want to have a hot take

And online dating and app dating is a great, is it terrible, is it frustrating, is it exciting

It's both, it's all of those things

And it's one we're meeting

We're seeing the technology meeting people where they are

Which is on apps and websites

And to your point, our data show that it is the most common way that singles

Oh well over 100 million singles in the United States

As you mentioned earlier

Over close to 40% of the adult population at any given time

That the number one place that singles are meeting their most recent date is on an app or a website

Farm more than bars or clubs or church or school or friends

In that sense, they are working

They are the place that people are meeting partners

And relationships are forming and marriages are forming

And for many people, particularly let's say LGBTQ people

They're far safer than walking into a bar

Now, if you're in New York with Miami

You might be thinking saying what is this guy talking about

But in many places in the world, if you're LGBTQ

How do you find someone else in your community

Are you safe walking into a place to try to pick someone up

So they offer a level of getting through the noise

To find someone that aligns with what you're looking for

Particularly if you're a sexual gender minority

We have multinational data where we found that women, for instance in India and Turkey

In countries that are characterized by less gender egalitarianism

They find online and updating much safer than dating in initial courtship

Face to face because they have more control in a digital context

So I think there's a lot of opportunity

There's also, if you want to find someone of the same religion

Of the same ethnic background

With the same hobbies, with the same kink, with the same allergies

Whatever

That we have these opportunities to do that with these technologies

So I think there's extraordinary opportunity

All right, that's the pro

The challenge is as you also suggested that there's information overload

That our brains are not equipped for the idea that you can swipe 3000 partners before lunch

Potential partners before lunch

And that's where we get into this problem of

You connect with someone and you just often think

Yeah, but I can, you're not really perfect

But I can get back on the app and swipe for a little bit more and find someone closer to my perfect

So we ruminate on our ideals

And it goes back to what you and I were just talking about

It forgets that so much of our relationship

So much of what we're attracted to

That comes out over time

So you're focused on these instantaneous ideals

And not on getting to know someone

All the excitement and fun that comes from expansion

Upself exploring the world

It's boring who you are

Who I am

Who we are together

That the apps can help cause us to lose sight of that

Of the beauty of the sort of engagement of going on actual dates getting to know someone

So there I think those that's the complexity there

There's a lot of opportunity

But we struggle with the data

We struggle with the sheer volume of opportunity

And when the brain thinks that we have an unlimited resource

We have a really hard time focusing on the person in front of us

The other side of it just and for me is

I think we're biologically wired for touch and closeness

And when intimacy for so many people is becoming mostly digital

It just makes me wonder if we outpaced our evolutionary design for intimacy

Through the use of technology

And is that one of the biggest things that's causing this huge gap

That we're seeing for Gen Z that we started the whole discussion with

I love that and as a social primate back to being a social primate

We know that touch is important

And it's that's whether it's licking and grooming behavior

That we see in many including primates

The 15% of primates engage in parabolic

And we know that touch is important

We learn a lot of information

Sensory information through touch

My colleague Michelle Drew

And I'm looking at my bookshelf looking at her book

writes about and her book she calls it a touch

Famine that we're experiencing in her book out of touch

And I love that phrase

And it's a reminder to your point John

It's not just singles who are looking for a we did a study

Here at the Kinsey Institute Amanda and I on

We found that a third of Mary of partnered people were long-term partner

34.4% I still remember the statistics

Say that they're not touched enough by their romantic partner

That's a pretty high number of people in relationships who say they're not being touched enough

No less people who are single who are looking for that connection

And that it's part of our legacy

I totally agree with you

We are a social primate

We want to feel connected

And when we say feel connected it's in the full sensory experience

We want to be heard both metaphorically and literally

We want to be seen we want to be felt

Want to be known

This is where I want to end things

Your subtitle is

Why we live and die for love

And a lot of the work that I've been doing

I really look at how the verification of our existence

Is a primary requirement for us to feel like we have meaning

So going to what I was just saying

If our intimacy is biologically tied to flourishing in our survival

Is the deepest team in drive ultimately

To feel known chosen and verified by another person

I think that we have particularly those of us that study

Relationships mating sexuality

I think we've focused a lot on the evolutionary drives for sex

Because it's so obviously related to sexual reproduction

And in so doing we've ignored

The enormous role and importance for the evolutionary drive for connection

Particularly for intimate connection

And how much of our lives that shapes

Including the other including the reproductive piece

But also

Evolution doesn't necessarily

When we talk about thriving and flourishing

Evolution is really about survival

And but we have the capacity to thrive

To move beyond the survival and reproduction

But we can only do that when we meet the conditions

For survival and the connection

That being part of a social fabric and feeling connected

Have a meaningful connection

Intimate connection

That's when we are able to do what humans can do

So well and that is to thrive and to flourish

And to enjoy our lives

So I yes my short answer is yes

I think that the more we understand of the science of intimacy

The more we understand it is what made us human

And it what allows us to flourish

Justin it's been such an honor to have you today

Where's the best place for people to learn more about

The work that you're doing in your book

Thank you so much to the intimate animals available

And bookstores

And anywhere you can order a book

And I invite folks if you read it I'd love to hear from you

I'm having fun learning what people enjoyed about it

Or didn't enjoy about it

And follow me on social media

It's at Dr. Justin Garcia

And folks can also follow the Kinsey Institute

Where we post a lot of our studies

Opportunities to be engaged

And I hope I get to hear from more folks

And most importantly thank you John

There's been so much fun being in conversation

And thinking about where our work

Combined could bring together

And help us better understand the best parts of being human

Awesome

Justin's such a great time today

Thank you again

Thank you

That brings us to the end of today's conversation

With Dr. Justin Garcia

What stood out most to me is how deeply human connection really is

Our need to bond, to touch, to feel known and valued

Is not weakness, it's a design

Justin's work reminds us that intimacy is not something we earn after success

It's something that sustains us through life itself

And a culture that often prioritizes independence and productivity

This is a powerful reframe

Connection is not a distraction from achievement

It's one of the conditions that makes achievement meaningful

And it raises an important question

If we don't consciously build connection

What quietly takes its place?

That question leads directly into our next conversation

On Thursday I'll be joined by my friend Nier Eil

Behavioral expert and author of the New York Times best-selling book Beyond Belief

While today's episode explored intimacy and human bonding

Nier examines how our beliefs shape behavior, attention

And decision-making in a world engineered to capture our focus

It's a powerful continuation of the life beyond the script

Moving from connection to cognition

From relationships to the internal narratives that guide our lives

Another study that blew my mind was a study that conducted at Yale

Where they found that people who had positive views about aging

Versus negative views on aging

Lived on average seven and a half years longer

Seven and a half years longer is a tremendous effect

That is longer than the effect of diet

It's longer than the effect of exercise

It's greater than the effect of quitting smoking on your lifespan

And for all the attention we talk about

vitamins and minerals and don't eat right and exercise and don't smoke

Who talks to you about your beliefs?

We almost never hear that

This episode resonated with you

Share it with someone who might need it

Leave a fire start rating a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify

Watch the full conversation on YouTube

And until next time remember

A meaningful life isn't built in isolation

It's built through the connections that remind us

We don't have to navigate the world alone

I'm John Miles and you've been PassionStruck