Episode 7. Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love: The Big O
In this episode of Marriage IQ, we explore the captivating world of the hormone oxytocin and its impact on relationships, offering a blend of personal experiences and scientific insights. Wei share a relatable anecdote about receiving an unusual gift, sparking a conversation about the different connections desired by men and women in relationships.
Scott delves into the hormonal variances between genders, shedding light on the profound influence of oxytocin and testosterone. We explore oxytocin's role in parental bonding and the intricate dynamics of romantic relationships, emphasizing its impact on emotional well-being. We also discuss natural ways to boost oxytocin levels and its potential to reduce stress and enhance positive social interactions.
This episode provides valuable insights into the biological and emotional aspects of relationships, making this episode a must-listen for couples seeking to deepen their connection and better understand the underlying mechanisms shaping their relationships. With relatable stories and expert perspectives, this episode offers a thought-provoking exploration of oxytocin's significance in the context of marriage and family dynamics.
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00:00:02
Welcome to Marriage IQ, the podcast for the intelligent spouse. I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings. And I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings. We are two doctors, two researchers, two spouses, two lovers, and two incredibly different human beings coming together for one purpose, to transform the stinky parts of your marriage into scintillating ones, using intelligence mixed with a little fun.00:00:34
Welcome back, all you intelligent spouses out there, let's follow up from last week. We innocently asked you all, what is the big o? O? What do you think we're talking about? Hmm?00:00:49
The big o. Is it oh, no, or, oh, I see. Ah, that would be a good one. Or is it the other big o? No, not that big o.00:01:03
This is an upstanding podcast, Heidi Hastings, PhD. Seriously, though, the big o, or orgasm, is a topic we'll delve into in a later podcast for sure. But the big o today we want to talk about is drum roll. Oxytocin. Surprise, surprise.00:01:24
This is a really great topic for a few reasons. But first of all, this is an opportunity for the Heidi Hastings, PhD in this relationship, who's a medical doctor, to get to strut his stuff. But this medical topic also has to do a lot with relationships. So the other Heidi Hastings, PhD, who is the social scientist in this relationship, also gets to weigh in on this from her field of experience. So we're really excited.00:01:54
Should we dive in? Let's get into it. Okay. So, I hear from a lot of women, and also some men, but particularly about women. Some things like, men just want sex, and I want connection.00:02:11
Yeah, they hear things like, men just want to see sexy women or their sexy wives, but women want to see their husbands play with their children. They want to have meaningful conversations and help them with chores around the house. Tale is old as time. In fact, can you remember I had a friend many years ago who, for my birthday, gave me a calendar called porn for women, and I was, like, just shocked. But then when I opened it, it had a sexy husband scrubbing the toilet, playing with the kids, porn for women, doing the dishes.00:02:54
They're all things that have to do with connection, as opposed to the kind of calendars that I saw young men my age have with women scantily clad. So the dugout at the baseball field, right? Is that what you told me? Yeah. So this is a.00:03:19
This is a tale as old as time, isn't it? That's like a big elephant in the room, right? We know it's there, but we don't really know what much to do about it. But women like connection, and men like connection. Of a different type.00:03:35
So can you tell me, Scott, what you think oxytocin has to do with this? And just give us a little background maybe on, because this is a hormonal issue, right? Well, hormones in a lot of ways, yes. And I've been trying to do a deep dive on this question, this age old question that's been around for thousands of years. The difference, the motivation behind men and women, they are different, right?00:04:04
We eat the same food, we sleep in the same bed, we drink the same water. Why on earth are we so different? Our motivations for sex and connection. Well, and for a lot of things, you and I are very different from each other. And at times in our relationship, we might have seen that as bad, like judging you according to my perspective of things.00:04:28
But over time, we've come to realize there are just inherent differences that are really helpful to understand, you know, and reading a lot of books and research articles, trying to get to the bottom of it, you know, and coming up with a simple solution. The thing that keeps coming back to me is this, well, hormones in particular, because they help drive us, motivate us to do things. And one of those things men have more than women is testosterone. I think most people know this. Men have about 15 to 20 times more testosterone circulating in their body than women, especially as they age.00:05:19
Women, younger women do tend to have higher basalt, baseline testosterone than women in their fifties and sixties because testosterone is produced in the ovary just as testosterone is produced in much higher levels in the male testicle. Okay, so what does testosterone do? So testosterone is an androgenic hormone. So it enhances male or masculine traits. It also increases level of sexual arousal, libido, sex drive.00:06:04
It increases stamina, it increases lean muscle mass. This is why some men and some women take testosterone when they want to bulk up. So all of these things are more of a masculine type of trait. Physiologically, women do have some testosterone. It's not that they don't have any.00:06:30
But I had no idea about oxytocin levels. I've always known and learned in medical school about how oxytocin is important for connection. Is a connection or the cuddle hormone, the love hormone. It's also used to help stimulate the uterus when a woman is delivering a baby. So I'm like, how do those two things work?00:06:55
So they give women oxytocin to induce labor. Yeah. So it's the same hormone, but it does vastly different things and very, very enigmatic, mysterious hormone. So this study by this researcher, Maraziti and Baroni 2019, they measured plasma oxytocin levels in women, in men, young, you know, young ages, about four times higher in women than in men. That started to kind of click in me.00:07:33
Like, this is why women tend to crave connection, crave being together, the intimacy. They just are naturally have more of this oxytocin. Now, men may have some higher levels and have that ability more than other men, but as a general rule, women do have higher levels of oxytocin circulating in their body. And it does make sense from a standpoint of if you're going to have a child, if you're going to, that child's going to survive and thrive. There needs to be a connection there.00:08:14
There needs to be, you know, intimacy between the mother and child. You have more oxytocin. That's maybe just a divine part of our creation as human beings, that women would be created to connect deeply with their young, helpless children. But as adults, we should learn how to do that as well. Yeah, evolutionists would say that there's more oxytocin in women because evolutionarily, you want your offspring to survive.00:08:49
I think that it's far more complicated than one theory. You can't. Oxytocin is so mysterious that you really can't explain it from an evolutionary standpoint, it's really hard to do so. So, yeah, I think so. For those who are believers in God, they may think that God put that in women.00:09:17
It would make sense. If there is an intelligent designer, it just makes more sense to me anyway. All right. Anything else you want to. Well, there's also dopamine, which also.00:09:28
That's another hormone a lot. Yeah. And we will talk more about dopamine in another podcast. But that's kind of the excitement hormone that really plays in with oxytocin when there's a new relationship. Both of these are like a symphony and interplay to develop those initial bonds, those attraction bonds between a man and a woman.00:09:54
None of this is straightforward. We can't make large predictions based on hormone levels. It's all still being researched. And really, it kind of begs the question again, we talked about this in previous podcasts. What came first, the chicken or the egg?00:10:09
What's causing what? Well, and I really like your idea of comparing it to a symphony, because perhaps all these hormones work together for not only the survival of humankind, but also for the joy, the love, the perpetuation of family relationships. Yeah, yeah. I did a deep dive of my own on the impact of oxytocin on relationships. So there's interesting, cool things that I learned.00:10:42
They are doing a lot of studies using a synthetic form of oxytocin that is sprayed up your nose. Sprayed up your nose. Intranasal, intranasal. It's just sprayed up your nose and goes into the brain. In order to look at brain scans of how it's impacting things and then how it impacts behaviors, social behaviors.00:11:07
What did you find? Well, there are several studies that looked at how oxytocin, with higher levels of oxytocin, it helps fathers connect more with their children. So there was a study that showed how higher oxytocin levels help fathers connect with autistic children, a relationship that can otherwise be really difficult to wrap your head and heart around. Wow. Fathers with higher oxytocin levels were found to better interact with newborns, touch them more, interact with them more, and with toddlers, they were able to have more physical touch during play.00:11:46
They were able to read their expressions more, have better access to those social cues, which then increased connection between father and child. They also, as you mentioned, show studies with childbirth and breastfeeding for women and how that is associated with deeper connection with a mother and her child. But it really made me think about if that's true, because I hear a lot of women say, I'm very connected to my children and I'm not connected at all to my husband. So is that because, and I just want your opinion on that. Is that because perhaps they have that oxytocin level?00:12:31
They're holding the baby, they're nursing the baby. As the children get bigger, there's still a lot of hugging, a lot of touching, a lot of deep connection. And dad is onto other things, checked out. Or is it like, what would you subscribe that phenomenon to? Of being more connected to children than to a spouse?00:12:53
Yeah. No, I think you're onto something. You have this unfair advantage, it seems to me when you deliver the child, I'm never going to be able to have that experience. Right? You deliver the child, there's this flood of oxytocin that comes in because naturally, let's look at this from a natural, biological standpoint.00:13:17
You deliver that child, the flood of oxytocin, which makes me feel like I'm going crazy for. Well, no, it helps you connect to the child, but it also acts as a hemostasis. So it clamps down on that uterus. Right. So it's a natural burst at childbirth.00:13:43
Really interesting hormone. And yet I don't get to experience that. I have lower levels. You know, I can see why some women, or a lot of women have, will develop if they confuse that connection with their children and supplant that relationship with their child above that of their husband. Right.00:14:05
It's very natural because a child is innocent and helpless, and it's necessary. And for a mother who's nursing, the mother needs the child as much as the child needs the mother, because you feel like you're going to burst if you don't have the child there to nurse. And so that interconnection on each other requires really intentional connection with a husband or with a father and a child. It's not hormonally or even for survival required, but it just really takes intention. I remember my boss many years ago after we got married, and I had a child, as you know, when we got married, for my first marriage, she warned us, she said, you've got to put your marriage first because your child is going to leave.00:14:58
And I thought, but wait a second, she was here before he was here. How do I do that? It was really hard for a while to make that transition there, but again, is really necessary. So from another study I read that reviewed 27 other major studies to find, okay, across all of these major studies, what can we learn about oxytocin with relationships? They found that oxytocin levels can be linked to the formation and retention of romantic partnerships and how behaviors and relationship dynamics in couples can influence these levels.00:15:40
In other words, it is iterative, it is back and forth. So I start out with these high. We start out with these high levels of oxytocin as our relationship is forming. The physical touch, the doing things together, the support of each other, the kind words, all of those are producing oxytocin, which makes us feel loved and connected and excited. But then feeling loved and connected and excited also encourages us to put things in our relationship that then bring more oxytocin back into it.00:16:16
But it takes being intentional. That study also found that the release of oxytocin and the genetic influences on romantic behavior may be more complex than a lot of theories explain. Studies consistently show that romantic partners regulate each other physically and emotionally, and that oxytocin seems to play a role in this process. So there's interdependence between the role of oxytocin in romantic relationships and how it helps maintain and balance our body. Okay, let me just ask here, what do you mean by that?00:16:53
By balancing the body? Yeah. So it's been shown to bring down depression, anxiety, stress. If we can introduce more oxytocin, it just helps us slow down and be more calm, more balanced, have greater well being, but also the act of doing so. Having more oxytocin encourages.00:17:17
Like I said, it's iterative. It builds upon each other. So it's not necessarily the chicken or the egg. It's just the chicken creates an egg, which creates another chicken, which creates another egg. That's it.00:17:28
Right? That's it. So, like you said, oxytocin is often referred to as a love hormone that's released in our bodies during social situations, not just in a romantic relationship, but even with friends, when we feel good, when we're with friends, when we feel like we belong and we're connected. So do you think if I'm an extrovert, really high, open, new people experiences, do you think it's because I'm just higher in oxytocin and that's my personality? You know what?00:18:01
That's a really good point. We'll have to look that up. That kind of sounds like identity a little bit. It does. It is related to that, I'm sure.00:18:09
Just a trait. Higher level of oxytocin, just like for women. Trait level of oxytocin or a genetic. But oxytocin is especially well known for its high concentrations during positive interactions, like falling in love or experiencing an orgasm, giving birth, breastfeeding, like we've talked about. There's a professor, Shimei Tsori, that has research talking about how oxytocin is also released during negative social interactions.00:18:42
So, like jealousy or things like that. So I'm wondering if it's just associated with high intense relationships. Doctor Schneiderman conducted research on oxytocin, showing that romantic couples had much higher levels of oxytocin during their first six months of the relationship formation than did single people. This could mean that those twitter pated feelings that we have during relationship formation actually increase oxytocin for both partners, not just for women. We talked about women have higher levels of oxytocin than men.00:19:24
But the study also showed that those with higher levels of oxytocin were more likely to be together six months later. They were more likely to engage in affectionate touch and be more emotionally invested in giving love and support to each other, even in times of distress. So you talk about oxytocin. So I'm wondering about dopamine playing a part in this, too. Ooh, tell me.00:19:51
Well. Cause I'm not as familiar with that, I think. Well, I think. And again, this podcast is not gonna be on dopamine, but I think there's definitely an interplay, a symphony. Like I said earlier, dopamine is definitely helps with motivation.00:20:07
Isn't that the reward center? Desire, motivation for a reward? Okay. It's not necessarily the reward, it's the motivation for the reward. It's the motivation.00:20:19
And so part of that motivation, I think you're gonna find higher levels of dopamine with that oxytocin in these relationships where they are Twitter pated after six months or after 60 years, and they're still Twitter painted. Okay. But I would say if they're still Twitter painted after 60 years, they're probably pretty intentional about putting. They're pretty intentional about increasing that, increasing the oxytocin and dopamine. Okay, so tell me, how does oxytocin work?00:20:50
Yeah, so there is a study here. Actually, it's not a study. It's a group of studies reported in medical News today. It's really good on the oxytocin that was done some couple of years ago and talks a little bit about the link between love and oxytocin and really some interesting studies about, well, of course, obviously for medical purposes, it helps to clamp down the uterus after birth so that the woman doesn't lose too much blood. It also helps stimulate the milk flow.00:21:34
Well, the milk flow, but also the lactation to induce labor. And it also works a little bit differently in the body. That does in the brain. The brain, definitely. More emotions, more feelings.00:21:51
Okay. It appears to reduce the stress response anxiety, as you have stated earlier, but they also said it's an important component of a complex neurochemical system that allows the body to adapt to highly emotive situations. How's that for being definitive? We can adapt emotions of our own or someone else's emotions? Well, both, because when you're, when we were earlier talking about spraying the oxytocin up the nose of fathers, and that helped them to adapt to the emotions of their children better.00:22:28
Yeah, I think also help us do that within ourselves. Here's the rub, though. It's that in other studies, there's another study done on oxytocin levels in people with mental disorders or mental illnesses, or I should say neurotic personality disorders. And so let's say obsessive compulsive personality disorder. This type of person tends to have higher levels of oxytocin just as a baseline.00:23:09
Wow, interesting. So it's quite a bit higher now. Women will have more than men, as we stated earlier, as a baseline. If you have OCD, you tend to have higher levels of oxytocin if you have major depressive disorder, you tend to have lower basal levels of oxytocin. And this may be a reason why women tend, again, not overgeneralizing, tend to have more obsessive compulsive traits than men, as a general rule.00:23:51
So it's not all good. It's not. Yay. Just get more right. It's very complex.00:23:59
It has its pros and cons. You want to give meant more to men, which it sounds like they're starting to do studies, generally speaking, by squirting it up the nose. But how do you take it away from women? I think. I think that you're.00:24:13
I think as a general rule, they should probably put oxytocin in all of men's waters. I think the world would spin a lot easier. So, in a relationship context, okay, men, this has been studied. In fact, I was looking in this book. There's a really, really good book called why Men want Sex and Women need Love by Allen and Barbara Pease.00:24:37
They've sold 27 million copies. Must be hitting a soft spot with a lot of people. A lot of copies, so. 27 million copies, so. Or a pain point in this study.00:24:53
Actually, it is a pretty old study, back in 1982, but I don't see why this would change at all today. They did a study on males and females. The question asked to be just random people. They put an attractive male in front of a random female, and then they put an attractive female in front of a random male and asked these three questions. Would you go out with me?00:25:23
Would you like to come to my apartment? Would you have sex with me? Okay. Okay. This is cold.00:25:31
Never seen before. Random stranger. Okay. 76% of males agreed to have sex with the attractive female. Almost zero of the females agreed to have sex with the male.00:25:48
It was pretty much zero. Now, having said that, half of the females said they would agree to go on a date with the attractive male, so they wanted to create connection. Connection, yes. This is so exciting, isn't it? So exciting?00:26:09
It's like the e equals Mc squared, right? For Einstein. For Einstein. Like, if you go to a bar, which we don't. We don't go to a bar, but they have bars.00:26:21
Everyone knows. Well, I guess not everyone knows, but you go to a bar, typically to pick up someone. Never done to one. Right. Never done it.00:26:28
But I've heard, like. Or tinder. Right. The expectation is you go home for a one night stand. If it was a man's world, there would be no bar.00:26:41
There would just be a lineup of women. But the bar presents the opportunity for a woman to start contextualizing. Even in one night stands, they need the bar, because in my statistics class, we learned about studies done on how alcohol. Yes. Unattractive women seem more attractive.00:27:01
Yes. Yes. Right. So they need alcohol. That's true.00:27:05
But it does also, you gotta have a story before you do it for the woman. Like, ask any woman. It's here. It's literally 100% of women, even on one night stands, that oxytocin forces them almost into having to develop some fast connection with this person. Interesting.00:27:27
This fast relationship, even if it's for one night only. Anyway, we talked about oxytocin. Right. Too much might be a little problematic. Too little is problematic.00:27:40
There's kind of this goldilocks zone. Another study here by Scheele and Willie. In 2022, they did a study on men and women in a committed relationship. It was a placebo controlled meaning. They gave some the active drug of oxytocin, another placebo.00:28:03
They looked at how they viewed their partner, and some they gave no drug or a placebo, actually. They did it inside themselves. So they did a. The placebo control was actually with the same men. They did it with it and without it.00:28:18
Ooh, interesting. And so that makes it a better study. Yeah. So they found that with the oxytocin, they found that looking at a photo of their wife, it made them. They looked more attractive than other women.00:28:36
This is in the same men with the oxytocin. Their wife actually looked more attractive than any. Than other women. Other attractive women. Other random women.00:28:46
Other women that they knew because they had a connection with them. Right. So what they're postulating is that this may, intranasal oxytocin may enhance monogamy in committed relationships. Wow. You could learn a lot from that about patterns of.00:29:09
Well, there are so many things. It's a symphony of hormones, like you said. But that is super interesting. I like that. I also read a study that was really interesting on the way that oxytocin differs in gender.00:29:23
A study by male Fisher Schaffte showed that men, in men, oxytocin improves the ability to identify competitive relationships, whereas in women, it facilitates the ability to identify family relationships. That is really important when we look at roles of men as provider, as protector, to be able to identify who do they need to align with, who do they need to have relationships with to fulfill their roles in the family as a man. But they're not really thinking necessarily about family. Women with their roles as more common roles anyway, as nurturer and working within families, especially up until more recent years, when women have been more in the workforce since World War Two. I think this really shows how oxytocin helps support both of those roles.00:30:28
It increases empathy, trust, and the ability to recognize, like you said, different emotions in someone else. So it sounds like a good thing to have in moderate doses. Yeah. If I'm hearing you right, I would say it explains a lot, as well as, you know, in relationships as well as in gender roles. Yeah.00:30:53
So I think just explaining a lot about the differences between men and women, you know, I wanted to find the crux of the issue. I don't think oxytocin is the only thing. Right, I would agree, but it's part of the story. It's part of that story, and it's so amazing, like, why men want sex and women need love. Like, it's a big part of it is oxytocin.00:31:24
Oxytocin, we know, can reduce stress by lowering blood pressure and cortisol levels. It can increase pain tolerance. And like we said, it reduces anxiety, promotes positive social interactions, it promotes growth and healing. I think it might be responsible in part for that afterglow effect after making love. So what can we do to increase this naturally?00:31:52
Because we talked about, they're spraying it up people's noses now to do different tests on how oxytocin works. But right now, if I understand right, you tell me if I'm right or wrong. There aren't prescriptions for oxytocin, right? Not that I know of, other than used during childbirth. Okay.00:32:10
But I did find that there are several ways that we can naturally increase oxytocin. Tell me, Heidi Hastings, PhD, if you think that your relationship might be void of some of the connection that you're really desiring, or as a man, if you see, oh, my goodness, I could be doing things perhaps to have more connection in my relationship. Here are some things that have been shown to increase oxytocin. Physical touch. That's nice.00:32:48
And this is physical touch. Kissing, touching hands, hand holding back. Robes, feet, robes, any kind of physical touch. Is it, Heidi Hastings, PhD, is it like immediate sex? Yeah, there are several ways.00:33:02
Physical touch, spending time with physical touch, slowing things down, being intentional, looking in each other's eyes, having deep connection. That way all of those can increase oxytocin in sex, besides orgasm, which research shows has kind of a burst of oxytocin there. But even outside of sexual relationships, physical touch is really important in increasing the oxytocin. Not even being related to sexual relationships, showing support or empathy or warmth for our partner. Music was a really interesting one for us.00:33:43
It would be Frank sinatra, Louisianella, different music by John Williams or John Barry. Those are some of the types of music, or jazz piano. Those are some of the types of music that I think create oxytocin rush in you and I. For some people, it might be headbanger music, for others, it might be country music. But those beautiful types of music are able to help increase oxytocin.00:34:13
Slowing down again with mindfulness and meditation, getting enough vitamin D, yoga, socializing with each other, with friends, with family, animals. That's an interesting one. Ooh, animals. So dogs specifically have been shown to create oxytocin. But also I've seen people who have a lot of farm animals or cats or donkeys or goats or other animals, that just are able to feel more connected, sometimes even more with them, than with human beings.00:34:54
I really like that. Yeah. Doing something nice for someone or making food together and then eating it with someone you care about creates connection through oxytocin. I like it. Have you had any experiences where you felt specifically really connected to me, that you would say that that's from an oxytocin rush?00:35:14
Maybe. So I wanted to personalize this in our lives, in our own life. And a recent experience with. When you and I were punting, that's going down in a little boat on the Avon river in Christchurch, New Zealand, a few months ago. And it was a perfect day, beautiful weather.00:35:39
It was extremely romantic. And I could just. There's just a sense of feeling that overcomes you and me that you can't describe, but, you know, it's a highly intimate moment. Snuggling, holding on to each other, looking at each other. There's a lot of romance, a lot of intimacy, a lot of cuddling.00:36:08
Isn't that interesting? A lot of oxytocin being made. If you remember that day, it followed a really, really, really stressful 24 hours. Do you remember that? Yes.00:36:22
We'd gotten there. The hotel that we'd reserved, they had no reservation for us. We'd bought tickets to go on this punting and then missed it by just moments. The boat just took away before. Went away before we got there.00:36:37
So I had to come the next day. Right? Yeah, we had a rainstorm right before. There were several things that we. We didn't have umbrella, or we'd left our umbrella somewhere.00:36:48
I can't remember back in where we'd gotten something to eat, and it just had a lot of really stressful things, and I wonder if kind of like childbirth, it's really, really stressful. And then you have this moment of deep connection. This rush of oxytocin maybe makes it even more sweet. What are your thoughts on. Yeah, no, I think that's true.00:37:10
There might be something to that. Well, knowing about our hormones, including oxytocin, really ties us back to some of these cornerstones. Yes. Of identity, intentionality. We can know who we are better by intentionally learning about the chemical processes that create our feelings and emotions and our bodies.00:37:31
And when we know the how, we can better explain the why. I agree, and this topic has been really fun for us to ask questions and look into. Do some deep dives into. Yeah. So for next week, what four letter word is more powerful than anything else on earth?00:37:50
Ooh. Hmm. I have some pretty good ideas. All right, well, thanks so much for being with us today, and until next time. Bye bye.00:38:06
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