The intersecting landscapes of husbands and wives cause lots of problems. Often, as the rose colored honeymoon fades into the past, spouses can feel a little too familiar with their partner’s inner landscapes. Often, they freely express the qualia that reveals itself to them; but the husband doesn’t want to hear gossip and the wife doesn’t want to explore the Kama Sutra. These two examples are not random. Husbands and wives inevitably experience the intersection of two fundamental gender landscapes: sex and conversation.
It is well known that males are more interested in sex than conversation, and that females are more interested in conversation than sex. Research has shown that conversation provides teenage girls a dopamine rush comparable to a boys orgasm. In marriage, wives learn that if they want their husbands to talk to them more, they need to participate in sex; and husbands learn that if they want their wives to give them more sex, they need to participate in more conversation. In a good marriage, husband’s and wives Interest and Participation levels, of sex and conversation, are in balance.
A Good Marriage and Sex
Interest Level: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Participation Level 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
A Good Marriage and Conversation
Interest Level: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Participation Level 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
As we know, people generally chase the Big Dopamine to the exclusion of the Little Dopamine – in this case, sex, for the man, trumps conversation. There is a point in every marriage when a husband begins to understand that if he wants sex he must consciously ritual with his wife — that is, he must make conversation with her. However, by consciously placing the problem into the ritual framework, the Big Dopamine may recede and the Little Dopamine may become sensible.
The first thing to occur in a ritual is Separation. Conversation is not really a part of a man’s sexual landscape. It is a separate landscape, with all its own landmarks and pathways. Conversation is like some unfamiliar neighborhood one must pass through on the way to a movie theater or a restaurant. The young husband, finds himself lost in this landscape, and impatient to get out of it.
But the good husband recognizes this crisis for what it is: an opportunity for conscious ritualing. Lost in an unfamiliar landscape, he begins to notice landmarks and pathways he has never noticed before. One thing he soon recognizes, is that he is not lost at all: his wife is very familiar with this landscape and is quite happy to guide him through it. She will, happily, show him all the sights. He is already participating; all he need do now is try to be interested.
The husband is now in the second, or Event stage of his ritual. He quickly learns to have faith in his wife’s emotional intelligence, and her ability to point out all the remarkable feelings, insights, stories and myriad landmarks and pathways that make up the landscape of a woman’s conversation. If he is sensitive, he will appreciate them, because they trigger Little Dopamine squirts in him. Of course, he must respond with his body: simple, “oh’s,” “yesses,” or “I see’s” will suffice; or he may touch her hand, or move a wisp of hair from over her excited eye. In learning about her neurolandscape, he is beginning the process of rewiring his own.
He must be extremely diligent in this, and not let the Big Dopamine reward of his sex landscape overwhelm his developing taste for the Little Dopamine of her conversation. This is hard, but hardly impossible – in fact, there are multitudinous volumes written on the benefits of channeling the sex drive into other pursuits. It need not be so drastic in a marriage – anyway, conversation makes for excellent ritualing.
Spouses (and all the rest of us, too) must ritual repeatedly to gain confidence with unfamiliar landscapes. Eventually, the sincere husband will find that his wife’s landmarks and pathways are not only interesting, but he will discover landmarks and pathways in her landscapes that even she has not noticed herself. This, by the way, is the skill that the dating “wolf” uses so successfully, to seduce naive females. Indeed, the husband may find himself aware of this wolfish ability, but no woman, and certainly no wife, is going to succumb to this ruse more than a few times. Her landscape is her own, after all, and while she may be quite happy to have her husband’s footprints throughout, she will not fill it with his landmarks and pathways any more than she will let him decorate the interior of her bedroom.
Still, our husband has succeeded admirably in his ritualing. He can return to his routine having gained understanding and insight into his wife’s world of conversation. He has begun to rewire his brain to appreciate the Little Dopamine he has found there. He has begun to arrange some new qualia within his inner landscape, like souvenirs upon a shelf. In the future, he can return to them, and use them to pause the Big Dopamine while priming himself with Little Dopamine starter squirts, readying himself for conversation with his true love, once again. Madam, at the same time, may be readying herself to be guided through his favorite landscape.