How "No Strings Attached" Relationships Became Popular
RAMONA BRULAND: It's "No Strings Attached", friends with benefits, and all that that entails. With me to talk about this topic and this film is Dr. Alan Altman. He has 35 years experience as a professor at Harvard Medical School. He's also the president of the International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health, one of the foremost academic and clinical research societies dedicated to women's sexual function and dysfunction. He's also a consultative gynecologist for menopausal and sexual dysfunction here in Aspen, Colorado. Thank you so much for joining us today.
DR ALAN ALTMAN: Absolute pleasure.
RAMONA: Quite the title there. Sitting next to you, we have Dr. Marianne Brandon, clinical psychologist. She is a diplomat in sex therapy through the American Association of sex educators, counselors, and therapists, serving individuals and couples in Annapolis, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and the surrounding areas. Thanks for joining us today.
DR MARIANNE BRANDON: My pleasure.
RAMONA: Well, you guys have quite the credentials, and we are going to be talking about monogamy, which you have a new book out, in fact, called Monogamy: An Untold Story. Tell us a bit about the book and the groundbreaking research that went into it.
__________________________________________________________________________________
ASK YOUR QUESTIONS: Have a question for Dr. Marianne Brandon?
Join a live chat on Thursday, January 20th at 3 pm EST. Click here.
__________________________________________________________________________________
DR BRANDON: Absolutely. Well, monogamy, unfortunately, isn't natural for primates and mammals, for the most part. So Natalie Portman in the movie, her character was correct. And I say unfortunately, because we want to believe that monogamy is natural. We want to believe that passion easily lasts a lifetime. and we can pair up with one person, and enjoy that. But the truth of the matter is, we're animals. We're mammals. Only 3% of mammals are naturally monogamous. And for human beings, what that means is some of us are going to be more prone toward monogamy than others, based on our DNA, and our personality, and a variety of different things. We're just now researching what it really means for people, and who might be more prone to monogamy than others.
RAMONA: So how did you find out that monogamy wasn't part of human culture back in the cavemen days?
DR BRANDON: Well, I looked at the reality. The statistics today of divorce, which is about, everyone knows, about half of marriages end in divorce. Up to about 50% of people are having affairs, 20% of marriages are sexless, and of course I work with patients all the time with my private practice, and I see these problems hour after hour. And so I wanted to understand what was really going on.
So I looked at the anthropological literature, and the zoological literature, and here's where I've learned that we really need to take our instincts so much more seriously when it comes to sex.
RAMONA: There's so much conversation surrounding that. If you wanted to add something-?
DR ALTMAN: Yeah, a couple of things. First of all, culturally and age-wise, it's more difficult now to be monogamous than it's ever been before. From the point of view, first of all, simply, we're living longer. And where most people died in their forties or fifties- and you know, if your marriage wasn't so good, OK, it's not going to last much longer anyway. As opposed to, my God, you know, now I'm going to live to 80. Is this what it's going to be? OK? And that's fine for some people. But that's part of it, the fact that people are living longer.
RAMONA: At what point of the human evolution did we start believing or living the monogamous relationship?
DR BRANDON: Well, that was quite a long time ago. And it was imposed or encouraged, let's say, for political reasons and religious reasons. It really helped organize our culture. It helped us create families and structures that were great for every member of the family.
DR ALTMAN: A lot of good stuff.
DR BRANDON: Right. Benefited men, benefited women, benefited children. And it really helped us progress. I mean, we have grown so much from that very basic standpoint of connecting that way.
RAMONA: It's definitely been ingrained in is, you know, thou shalt not commit adultery. What's changed in society too make it, not acceptable, but, you know, we talk about it now to the point that they're making Hollywood films on it?
DR ALTMAN: Well, it used to be that you had to be married to have kids. And it used to be, you had to be married to have security. Financial security, home security, this type of situation. Now that's just not necessary anymore. I mean, we still like to think that we want to do that and need to do that. But one can, you're going to have babies without being married. You can have a family without being married. Both partners in a relationship can work, so security-wise, you're not depending on one or the other for that. So culturally, things have changed quite a bit. And I think when Dr. Brandon talks about the changes that we've seen with respect to the culture, as far as the high rate of divorce, or the high rate of affairs, and things like that, we're beginning to feel the impact where the culture occurs. We're living longer, and there may not be this need that there used to be. Way back when, there used to be that need, because she needed protection, she needed to have food gathered for her babies, and he needed to get his genes into the next generation. So everybody made out OK, and I think that had something to do with how that came together.
DR BRANDON: Most definitely. And you alluded earlier the fact that technology is providing people with so many more opportunities. So that's another piece of this puzzle. We can connect so easily with cell phones and internet in ways that have never before existed. So it has an astronomical effect on people's sex lives.
DR ALTMAN: There's another point as well. And that is, with all of this internet going on, people have different expectations about marriage, about a relationship. And most of the young people that I see the office, where people would have concerns about excitement and passion in their marriage after 20 years, we're now starting to see that after 2 or 3 years. Because people have expectations that sex is going to be off-the-wall, and yelling, and screaming. And that's what they see in the media, and it really isn't that way.
RAMONA: Right. So in this film, "No Strings Attached", they're living a friends with benefits relationship. How popular, or how much does this happen in our society today, or is this really something that still just happens in the movie.
DR BRANDON: No, this is actually very popular among the younger generations. And I think it is only gaining momentum.
RAMONA: So is this like a natural type of relationship that's becoming more and more acceptable in society today?
DR BRANDON: Natural! No, I would argue with that. I would not call it natural. What it is, is it's an adaptation to what's going on sexually in our culture today. I wouldn't call it any more natural than monogamy.
DR ALTMAN: And we tend to agree, for primates, it's not natural. But that doesn't mean that therefore, friends with benefits is natural. What it means is that friends with benefits has evolved from this concept ... I think it's very interesting when we talk about friends with benefits. Is there any good for this? What are the pros? What are the cons? What brought friends with benefits about?
DR BRANDON: The pro, I would say, is that it's a very honest approach to sexual relationships. So people know where they stand, and it's very clear. There are, however, a lot of cons to this. And the first con, I would suggest, is that what it encourages is for people to disconnect their hears from their bodies. So what friends with benefits does, is encourages sex rather than making love. And if people do that repeatedly, they never will learn how to make love with their hearts, and how to experience the art of making love. They'll just learn how to fool around.
RAMONA: I'm sure there's a time and a place for falling in love, and a time and a place where you just don't have time to fall in love, and a friends with benefits relationship would work out.
DR ALTMAN: Well, in the movie, I find it fascinating. And it's really, we were discussing earlier, this is a microcosm of our culture. And it's done very well in the movie, from the point of view of, you start out with a woman who is a doctor. And she's in her profession, she's making all these tough calls, she's powerful, she's confident. And you start out with a young man, who's OK, you know. Not a whole lot going on, but he's a sweet guy, he's a good-looking guy. And it's as if, and you may disagree with this. It's as if she's kind of running the relationship, and he is kind of accepting the relationship.
RAMONA: It sounds like in some scenarios it's like this dream situation, and in others, it's a heart wrenching, terrible situation to be in.
DR ALTMAN: It always starts as a dream situation, wouldn't you agree?
DR BRANDON: Um, no-
DR ALTMAN: It starts out being- at least for the guys it does. It starts out being really a great idea, but sooner or later, you have hormones in your brain that start to flow. Oxytocin is one of the most important ones. It's what we call a bonding hormone. It's what a mother puts out when she's breastfeeding with a baby. And it's a bonding hormone.
Sooner or later, something's going to happen. You remember "When Harry Met Sally", the movie. Same type of thing. He was arguing, you can't have sex without falling in love with somebody. And for the most part, we see that relatively frequently. In the beginning, it's kind of neat, because she's the aggressor, and he's having fun watching her lead the way here. I'm not saying necessarily in the movie. Out of the movie as well. Then as things change, a woman wants a man who's more man than she is. OK? And if she's leading it the whole way along, that may not flow continually.
RAMONA: I'm very excited to see the film when it comes out. But which way are we going to see the pendulum swing? Because, you know, mid-last century, divorce didn't even exist. Now, in 2011, you know. We have these very loose relationships as an option, if you want to go there. What do you think we're going to see in 10, 15, 20 years' time?
DR BRANDON: That's a fabulous question. And I would predict we're going to see both. Because we have a drive to connect, to procreate, to have a family, to protect people that we love. That's not going away. Just like this drive for passion isn't going away. So we went from one extreme of monogamy, and not acknowledging that there's anything else, I think now we're headed in the other direction, probably going to the other end of the extreme. Perhaps in a few decades, we'll settle out somewhere in between, where people will appreciate both of these needs, and find ways to intermix them in their lives.
DR ALTMAN: I think the honesty of friends with benefits is very refreshing. And I don't think we see that as frequently as we would like to in a long-term marriage.
For more of our interview with the doctors, in which they address how married couples can keep their love and sexual chemistry alive, click here.
For more expert offers, live chats and giveaways, sign-up for genConnect. (It's free).
More articles from Dr. Brandon:
4 Lessons I've Learned as a Sex Therapist
Safe Estrogen Treatments (VIDEO)
genConnect is your place to connect with the best of life's experts across generations. Learn, share and engage with experts through articles, Q&A, groups, genConnect TV, genConnect Products to enrich your career, health, relationships and lifestyle.
Follow genConnect on Facebook and Twitter for daily expert advice and giveaways on your newsfeed.
