This post builds on the Erotic Triad. If you haven’t read the first post yet, start there, or this won’t make sense.
Most of us follow the same predictable Western script: stumble through puberty, flirt badly, hook up, find someone who feels less disappointing than the rest, and settle into monogamy, usually marriage. Once inside that contract, sex follows a familiar arc: hot, then routine, then gone.
This post maps the natural rise and fall of modern relationships: why they start with fiery passion, why they stall, and why so many crash.
My goal is to help you live a more fulfilling life, and there's no better place to start than better sex!
The Modern Relationship
Almost all relationships start with a spark. The novelty is intoxicating, exciting, awkward, and slightly terrifying. Eventually, we end up naked. That first stretch is Novelty Sex, which is fast, shallow, dopamine-drenched, and impossible to sustain. It's fun, exciting, fast-paced, and stimulating, but devoid of any kind of emotional intimacy. Our brains are flooded with dopamine and norepinephrine.
Sometimes, that rush burns out after a few weeks; sometimes, it ignites the obsession phase, which features Transcendent Sex. Friends disappear, jobs suffer, and we live on phenylethylamine and each other’s breath. It's a drug that has no parallel.
That chemical high lasts six to 24 months, long enough for most people to lock in the relationship and call it love.
Then biology cashes in on the deal. Babies arrive, exhaustion replaces obsession, and Novelty Sex and Transcendence Sex quietly dissolve into Maintenance Sex. Oxytocin and vasopressin flood the system, gluing partners together just long enough to keep the species alive.
Maintenance Sex eventually becomes exactly what the name implies: maintenance. Predictable. Dutiful. Boring.
By year seven, give or take, the itch begins. We start craving the dopamine and adrenaline hit our bodies mistake for "true love."This is the point where it's common for one or both partners to cheat. Whether they do or not, many relationships will end at this point. Couples that stay together usually do so because they have a strong incentive to stay together. That might be because of their particular culture, legal pressure, financial considerations, or, most commonly, a lack of viable, better partners. Or, sometimes, they just really dig each other even if the sex is no longer as hot as it once was.
As a detective and recreational sex educator, I’ve fielded endless questions about infidelity. The patterns of infidelity don't change. If you suspect cheating, read this post. Even though it's a decade old, the information is timeless. The ‘volatile conundrum’ tactic is an especially effective means of discovering lies.
Anyway, some couples survive this seven year itch for the reasons I mentioned or simply because they still dig each other a lot. Still, the sex is likely fading, and both partners feel it. If both partners are okay with the cessation of sex, that's perfectly fine and they'll likely continue living a passionless-but-still-deeply-fulfilling relationship.
However, if one or both partners are sexually unsatisfied AND they don't want the relationship to end, both partners will likely suffer the dreaded "dead bedroom" phenomenon. This triggers a full-system crash; neurochemical, emotional, and sexual.
When Maintenance Sex ceases, the Oxytocin bond, the glue designed to make you feel safe and co-regulated, dissolves. The bed becomes a battleground; the home a pressure chamber. Partners retreat into isolated roles, often feeling more like resentful roommates than lovers. The initiator feels rejected and defective; the gatekeeper feels hounded and resentful. Both start dying a little more every night.
This starvation state is dangerous: the dopamine drive reactivates, hunting novelty like a junkie searching for a fix.
Meanwhile, the kids marinate in Cortisol and Adrenaline. They learn that love means avoidance and passion is temporary; a legacy of silence they’ll carry into their own relationships.
In short, staying in a sexless relationship rarely ends well. It breeds resentment, anxiety, and quiet despair. But so can divorce.
So what’s the fix? That’s what the next post explores: how to reignite the fire without burning the house down.
~Jason
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