Will You Marry Me? Commitment (for Better or for Worse)

Excerpted from
Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget
By Marianne J. Legato, MD, FACP

I have always loved men. I like the way they feel, taste, smell-and most of all, the way they think. Medical school was a vast garden of camaraderie and friendliness, where men of all sizes and shapes taught and mentored me and my (mostly male) fellow students. We were partners in a privileged fraternity, where intellectual achievement was the coin of the realm, and we built friendships laced with humor and a real, bubbling, intellectual excitement as we mastered complex information and solved problems with relentless logic. The men I studied and worked with made the whole process enormously fun and taught me a lesson I've carried with me ever since: Men can be wonderful friends.

But the minute I entered a personal, romantic, sexual relationship with any of them, all of that changed. As soon as the first flush of infatuation wore off, I felt isolated; what I thought was important for intimacy was never what my partner emphasized. Any sense I might have had of being comfortable, accepted, and understood mysteriously vanished. The easy exchanges I'd had with my friends were nowhere to be found in these increasingly unsatisfying relationships.

The problem seemed to get worse the more committed these relationships became! I began to believe that my friendships, so rich and replete with all the things that made my professional life so pleasant, were much more successful than my romances. I wasn't alone; many of my women friends, for all of their apparently successful attempts at partnering, confided that their relationships were not, in fact, all they seemed.

I am happy to report that I have gotten considerably better at negotiating my relationships with men since those years in medical school, and I have enjoyed many satisfying exchanges and relationships in the interim, but I find that I still struggle with those tensions. From the patients who pass through my office and the students I now teach, I know that it's not any different or easier for a younger generation.

Can we ever get what we want in a relationship from the lovers we adore? Or is there a reason that all the fairy tales end with a first kiss? Is a long-term commitment that continues to enrich our lives and satisfy our needs just a dream, or are there practical steps we can take to make sure that our increased familiarity with one another breeds not contempt, but intimacy?

Are We Working at Cross-Purposes?

If you believe, as I do, that the brain is sexed from the very moment of conception and that certain evolutionary processes have shaped the development of our brains and what they desire, then you might review the evolutionary and anecdotal evidence and arrive at a very uncomfortable conclusion: Women want relationships, while men do not.

On the face of it, there is a contradiction at work. From a purely evolutionary perspective, males are driven to mate as often and as widely as they possibly can, to maximize the number of their potential offspring. Females, on the other hand, benefit from pair-bonding, establishing long-standing relationships that will ensure them protection and resources, especially during the vulnerable period while they're raising their dependent young. On that evidence, it does seem that men and women are locked into a seemingly irresolvable conflict.

But I don't believe that all relationships are doomed from the start. First of all, this is a pretty reductive way to look at evolution. People, like animals, do all kinds of things that don't have anything to do with furthering the species. Witness, for example, the prevalence of homosexuality in the animal kingdom. June Reinisch, PhD, director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction in Bloomington, Indiana, offers this incomplete list: the fruit fly, some birds, bulls, cows, horses, antelopes, boars, rams, sheep, dogs, cats, and primates, including the stumptail macaque, pigtail macaque, rhesus monkeys, Catarrhine monkeys, Japanese macaques, Hanuman langurs, vervets, squirrel monkeys, chimpanzees, pygmy chimpanzees, and mountain gorillas. Bruce Bagemihl, PhD, has compiled a list of animals who not only engage in homosexual activity, but also live in pairs, defend territories they own together, and raise young together.

If homosexual behavior in animals is inherently counterproductive, why wouldn't evolution have extinguished it by now? I think this is a really important and unanswered question by critics of homosexuality, and it certainly highlights the flaws in a simplistic interpretation of the role human biology plays in the choices we make.

But let's say, for argument's sake, that it is true that women look for resources and security for her offspring from a man, and that this explains the drive so many women have to meet someone and get married. I think something very interesting is happening at this particular moment in time, right before our very eyes.

Since World War II, the economic situation for women has undergone a dramatic change (but not as drastic as it should, could, and will be). Our access to education and employment has exploded, with the result that a great many women now have the means to support themselves and their families. In this day and age, if a woman is dedicated to earning her own living, she is no longer dependent on a male provider. A variety of childcare options (again, not as many as can and should be available, but more than there have ever been) allow many women to go back to work not long after the birth of their children. (I'm a living example of this. I managed to give a lecture I thought was very important for my career while I was in labor with my first child-and to stay for the question period several hours later! I delivered the baby 10 hours after leaving the auditorium. A week later, I was back in my laboratory and seeing patients.) Maternity leave, once a fantasy, is now a reality and continues to improve as women fight for the right to have time they want with their newborns without losing ground in their careers.

Because women are much more economically independent than they have ever been, they are, as a result, much less dependent on a male partner. A woman's ability to support and provide for her offspring without a partner's help calls into question the necessity of marriage or a committed relationship for either sex. There is still a great deal of emotional and practical support to be gained from a pair-bond, to be sure, but there are a great number of single mothers who get by admirably by relying on their friends, neighbors, and family for the help a man might otherwise provide.

It's a terrific development, in my opinion, because it means that both parties can now enter into a long-term union out of choice, rather than obligation or need.

Consider, for example, one of my patients, Rachel. She is about to turn 40 and has not yet found a man she likes enough to marry and have children with. Since she owns her own residence and has job security as a teacher, she has begun to look into adopting. There are millions of children orphaned by the AIDS virus in Africa and by the tsunami in the Indian Ocean; if all goes well, she will be able to give one of those orphans a loving home before she turns 41.

I find Rachel's story fascinating, and indicative. Although she would like to have married by this time, she does not need a man for any of the things that her mother's generation believed you needed a man to have-a home, financial security, even a child. If and when she chooses to share her life with someone else, it will be because of what else he can bring, whether its love, companionship, available sex, mutual interests, or simply a whiff of the unknown. And while I realize that many women have not yet achieved the kind of financial independence that she has, it's certainly the direction in which more and more women are headed.

For women currently in relationships, however, many of the problems remain the same. Is there anything in the current brain research that can help us to explain why the wonderful, heady passion of the first few years is so hard to sustain?