Why Humans Are Wired for Love but Struggling to Connect | Dr. Justin Garcia — EP 745

If humans evolved for love, connection, and pair bonding, why does modern life feel so lonely? Today, we explore one of the most overlooked forces shaping human flourishing: intimacy. Joining me is evolutionary biologist and Executive Director of the Kinsey Institute, Dr. Justin Garcia, to discuss his groundbreaking book, The Intimate Animal: The Science of Sex, Fidelity, and Why We Live and Die for Love. In this conversation, we challenge the idea that love is purely cultural or emotional. Justin explains that romantic love is deeply biological — driven by neural systems that resemble addiction, shaped by millions of years of evolution, and essential to survival. Yet modern technology, shifting norms, and changing expectations are disrupting those ancient systems in ways we are only beginning to understand. We move from fMRI brain scans of people in love to the paradox at the heart of human relationships: we evolved for pair bonding, but not necessarily strict sexual monogamy. Justin reveals how commitment and novelty operate as competing evolutionary drives — and why this tension shows up in nearly every long-term relationship. If you’ve ever wondered why dating feels harder, why connection feels fragile, or why loneliness persists even when we’re constantly connected, this episode offers a biological roadmap for understanding the intimacy crisis of modern life. Passion Struck is the #1 alternative health and personal growth podcast dedicated to human flourishing and the science of mattering. It is ranked #1 on FeedSpot’s list of the Top Passion Podcasts on the Web and is consistently recognized among the world’s top business and mindset podcasts. Check the full show notes here: https://passionstruck.com/the-science-of-love-dr-justin-garcia/Explore guided prompts, reflections, and a companion reflection guide connected to this episode at: https://www.theignitedlife.net/p/the-intimacy-crisis-why-wired-for-love-but-lonelyThank You to Our SponsorsLimited Time Offer – Get Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15% OFF online with my code PASSION at huel.com/passion. New Customers Only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show!”Connect with JohnKeynotes, books, podcast, and resources: https://linktr.ee/John_R_MilesChildren’s Book — You Matter, Little Luma: https://youmatterluma.com/Download a Free Companion Reflection Guide: https://www.theignitedlife.netConnect with John (keynotes, books, podcast): https://linktr.ee/John_R_MilesGet the book The Intimate Animal: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/justin-r-garcia-phd/the-intimate-animal/9781668653593/In This Episode, You Will Learn:Love as a Biological Drive: Why romantic love activates brain pathways similar to addiction — and why breakups can feel like withdrawal. Pair Bonding vs. Monogamy: How humans evolved for deep attachment but also novelty, creating tension in modern relationships. The Intimacy Crisis: Why loneliness persists despite unprecedented digital connectivity — and why connection is a biological necessity, not a luxury. Touch Deprivation: The hidden health risks of reduced physical contact,...

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John R. Miles?

  Coming up next on Passion Struck.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  We know that the, from studies of fMRI brain scan of people who are recently romantically in love and people who are passionately in love, it is a very much parallel to addiction in the brain. And in fact, romantic rejection, studies of people who have gone through breakups, they, the brain looks remarkably like someone going through with drug withdrawal, particularly cocaine withdrawal, which helps explain why breakups can feel so intense and emotionally, physically, it's why people feel physical pain with breakups. That, I'm always a little cautious of calling it an addiction, but it is very parallel to addiction. And I, in part because we're so used to addictions being negative and love is a positively balanced one for the most part.

• 0:42John R. Miles?

  Welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week, I sit down with changemakers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is choosing to live like you matter.

• 1:30John R. Miles?

  Hey friends and welcome back to episode 745 of Passion Struck. Throughout this Life Beyond the Script series, we've been exploring what happens when the assumptions we've lived by about identity, success, health, and purpose stop working. But there's another script most of us inherit without ever questioning it. The script about love, about relationships, about what it means to feel connected in a world that has never been more digitally linked, yet often feels profoundly lonely. Earlier in this series, we've explored how biology shapes resilience with Dave Asprey, how emotional strength influences physical health with Dr. Kara Nurula and how technology is reshaping entire systems of care with Dr.

• 2:15John R. Miles?

  Robert Wachter. Today, we turn to something even more fundamental, intimacy, because beneath achievement, status, and productivity, most people are searching for one thing, to feel seen, to feel chosen, to feel like they matter to someone. My guest today is Dr. Justin Garcia, evolutionary biologist, executive director of the Kinsey Institute, and author of the new book, The Intimate Animal: The Science of Sex, Fidelity, and Why We Live and Die for Love. In this conversation, we explore a provocative idea. Humans didn't just evolve to survive, we evolved to bond. Justin explains how pair bonding, touch, sexual desire, attachment, and connection are deeply

• 2:59John R. Miles?

  rooted in our biology, and why modern life is disrupting those systems in ways we're only beginning to understand. We discuss the evolutionary roots of romantic love and pair bonding. We go into why Gen Z is both craving connection and delaying relationships, how technology is reshaping dating, attraction, and intimacy, the underlying paradox between commitment and novelty, and why touch deprivation may be one of the most hidden crises of modern life. As Justin explains, intimacy isn't a luxury, it's infrastructure for human flourishing. Before we dive in, a quick ask: if this episode resonates with you, share it with someone who might benefit from it. You can also watch the full conversations on our YouTube channels.

• 3:44John R. Miles?

  And if you haven't yet, leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify helps more people discover these conversations. Now, let's dive into my conversation with Dr. Justin Garcia. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now, let that journey begin.

• 4:08John R. Miles?

  I am absolutely thrilled today to welcome Dr. Justin Garcia on Passion Struck. Justin, it's so great to see you today. How are you?

• 4:16Speaker 01

  I'm great. I'm thrilled to be with you. We're going to get to talk about a lot of important parts of what it means to be human.

• 4:22John R. Miles?

  We're here today to discuss your brand new book, The Intimate Animal: The Science of Sex, Fidelity, and Why We Live and Die for Love. And when I got the book, one of the first things I realized is that it features a blurb from a mutual friend, Emily Morse.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 4:40John R. Miles?

  You know Emily?

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Everyone should know Emily. She's such a brilliant sex educator and has done such a good job at helping everyone of all walks of life, and particularly the public, really understand what we do as sex researchers and how we apply that to our lives. So she's a longtime friend. We've had some opportunities to events together and someone whose work I really respect and admire. It's not easy to always talk about sex and sexuality in public spaces and to do it in a way that honors, that honors the complexity of our sex lives and treats it with respect. And Emily does that better than anyone.

• 5:17John R. Miles?

  Well, Emily and I are both huge Michigan fans, so that's one of the tithes for us. But I remember when she was telling me when she got her doctorate, it was one of the first doctorates ever in the study of sex or intimacy.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:30John R. Miles?

  Which is really interesting to see over the past 15 to 17 years what she has done with it. So.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  And it speaks to a larger, I think, pattern even still today. So many people who study sex and sexuality, I have colleagues that they're only one in their department who studies sexuality. They're the only one in their college, on their campus that studies sexuality. We're in a really fortunate position here at the Kinsey Institute. I run up and down the hall and we're probably the largest concentration of sex and relationship researchers in the world. And there's historians and psychologists and biologists and physicians. And we bring all this just in different disciplinary perspective to bear everyone with their own theories and methods. And, but it can be hard to study sexuality, hard, difficult to get funding, difficult to get jobs, difficult. So it's a, still a complex and misunderstood part of the scientific arena.

• 6:23John R. Miles?

  Well, it certainly is. Another thing I just wanted to throw at you is you probably don't talk to too many podcast hosts who's. Two siblings both went to IU.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Oh, really? I hope you were celebrating the football game this year.

• 6:36John R. Miles?

  My, my brother was at the semifinal game and we were definitely celebrating.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  And there's a lot to be said about relationships and connection and fandom and, but so there's research questions somewhere in there.

• 6:51John R. Miles?

  Justin, recently, because of what you were just talking about, I've tried to do a couple of episodes that are deep diving relationships. So one of these was with Paul Eastwick and another one, I was lucky enough to get Harry Rees and Sonya Lurimirsky to come on together, which was cool to have the preeminent expert in happiness and relationships come on to discuss it. But we went into kind of how compatibility forms in relationships and how responsiveness actually makes people feel loved. What I wanted to ask you is from an evolutionary perspective, why would the human brain and body be designed to depend so deeply on intimacy at all?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  I love John, you jumped right into the deep end and I think it's such a big question. And for all of us, this idea that we understand the role of intimacy, of connection, of love in our lives, it's profound. People do intense things for our romantic and sexual desires and our relationships. People around the world live and die for love and, but why? As an evolutionary biologist, the question is, why is that? And I think there's a couple of ways we can and should answer that as we unpack it. The one part of that is that a lot of researchers have argued that we have patterns of what we call social monogamy or pair bonding, that we're pair bonding species. So what that means is that we form these intense romantic bonds.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  And when biologists talk about pair bonds, if we're talking about other species, we say mutual territory defense, mutual nest building, mutual raising of offspring. That mutual part is really important. You have a, a close partner that you're weathering life with. And typically as evolutionists, we're thinking about survival and reproduction. So the evidence would suggest that our species, our ancestors, hominins, were engaging in pair bonding behavior for over four million years and a little bit more in some, according to some anthropologists.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  So for us, what that was about was survival and reproduction. And I think it's important to remember both of those. So on the one hand, on reproduction, we know that as humans continue to evolve into what we know as anatomically modern humans, that having a pair bond partner to defend offspring, to be, we gestate for nine to 10 months. It takes years and years for it to raise children to the time that they're able to do anything on their own. That is part of a natural history that pair bonds helped us to invest in development and growth as a species. Only about three to 5% of mammals engage in that pair bonding behavior. So it's also relatively unique. That's the one lever is about reproduction.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  The other is about survival. And one thing I argued in the Intimate Animal is I think more and more we can understand that pair bonds also evolved to allow us to weather uncertainty, to respond to changing environments, social environments, physical environments. We had a partner, co-pilot to go through life with, to manage ups and downs and predators and resources. And in many ways, that's what's allowed our species to really dominate the globe. So I think there's a couple of different evolutionary pieces at play there. And then the next level is then we start to see the mechanisms, what's going on in the brain and in our physiology that all back up this idea that we have, that our deep sense of connection to others is biological.

• 10:19John R. Miles?

  Yeah, well, I love that, that topic because it's one that I've been studying myself now for almost two decades. And I have my own book coming up, coming out on this in October titled The Mattering Effect. But I really trace this, this loss of shared connection and its consequences and then go into kind of how do you rebuild it? But something I saw in your book and something I've been studying really connected. I started looking at loneliness, helplessness, people burned out, people disengaged, people broken. And I said, there has to be something in common with all of these.

• 11:01John R. Miles?

  And for me, that commonality is mattering. But you saw that.

• 11:09John R. Miles?

  A connection is also there with forty percent of US adults being single. And these things on the other side rising globally. What's the connection point?

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that. And I like this idea of mattering. And I think we're talking about different facets of the same diamond here, which is exciting that the part of, for me, intimacy is this idea of being seen and heard and known that sometimes researchers talk about the need to belong, that we have a pretty good understanding from biologists, psychologists, a lot of social behavioral scientists, that humans have a need to feel connected to others. We are a social primate through and through. We want to feel connected. But it's not just the having connections. In many ways, we are more connected than ever before in our evolutionary history. We can log on to social media, there's thousands of people. We can be on a subway and interact with thousands of people.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  You can be in a restaurant and interact with hundreds of people. But we also have more people in our phone or on our social media. But it's the quality of those connections. And I think for me, the paradox in all of this, what you're talking about, John, and loneliness, is how are we more connected, but we seem to be struggling with loneliness? So it's not, how is it that people have psychological loneliness when they wake up in a bed next to a partner every morning? Or they have all these people that they're talking to on social media? That is, for me, an issue of quality. It's the nature of the relationships. It's the depth of the connections. I think, to use a word that you just used, do those connections matter in their life to them?

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Do they feel like they are someone that you could actually rely on in a time of need? Do they feel that you're someone you can rely on in a time of need? Pair bond relationships, in the best case, well, when they're highly satisfying in terms of romantic and sexual satisfaction and relationship quality, our partners are people that we think are going to catch us when we fall, that we feel that there's a depth to those bonds and connections. That's what I think is our big issue, as I talk about it as an intimacy crisis, but it's almost thinking of it as a level above this loneliness epidemic. It's, well, what's going on that we're, that we just don't feel connected to all the people around us? And that's my sort of entry point to a lot of that. And I'm curious what you think, too. I can't wait to read your book.

• 13:33John R. Miles?

  I've been trying to really get my arms around this because what I'm seeing is that mattering is breaking down in our families, in our intimate relationships, in our work environments, in our communities. So it is a common throughput. And when I think about intimacy, when we say connection, that's what a lot of people think of mattering. But I recently had a really interesting dialogue with Rebecca Goldstein. I'm not sure if you're familiar with her. She's a philosopher. She just came out with a book called The Mattering Instinct.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:04John R. Miles?

  But she and I both believe something that's a little bit different than what most people are saying. When I think of connection, I'm thinking of the relational aspect that you have with someone else. When I am thinking about mattering, I think about our own human operating system. And what I think is happening is mattering is the foundation for connection. It is the foundation for meaning. But when people don't feel themselves like they matter, I think that's where this gap that I call the mattering gap starts. If you don't feel like you matter to yourself, if you don't feel like you are seen, et cetera,

• 14:49John R. Miles?

  how are you ever going to feel that you could be intimate with someone? How are you going to connect with someone else? And so I think where this starts breaking down is in how we ourselves have lost mattering via a series, it's decades worth of micro collapses that end up happening to us. So it's not like we just wake up and we suddenly feel this. It's almost like burnout. It happens gradually. What do you think about that?

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I really, I like that. And I think, and I'm gonna, if I can build on that, what I really like about that is this idea that if you're in a pair bond relationship, if you have a romantic pair, but now you can also have best friends and family that romantic bonds aren't the only source of this. But inherent to a romantic relationship is that you rely on each other, you lean on each other, you at times need each other. And I think sometimes I hear folks say, well, I don't want a partner that needs me or that I need them. And that's unrealistic. That's the part of if you're in a long haul with a close romantic bond, there will be days and moments that you need it. You rely on each other and you benefit from each other. You grow from each other. That Knowing that there's a beauty, but there's also a deep satisfaction that comes with knowing that I could show up for my partner.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  That I, because I matter for them, it gives a sense of, a sense of purpose. Now, it doesn't mean that you live only for serving them. Like couples sometimes joke about that. My wife and I sometimes joke about that. They, "What's your purpose?" "It's just taking care of you, honey." And you don't want, that shouldn't be the only purpose, but to know that you're there to support, to be each other's best selves. Something you said, John, I really like, though. It makes me think of this new data we have, and I'm curious, maybe we can work, think on this, puzzle on this together. We have a new study that we did in partnership with Match Group. We found that about 80% of Gen Z say that they want romantic love in their life, but 45% don't think that they're ready. They think that they have to work on themselves more.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  That, and then we ask in different areas, they have to work on themselves. And what I'm making of that, of what you just said in that news, this new study we have, I think somewhere what's getting lost, particularly for young people, is the translating, the how-to part of that. Saying that they think in order, I worry that too many people, nearly have, think that in order to have that mattering, they need to just go work on themselves in isolation. And I don't think that's actually the answer. I don't think that's the path to get there, that we need to work on yourself, that relationships can be a vessel, they, for figuring out who you are and what you want, in the best cases, and thriving together, and experiencing the world together.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  So I'm curious, the jump between, I think you nailed it, there's this piece of feeling connected, of feeling needed, of having purpose, but I worry that too many, especially among the young, and I think this is where we're seeing burnout in relationships and dating. As they think they need to go solve this mystery somewhere on their own on the peak of a mountain. And in fact, dating and connecting with people are a place to learn that.

• 17:57John R. Miles?

  Before we continue, I want to pause for a moment. One of the central ideas in the Life Beyond the Script series is that transformation isn't only about changing what you do, it's about understanding what you need as a human being. On theignitedlife.net, I'm publishing companion reflections and articles for every episode in this series, designed to help you examine your own life more deeply. Because awareness creates insight, but intentional action creates change. If you want to explore the reflections for this episode, visit theignitedlife.net. And I also want to thank our sponsors for supporting the show. Their support makes these conversations possible. Now, a quick break for our sponsors.

• 18:41John R. Miles?

  You're listening to Passion Struck right here on the Passion Struck Network. Now, let's return to the discussion with Dr. Justin Garcia. So a couple of things. I was not aware of that study, and I find it interesting because I have two kids who are Gen Z.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:57John R. Miles?

  Both who find dating now very complicated, especially the older one who's 27. But it's really interesting, because when we grew up, there was much more of you just jump into it and figure it out, right? Than trying to make yourself perfect. And I think oftentimes, you get years into a relationship and then realize you need to do some of that internal work. But if you keep delaying it, because we both know how difficult it is for people to do that work, it often keeps getting put off until it's never done, it really does delay that inception point when you feel like you're ready to be in a relationship.

• 19:38John R. Miles?

  Now, I can look at this from my own perspective. I was married for over two decades, and we ended up getting divorced. And I went through a phase where, like many people, I dated a lot, because I was trying to figure out What type of mate do I want to have in my life going forward? And I knew I didn't want the same thing I had before. But I reached a point where I realized I needed to take some time for myself to figure a few things out, or the relationship I really wanted wasn't going to happen until I worked on a couple of core pieces. So I do think that had I not done that, I probably wouldn't be married today and wouldn't have met the woman that I have. So I see the need for it.

• 20:22John R. Miles?

  But it does beg a real big question of if you keep putting that off, how long are you going to keep putting it off for?

• 20:31Speaker 01

  And where you do it, how we work on ourselves. I worry that particularly for the young, they don't see interpersonal interactions and relationships and dating as that. That's a context within which we work with ourselves. In relationships, we grow together. You expect to grow together, not to just show up preformed and hit play and that's it.

• 20:53John R. Miles?

  Justin, one of the things that you describe in the book is a core paradox. We as humans are wired for pair bonding, but not necessarily strip sexual monogamy. How does that tension shape modern love?

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to talk about this because I think it really is one of the key tensions that explain so much of the ups and downs in our relationships. So one of the arguments I make in the Intimate Animal and my colleagues and I have made in academic articles is that humans have this tendency for pair bonding, so what we call. So maybe let me take one step back. As a biologist, we don't, I don't talk about monogamy. We don't typically talk about a species that's monogamous in the same way that we tend to in the human sciences or in the public. And what I mean by that is we talk about two different pieces of monogamy. There's social monogamy, which is the pair bond. That's the relationship structure. And there's sexual monogamy, which is fidelity. That's your mating behavior.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  And that they actually have two different mechanisms in the brain. What's going on in terms of when we form a deep romantic bond to someone and our interests in sexual variety are different mechanisms? And in some ways, there are different evolutionary pressures, different levers in some sense, that we had this pressure, evolutionary selection pressure to form pair bonds. It was good for survival and reproduction, but then also pressure for sexual variety and diversity. Because that can be helpful if there's disease or if you have more variation. Maintains levels of competition. What the way I think of relationships is when people say, are we monogamous? It's a complicated question. We have a natural history, a tendency to form intense pair bonds, typically with one person at a time, although not everyone. There's interesting work on polyamory, for instance.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Most people tend to form one at a time. And there's always variation. As an evolutionary biologist, I've read in butter, as diversity of traits, there's always variation. And then this question of sexual novelty. And I think in many relationships, we can come to understand that tension as I have a primary relationship and then there's infidelity occurs, or I feel like it's going to occur, or I'm worried about it occurring. And all the management of jealousy and mate guarding and all the stuff that goes into this infidelity stuff. But in fact, what can happen, you're in a primary relationship, either drive for sexual novelty can pull us towards infidelity. Or for some people, it pulls them towards opening up their relationship. And we're talking more and more about that and publicly about different ways that people

• 23:19Speaker 01

  are expanding relationships or trying to open relationships, consensual non-monogamy, polyamory. And that's another way to address that tension. The other way to address that tension, and the one that I think when we understand we can harness, is we could say, okay, I have a desire for sexual novelty, but I also have this long-term pair bond. Well, we can take that desire for sexual novelty and pull it into our relationship. So then we say, let's do things in the context of our partner that are new and exciting, that activate the dopamine systems in the brain. And I don't necessarily need to be pulled elsewhere to get that. I can do it in my relationship, but it takes some effort and it takes understanding that, seeing it and working towards it as a couple to do new things, whether that's in the bedroom,

• 24:04Speaker 01

  sexual novelty, or it's taking vacations, taking cooking classes, walking around a different park in your neighborhood. There's also this big range of ways that we can get our sense of novelty in our lives.

• 24:15John R. Miles?

  It really is interesting, especially for someone with my background. I grew up in a very religious Catholic family, went to parochial schools for my entire schooling through high school and was taught since I could breathe that being in a monogamous relationship is the only sanctity of God. And I'm sure a lot of the listeners probably share some of that core background I do. So how do you differentiate between spiritual core like that and what some people are now experimenting with? That seems to be on the opposite side of that.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  I think the interesting thing about and my work, what I really enjoy is that we can understand that we have evolutionary tendencies or motivational systems, but they're always subject to an ecology. They're always subject to social context, ecological context, whether that's religion or whether that's a particular country or culture. So people structure relationships in very different ways around the world. Sometimes it's based on resources. Sometimes it's based on religious edict. For instance, there's multiple religions that allow people to have multiple spouses. But in there, you often see things about, so for instance, in the Quran, you can have multiple wives, but you need to be able to provide for all of them equally.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  So it's not that it's a free range, it's a swinging party. It's actually a religiously influenced way that you can expand the family, but you have to honor that there's multiple families, there's multiple pair bonds, there's multiple children. So when you dig, when we dig into how different religions structure these things, I think there's often an interesting story. And for me, that's different from, I'm on the one hand, thinking about the biology of love bonds and then everything else is about how culture, religion, marital agreements, all of those things give us guidance on how to structure those desires, structure those. So in the cases of, I think in the cases of religious groups or that really fohone

• 26:24Speaker 01

  in on marriage and monogamy, well, then the question is, okay, but where are we getting on, that's a great example of, okay, but are we cultivating a desire for novelty in that relationship? And at times, when you turn the screws so tight about so much regulation in people's intimate lives, they sometimes can develop what my late colleague, Colin Fisher, would call frustration attraction. So you tell them they can't do something, you tell someone they can't do something, and we start to get more interested in it. So that there's paradoxes there. For instance, some of the highest consumption of sex toys and pornography is in the US Bible Belt in the country. So the region characterizes the highest religiosity. I don't say that as a moral statement, one way or the other.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  What does the data tell us about when you're very restrictive about information, sex education, thinking about people's diverse romantic and sexual lives? People start seeking it out, and they start, they have almost a greater craving for that seeking. I'm always cautious about when we think about how we regulate aspects of people's romantic and sexual lives. On the other hand, to the point of your question that I didn't answer yet, I'm sorry, John, about the part about our spiritual selves and how we bring them to our relationships. There's also a whole lot of satisfaction that can come for people when they think about, well, how do I think about my romantic and sexual life? And is it part of a spiritual experience and journey? And is it important that we align? Because that's what social scientists call homophily.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  We tend to be attracted to people with similar backgrounds as ourselves. Sometimes it's based on religion, sometimes race. Increasingly, we're seeing in our data, it's political orientation. So it's your party, our political party affiliation. But we tend to look for people that we can understand. With religion and spirituality, they're often superordinate goals. It's about like our purpose in life and are we aligning on that? That can add a lot of depth to a romantic relationship. And it can also add a lot of depth, I think, to people's sexual experiences. But we have to do it within the confines of what makes us comfortable. And if you're coming from a religious or spiritual background, sometimes some, thinking of some of that, that capturing that novelty can make us uncomfortable, really uncomfortable.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  Now, if we're uncomfortable, particularly if we don't feel safe, psychological safety, then you shut down all the mechanisms for mating, for connection, for sexual interest. So we have to balance that desire for newness with a sense of feeling safe and connected.

• 28:53John R. Miles?

  So since I opened the door to marriage, I want to talk about modern families for a second. One thing that I interpreted reading the book is that humans evolved as cooperative breeders, where care is shared across our groups that we exist in throughout history. And in modern families, what I think ends up happening more and more is that one person seems to become the fixer or the emotional rock that's carrying everything in the relationship. Does evolutionary science suggest that this kind of one-way investment that ends up happening is a distortion to our natural design and impacts the vitality of that family unit

• 29:37John R. Miles?

  or that intimate bond?

• 29:40Speaker 01

  It's an important question and gets at how we structure our relationships. And in some ways, I know you mentioned Paul Eastwick's wonderful work. And in some ways, he's thinking about these notions of compatibility in his work, really nuanced ways that I enjoy. And so my take on this is particularly, I remember watching Brene Brown give an interview once, and she said that her, she and her partner will sometimes say, is my cup filled today? Like, how much can I bring? And it's, I've only got 10% in my cup today, so you bring 90%. And I think that, so I want to start with that because that reminds us that relationships are dynamic. And sometimes our efforts are situational. They're not necessarily always. Now, if you are in a relationship that's always lopsided, that, for some people, that can work.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Sometimes someone's much more of a caretaker, someone's more of a caregiver. That sometimes can work. But by and large, what we know is that long-term, that can create problems. It creates resentment, it creates jealousy, it creates frustration. But the part that is more complex, that researchers are, questions researchers continue to understand.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Are that when those distributions of effort or investment that they are situational. So my wife and I, for instance, had a baby recently. That there are days that one of us has more energy than the other. There are days that, you know, some of us that there were especially my wife's recovering and now that that's an intense life experience and you're balancing that. But there's all sorts of things. There's you get a new promotion. You do a reorganization at work. You are writing a book, something you and Jack are both right thinking about. You're in the final stages of finishing that book. You're not always functional at the dinner table at night. And when we can understand that our relationships are dynamic and that our lives are dynamic, that there are moments, and sometimes it's not just a day, it's a season. Sometimes things are intense at work for three, four, six months.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  And how you navigate that. And in the best case, the couple, the relationship becomes your source of, hey, can I need to lean on you a little bit more right now because I trust and confide in you. It's actually the thing that we see in our studies over and over. The thing people most want in their romantic partner is someone they can trust and confide in. For exactly these reasons. Okay, here's I'm in a season that I need to trust and confide in you. I can't show up fully. But in the best case, it's with the promise of that I'm coming back as soon as I get a handle on work. As I turn the book in, as I get over the surgery, as I'm not so sleep deprived, whatever it is, that that then we get back. So I think that it can be unhelpful to think of relationships as needing to split your effort.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  That there's some formula that we have to follow because it doesn't leave us the real. It's so divorced from the real world of the push and pull that we all experience in our lives that we show up with in our relationships. But when it's when it feels permanently tilted or that there's no way forward, there's no working together towards a goal to get back to it. That can create frustration. Now, there are exceptions, like there are to everything. You could, I'm thinking of cases of relationships like sugar baby cat cat relationships that there's something built in those, the sort of transactional aspects that are present in all relationships, that maybe the what one is providing is different.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  So maybe it's one is providing more financial resources and others more domestic resources or emotional resources.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  And when we start to think of that, it gets complicated quickly. But I'm hesitant to say that the literature, the available academic literature tells us a clear story of whether that's good or bad. I think we're understanding more and more that it can vary and that there's a lot of nuance to when it plays out in the real world. But we do know that permanent lopsidedness of effort, that will grate on a relationship real fast if there's not a sense of... It's the same thing as long distance relationships. If you're long distance for two years while you're working on your masters, okay, we have a plan, we can figure it out. If you move to the other part of the world and who knows when we're going to see each other, there's no end site, there's no end in sight for both of us, there's no goal that we work towards, that really is a challenge for a relationship.

• 33:45John R. Miles?

  Yeah, I spent a number of years in the military and I was just reading this article on, there's a current carrier task force that was deployed last June and they were the ones who were down in South America when we were down there and supposed to come back home. They were already overdue and now they've been sent to the Middle East and they're not even there yet. So by the time they're done, whatever they're doing and then have to transverse the whole way home, you can, you can understand how for the five, 6,000 people that this is impacting, how difficult that could be for their relationships.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  And the social support that they're going to need when they're back home and they're... I love that you bring this up, John, because I think in so many areas of our life, whether it's physical health, now I'm in, now I'm in your territory, so correct me, but I think in our physical health and our mental health and our careers, that knowing that our relationships can be a source of our flourishing, of our thriving. But I think one of the things I tried to deal with in the book was to, when we understand the science of our romantic and sexual lives, can we honor it? Can we respect it? Can we cultivate it? Because exactly, that's a great case of people are away and then they get moved around again and moved around again and hey, they got to get back to their relationships and be present for them because in the long run...

• 35:02Speaker 01

  We know that having that support, that emotional support is better for everyone's health, physical health, psychological health, their performance at work, their ability to focus, their ability to thrive. So I, I think we need relationship prescriptions to really focus in on our relationships because they're such a source of our wellbeing. And when they're disrupted, they can be such a source of distraction and pain and heartache for us.

• 35:27John R. Miles?

  For sure. I know when I was in those deployments, we're tough on the relationship, especially when they happened in quick succession, or when they went way overdue, and your mind is expecting it to be a certain duration, and that's what you're preparing for. And then it keeps getting elongated. It doesn't help. Well, I want to go back to the relationship angle. And we were talking earlier about Gen Zs and how more and more of them are waiting to get in these relationships. But oftentimes, we get into a relationship, and then one of the things that really fascinates me is mate guarding. Like, why does that happen so early in relationships,

• 36:07John R. Miles?

  even in so many cases before exclusivity is even defined in the relationship?

• 36:15Speaker 01

  And I think that is, it's evolutionary. We know that a lot of animals do this, and some do it more intensely than others. I remember this example, I was watching red-winged blackbirds in a nature preserve in upstate New York, and a male and female that were pair bonded birds, about 90% of birds will pair bond, at least for breeding season. And another male came, one male flew off, and then another male came in, tried to mate with the female. And then the first male came back, and the two of them grappled, and they fought each other, and they fell into the reeds around this pond, and only one flew out. That's why we sometimes say Mother Nature's red in tooth and claw. And when we invest in a pair bond, when we invest, now, we, as humans,

• 36:57Speaker 01

  we talk about emotional investment, romantic investment, but all of us, any species, that when you invest in courtship, and you invest in a partnership, but also to a question you really ask often before you've really said, are we actually a couple? What's going on here? We're on mate guarding, ready. One, you psychologically and emotionally start to invest, you start thinking of a future with someone, you start hoping for more connection with someone. We can activate all those mate guarding mechanisms. And then we try to protect our investment. And when I say protect, part of that means making sure you're safe. We do that when we care about people, typically, not always. We also know that there are people who are in unhealthy relationships and they make each other less safe.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  And but so part of it is protecting you, but then the other is protecting the relationship. And what comes with that is jealousy, make guarding. It's trying to keep other people away because I've already built this connection, this emotional connection. So I want to keep everyone else away who thinks that they can build a connection and pull you away from what I've already started thinking and dreaming and hoping and desiring.

• 38:04John R. Miles?

  And I was also going to say, I think there's also a component of this that romantic love does resemble addiction or anxiety on a neurobiological level. So I think that comes into it too, because you can get addicted to a person very quickly.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Exactly. And there's a lot of evidence that romantic love, what goes on. So we know that the, from studies of fMRI brain scan of people who are recently romantically in love and people who are passionately in love, it is very much parallel to addiction in the brain. And in fact, romantic rejection, studies of people who have gone through breakups, they, the brain looks remarkably like someone going through with drug withdrawal, particularly cocaine withdrawal, which helps explain why breakups can feel so intense. And emotionally, physically, it's why people feel physical pain with breakups. That I'm always a little cautious of calling it an addiction, but it is very parallel to addiction. And I, in part because we're so used to addictions being negative and love is a positively balanced one for the most part.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  But part for people who study sex and relationships, we're always cautious about the notion of sex addiction. So then when we talk about love addiction, it's always, well, it's something different. And but you're right, it really is. I really do think of it as like an addiction. We, it's a repetitive reward. It's, we like being around the beloved, we fantasize with them. It's the way that psychologists describe romantic love. It's focused attention, intrusive thought, obsessive thinking. So there's euphoria that comes with that, but there's also a craving that comes with it.

• 39:36John R. Miles?

  Justin, one of the things I've been spending my time on recently is, in addition to you, I've recently interviewed Barry Schwartz, talking about relational choice theory. And I've got Alvin Roth coming on where we're talking about choiceology as well. And when I think about our choices, I think about agency. And when I think about love, I realize it's partly chemical. So how much agency or choice do we really have in choosing it?

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a great question. And I think actually, we do have a lot. I think we have a lot. And that, so we know that, one way we can look at that is, what do we understand versus, for people who choose their partners versus arranged marriages? And in the studies on arranged marriage, about three years in, the satisfaction levels are fairly similar to what we call love marriage, somewhere where you pick your own partner yourself. Now, there's a lot that's to unpack there, though. In most cultures that practice arranged marriage, one, it's culturally understood that it's something that you do, but also people, for the most part, and anthropologists have written a lot about this, you can reject a partner. Maybe your families are setting you up and you go, no way, it's not going to happen. I think that sometimes, particularly in North America, we have a view that arranged marriages, like, oh, someone just got plucked out of nowhere and you're going to meet them tomorrow

• 40:47Speaker 01

  and marry them. And that's not really what plays out in cultures that practices. And the, so that tells us something, that satisfaction can grow. I also think, in our Singles in America study that we did with my colleague, Amanda Gesselman, we've asked people have things about like love at first sight, or if they are attracted to someone, when they fall in love with someone. We found that over 70% of people have become deeply attracted to someone that they initially didn't think they were. And over a third have fallen in love with someone that they wouldn't have initially predicted. That, that's why I'm a big advocate of second dates and third dates. But I think it's also a reminder that when we talk about attraction and we talk about love, yes, there's a biology to it. And there are some people we're attracted to more than others.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  But a lot of that attraction takes time to build, that that chemistry is dynamic, that the biology of love, as you fall in love with someone, it's not just how they look, or how they smell, or how they sound. It's also, again, is it someone you can trust and confide in? Is it someone who is nice? Is it someone who is funny? It's someone who you think listens to you and hears you and sees you? Back to that intimacy piece. You could be across the table from someone who's handsome or gorgeous and you say, this person doesn't even know I'm here. And those are the relational dynamics that take time. So I think that as much as it is a biological process, that doesn't mean it's instantaneous, doesn't mean that you know right away. In fact, all the evidence suggests that love takes time to cultivate and to pull

• 42:16Speaker 01

  all those things out of someone. So I think in that case, it's, we shouldn't let the biology drive our decisions. We should make our decisions and then enjoy it. And as we understand what we're experiencing, understand the craving that comes for a person, understand that it takes time to really activate some of those, because we're looking for information about trust, health, kindness, that can take time. So for me, it's understanding the biology makes the whole process richer and more pleasurable. We shouldn't just wait to be hit in the head with feelings of limerence. That's not necessarily the best driver.

• 42:52John R. Miles?

  When I think about mating and intimacy evolutionary wise, for millennia, we have, as humans, been able to find partners without technology. And when you think of modern technology, the internet really came online in the mid 90s and dating apps came in line much after that. But when I talk to a lot of Gen Z'ers now, and even millennials, and you ask them about going out and socializing and finding a mate, a lot of them tell me, that's not even where it happens anymore. You have to do it online. And it just leads

• 43:34John R. Miles?

  me to shaking my head in many ways. Because when I think of dating apps, they've expanded the possibilities globally. And you talk a lot about this in your chapter three. But as we were just talking about choices, they also introduce decision overload, unrealistic expectations, instability. And in some ways, I think it's made it worse than what we once had before. So how do you think they're, in some ways, expanding connection, but in other ways, industrializing rejection and people not?

• 44:14John R. Miles?

  Being able to find mates.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  I love that you bring this up because I think at its core, they're doing both. And that's the challenge. I think that so many of us want to have a hot take on online dating and app dating. Is it great? Is it terrible? Is it frustrating? Is it exciting? It's both. It's all of those things. And it's one, we're meeting, we're seeing the technology, meeting people where they are, which is on apps and websites. And to your point, our data show that it is the most common way that singles, oh, well over 100 million singles in the United States, as you mentioned earlier, over close to 40% of the adult population at any given time, that the number one place that singles are meeting their most recent date is on an app or a website, far more than bars or clubs or church or school or friends. In that sense, they are working.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  They are the place that people are meeting partners and relationships are forming and marriages are forming. And for many people, particularly, let's say LGBTQ people, they're far safer than walking into a bar. Now, if you're in New York or Miami, you might be thinking, saying, what is this guy talking about? But in many places in the world, if you're LGBTQ, how do you find someone else in your community? Are you safe walking into a place to try to pick someone up? So they offer a level of getting through the noise to find someone that aligns with what you're looking for, particularly if you're a sexual gender minority. We have multinational data where we found that women, for instance, in India and Turkey and countries that are characterized by less gender egalitarianism, they find online

• 45:40Speaker 01

  and app dating much safer than dating in initial courtship, face to face, because they have more control in a digital context. So I think there's a lot of opportunity. There's also the, if you want to find someone of the same religion, of the same ethnic background, with the same hobbies, with the same kink, with the same allergies, whatever, that we have these opportunities to do that with these technologies. So I think there's extraordinary opportunity. All right, that's the pro. The challenge is, as you also suggested, that there's information overload, that our brains are not equipped for the idea that you can swipe 3,000 partners before lunch, potential partners before lunch. And that's where we get into this problem of you you connect with someone and you just often think,

• 46:22Speaker 01

  yeah, but I can you're not really perfect, but I can get back on the app and swipe for a little bit more and find someone closer to my perfect. So we ruminate on our ideals. And it goes back to what you and I were just talking about. It forgets that so much of our relationship, so much of what we're attracted to, that comes out over time. So you're focused on these instantaneous ideals and not on getting to know someone. All the excitement and fun that comes from expansion itself, exploring the world, exploring who you are, who I am, who we are together, that the apps can help cause us to lose sight of that, of the beauty of the sort of engagement of going on actual dates, getting to know someone. So there I think that's the complexity there. There's a lot of opportunity, but we struggle with the data.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  We struggle with the sheer volume of opportunity. And when the brain thinks that we have an unlimited resource, we have a really hard time focusing on the person in front of us.

• 47:15John R. Miles?

  The other side of it, Justin, for me is I think we're biologically wired for touch and closeness. And when intimacy for so many people is becoming mostly digital, it just makes me wonder if we outpaced our evolutionary design for intimacy through the use of technology. And is that one of the biggest things that's causing this huge gap that we're seeing for Gen Z that we started the whole discussion with?

• 47:41Speaker 01

  I love that. And as a social primate, back to being a social primate, we know that touch is important and it's whether it's licking and grooming behavior that we see in many, including primates, the 15% of primates engage in pair bonding. And we know that touch is important. We learn a lot of information, sensory information through touch. My colleague, Michelle Druin, looking at my bookshelf, looking at her book, writes about in her book, she calls it a touch famine that we're experiencing in her book, Out of Touch. And I love that phrase and it's a reminder to your point, John, it's not just singles who are looking for it. We did a study here at the Kinsey Institute, Amanda and I, on we found that a third of married, of partnered people who are long-term partnered, 34.4%, I still remember the statistic, say that they're not touched enough by their romantic partner. That's a pretty high number of people in.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  Relationships who say they're not being touched enough, no less people who are single, who are looking for that connection. And that is part of our legacy. I totally agree with you. We are a social, we're a social primate. We want to feel connected. And when I, and when we say feel connected, it's in the full sensory experience. We want to be heard, both metaphorically and literally. We want to be seen. We want to be felt. Want to be known.

• 48:47John R. Miles?

  This is where I want to end things. Your subtitle is Why We Live and Die for Love. And a lot of the work that I've been doing, I really look at how the verification of our existence is a primary requirement for us to feel like we have meaning. So going to what I was just saying, if our intimacy is biologically tied to flourishing and our survival, is the deepest human drive ultimately to feel known, chosen and verified by another person?

• 49:19Speaker 01

  I think that we have, particularly those of us that study relationships, mating, sexuality. I think we focused a lot on the evolutionary drives for sex because it's so obviously related to sexual reproduction. And in so doing, we've ignored the enormous role and importance for the evolutionary drive for connection, particularly for intimate connection, and how much of our lives that shapes, including the other, including the reproductive piece. But also, evolution doesn't necessarily, when we talk about thriving and flourishing, evolution's really about survival. And, but we have the capacity to thrive, to move beyond the survival and reproduction.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  But we can only do that when we meet the conditions for survival and the connection that being part of a social fabric and feeling connected, have a meaningful connection, intimate connection. That's when we are able to do what humans can do so well, and that is to thrive and to flourish and to enjoy our lives. So I, yes, my short answer is yes. I think that the more we understand of the science of intimacy, the more we understand it is what made us human and it's what allows us to flourish.

• 50:30John R. Miles?

  Justin, it's been such an honor to have you today. Where's the best place for people to learn more about the work that you're doing in your book?

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. The Intimate Animal is available in bookstores and anywhere you can order a book. And I invite folks, if you read it, I'd love to hear from you. I'm having fun learning what people enjoyed about it or didn't enjoy about it. And follow me on social media. It's at Dr. Justin Garcia. And folks can also follow the Kinsey Institute, where we post a lot of our studies, opportunities to be engaged, and I hope I get to hear from more folks. And most importantly, thank you, John. It's been so much fun being in conversation and thinking about where our work combined, could bring together and help us better understand the best parts of being human.

• 51:13John R. Miles?

  Awesome. Justin, such a great time today. Thank you again.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 51:17John R. Miles?

  That brings us to the end of today's conversation with Dr. Justin Garcia. What stood out most to me is how deeply human connection really is. Our need to bond, to touch, to feel known and valued is not weakness, it's a design. Justin's work reminds us that intimacy is not something we earn after success. It's something that sustains us through life itself. In a culture that often prioritizes independence and productivity, this is a powerful reframe. Connection is not a distraction from achievement. It's one of the conditions that makes achievement meaningful. And it raises an important question. If we don't consciously build connection, what quietly takes its place? That question leads directly into our next conversation.

• 51:59John R. Miles?

  On Thursday, I'll be joined by my friend Nir Eyal, behavioral expert and author of the New York Times bestselling book, Beyond Belief. While today's episode explored intimacy and human bonding, Nir examines how our beliefs shape behavior, attention, and decision making in a world engineered to capture our focus. It's a powerful continuation of the life beyond the script, moving from connection to cognition, from relationships to the internal narratives that guide our lives.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  Another study that blew my mind was a study conducted at Yale, where they found that people who had positive views about aging versus negative views on aging, lived on average, seven and a half years longer. Seven and a half years longer is a tremendous effect. That is longer than the effect of diet. It's longer than the effect of exercise. It's greater than the effect of quitting smoking on your lifespan. And for all the attention, we talk about vitamins and minerals and don't eat right and exercise and don't smoke. Who talks to you about your beliefs? We almost never hear that.

• 52:56John R. Miles?

  If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need it. Leave a five star rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Watch the full conversation on YouTube. And until next time, remember, a meaningful life isn't built in isolation. It's built through the connections that remind us we don't have to navigate the world alone. I'm John Miles and you've been passion struck.