Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship by David Schnarch Read Free Book Online Page A

desire, your emotional functioning, and your connection with your partner.
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Where does your “self” reside?
     
    Just like lust, infatuation, and attachment, the human self has its own underlying brain real estate. Part of it is located in your prefrontalneocortex (your forebrain), the most recently evolved and unique aspect of the human brain. 29
    In three separate tests, researchers scanned people’s brains while they had them think about themselves, other people, and different situations. They found that when you’re thinking about yourself or others (as compared to thinking about situations), two parts of your brain light up. 30 But an additional separate region turns on when you’re thinking about yourself—one that doesn’t turn on in either of the other two instances. 31 Thoughts pertaining to your “self” are discernable in your brain from your thoughts about other people. Thinking about your self is so special it occupies a unique place in your head. 32
    As I mentioned earlier, Helen Fisher found that over time, romantic love engages parts of your brain that map other people’s thoughts and emotions. Well, these parts map your own feelings, too. They are central to self-awareness and your sense of having a “self.” In other words, the same neurons that let your partner become a real person in your mind also support your sense of self. This leads to inevitable battles of identity, autonomy, and togetherness.
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Two kinds of consciousness
     
    Your self doesn’t simply reside in an identifiable pattern of neurons and neurochemicals inside your skull. Your mind is the mental space in which your self resides. Stick with me for a few paragraphs while I explain this.
    Your sense of self has both a primitive and complex level, just like your sexual desire. Your most basic sense of self comes from your body. 33 This “primary consciousness” arises from bodily cues. This is your sense of where you physically end and other things begin. Your “body self” comes from your brain’s ability to distinguish self-generated movement versus motion and sensations induced by outside sources. 34
    Any creature has primary consciousness if it establishes a connection between what happens in the world and how its body feels, so it can take actions that create pleasure and avoid pain. 35 Your cat or dog—like most animals—has primary (primitive) consciousness. 36
    You have this sense of self because your brain constantly maps the stateof your body. 37 Nature built upon these stable gangs of neurons to create your “mental self.” Your mental self is anchored in this continuous sense of physical being, the reference point for organizing your actions. 38
    Your self also involves “higher-order consciousness,” which stems from more sophisticated discriminations than “this is me” vs. “this is not me.” Two facets of higher-order consciousness are consciousness of being conscious (self-awareness), and reading the minds of other self-aware beings (mind-mapping, which we’ll cover next chapter). 39
    Your forebrain (prefrontal neocortex) holds the “hardware” for your complex sense of self and highly nuanced sexual desire. But higher-order consciousness is not reducible to brain neurons firing. 40 The “software” of consciousness is created through our interactions with other people. 41 That’s why your sexual desire is greatly influenced by what’s happening in your relationship.
    Your brain, your self, and your sexual desire are fundamentally social entities. Humans, who possess language and true linguistic capability, have the most complex self—and the most sexual desire problems—on the planet. 42 And if the foregoing doesn’t convince you that your brain is a social organ, perhaps this will: Your brain perpetually rewires itself in response to interpersonal contact throughout your lifetime. 43
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Body, brain, mind, and relationship
     
    You have a socially defined nameable self, a mental