The big failure mode I see with physical intimacy is people rushing into major commitments (kids, marriage, moving in together) in the first two years of a relationship, when they’re still in the tempestuous, exciting, misleading phase of being “in love.” The solution is to be slower to commit.
I am not sure you can avoid the cognition-distorting effects of these hormones by avoiding physical intimacy. It’s very possible to be in love without any physical contact.
For sure, it’s possible to be in love without physical contact, and I’ve personally experienced it. However, based on the article I shared about toxic relationships (which mostly focused on the effects of hormones) and my own sexual experiences, I’d say without being completely avoided, these hormones are produced in far less quantity without sex, and so their effects are mitigated.
I do agree that being slower to commit leads to avoid the failure you point out, and I personally have some rules as to how long I wait for some steps in a relationship (which are kind of arbitrary and open to changes). But I thing that’s a generally pretty agreed-upon belief, and so I preferred to focus on impacts less talked about in this post.
The big failure mode I see with physical intimacy is people rushing into major commitments (kids, marriage, moving in together) in the first two years of a relationship, when they’re still in the tempestuous, exciting, misleading phase of being “in love.” The solution is to be slower to commit.
I am not sure you can avoid the cognition-distorting effects of these hormones by avoiding physical intimacy. It’s very possible to be in love without any physical contact.
For sure, it’s possible to be in love without physical contact, and I’ve personally experienced it. However, based on the article I shared about toxic relationships (which mostly focused on the effects of hormones) and my own sexual experiences, I’d say without being completely avoided, these hormones are produced in far less quantity without sex, and so their effects are mitigated.
I do agree that being slower to commit leads to avoid the failure you point out, and I personally have some rules as to how long I wait for some steps in a relationship (which are kind of arbitrary and open to changes). But I thing that’s a generally pretty agreed-upon belief, and so I preferred to focus on impacts less talked about in this post.