The Biology of Love with Dr. Liat Yakir

Jennifer Norman:
Hello beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast, your source for hope, healing, happiness and humanity. My name is Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of The Human Beauty Movement and your host. This podcast is here to guide you on your journey of self love, empowerment, soul alignment and joy. With each episode, I invite beautiful humans from all corners of the globe to join me for open conversations about their life lessons and the important work that they are doing to help heal humankind. Take a moment now to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. I'm so glad you're here, joining me for today's show.

Jennifer Norman:
Today's podcast is all about the biology of love, and we have a very intriguing question to explain. Are humans hardwired for monogamy or not? To help us understand the genetic nature of love and coupling, we have a very special guest, Dr. Liat Yakir. Dr. Yakir is a renowned biologist, author, and lecturer who specializes in the biology of emotions and human behavior. With a PhD in Genetics and a Master of Science in Hormone Research from the Weizmann Institute of Science, along with a Bachelor of Science in Life Sciences from Tel Aviv University, Dr. Yakir was a featured expert on the reality show Marriage at First Sight, and she's also the host of Brain Story, a popular podcast in Israel. Her first book, A Brief History of Love, explores the biology of romantic love and has become a bestseller in Israel, captivating readers with its insightful and engaging exploration of one of humanity's most profound experiences.

Jennifer Norman:
In today's episode, Dr. Yakir will take us on a journey through the biological underpinnings of love, examining questions such as, what roles do genetics and hormones play in romantic attachment? How do evolutionary forces shape our relationships? And of course, are humans naturally inclined towards monogamy? So whether you're curious about the science behind love or simply fascinated by human behavior, this episode is for you. Dr. Yakir's insights promise to be both enlightening and thought provoking, offering a deeper understanding of the complex emotions that bind us together. So, without further ado, let's give a warm welcome to Dr. Liat Yakir. Welcome, Liat. It's so great to have you on the show.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Hi, Jennifer. I'm happy, very happy to meet you and to be hear on your podcast.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, it's so delightful. And you're podcasting with me all the way from Israel. I am just delighted how the podcasting world brings everybody together. So, wow. Love is such a complicated topic. And I wanted to let you know that I was recently doing a workshop with teenagers. And I was trying to provide a solid definition of love to them, which is hard to do because everybody has a different impression about what love is. And the best definition that I could offer as I was doing my research was that it's like this emotional combination of three things: closeness, caring and commitment. And depending on the type of love you have, that there's usually some sort of an interaction of closeness, care and commitment.

Jennifer Norman:
But we've been sold this dream of marriage and happily ever after. And it's a fact, today marriage rates are declining. About 39% of marriages, in the US anyway, end in divorce. So as I understand it, from a biological standpoint, you're not so surprised.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Yes, not at all.

Jennifer Norman:
What is love? What do hormones and neurons and genes have to do with love at all?

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Yes, it will be a pleasure for me. I talk about it all the time. And it's a subject that is very interesting for me. So I am a biologist, and so I look at the world through the lens of biology, and basically we need to understand that our behavior and our emotion and our desires are really motivated and drived by genes and hormones and neurons that shape who we are. So when we talk about love, we basically talk about three stages of love. And in each stage different hormones plays with our head and we call love for all the three stages. But basically we need to really define each stage and understand it fully so we will understand why biology screws our love life and make life hard for us in long term relationships.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
So the first stage of love is attraction. Why we are attracted to some people and not to others. What are the attractions, rules of evolution? The main hormones that play in this stage, it's testosterone and estrogen. Even in the same sex love, it's basically testosterone and estrogen. We are looking for signs of these hormones in the other person. Signs of fertility, signs of health, signs of good genes. We are attracted to these signals.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
And then comes the infatuation state, the falling in love, the butterflies in the belly. And it's basically the product of 3, 4 hormones. Dopamine, Serotonin. Dopamine is the pleasure hormone, the motivation hormone. Serotonin is the happy hormone. Happiness makes us feel good, regulator of our mood, and adrenaline that makes us excited. This stage has many side effects because these drugs are very potent. I call them the love drugs. In the world of drugs, it's like cocaine and md. It's very powerful drugs.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
So in this stage, like we feel euphoria and when we are not with a partner, we feel withdrawal symptoms and sometimes obsessiveness, relationship OCD. We want to be all the time together and control and know what the partner is doing right now and if he wants me or doesn't want me. Jealousy and even temporary insanity.

Jennifer Norman:
Sounds wonderful. The type of love that we're talking about is more the romantic type, the more Eros. I guess that's in Latin we would call it. And certainly there are different types of love. Familial love, friendship love, self love. But what we're focusing on for this particular episode is really the idea of romantic love and partnering up, so to speak.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Exactly. So you are attracted to someone and then if everything goes good, you make love. The sex. During sexual intercourse, there are a lot of hormones released in the brain. So we get connected and we get attached afterwards. But the infatuation stage, the falling in love, the butterflies in the belly, usually this stage lasts between six hours and two years, mostly usually one year. After one year, all these hormones that are secreted in high doses, when it's new, the novelty seeking hormones, especially dopamine, we want something new. But when the person becomes familiar to us, the same touch, the same smell, the same words, the same dynamics, so we become familiar and the passion dwindles over time, so we feel less passion. The passion is basically dopamine and testosterone also that makes us desire. So after two years, three years, four years, five years, for some people it can be very short lived and for others long lived.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
But the third stage that we all want to get to this stage is the attachment, the safety, the security, that there is a lot of benefit to this stable state, that you know the person, he's very familiar to you, you know that you will get emotional support, sometimes you will fight and then you reconciliate, but still you have emotional support. But not anymore the butterflies in the belly, you're not anymore feeling like this withdrawal symptoms when you're not together or when they're not sending messages. And we come to this stable state, which can be sometimes boring because it's familiar. And sometimes we can see other person and he can make us again feel some butterflies or adrenaline, you know, that attraction. Because as you said, we are not biologically inclined to monogamy as species, as biology. We don't meet the criteria in biology to be called a monogamist creatures.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
So we have this wiring that makes us look for something new after a while. So that's why we cheat, some people, or cheat even in fantasy, thinking about another person, looking again for these fertility signs and health signs, which is very healthy. It's good to be attractive also to other people. It's part of our biology. But then we sometimes start to feel boredom with the same relationship. And then troubles come because the love drugs that were in the beginning really mask our conscious. And we see the person in euphoric, in euphoria, you know, we have this euphoric effect that we see everything good and we see all the ideal things about the person. And after this hormones decline.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
We see the partner truly as he is, with the flaws, with the weaknesses, and also with our own weaknesses. Because in the beginning, in the infatuation stage, we try to put the best personality of ourselves to be like the most attractive and very light and funny and nice. And then after a while, we come back to our own true self. And then we see each other not like in the beginning. And then the fight starts and the power struggles and all the small and big fights about everything. About money, about where to go and what to do. Because the other person is not exactly like me. But at the beginning of the relationship, we want to be loved.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
We want person will be attracted to us. So we try to satisfy the other needs. And after a while we come back to ourselves, our true selves, what our needs and what we want. So the struggles become the conflicts and the fights. If we manage to pass this stage, we can come to this final stage of attachment. Which I basically think this stage we should call love. The real love. That you love the person as he is and you love yourself as you are.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
And you can be really for each other, with each other, with the weaknesses, with the flaws, with the loss of attraction sometimes. And with the sex is not like it was in the beginning, but it's a price we pay.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow. I think that a lot of people can relate to exactly what you were talking about. And a lot of times we try to deny it. I think as society, that it's like, oh, no, I want to find this forever love. And I have to like all of these emotions that I might be feeling about looking for somebody else. Or if you're a woman and you are heterosexual, with a man who might have a wandering eye and thinking, oh, that's a bad person. That's somebody who is not going to be faithful. And yet we're saying that we as a species are probably predisposed not to be faithful. And I think that will come as a shock, or at least a...perhaps not a shock, but it's just something that I think a lot of people have really been conditioned to believe is something either sinful or not ideal in terms of how we are supposed to behave.

Jennifer Norman:
I know that in your work you do a lot of comparisons to nature, to animals and other mammals. And if we think about what you were talking about, the attraction, I mean, there's no question that in mating season we talk about peacocking and a lot of birds and animals, I mean, they have these showy colors and it's all to try to attract a mate. And so it's absolutely true that we're not the only ones that try to put on a good show in order to attract a partner. It's really part of the whole biological process and this idea of infatuation and hormones raging and all of these things, which leads us to a place of wanting to pair up and mate. But then once things start getting familiar and what we would say is too domestic or he's stopped trying, she's letting herself go. They're not putting in the effort that they once were in order to woo me.

Jennifer Norman:
That's when a lot of people are like, oh, I'm not married anymore, I just have a roommate. They joke and say they're just living together, but there's no passion here. I would love for you to talk a little bit more about what you have learned or what you know about this idea of monogamy, humans and other species, because I find it so fascinating.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Yes. So basically only 5% of mammals are monogamists. So it's very rare in nature because we have to understand our brain and nervous system, ours and other mammals and other also animals is not wired for a happiness and happily ever after. It's just wired to make as much copies of ourselves self as possible and to diversify the genes that we are mixing with. So I would be an evolutionary success if I will have four children from different men and not from the same men. Because this is how it's risk management for my genes. Not for me, it's for my genes. I mean, I'm talking from the perspective of the genetics of the genes that wants to stay here forever. And if I have a diversified children, my genes mixed with other genes of many men, or four men, let's say I will have a diverse immune system for my kids, diverse genes for my kids.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
So maybe some of them won't survive, but the others will survive. So like when a dog (goes into) labor, female, usually the pups are not from the same male, from different males. So the evolutionary stable state, the evolutionary stable strategy in nature is polygamy, not monogamy, polygamy. The males are fighting for their status. And the females are very picky and they want the best. They want the alpha male. They want the smartest and the best runner and the best with all the beautiful decorations. This is basically the stable strategy in nature. Polygamy

Dr. Liat Yakir:
And also humans, for even until today in Africa and Arab states and also other places, there is polygamy in humans. And monogamy is very, very rare. We see it basically more in birds, but also in birds and in 5% of the mammals, like some kind of wolves and other mammalians, some one kind of one species of voles. It's very rare, but basically we see that it happens.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
And monogamy will evolve only in climate that are very harsh. There is not enough food, many predators. So the offspring, the child needs two parents in order to survive. Only when the child needs two parents to survive, there will be monogamy. Like in birds, the eggs are out of the body, so the mother need to keep the eggs and the father goes to bring food and they replace each other. So basically, and even in these monogamous creatures, it's not forever happily ever after. It's not forever. They are serial monogamists, which means that they are getting divorced after the pups goes to independence, or the chicks will fly away from the nest, they will choose another partner. They will not stay with one partner for life. So basically they get divorced and remarried again like we do. So we are somewhere in between of serial monogamist and polygamist.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
And also we have variation in humans. Monogamy is not good for everyone. And also polyamory or other options are not good for (every)one. So we are also different. And there is genetics to this also. So it's very interesting because researchers were very interested in understanding why the monogamists act, behave like this. What makes them stay with the same partner at least as long as the kids are in are at home?

Dr. Liat Yakir:
And they found one gene especially, but of course it's never one gene. But it's also rooted in the genetic. It's basically a receptor for oxytocin, which is the love hormone. So monogamists have more of this gene. And so basically we don't meet the criteria. Criteria number one is the male will look exactly like the female. In human, it's not like this. Men look different from females. They have more muscle, they have more mass, the body mass.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Monogamists don't have wars, they don't need to fight because everyone has one mate. And in polygamists, only one get the females, only the alpha. So the wars can be very, very cruel between the males. And also in humans, we still have wars and we still see men are more competitive and also women are very picky.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Still, I think there is a research in the Tinder and other apps that not all the men get messages from the women. Few men, like some say 10% or 20%, gets most of the messages from women. So we also want the height. We look for height. High men. Height is a very parameter. It's a parameter that women really check. And also social status. Men with higher social status gets more messages from women. They are more approached from women. So. And also there are other criteria like how long is the male organ? The penis and in human is very big in relations to the body size. So usually more. A bigger organ means more sperm competition.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
There is more competition in birds, for example, they almost lost the penis. There is almost no penis in birds because the females didn't like this. So they choose only for the ones with the...because females in birds can fly. If she doesn't like what she see, she can fly away. So there. There was a selection for loss of the penis. It's amazing.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
But basically we humans are not meeting the criteria. Some scientists say that there is of course benefits, especially psychological benefits in humans. And basically our children (are) also very needy and needs a lot of care and can stay at home until the age of 30. So you need a lot of care and resources to provide for human baby. So there are benefits for monogamy also.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
I'm a real preacher for monogamy. Yes. Even though I talk about biology is against us in this story. I really believe in monogamy and love for the same person. I'm divorced twice, so it's not forever. Really struggled in life with love, my relationship. So that's why I went to this journey of understanding and looking on the research and the literature to understand why it happened to me and it happened to many others. And it's some kind of universal law of love. So it's biology.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow. Wow. You just gave so much information. And I think the important underpinning here is that we're not talking about ethics on this particular episode. If you are for polygamy or against it and feel that it's immoral or not, we're really not getting into that discussion. Also, in terms of patriarchal versus matriarchal households, you may have an opinion on feminism or not. However, from an evolutionary perspective and from a scientific and biological perspective, a lot of this does make sense and it is worth a lot of research and thinking about how society has developed in this way to believe that monogamy was the purest form of the way that a partnership could be held.

Jennifer Norman:
And I'm curious, in your research, what did you find, Dr. Yakir, about why all of a sudden, monogamy became the way that relationships should be from the standpoint of society?

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Yeah, this is a very, very interesting question. So we need to go back to the Romans. The Romans were the ones that distributed the monogamy -- and wine -- and monogamy in their colonies.

Jennifer Norman:
It seems to be antithetical. Wine and monogamy. But go ahead.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
So in order to broaden the empire, they came also to this area, the Middle East and the Arab, my area, basically, but also in other places like Turkey. And there were polygamy there. Everywhere there was polygamy. One man with few women, many children. And this made real big headache for the empire, because a man in a polygamist family is loyal to the family, to the clan, to the really big family. There is many women and many children. And it's like a small army, you know, it's a big clan.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
So it made a headache for the empire. So they made this rule that one man, one woman. This is love. And through Christianity and the church, they distributed this idea. One man, one male, one female, happily ever after. And then the culture also, basically also ruled by empires since then, made this idea very, very intuitive for us or very rooted in. We are born with this idea.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Look for the one get married and live happily ever after. And this is a process, process of the culture of 1500 years through religion. And we see that when religion start to decline in the 70s of the last century, in the people's life, we are not living by the religious rule of the church or the synagogue or everywhere. Or the mosque. So everyone can do whatever he wants or she wants. And also the feminist, of course, movement. So this model breaks down the monogamy as we knew it.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
One man, one woman. Usually the woman is subordinate to the man. Yes, "Family" comes from the word...you know "familus", which is the slaves' household of the lord, the patriarch. Like the women and the children are the kind of subordinated to the male. So you will have your own family and everything will be okay.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
And it start to shake. All these models start to shake. All this structure, which also contributed economically to humans. Yes, of course. But still it's really breaking in this century is due to the feminist movement. Women can choose, women can decide. Women are not anymore want to be subordinate to anyone and not to the men, of course. Just want to choose the mate for themselves. And their religion doesn't hold them together anymore.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
So that's why I'm talking about biology. I think that in this era we should talk about biology because it comes back. Because there are no social constructs that bind us to any kind of model. It's like a new family. We can decide our own structure for the economic unit. Men with men, women with women. And I'm a single mother. This is a family, family of single mother and two children.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Of course we're just creating new structures. But while creating new structures, in my opinion, we need to go back to the basics of our evolutionary roots and our biology and understand what is love. Because it has a lot of benefits for us if we know to make it right. Because now we don't have any more constructs of society. It's still very hard. People are still getting married with this dream that it will be forever. We see that the reality is less optimistic. The span of marriage is getting shorter after one year, two years, less than five years.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
People are getting divorced, sometimes with a small child at home. And I think basically it's because still we have wrong paradigm or premises about love. So if we understand it and first know how to choose right to attract to a person, to be attracted to a person from the good reasons from the to choose not only through physical appearance, good looking, social status and all this because in the long run it is not the characteristics that predict sustainable and long lasting pair bond. It's basically more the personality traits, the values of a person, the kindness which we are not attracted to kindness. Usually we're attracted to good looking and to sometimes narcissistic people, you know, that can show off. And yeah, everyone wants to be with them, so we also want to be with them. And sometimes the good guys or the good girls that are more shy and very kind, sometimes pleasing, just want to do everything for you. And we sometimes look for the bad guys, you know, the bad guys are or the bad girls sometimes more erotic or more attractive to us.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
So I'm saying let the primitive brain to choose a partner. Because it's a very, very important choice. We can change our career, we can change the place we live. We can change basically everything we want. But the person with which we make children, the father or the mother of our children is unreplaceable. This person will be with us and will be big part of our happiness. Even when we will not be together. If even after divorce, we still go to the marriage of the daughter or son together because we have children.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
So it's very important. So sometimes I feel so sorry that we choose this important thing for our lives in a social app, dating apps, like commercial app. Like in world, like, I choose food, I want it to be with onion, without onion. Like relation-shopping. It's called really. Relation-shopping.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Like, if I choose the right height.

Jennifer Norman:
Well, I think that it's such a fascinating time to be alive because there is so much in transition now. I think that a lot of people were unaware, and probably, as you were saying, still are unaware of the basis of monogamy and how it was really conflated with power as well as religion back in the Roman days. And then how that becomes almost what your ethical basis is about how things are right. And in the United States, polygamy is outlawed. You know, we're not allowed to be a polygamist. It's almost as if the biology and our human nature is always going to win out in some way. And so you do see that failing of the structure. You see the failing in religion, which obviously before, it was always taboo to get divorced for a long, long time in the United States and in other places in the world. But now it's really not as much of an issue because it is just so prevalent. It's not so much something that people feel that they need to be obligated if they're unhappy in a marriage and can't seem to make it work.

Jennifer Norman:
Yet, perhaps we're biologically just hardwired to all of a sudden start drifting apart and start needing something else in our lives. We, from a psychological perspective, put a lot of pressure on ourselves because of what we believe is right and what's wrong. And look for practicalities. I think sometimes people are like, oh, let's get married. It's financially going to be much more...a much better decision if we can buy a house together rather than apart. It's hard when you try to raise a child and you've got either mixed marriages or you're doing it alone. It's quite, quite difficult.

Jennifer Norman:
And so people try to stay together for the children, and then they start living a life which is a bit of bondage, which is a bit of suffering, because they feel it's more born out of obligation rather than true love.And those feelings of really care and that closeness that they may have felt at one time in their lives. Can we talk about that for a moment? Because I know that you said that there is something also biologically that happens when we have children. And, you know, over time, as things start to become more familiar, things start to seem less passionate. We start showing our true colors, unveiling our true selves. They say maybe that's why we're preaching authenticity from the beginning is like know me from the beginning so that there are no surprises later on down the line. But what happens to us when we have children in terms of the relationship?

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Yes. So it also goes back to hormones. But the number one enemy of the relationship is stress. When we are stressed, our also sexual desire declines. We become more aggressive or self centered and children brings a lot of of happiness but a lot of stress to the relationship. And women also undergo tremendous changes in the brain during pregnancy and labor, giving birth and also afterwards. Basically huge hormonal changes and also changes in wirings of the brain for more oxytocin. You are now caring machine, a rearing machine.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
You need to be focused on the needs of your child and be more empathic. And really it's a rearrangement of white matter and the gray matter better in the brain. And more cells, I talk about it in the book more cells that secrete oxytocin in the female brain after she gives birth. So basically we go through changes. So evolutionary terms, the rationale of evolution is when you have a baby, you shouldn't go and seek for men, for male, for another offspring. Yes, you should take care of the offspring. Now. So many women feel their sexual desire declines after they give birth.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Some are not, but many do feel that it's just not interested right now. I'm not interested in this. And sometimes the men feel very frustrated. I had this woman that was very sexual. She wanted to touch and she wanted to have fun together. And now suddenly she becomes like rearing machine. All what she wants to. What makes her motivated is the children and where is my place now.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
And even the changes the hormonal changes will undergo make them less sexually desired. This basically what I explain now. This was the biological reason for my first divorce after my child was born. I didn't understand it at that time, the tremendous changes that I went through. I practically became a different woman. Now I understand it. Even I change career instead of going on in research when staying away from my daughter and not be able to breastfeed her. This was unacceptable for me.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
So I changed career instead of change my desire to be with the child. So many, many couples undergoes these changes. The man doesn't undergo rearrangement of his brain because he's not having this experience of pregnancy and giving birth. So it's a different process for the man. And he usually feel very, very frustrated. Like even trying to understand what is my role in the house now. Yeah, because the children want the mother and the mother also gets a lot of her oxytocin.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
It's not the mother or the father. It's the ones that stays with the children more. A lot of her love hormone from the kids. They are touching, they want to be...they want skin to skin, they want to feel your heart, they want to go after you wherever you go. So on the one hand you feel all this oxytocin that fills you and makes you feel very, very good because we need this hormone. But from the other side also, it's a lot of stress.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Stress makes us release cortisol because at the end of the day you didn't have time for yourself, one minute, minutes during the day, you just think about them and do things for them. And finally in the evening, you have little time for yourself. And then your partner comes and he wants that you will, you know, be with him.

Jennifer Norman:
It's the last thing that you want to do!

Dr. Liat Yakir:
It's the last thing that you want to do now. But he didn't feel all this oxytocin. So yeah, of course the children comes to the father and he plays with them. Of course, usually most, in most households, it's more women play and stay with the children. So he's coming back from work and he wants also his dose of oxytocin for the day, the meal of oxytocin. What about me? But you don't have anything to give anymore. And also children makes us, especially small kids, makes us release prolactin. Prolactin is the hormones that creates the milk.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
But even when we are not breastfeeding anymore, we still, when we are around our kids, kids, we make prolactin which makes us want to care for them more. It's like a manipulation of the kids on our brain. Like, care for me, care for me, care for me. I will make you secrete prolactin so you won't think about anything other than my needs. Now be very empathic to me. And prolactin is another hormone that destroys our sexual desire.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
We have secretion of prolactin in men especially. We see it in men after orgasm. Usually men cannot get erected again, like for a few 20 minutes, up to 20 minutes. This is prolactin. It causes this period. It's basically an anti erotic hormone.

Jennifer Norman:
It inhibits your libido at that point. Yeah.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
And we are full of this hormone when we have small children. That's why usually couples with small children don't make sex like they used to. They are the group of the population that make the least sex intercourse in population. When children are getting more adult, we go back to feel all this desire. So what we need to basically understand is leave the frustration, the shame, the guilt. All this feeling that we feel. Like I remember I felt a lot of guilt, a lot of frustration and like I'm not a good enough mother and I'm not a good enough wife for my husband. And I didn't know how to say my needs.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Very people pleaser. Yeah. So I was taking it all on myself. And that makes me. In the end the stress was too high for me. So we need to understand play of these hormones on our body and differences between the female brain and the male brain. The female reproduction system and the male reproduction system. They have their own frustrations.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
We have our own frustrations. And we need just to be more empathic to each other. Yes. It's not like she's doing on purpose or he's doing on purpose. It's usually different mechanism, different operating system that we have. But when we talk about it and when we share and when very important take home message is for women, especially young women with children to take care of yourself. You are the most important thing in this family. The foundation of the family is the mother.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
I believe because her emotional state will affect everyone. It affects the children and it affects the husband. And what we need in order to reduce the levels of the stress hormones, the cortisol and also the prolactin is. Is to be with the kids, but also to be without them. To do things alone, to have your friends and hobbies. Usually we tend to. I'm a mother now, so I don't have anything. Just being a mother is enough for me.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Being a mother and a career, it's enough. And we forget about the happy chemicals that we need in order to maintain a happy life. And sexual desire. Sexual desire cannot come when you are stressed. It won't come. You just want to sleep. Sleep or be with yourself or just read a book now and have a coffee. That's it. Leave me alone.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Sexual desire will come when we are satisfied with ourselves. Satisfied with life. After a walk in the park and sunlight and good sleep. Sleep is the foundation. And usually parents for small children, young children, they do not sleep enough. So put in the schedule the sleep. And after a good sleep and a good meal, even before the good meal because it will be heavy afterwards.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
But to make time for sex, make time. I don't like to call it sex because when we say sex we think it has to be, you know, penetrative and yeah, I just mean to be sexual with one another, to be intimate, to hold one another, skin to skin, massages, caresses. Even if one of the partners will eventually satisfy himself, it's okay. Or herself, it's okay. It doesn't have to come with the duty, it has to finish like in orgasm. No it's just the touch we really need. We are touchy creatures. We need hugs and kisses and caresses.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
You see it in the babies when children, they just want to hug you. In the COVID we saw how horrible it was psychologically for us if we cannot touch each other. So basically it's not to count how much sex you did, but how sexual we were with each other. Eroticism and fantasy. Because we have this Coolidge Effect, the tolerance -- less dopamine for the same familiar touch and familiar protocol of sex. And then we have prolactin from the baby, from the kids. And then we have the cortisol from the stress.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
The stress is not only of course from the children, it's from life and everything around and the career. And we are in very stressful society. So we have all the reason to fail if we don't understand it. We are not biologically monogamous. We have all these hormones that makes us, when we have children, makes us really go apart from each other. And then after 10, 20 years, you cannot stand each other anymore.

Jennifer Norman:
Sounds amazing!

Dr. Liat Yakir:
So that's why we need to work on it. To work on it. And when I say work on it is to work on our hormones. We know that number one predictor of successful marriage, successful relationship is not the partner. It's not the quality and the personality of the partner. It's not the quality of the match. It's the satisfaction of oneself with his life. Like if I'm good, if I'm happy with myself, with my career, with my friends, I have everything that I need.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
I tend to be more good in also in the relationship. I don't criticize a lot and I don't see everything the negative. Because I feel good, I'm good with myself, so I can be good to the other person. So the number one rule, a guideline is to keep yourself satisfied with life. Elevate your happy chemicals. Relaxation, mindfulness. Some people are more stressed than others.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Some people, really like myself. I have my own times of depression or anxiety. You know, it's not clinical depression, but sometimes you know I feel, yeah, I have ups and downs. Yeah. Still I know that music and sunlight and vacation and friends, friends, friends. For me it's especially female friends. We have our own group and when we call each other the charger, when we are with each other, we can go back to the family.

Jennifer Norman:
So up uplifting. What amazing, amazing information and advice because I think that that's true. It starts all with yourself and making sure that you're taken care of and you're going to be the one that knows best how to take care of you. And a lot of times when we are people pleasers. I know that you mentioned that you were one. I was one. I think that there's a lot of people that can relate to that. When you feel that you're obligated to give more than you receive rather than it being a little bit like I, I need to take some time for me and just make sure that my life isn't filled with suffering and obligation and duty and work that I actually love it. I love myself, I love my life. I love how things are going.

Jennifer Norman:
And of course my relationships are going to be better. Of course I'll feel stressed, but I'll be able to be better to manage it. I'll understand when my hormones are getting out of whack and I'll be able to identify it rather than letting them run my life. I'll be able to understand the ebbs and flows and the seasons of my life of when going to be much more virile and fertile and sexual. And then I might go into this child's rearing stage and I'll be able to talk and communicate with my lover at that time or my partner about the needs and how they shift.

Jennifer Norman:
And we'll go into it with full eyes open rather than thinking it's the end of the world because we're not having sex anymore. I think that a lot of relationships that go into therapy are, you know, they just don't really understand. Just like that whole season that happens with their lifespan and understanding their emotions and not really taking care of their hormone health as much as perhaps we could and is optimal for ourselves these days it's. We're fighting against our biology.I love that you named your book A Brief History of What Attracts Us: How We Fall in Love, and Why Biology Screws It All Up. I think that that is such a brilliant name and subtitle for the book. I do want everybody to know a little bit more about your book and what they can expect in it and where they can find it.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Yes, sure. So it's in Amazon also Audible and digital and Watkins published the publication. They published it in the UK, but it's also available in the US and in bookshops. I know that Barnes & Noble and other retailers also have this book so you can order it. I have there also the scientific prescriptions for maintaining love and understanding the biology. After you understand the biology, what to do. So there is a full prescription of two chapters, what we can do different than we do today using the biology language. I like to talk in the language of hormones. It makes sense, makes us understand more.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
So it's like psychology, biology, evolution, the genes, the hormones. So I recommend it, of course.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh absolutely. Absolutely. I hope that everybody who's listening goes and picks up your book because I think that there is so much to learn in it. And for those who have been in relationships and keep wondering why these things happen, I think that a lot of people get stuck in these cycles in relationships. You're going for the same kind of person. The same kinds of things happen in the last relationship and now they're happening again. That's a bit of biology too. And I believe that that's discussed in the book.

Jennifer Norman:
And looking at ways to be able to manage through now that we have society, now that we know that maybe you're an empowered feminine and you want to have your life. You want to work, you want to have the kids, you want to have the happy ending, all of those things. And you deserve to. But know that sometimes it could be that your hormones and your biology are working against you. What to do about it. Wow. These prescriptions sound like they could be just really, really helpful for so many people.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Thank you so much. Jennifer.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes, Dr. Liat Yakir, thank you so much for being on the show today. And I will make sure that everybody has your website and your social handles in the show notes so that they can learn more about you. Thanks for being on the show. Thank you.

Dr. Liat Yakir:
Thank you so much. Bye bye.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, follow rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts The Human Beauty Movement is a community based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media, and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human.