Make Love Like a Prairie Vole
Bloomsbury Publishing, January 2012 Buy
Why is a good sexual relationship so important?
Sex plays a central role in our lives. It not only makes us feel desirable and loved but an orgasm is also a great physical release and a reducer of stress. Most important of all, sex bonds us to our partner and stops our relationships disintegrating into just friends or co-parents. It is not surprising that we are fascinated by the subject.
Why do things go wrong?
Unfortunately, sex is extremely difficult to discuss sensibly even with our partner, in fact, especially with our partner. First, we don’t have the vocabulary without sounding smutty or purely physiological. Second, even an innocent discussion of what we enjoy can be interpreted as criticism by our partner. The whole topic is so full of traps that most couples retreat into silence and hope for the best.
On a national level, the topic is dominated by sex education in schools, avoiding teenage pregnancy and cutting the rate of sexually transmitted diseases. This is seasoned with a prurient interest in the sex lives of celebrities and salacious court trials. To further complicate matters, we are fed unrealistic fantasies and misinformation by the authors of racy romantic fiction and by pornographers. On the subject that we need the most information – how to keep a loving relationship sexually alive despite the familiarity of day-to-day living, the exhaustion of bringing up children and earning a living – there is a resounding silence.
Why did you decide to write this book?
I am afraid that my world – marital therapy – does not have a distinguished record either. Counsellors have tended to help couples with their emotional issues or referred them to a sex therapist to work on a specific physical problem (like erectile dysfunction or an inability to orgasm). The first approach hopes that improving communication and helping couples like each other again will have a positive knock-on effect on their lovemaking. The second concentrates on the physical aspects of sex and downplays the feelings. However, good love making is both an emotional and a physical act.
My ambition, in writing this book, is to bring together my knowledge – gleaned from over twenty-five years helping couples who have okay but not particularly satisfying love lives – with the structured programmes of sex therapy and combine them with the latest research by neurobiologists into our hormones, the pleasure receptors in our brains and what creates sexual desire.
Why Prairie Voles?
Prairie Voles are the Romeo and Juliets of the animal kingdom. Not only do they pair-off for life but spend hours grooming and cuddling in their burrows. At their peak, these voles will make love for two day marathons! They are great parents too, with the male vole completely involved in caring for and raising his pups. In contrast, their close cousins, the meadow vole mate indiscriminately and live solitary lives with the female meadow vole left to bring up her off-spring alone – despite sharing 99% of the same genes. We also know more about Prairie Voles that any other creature because they are small and live quite happily in the research centres of American universities. In addition, neuroscientists’ desire to understand the difference between these two radically different lifestyles means that we know more about the brain make-up of Prairie Voles than any other creature and the beginnings of an understanding of the biochemical pathways of love and the key to a more fulfilling sex life.
How does the book work?
At the end of each chapter, there is one key task to complete. Although I don’t want to be prescriptive – because I believe deep down you know what’s best for your relationship – these tasks encapsulate the main ideas of each chapter and help your partner take on board the underlying philosophy, even if he or she does not read the whole book. There is also a ten week plan – which exercises starting off with simple touching – which strip down your love-making and allow you to rebuild with a new and more passionate approach. If you are concerned that your partner is not a reader, I have created an app that sits alongside the book with a weekly video where I introduce and explain the task and a couple demonstrate the exercises. (Available January 2012)
Andrew G Marshall
December 2012
