The brain wants what it wants | Shutterstock
It can be easy to think back to your younger years and the sexual misadventures of your past and wonder, why did I do that? We’ve all been caught in the terrible storm between conscious thought and wanting to do the dirty thing, even with someone we don’t even like. It turns out that we don’t always have control over our bedroom decisions—sometimes our brain just chooses those things for us. How does that happen?
You might already know that sex feels good. There’s something about it we’ve just got to have. We spend so much time thinking about it, looking for it, and being envious of other people who are having it. Sex feels so good because it stimulates the release of dopamine in the brain, which gives us that all-consuming feeling of pleasure, not unlike the high people experience when they take drugs. The stimulation one gets from sex and from taking drugs isn’t exactly the same, but both activities stimulate the “rewards” part of the brain, making us want more of the stuff that makes us feel great.
Not surprisingly, the brain really likes it when we do things that make it feel good. Sometimes, that means we experience bonding with someone who isn’t necessarily a good fit for us. Another pleasure hormone called oxytocin, sometimes referred to as the “love hormone,” is released during childbirth and breast-feeding both as a way to make the uterine muscles contract during childbirth and to promote bonding or romantic attachment between people. Because this hormone is released during sex, our brains may be telling us that this guy or this girl is the one—even when they definitely aren’t.
Like oxytocin, testosterone influences the body’s movements, but not quite in the same way. Men will get erections even when they’re not aroused. These “reflexive” erections happen because the penis receives unconscious messages from the brain rather than a pressing desire to get funky. Men’s genitals and brains are all very closely connected via an intricate pathway of nerves, which means that sometimes, boners just happen for no good reason. If he’s not paying attention, a man might not even notice.
Here’s something else interesting: for some, sex really is like a religious experience. Dr. Andrew Newberg discovered scanned the brains of Catholic nuns and Buddhist monks while they prayed and meditated, respectively, to find that there is some overlap in the way the brain experiences the religion and the way it experiences sexual arousal. In The Scientific American: Book of Love, Sex, and the Brain, journalist Judith Horstman writes, “Religious experiences produce sensations of bliss, transcendence beyond one’s self and unity with the loved one that is very like the ecstasy of orgasm.”
As ever, we’re all at the mercy of our brains. All we can hope is that those reflexive erections don’t strike when we’re on a bus or in a movie theater.