January 19, 2004 Health

	photo essay
	Animal Attraction There's more than one way to make hay, as birds, bees and bonobos know
	graphic
	Where Our Sex Drive Comes From Mapping the origins of sex drive on the human body
	remedies
	Love Potions A guide to some of the medical treatments available for what ails our libidos
	self-test
	The Passionate Love Scale Determine just how you feel about that special (or ex-special) someone

Of course, artistry—even something as small as a well-chosen greeting card or a romantic setting for dinner—may open the sexual door, but something else must keep it from closing again. What sustains a physical relationship after the early romantic rounds end is something more nuanced than seduction and more enduring than passion. Often it's something as wonderfully ordinary as stability. Partners who maintain a robust sex life are simply more likely to remain partners than those who don't, something almost any couple knew long before the sex researchers thought to quantify it. If it is hard to be physical with a mate you've stopped loving, it can be equally hard to get to that cold point with a person with whom you still share the intimacy, exclusivity and, especially, vulnerability of sex. This is particularly true as the intoxication of a new relationship begins to fade and partners start to notice flaws they were too romantically tipsy to see before.

Not only does the relationship benefit from a steady sex life, but so can the physical and emotional health of the partners themselves. Research suggests that married people may live longer than singles, that happily marrieds do best of all, and that couples who remain at least somewhat sexual, even into their dotage, report a better level of satisfaction both with their relationships and with their lives as a whole. Certainly, it's hard to say if people who start off happy and satisfied simply have more sex or if it's the sex that makes them happy and satisfied. Whatever the answer, it's clear that human beings would not be fully Homo sapiens—at least not as we've come to understand ourselves—without the great, mysterious, preposterous pageant of our sexuality.

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