The American Psychological Association has published a surprising statistic: 40-50% of first marriages in the U.S. end in divorce. This is not just an issue in America, but a global trend, besides the fact that those couples have chosen their mate freely and experienced euphoria.

Naturally, the innate duty of men and women is to continue their lineage by continuing their descendants. The duty is activated as young men and women become intimately attracted to each other.Once the two find each other and feel a perfect match, the innate duty drives the two to become easily excited. In such conditions, their affection suppresses their rational differences and induces them to become intimately attached and inseparable, which drives them to seal their relationship by getting married. Nevertheless, as the duty of the two is to deliver their descendant, this duty induces their romantic relationship to become rational not long after they enjoy their honeymoon. At the same time, their intimate attention is innately divided and shared between the mate and their successor. The splitting of attention that reduces attention will emerge regardless of whether the two have children.

Dividing attention between the spouse, as described above, will naturally occur as it is necessary to nurture their descendant; otherwise, the couple might be too busy together and neglect their descendant. Such a shift in attention induces the couple to become innately rational as the two interact. As it happens, the child-rearing tasks can cause friction and communication problems, making husband and wife easily critical of each other. Even couples who are not formally married tend to experience such communication problems eventually.

Without awareness of the above situation, the splitting of attention that reduces intimate attention to the mate can easily create a misperception of intimacy on both sides and create a belief that the mate has changed intimately. Such an incident might raise a rhetorical question: How can a deeply in-love couple commit to a lifelong journey together at their wedding celebration, trapped in conflict? In this essay, we aim to unravel this mystery in a way that will help couples uphold their wedding vows.

For a couple, recognizing the above intimate issue beforehand is crucial for helping them to avoid the intimate incident that can happen to any couple after they relax from their honeymoon. This topic is of utmost importance, as it affects countless individuals’ lives and even the social fabric, given the importance of marriage to society.

The above narrative might explain why couples, before their marriage, experience euphoria and feel compatible, but soon after their marriage, they can easily get agitated.

Given the challenges newlyweds often face—and the high divorce rate among first marriages—it is strongly advised that couples engage in open, intimate conversations about their potential differences in preferences soon after the wedding. These discussions allow both partners to identify and acknowledge areas of incompatibility while the relationship is still buoyed by euphoric love. This honeymoon phase offers a unique window for vulnerability and connection, making it the ideal time to lay the groundwork for long-term understanding. If such conversations are postponed, couples may be blindsided when the initial emotional high subsides, and rational engagement becomes the norm. Without this proactive approach, they risk encountering the kind of intimate friction that can erode the foundation of their marriage.

Biologically, all living things we see today resulted from procreative processes that preceded them. All living things, including humans, possess a survival instinct that drives them to find ways to thrive and remain together. Thus, the species propagates itself from generation to generation. In humans, this drive may be that individuals hold onto certain beliefs or attitudes stringently and seek to persuade others, especially their partners. This requires a sense of responsibility to avoid the side effects of disagreements that can evolve into conflict.

In the early stage of human evolution, the search for a life partner and the corresponding relationship between man and woman must have been driven solely by instinct. Divorce was almost surely rare. However, as humans possess a powerful brain, it is crucial to understand that a rational brain at some point in the past might have begun to influence how early man and woman intimately interacted. This interplay between emotion and rationality, between heart and mind, is a fascinating and deeply human aspect of relationships. It can induce joy and conflict, shaping the dynamics of our intimate interactions. Our emotional responses often determine the course of our relationships, underscoring the profound impact of our feelings on our togetherness.

On the wide side, imagine the relationship as an intimate journey as a single man or woman driven to search for an intimately compatible mate. In this quest, Mother Nature rewards them with happiness if they find a mate and engage in harmony. Those who fail to find a mate suffer great misery. This engagement in life, including reward and punishment arrangements for finding the best possible mate, is the core of living for any individual. This engagement is called the innate duty, a concept that illuminates the profound significance of a lifelong partnership.

In this essay, early humans are the primitive men and women who engaged with one another intimately, using their instincts. As the early humans also used their rational brains, they became modern humans.

Marriage is everyone’s innate duty, requiring full-time effort and dedication. This essay discusses the possible intimate pleasure and misery that arise when men and women relate to one another to fulfill their innate duty. It also offers a possible solution for a couple whose intimacy has been flagged.

At the start of the relationship, as members of modern humans, a man and woman tend to be exceptionally excited about each other. Passion abounds. However, once they get married, Mother Nature ignites the pair’s inner drive to become rational in nurturing their coming offspring to the best, independent of how vibrant the relationship between the couple is. Such a switch places the couple in a realistic, less emotional paradigm, as they must educate their offspring rationally. Unfortunately, seeing each other realistically can create intimate conflict between husband and wife.

In early humans, as men and women were guided by instinct, such an intimate switch as described above did not create intimate friction. Unfortunately, once brainpower engages modern men and women in relating to each other intimately, a conflict can quickly arise after they get married. This essay seeks to identify ways to build stable marriages by identifying potential intimacy problems and finding resources to promote sustainable, enduring, happily-ever-after togetherness.

To fulfill the innate duty of modern humans, along with the inner drive, circumstances such as the environment, rationality, physicality, sociality, and wealth conditions influence men and women in how they attract and are attracted to a potential mate. Consequently, how an individual intimately appears and acts can differ from his/her natural nature. Such improvement can strengthen their togetherness before marriage, but can create problems once they marry. To nurture their offspring, a married man and woman are innately driven to live realistically, so that they can see each other realistically. Such a drive between husband and wife to live realistically will happen anyway, whether they plan to have offspring.

In search of a mate, a young single individual uses their vision to determine what their future mate should look like or behave. This vision drives and motivates him/her to search for the best possible mate for life. To attract potential mates, his/her vision drives the individual’s innate power to improve physically and materially. This perception emerges as Mother Nature drives men and women to nurture their offspring to become the best possible descendants.

Once two individuals find in each other a perfect match and get married, their intimate imagination drives their innate duty to continue their lineage, inducing one to expect the other to do or not do what one believes is best. As it happens, delivering offspring takes (innately become) precedence over the romantic relationship or “keeping the spark alive.” The search for a mate and nurturing their descendants is the substance of this essay. Once a man and a woman find each other a perfect match and get married, they are destined to bear their successor, and this activity is called the marriage stance.

Mother Nature amplifies an honor-and-punishment scheme for men and women as they are occupied with their innate duty, which induces them to become selective in their choice of a life partner. This scheme makes individuals feel satisfied when they find a mate who aligns with their imagination, but they can feel miserable when they cannot find a partner. The urge to find a mate can prompt various physical and material preparations to attract attention and secure a comfortable future together. To drive such engagement, Mother Nature reserves the associated affection in each pairing stage for men and women to complete their innate duty. This type of affection is the innate power that has to become active at each pairing stage.

Just as a single man or woman searches for a life partner and finds one who makes him/her intimately attached and gets a positive response, such a finding triggers a distinctive innate power to become active and suppresses their unsupportive preference differences. This type of innate power is explained on the next page, which induces them see only the good things in their mates, and thus generates mutual excitement in the pair. Mother Nature innately assigns its assignment. This dynamic enables human evolution, the gradual responsibility of the two to deliver and nurture their offspring in the best possible arrangement. And the excitement as the two get together is the intimate support for starting the improvement of the species over generations.

However, the passage of time in marriage, particularly the birth of offspring, whose care requires a more rational, less passionate or instinctual approach, can cause friction in the intimacy. This marital conflict is endemic to modern humans and their rational mode of thinking. Primitive men and women, who followed their instincts as they engaged with one another, were unlikely to be trapped in rational problems visible to modern humans. The intimate transformation of the two as they nurture their offspring may explain why some couples feel compatible at the beginning of their partnerships but can become bored not long after getting married.

After exchanging vows to be together for life, the distinctive type of affection that makes the two intimately attached at the beginning of their relationship will eventually diminish, creating room for their offspring to be loved wholeheartedly. This intimate transformation can cause marital instability. To overcome such a problem, the couple has to accept that their relationship is entering a new stage of their togetherness, continuing their existence with a descendant in the best possible environment. Accepting such a change is necessary as the distinctive type of affection will inevitably disappear, no matter what they do. This type of affection will be elaborated on later.

The rational brains of modern single men and women form their subjective perspectives on engaging with one another to achieve what they believe can make an enjoyable relationship. In addition, the vibrant environment stimulates today’s humans to fabricate intimate preferences and drives how they should interact, some of which are moving away from innate duty. These efforts trigger one to become rationally creative in the search stage. Unfortunately, such creativity can create preferential problems that did not exist in early human intimate relationships. Such a preferential problem will be discussed at great length in this essay.

The intense desire to have a mate sooner drives a single young individual to engage in any intimate action to attract a potential mate. Such man-made intimate attraction is inducing their environment to become vibrant, but it can create an intimate fantasy for someone searching for a mate. Once two individuals connect intimately in such an environment, they are driven to experience intense euphoric moments together. However, once they get married, the newfound ability to see their preference differences, initially covered up by their affection, can create a stumbling block in their relationships.

The energy that powered early humans grow into modern humans is embedded in every individual and continues to charge present-day humans to move into the next generation. This energy is the innate power that drives individuals to pursue better togetherness and happy families.

In this essay, the intimate engagement between man and woman to complete their innate duty is divided into six successive pairing stages. In each stage, the couple must activate a distinctive type of innate power. Each of these stages and respective types of innate power will be explained below.

In engaging innate duty, men and women are driven to engage one another through intimate acts such as touching, praising, kissing, having sex, acknowledging, agreeing, rejecting, smiling, or gesturing. To drive husband and wife to relate in the innate duty, Mother Nature provides each individual with a distinctive type of innate power at each pairing stage that stimulates the two to engage in intimate acts, which can potentially induce satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

As Men and women engage in their innate duty, they follow inborn instructions embedded in their minds. Such instruction in each stage drives men and women to engage in different tasks with the same ultimate goal of continuing their existence. As described earlier in this essay, those tasks are constructed in six stages. Mother Nature gives men and women the power to fulfill their innate duty by providing them with reward and punishment systems that drive individuals at each stage.

Over generations, as social beings, men and women have created diverse communities, and there is wide variation in how they execute their innate duties in their respective communities. As a result, the intensity and variation of the intimate relationships differ from one community to another. Besides, in modern-day society, marriage is not just the emotional union between a man and woman, as it was for early humans. Marriage is a legal, social, and ethical responsibility that couples must adhere to. And where a couple can create another man-made satisfaction or frustration.

In this essay, to simplify the discussion, the following terms and definitions are used when describing how a man and woman relate to fulfilling their innate duty:

Closing remark: Modern humans’ brain power enriches and drives intimate relationships become vibrantly diverse. Nevertheless, once a man and woman get married, they are innately driven to nurture their offspring. As discussed above, such a drive induces the two become realistic about seeing each other, which can create friction between them not long after the celebration.

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