Understanding relationship requires understanding the inter-relationship of three organs: the heart, the brain and the respective sex organs (penis for the men and clitoris/vagina for the women). While the heart is, in this case, being used symbolically to represent emotion, the brain represents reason and the sex organs represent physical desire/lust.

For centuries philosophers, poets and behavioral scientists have, at times, left out the sex part of the equation (probably because of the general taboo on anything sexual) and it is for that reason, I submit, that we are all misguided. For whom else do we learn about the human condition and human behavior if not from those who write about it as well as from our experiences?

All too often we try to reconcile our understanding of ourselves and others by analyzing the heart and brain. Why did she leave me? Why does he drink? Why do we argue all the time? Why does he do all those jerky things? Why does she worry about money? Why does he/she cheat? Why do I have to put the toilet seat down? Any question you can imagine can best be explained by understanding the motivations and interactions of the heart, the brain and the sex glands.

This is profound and probably boring, so don’t feel bad if you move on to another endeavor, but just don’t complain when you can’t figure out why your life and the lives of your loved ones are evolving the way they do with seemingly little rhyme nor reason.

Everyone knows that we should think with our heads and not our hearts, however, one special thing about our humanity is that we do have hearts and try to use them to make lives and conditions better. That is a noble goal and quite often it makes the world a better place, but everyone knows of one case or another either involving themselves or someone they know where the use of heart over mind results in disastrous consequences.

The relationship you should have left long ago, the putting up with an addicted personality, living with a gold digger, the list goes on and on, they are all examples of where using the brain instead of the heart may have garnered a better outcome.

We can also count the many examples where by using the heart over the brain, we change lives, enhanced our own and all around made the world a better place.

It is using a balance between the two immense forces of heart/brain that helps us to navigate through the currents of life.

Where we often just can’t figure out why things turn out the way they do, or why people act the way they do is because we often forget to include sex in the equation. Many may think they include sex in the analysis, but all too often we count emotion as the sexual component of human behavior and it is so very different that we miscalculate our understanding of human behavior.

If you don’t understand that love and lust are wildly different, you miss the point. Don’t feel bad, because while it is easy to understand the difference between love and lust when looking at the words from a definition point of view, we can easily misrepresent love for lust and the other way around, and thus fail to understand certain behaviors.

So far we looked at the easy stuff that everyone knows. It’s the more subtle reasons that come into play that make understanding relationships difficult and sometimes impossible to understand.

Many of the complexities of human relationships have much to do with the sex glands or shall we say sexuality. A glaring example has to do with male older daters who would have a generation ago been very content to be in a coddled, lapdog relationship because their sex glands were no longer functioning. Once the advent of Viagra landed upon the shores of dating, they no longer had to be frustrated by henpecking women. The advent of erectile dysfunction medications brought forth what can be described as the third sexual revolution. The first being the  society accepting the promiscuity of the sixties/Woodstock era and the second being the liberation of women that very much coincided with Woodstock but had much to do with the advent of birth control pills.

The liberation of women along with the loss of sexual taboos have allowed the women to engage in just as much promiscuity and infidelity as the men. This revolution has not necessarily led to a better environment from which to foster intimate relationships, because it is no longer necessary to work out problems when one knows they can get milk down the road from another cow/bull willing and able to make the offering. I use milk here to represent both women and men offering white in color liquids to the opposite sex.

When you try to figure out what the hell is going on with your date’s/mate's behavior, just remember to include the sex glands in your analysis, or you may miss something very important about why they act the way they do.

The composer, the poet, the philosopher and the scientist who define human behavior as the sum of emotion and intellect miss the mark unless they learn to include sex and lust as distinct entities that often relate to emotion but are truly different and at times mutually exclusive.