When friends ask why I like the book "Incognito" by Eagleman, I explain the writing gives a good sense of how much goes on in me that I don't know about and can't directly sense. The little book "7 and a Half Lessons About Your Brain" does similar things but not so emphatically. When a person reviews life lived, it can be difficult to deeply understand attractions and sexual history. I have read that humans were thought to be somewhat exempt from drives and instincts that many other animals use to mature and guide themselves through life. But biologists know that bucks are powerfully drawn to sexually ready does and male bullfrogs are drawn to female bullfrogs in ways I am not. Sometimes, biologists collapse life activities into just two: eat (and other sustaining activities like breathing and sleeping) and "procreation", making babies and raising them.
I actually know very little about how conception and birth work in humans but I am familiar with the basics. Even though I am way past optimal fatherhood age, I still respond automatically to human female form, skin, voice, movement and such.
The human reproduction process and drives work pretty well, enough that the total human population is almost 8 billion and has produced individuals that currently live longer than ever. Human reproduction has been going on for millennia. I don't think anyone can fault Christianity for being too casual or superficial about sex and reproduction. Ever since childhood, I have been impressed by all the rules and references to "Don't"s and "Nevers" that pertain to sex. Of course, the subject, the activity, the social atmosphere involved are important and powerful and life changing.
Just sex often creates strong bonds and parenting may create stronger ones. From Google:
Are childless couples more likely to divorce?
In the first year, childless couples were more than three times as likely to get divorced as couples who had a baby. After that, the 'divorce risk' curve flattened out, and after 12 years the researchers could no longer see a significant difference between couples who had babies and those who did not.Feb 11, 2014
Childless couples have more divorces - ScienceNordic
It seems to me that all adults have an immediate reaction of tenderness to babies and little children. New mothers typically have extra amounts.
Today's local paper has the headline "Wausau West girls prep for WIAA state wrestling meet". Especially in the nubile years of readiness to reproduce, clashes of bodies may mean sex but they may mean contest. The local university has a team of women wrestlers who up to now wrestle only other women. https://athletics.uwsp.edu/sports/womens-wrestling
You might want to look at Google results for Are there matches between women and men wrestlers?
I wonder if people are getting more aware of the power of sex and relationships. I started to write that there seemed to be a casual attitude among young people but I found that Google presented results in the opposite direction: more serious, more abstention.
