If I do everything she wants to please her and keep her happy, then I'll have the intimacy（亲密） and sex that I want. I'll have a good marriage and a happy life. This is the refrain（重复） that I hear over and over from the men who come to work（使工作） with me in my practice. After all, happy wife, happy life, right? Wrong. Of course, the intention behind this saying is good.

  Who doesn't want their partner to be happy? But we misunderstand how to execute（实行） it. Because when you abandon（放弃） yourself in order to get love, it's an unspoken transaction（办理） that creates resentment（怨恨）, not attraction. So what do you do instead? Because today, as many as one in seven adults are in marriages with little to no sex. Now, for some couples, this isn't a problem.

  But for 100 percent of the men that come to work with me, it's definitely a problem. What I propose（提议） is bonding. You see, I've been studying bonding for my entire（全部的） life, first molecular（ 分子的） bonding as a PhD organic（[有化] 有机的） chemist, and now human bonding as a sex and relationship coach. I've noticed that there's two principles（原理） that we just never get taught, but they are essential for more intimacy, more trust（信任）, happiness, and yes, great sex. Who here wants that? You see, these two principles actually represent a paradox（似非而是的论点） at the heart of modern relating, a juicy paradox that when we learn to dance with it skillfully（巧妙地）, it's like magic.

  The first principle is creating a foundation（基础） of emotional（感情的） safety. Now, the people in the happy wife camp believe they're creating safety by keeping things happy all the time. But what this actually does is create an unsafe environment to be authentic（可信的）, and both partners end up worrying about creating judgment and reactivity from the other. Now, the second principle in dynamic（动力的） tension（张力） with the first one is the principle（原理） of a spark. Spark（火花） is about creating that sizzle, that mystery, a little bit of separation（分离）, that attraction between the two of you. You see the paradox here?

  How can you be at once both close and safe and cuddly and mm, and also separate and sizzling? Well, I'll tell you exactly how you do that. But first, you might be wondering how a PhD organic chemist like myself came to be studying relational（有关系的） chemistry. So picture（画） this. There I was in my white lab coat on a Saturday afternoon in lab. Yes, a Saturday afternoon.

  Very carefully pipetting yet another radioactive solution over and over again into a series of seemingly（看来似乎） endless（无止境的） tiny wells（井）. When the voice of my heart broke through, you're not supposed to be doing this anymore. I didn't want to believe it because walking away from a 10-year scientific career is no small thing, but I knew it was right. You see, I had never had a single class in all my years of scientific education in human bonding. I had learned everything about molecular bonding, but how to handle（拿） my own emotions in my partners? Good luck, you're on your own.

  How to communicate non-defensively? No way, we're not going to teach you that. How to have great sex? Absolutely not. So as a result, I was stuck in my head, trying to logic（逻辑） my way through life.