In an age of endless hookups, where hook-ups happen with the ease of a swipe and non-traditional relationship structures like polyamory are celebrated, why do people seem to be so isolated and lonely?
Chalk it up to changing social norms or generational attitudes around relationships. But according to Justin Garcia, the biggest issue is that we no longer crave the intimacy we used to. “Our species is on the brink of what I have come to think of as an intimacy crisis,” Garcia writes in his new book. Intimate Animals: The Science of Sex, Fidelity, and Why We Die for Love. Garcia suggests in the book that intimacy – not sex – is “the most powerful evolutionary driver of modern relationships”, but that our appetite for it “has been suppressed and misdirected in today’s digital world.”
An evolutionary biologist and anthropologist who began his career studying hookup culture, Garcia is the executive director of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, a research laboratory known for pioneering work on sexuality, online dating, and aging. (Sex may actually improve with age, a recent report found). He has held the position since 2019 and during that time has also served as Match’s chief scientific advisor, where he provides expertise for its annual Singles in America survey. In 2023, Indiana lawmakers voted to withhold public funding from the institute – state senator Lorissa Sweet, a Republican, falsely claimed Kinsey was studying orgasms in minors – but, the following year, the school’s board of trustees voted to abandon its plan to separate the institute into a nonprofit.
Garcia’s book covers a lot of ground – the “cognitive overload” of dating apps, why humans are socially conditioned to be monogamous but not sexually monogamous, the science of breakups – but its main takeaway is that “even in this confusing age, where moments of human connection are increasingly elusive, the quest for intimacy remains the most human of human impulses.”
On a recent afternoon over Zoom, I spoke with Garcia about the biggest misconceptions about the sex recession among Gen Z, the assault on sexual literacy in the current political climate, and why an AI chatbot won’t save your relationship. It’s all connected, he says.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Wired: What is an intimacy crisis, and as you write in the book, why are we on the verge of having one?
Justin Garcia: We hear a lot about the loneliness epidemic. Research shows that loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Psychological loneliness becomes embedded in physical and psychological health. At the same time, there are reports that suggest that the number of psychological loneliness has not increased that much. But apparently its impact is greater and more people are paying attention to the impact.
For me, there is a big umbrella. We’re suddenly talking about loneliness at the same time when we’re all more connected than ever. That’s why I call it the intimacy crisis. We have more people available to us, especially through the internet and social media platforms, but the depth of connection, the quality of connection, is not there.
You suggest that intimacy crisis can cause “unprecedented and serious biological consequences”. In what way?
We are in a moment where the human brain is taking in too much information and too much information is dangerous. That’s what’s going on in the news, in Gaza and Minnesota, with climate change, with the global economy—I mean, pick up any section of the newspaper, it’s bad news. It affects our nervous system. Just as human beings’ romantic and sensual lives respond to the environment in how they form relationship structures, they are also responding to this current environment, which means there is a lot of danger going on. When the nervous system is primed in response to threat, it is not conducive to social behavior and it is certainly not conducive to sexual intercourse. If our nervous system is detecting threats from all these things in our environment, it has all kinds of effects on our relationships. And if we don’t have the safety net of deep intimacy, we can’t weather these storms effectively.
<a href