He Comes Next

The Woman on the Shaky Bridge

In 1974, two psychologists named Arthur Aron and Donald Dutton set up an experiment in a canyon in British Columbia, and the results still shape how we think about desire today. They chose two bridges. One was a narrow suspension bridge, only five feet wide and four hundred and fifty feet long, swaying two hundred and fifty feet above a rocky riverbed. The other was a sturdy, anchored bridge resting just ten feet above a quiet stream. As men crossed each bridge alone, an attractive female researcher approached them, asked them to fill out a short questionnaire, and then handed over her phone number in case they wanted to hear about the results.

The men who had crossed the terrifying bridge called her far more often. They were also far more likely to ask her on a date. The men on the safe bridge mostly went home and forgot about it.

What happened? Their hearts were already pounding from the height and the sway, and when the woman appeared, their bodies misread that racing pulse as attraction. Psychologists call this misattribution, or excitation transfer. The arousal left over from one experience spills into the next and intensifies it. Fear became desire because the body couldn't quite tell them apart.

Ian Kerner takes that experiment and turns it into a philosophy for the bedroom. Most couples, he argues, spend their entire sexual lives on the stable bridge. It's safe, it's predictable, and it's a little dead. Great sex lives on the shaky bridge, where there's enough uncertainty and charge and aliveness that the body lights up and pays attention.