Sex, love, and attachment affect our health, happiness, and identity. How are love and intimacy affected by our biology, our backgrounds, and how can we develop an environment for it to flourish?

I’ve done a lot of reading about how long ‘love’ lasts: the being ‘in-love’ part, how that fades, but might, if you’re lucky and work at it, evolve into another form of long-term love. Or it ends. Well, apparently desire isn’t doomed to fade after three years, but could actually deepen and transform across a lifetime. It’s still a little taboo and certain aspects of this remain unspoken, often due to feelings of shame or inadequacy.

So, with my hope to bring clarity and courage to difficult conversations, I was joined by three wonderful voices:

Professor Francesco Bianchi-Demicheli, Associate Professor at the University of Geneva and a world-leading sexologist, whose work spans neuroscience, literature, and the psychology of intimacy.

Guy Brandenbourger, health advocate and founder of Health A Gesondheet Luxembourg - CAP ʰOR™️, who has made it his mission to put sexuality and longevity at the heart of public health debates.

Marie-Adélaïde Leclercq-Olhagaray, Editor-in-Chief of Elle Luxembourg, who understands from her readers that love and relationships are among the most pressing questions women, and men, are seeking answers to today. 

Attachment: The Blueprint of Intimacy

Attachment is the architecture of how we love as adults. Professor Bianchi explained that our early bonds set patterns of intimacy: secure, anxious, avoidant, or disorganised. These invisible scripts influence how we choose partners, navigate desire, and respond to closeness or conflict.

Now as children we don’t have much agency over the situation of family we’re born into. But the good news is that these patterns are not fixed. Encounters with secure, loving partners, or the deep work of psychotherapy, can reshape attachment.

Love Beyond the Myth of Three Years

Perhaps the most liberating truth revealed in this conversation is that the so-called “three-year limit” on love is a dangerous myth. Using brain imaging, Bianchi has shown that love can ignite neural networks across a lifetime. Passion can evolve into intimacy, companionship, and shared purpose.

Love can metamorphose and grow if we nurture playfulness. Couples who play together regulate stress, fuel creativity, and keep joy alive.

“Play is not frivolous,” he said. “It’s a survival skill for love.”

Sexuality Across Life’s Stages

Sexuality is not confined to youth. From puberty to pregnancy, perimenopause to andropause, hormonal transitions profoundly shape desire, mood, and connection. Too often, these changes are dismissed or medicalised without acknowledging their impact on intimacy.

Marie-Adélaïde highlighted how women, in particular, are reframing midlife. Financial independence has shifted dynamics: women no longer remain in relationships out of necessity, but from choice. Increasingly, they seek companionship without obligation: “not a nurse, not a cook, but a partner,” as she put it. Marie-Adélaïde also spoke about the clear shift for financially independent mid-life women to choose, possibly even marry, a partner but not live with them. 
Guy underscored why addressing these realities is urgent for public health. Longevity without quality of life, intimacy, and purpose is incomplete. His CAP hOR™ framework argues for prevention across the first 1,000 days of life, adolescence, adulthood, and senior years, and of course sexual health is part of overall health. Guy also spoke about the often very fixable issues of erectile dysfunction, which many men are too ashamed to speak about. And yet a large percentage of these issues can be treated. 

Intimacy and Passion through artistic endeavours

Professor Bianchi observed that society still divides pleasure into acceptable and unacceptable forms. We applaud someone for practising violin eight hours a day, but stigmatise the same dedication to intimacy. This double standard silences us, when in truth pleasure is not indulgence but evolution: our way of learning, connecting, and discovering meaning.

“We don’t just receive passion from the sky,” says Bianchi, “We create it, and we can recreate it.”

Beyond his scientific work, Professor Bianchi-Demicheli has also created TIAMOFORTE - a groundbreaking fusion of science, poetry, and music. In these poetic-scientific recitals, his words as a sexologist, poet, and storyteller intertwine with the artistry of a pianist, blending knowledge with emotion. The performances explore desire, love, and human bonds not only as biological or psychological forces, but as deeply cultural and creative ones.

Music, literature, and art, he argues, are essential in sustaining intimacy, rekindling passion, and expressing what neuroscience alone cannot capture. In this way, TIAMOFORTE is a living, real-time experiment in how creativity deepens connection, playfulness, and the shared ecstasy of being alive together.

And so hopefully you can sit back, relax and enjoy this show, learning that love can become a lifelong energy to be reshaped, reignited, and deepened. Attachment styles can be redrawn and redeveloped. And sexuality, in all its phases, is not a shameful secret but a powerful thread in the tapestry of health, happiness, and purpose.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/francesco-bianchi-demicheli-a5177535/?originalSubdomain=ch
https://www.linkedin.com/in/guy-brandenbourger-5b586228/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marieadelaideleclercqolhagaray/
https://www.elle.lu/fr/