19: Why We Love, Lust, and Live

Fisher on the show. Helen is a research associate in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University and is chief scientific director to the online matchmaking site match dot com. She has written many best selling books, including Anatomy of Love and Why We Love. Thank you so much for green to talk to me today, Helen. I'm delighted. You know, I'm a longtime fan of your work, and thank you

and and colleague. And you know you wrote the forward to the MADI Intelligence book that I wrote with Glenn, and we were so giddy when you agreed to write that. You know you should have seen us behind the scenes. Were like little teenge boys. We both have across on you. So so let me start by asking why you or how you got interested in studying the science of love. Were you fascinated with love? As a phenomenon as a child. I looking back on it, I think it stems from

the fact that I'm an identical twin. And you know, as a child, when you're an identical twin, everybody asked you do you like the same food? Do you do you have the same friends? Do you have the same captain? And your team? So long before I knew there was something called the nature nurture controversy, the nature nurture argument, I was very busy measuring how much of my own behavior was biological and how much of it was cultural.

And so then I got into graduate school, and at that time, of course, nobody believed that there was any biology to behavior. So that was I remember having to want some answer incorrectly on an exam. I was supposed to say that there was no biology to behavior, and of course I said that even though I was an identical twin and I knew perfectly well that there was.

But anyway, I think that I finally came to thinking that if there was any part of our behavior that would have biological orient origins, it would be behavior linked with sex and love, because as you and I both know, as Darwin said, you know, if you have four children and I have no children. You live on and I die out. So the game of love matters. It matters to your heritage, to your past, to sending your DNA

on and to tomorrow. So I figured there's got to be some biology to these basic reproductive behaviors, and so I really started first with the question, you know, why do we bother to form pair bonds? I mean, ninety seven percent of mammals do not pair up to really young and people do. Why do we do this? So I started with that, and then I moved into well, okay, we formed these pair bonds, and I'd written a book on it, Anatomy Love. And then I said, well, why

do we divorce? And why don't we know? Chris? Why do we go back and do it all over again? You know, Samuel Johnson once said, you know, he called remarriage the triumph of hope over experience, and indeed, you know, that's what we do. So that led me into these basic brain systems. And then one night I was walking through a Greenwich village in New York by myself, and

it's so occurred to me. Could we have evolved three distinctly different brain systems from mating and reproduction that would orchestrate all of our falling in love, marrying, adultery, divorce, et cetera. And I began to think, maybe we've evolved three distinctly different brain systems that evolved from mating and reproduction, sex drive being one, feelings of intense dramatic love being the second, and feelings of deep attachment being the third. So then I thought to my said, well, maybe I

should people put people in brain scanners. I mean, brain scanning was just beginning in the mid nineties, and I thought, I said, well, maybe I could see the brain pathways for these different brain systems and then come to understand the evolution of them. So it was a sort of a long slow growth. Wow. Wow, Well did you, I mean, did you ever have any like personal experiences in love where you're like, I have to understand, like what just

happened there? Like, well, you know, like how personal is this? Everybody would like to think that somebody like me has a very personal thing. I mean, I've fallen in love many times. Human you're human, yeah, I mean I've been single almost all my life, but I've certainly lived with several men. Had five long and very powerful love affairs and deep attachments to them. And but you know, I'm not a psychologist, I'm an anthropologist. I really am interested

in the evolution of these things. I must say. You know, I'm now studying personality, as I'm sure you know, and one personality style is think with the dopamine system. And these people tend to be curious, creative, spontaneous, energetic. And I've read something recently that they also not very interested in who they are. They look out, not in and that's pretty much what I've done in my life. I'm

not terribly interested in who Helen Fisher is. And I don't really see any I mean, isn't every teenager interested in sex and love and marriage and courtship. I mean, I don't think I was any different. I had lots of love affairs. But I think the reason I chose to go into this field is an intellectual one that in fact, these love makes the world go around. I mean, it really does. So It's a powerful part of life in every single culture in the world, and it had

to live evolved, and that's what interested me. So why do you think they call it falling in love? Why is that the expression? And I think you're actually Euroscience research probably is consistent with that phrasing, right, you know, Rhantic love is like a sleeping cat. It can be awakened at any second. Attachment that other brain system is it grows much more slowly, and I think it's the concept is falling because it is so helpless, you know. Stendall once said love is like a fever. It comes

and goes quite independently of the will. And indeed it does. I mean boom, you can you can see I felt it in this second, you know, I mean one more I'll remember with one man, you know, I just made love to him, actually, and I sat at the edge of the bed and I said, I just fell in love with you. And I remained in love with him for over fifteen years. So it's a brain system and it can be triggered at any time. And I think that's where the falling. You know, you don't climb into it.

You don't mean to climb into it. Often you trip over it and fall into it. I think that's very true based on my experience as well. But when you say you just made in love with him, do you mean like just before this podcast? No? No, no, no, no no, no, before I fell madly in love with them. Oh gosh, you're saying at that time and you just fell I want to clarify that. I want to clarify that, like

just before the psychology podcasts got very coffin. Okay, so you know, I'll try to You've done You've done great and remarkable research looking showing why some people fall in love with others and the critical factors. Would you mind just telling a listeners some of those critical factors that have been shown to robustly influence attraction and love. Great, And you know this was very hard for me. I

mean I've worked on it for over fifteen years. What's interesting about it is I thought that the hardest thing I would do with my life is get people who were madly in love into a brain scanner and study the brain circuitry of it. But actually that's nowhere near as complicated as why you choose one person rather than another. And as you know, I wrote a book on it called Why Him? Why Her? And there's all kinds of psychological reasons why somebody falls in love with one person

rather than another. I mean, we tend to fall in love with somebody from the same socioeconomic background, same general love of intelligence, the same level of good looks, same interests, same social and political and not political, social and religious values. There's many cultural reasons that you fall in love with one person rather than another. Another is what people call your love map as a small child. We grow up and we have a lot of experiences that make us

like this kind of person rather than that. But you know, you can walk into a room, Scott, and every person in that room is from your background, same general level of intelligence, same general level of good looks, same basic kind of childhood, and you don't fall in love with all of them. So I began to think to myself, well, maybe chemistry, basic body chemistry can be involved. I mean, wouldn't natural selection be pretty shoddy if we hadn't developed

any patterns to make choice? That would have been adapted millions of years ago. So I began to look at brain, any trade at all linked with any brain system, And as it turns out, there's all kinds of brain systems, but most of them keep the eyes blinking or the heartbreating, they're not linked with personality traits. So anyway, four brain systems are linked with personality traits. The dopamine, serotonin, testosterone,

and estrogen systems. And I began to think to myself, maybe I can make a questionnaire to see to what degree you express the traits linked with each of these four basic brain systems, and then watch on this dating site chemistry dot com, a subsidiary match dot com, and see if anybody is naturally drawn to certain types. And as it turns out, there are patterns to culture, the patterns to nature, the patterns to personality, and there's biological

patterns to make choice. And here's what I found. People who are very expressive of the dopamine system tend to be as I mentioned, novelties seeking, curious, creative, spontaneous, energetic, mentally flexible. And they're just three that's you can't subscribe me to T and me too. I have dopamine pumping out of the kazoos. There's no question about it. I knew that whatever that means, what I just said, yeah, you know what I mean, You know what I mean,

exactly what you mean. And they're drawn to people like themselves. Curious, creative people want people like themselves. The second are the people are very traditional people, very expressive of the traits LinkedIn the serotonin system. They are traditional, conventional, follow the rules, respect authority, tend to be religious standard religiosity is in the serotonin system. They tend to be concrete and literal. They like schedules and plans, and they're drawn to people

like themselves. Traditional is drawn to traditional. In the third and fourth two categories, it's the reverse, the opposites the track people are very high testosterone. Somebody like Steve Jobs is very drawn to somebody who's very high estrogen. High testosterone people tend to be analytical, logical, direct, decisive, good at things like math or engineer or mechanics or computers or music. They tend to be skeptical, a very assertive, like to debate, and they fall really for their opposite,

the high estrogen type. The high estrogen type tends to be very imaginative, sees the big picture, quite intuitive, good verbal in people's skills, empathetic, trusting, and emotionally expressive. And in fact, the high estrogen goes for the high testosterone too. And an amusing current example of that would be Hillary and Bill Clinton. Hillary, because I think she's the high testosterone. I was going to say that I was going to

say it like like Margaret Thatcher and Bill Is. He certainly has a lot of testosterone in them, but he also has a lot of high estrogen. I mean, he cries easily. He's the one that cried at the daughter's wedding. He's a synthesizing, a thinker. The whole world knows. He can't stop talking. He's very verbally skilled, he's emotionally skilled. He's good with people. And so you know, as a matter of fact, you know, Americans wonder when we're going

to have our first president. We've had our first president with Bill Clinton, I mean, first female president Clinton. Oh my gosh, I'm gonna quote you on that. I love that. I even think Abraham Lincoln was very high estrogen, very skilled with words, very empathetic, very compassionate, very contextual thinker, wanted a consensus, had a hard time making important decisions. Uh yeah. So now, of course we're all a combination of all of them. So you, Scott, are probably dopamine

and what testosterone. Well, I think that when I'm hearing you describe all these things, I'm like, that's me, that's me, that's me. I don't know what to do now. I feel like you know, I can cry on a dying but I can also you know, I probably have too much dystosterone and I probably have too much dopamine as well. What do you say, Are you good at math? Okay, so here's the thing I'm not good at. I'm not good at visual spatial reasoning. Actually, okay, I'm Are you

tough minded? I do think so? I do think so. Yeah, the sastroone system breaks down into two mathematically almost immediately into two subtypes. I think very characteristic of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Steve Jobs is very tough minded guy, really big time tough minded. He was not visually spatially skilled. He was not in his basement programming. He's not a programmer. Okay, good, so we can separate that because no, I'm really not

very good at uh. In fact, on my IQ tests, my my distinction between my verbal my nonverbals IQ scores is like dramatic. Yeah, the same with me. You maybe be high dopamine and high estrogen, which is such a wonderful thing for a woman to be with the man who's not because they can actually notice when you're crying, you know that sort of thing. Well, so that's very

interesting because you know, you something I'm not. I'm not like sometimes I try to be like the bad boy, but it's really not part of my biology and I realize that. But you look at like, you know, this question of like why are bad boys attractive? But you often see a lot of bad boys, you know with the really nurturing women, you know, like they're really like the nursing types, you know, who want to kind of

change them or help them. And I think there's something going on there with this theory of yours as well. Why the opposite a tract there with testosterone and estrogen, you know, like maybe there is something going on there with like the attraction between the bad boy and the caring, nurturing female. They need each other. I mean, the high testosterone type is not very skilled with people. They don't have verbal and people skills, whereas the high estrogen type does.

They're going to have very good conversations. And by testosterone type has a very deep, narrow understanding. I mean, they'll know all about I don't know, this civil war. They'll know all about electronics, or they'll know all about neuroscience, but they won't read widely and generally where's the high estrogen probably knows somewhat less about an awful lot more, and they can have very good conversations. And of course the high testosterone tends to be tough minded, whereas the

high estrogen is very tender hearted. In many ways, they're complementary. In fact, I think these four broad styles of made choice evolved. I think the high testosterone and the high estrogen have very different qualities that it was very adaptive for them to combine those qualities to raise their babies. I think a different strategy would be the two high

traditional types, the high serotonin type. They're going to have a very solid relationship they may the rest of their lives, because everybody has got the right way to do something, and if you don't do it the right way, you're going to bicker about it. But in may, I mean they're going to have very strong values. The fact that's

the word they use all the time. They're going to have and so they're going to run a sort of a strict ship and perhaps, uh, you know, I have lots of babies that grow up to have really good values. So that's another alternative mating strategy which is adaptive. My question was always why about why about you and me? I mean, we're going to find people who are very hygd dopamine like ourselves, who are gonna like novelty, are gonna like excitement, are gonna like are going maybe more

prone to be promiscuous and more charismatic. They're going to attract people to you know, who might offer promisecuities there. So why would they why would that pattern have evolved to hygd dopamine type seeking each other out? And my only hypothesis, and anybody else can have one too, certainly, is that they may be more likely to have a whole series of partnerships. And with a series of partnerships, you're gonna have babies by more than one person and

create more genetic variety in your lineage. So I think we've basically about three profoundly basic styles of made choice. One that creates a lot more baby it is a different partners the traditional second type that creates a lot of babies with one partner with strict values. And the third type of measures really interesting variations to create a lot of variety and they're young. I love this, It's

a really good point. So I think that we could distinguish between the drive for the for a variety of novelty which you get from dopamine, and the those who have a tendency to cheat. And I think it's more the testosterone. Maybe it's both, but maybe like a combination of like maybe testosterone and dopam makes it more likely to be promiscuits and cheat. But I don't know. You know, you you've done a lot of research on why we cheat and the reasons. Why could you maybe give people

some teasers on that? Yeah, it's interesting, you know. On my website, I did a meta analysis in which I listed all of the reasons why people cheat, so somebody could go to Helenfisher dot com and get all of them. I'll put that on the show notes. By the way, that would be great. I think it's called infidelity, Who, when, Where? Why? I'm not first author as a graduate student, but anyway, bottom line is there's many cultural reasons why people cheat.

I mean, if you ask somebody why they've cheated, they'll say, you know, well, I wanted to get caught and patch up the marriage. I wanted to get caught and break up the marriage. I wanted to supplement the marriage. I get lonely when my partner goes out of town. I want to solve a sex problem. I want to walk a walk on the wild side. I want to be admired by somebody who If you ask people around the world,

there's so many cultural reasons. But one of the most interesting thing to me was the study in the nineteen eighties in which they asked you know why you were adulteress, et cetera. And as it turns out, fifty six percent of men in that study and thirty four percent of women in that study said they were in extremely happy marriages.

They weren't being adulters because of a problem in the relationship, because of various cultural opportunities, because of the bad child, but they just they were in happy marriages and they did it anyway. And that's what's so interesting to me. Because I've looked at adultery in over forty cultures. You find it in every single one, even where you can get your head chopped off for it. There's got to

be some evolutionary payoffs for this. I'm not suggesting adultery, but to understand it as a scientist, so I mean, we know some of the biology that contributes to adultery. There's a wonderful study that came out of Sweden and a few years ago which they found a gene in the Vasa present system and men who had two copies of that gene had the most unstable marriages. They weren't adulterous,

but they had the most unstable marriages. Men with only one copy of that gene in the Vasa present system had more stable marriages, and men with no copies of that gene had the most stable marriages. So we're beginning to understand a little about that. And of course, with these three different brain systems that I talk about, sex drive is an intense romantic love and the feelings of attachment,

they're not always well connected. You know, you can feel deep attachment to a long term partner and then swing wildly into feelings of romantic love for somebody else, and then suddenly feel the sex drive for somebody in the officer, even on the street. So bottom line is the brain architecture enables us to love more than one person at a time, and we're beginning to find some of the physiology connected with it too. So what would be the

payoffs of this? And of course, as you know, you and I and everybody else in our field have been discussing this forever, but I don't buy the party line. The party line is that men are more adaldors than women because they have they can spread more seed every time they have an extra sexual event, they can have a baby and spread more DNA. So that's adapted. Sure,

I can buy that. But then they go on in this argument to say, well, you know, women can't have a child each time that they have text with the new partner, so it's to their advantage to hold on to the partner that they've got. Well, I don't think so. First of all, who are all these men sleeping with? Now? This is a basic math issue to it. Either there's an awful lot of women who are faithful and a few women who are sleeping with everybody. Let's go back

in million years. Is it man and a woman. They're walking along in a little hunting and gathering group, and occasionally she slips over the hill and has sex with somebody else. But what is she getting? She may have one more baby. That might be nice, but I mean from a Darwinian perspective to create more genetic variety, and they're young. But the bottom line is if her current partner dies or deserts her, she may have an insurance policy somebody who will step in and help her out,

and she will certainly get extra resources. I mean, men around the world give their adulterous partners everything from beer and food and vacations and money and forms of stability. And I think that that that could have had real payoffs for women for many, many millions of years, hence leaving this tendency not only in men but in women to be the oldest they have. It has payoffs for

both sexes. It makes a lot of sense. And also, you know, I just think of how unnatural monogamy or how you know, how much that's really asking a species to have these three different drives all coalesque in one person and to be and just like for that to be optimally satisfying. Yeah, it just seems like a hard thing to ask out of humans. I think monogamy is natural. I think adultery is natural too well. Monocy to the

basic evolutionary site people means a pair bond. You can have a pair bond and not be sexually faithful to that pair. You can be socially faithful to that pair. But then that's why as you know that we call

it social monogamy. I mean, you know, there's two people living in a house and they've got children, and they go to work and they behave like a pair bonded animals and are but if they both around on the side, their adulters as well, So I have I when you really look around the world at all of the basic variations in reproductive strategy, do you would and unlessen you went and counted heads, how many people are living in that hut, in that tepee, in that igo, in that

appartment building, in that home. It's generally true almost everywhere in the world. We are an animal that forms pair amount. We are also adulterous. We are both. We are an animal that has what I call a dual human reproductive strategy, a tremendous drive to pair up and rear our trodim as a team, and also a tendency for adultery, divorce and remarriage. And then with their large brain, with their

cognitive processes, we make decisions about our lives. I mean, you know, and I think some people make their decisions more easily than others. It is my guess that certain personality styles have an easier time with with being faithful to a partner. Yeah, I mean that's gonna say. Go into the brain. Research on love that shows that your decision airs the brain kind of the blood full goes away.

Oh yeah, it kind of shuts down, right, Yeah, when you fall in love, but basic brain regions in the prefrontal cortex linked with decision making begin to begin to Yeah, the flood the blood flows out, just like you said. And you're very poor at making decisions. I mean, you see somebody who's in love, and you know she'll say to you or he'll say to you, Oh, this preven this person is proven for me. It doesn't matter that she's married, that she has got ten children, that she's

got three heads. We'll get through that. Well, we'll have a fetish for three heads. I bet there's a fetish for everything, right probably. Oh where do fetishes come in? Sorry, my mind just goes makes associations all over the place. Where where does that adapt it? What's the adaptive value of like liking to suck toes for instance? Oh? Boy, Well, I don't study fetishes, but apparently men have many more than women do. Uh, And what I recall and you might know more about this than I do. I would

get you guess that you do that. Why would you guess I would? Because you've written on this, written on a lot of scientifically scientifically exactly. No, I didn't figure. I don't know. Are you into I'm not really, no, neither of I. But anyway, you know, it's it's very valuable from men to pick up on any possible chance for sex. I mean, the woman is the custodian of the egg. We own the egg. You've got to inseminate

that egg. And if you miss an opportunity to inseeminate that egg, you may miss an opportunity to spread your DNA on into tomorrow. So is there really important though, like like who you sleep with, Like, isn't there a great value like of making sure that it's going to be good genes like as opposed to just having sex discriminately?

Could there be a good case to be made why it's not good to have sex even though if you're a guy to not have it indiscriminately, well, if you pective, if you can then walk out and never see the child or mother again, and there's no you know, there's no reproductive fallout on you, you know, I mean, I think that's what most scientists are talking about, the fact that, you know, in relatively indiscriminate sex on the part of man, if it has no well, if they don't get a

sex disease, of course, I mean, you know, and they don't spend a lot of metabolic energy on it, of course, and if they don't get shamed from the culture for it, what they've got to lose. But the bottom line is

men are much more fetishish than women are. And the classic, the classic hypothesis has been that they are more interested in sucking toes and other kinds of fetishes because sometime in their past sucking does or whatever it was, was linked with some sort of sexual opportunity, and so they have now gotten into their brain that these things are connected and that toasucking is going to lead to sexual opportunity and unconsciously, of course, leads to reproduction. So women

are far less, uh be leaguered by by fetishes. I think there are just as many women that go to furry conventions as men, but maybe that's a whole different thing. What kind of conventions Furry conventions where they dress up as you know, animals convention. Yeah, they're called furry conventions. I'll put that in my show notes. Yeah, it's a fascinating subculture. It's a fascinating subculture. It says a little bit like Halloween, do Halloween, where you could just be

somebody else. Maybe. I mean, I saw this TV special of all these different kinds of fetishes that some people have balloon fetishes, you know, And and maybe you're right, maybe at some point in their life, like the balloon preceded a sexual opportunity or something and they got imprinted or something. But right is fascinating. The human variation, you know,

is so fascinating. Human variation is nascinating. But I've always been interested in I've been really dedicated my life to why we're all alike instead of why we're all different. And here's where feelings of romantic love, feelings of attachment, the sex drive. We really all carry that those around in our head. How we express them is very different from one person to another and one culture to the next,

but the actual feelings are pretty much the same. Yeah, you've basically you've you've said at some point you said, as long as humans survive, these three drives will survive. I think it's a fear system. You know and the anger system. These are basic survival mechanism. Is a matter of fact. Uh, feelings of intense romantic love emanated from this reward system. The brain system for wanting, for craving,

for session, for focus, and for motivation. And that system really starts in a tiny little factory when you're in the basement of the mind in the ventral tech metal area, and that little brain region that really generates the dopamine to give you that citing romantic club. That little factory lies right next to the factories that orchestrate hunger and thirst. This is a survival mechanism. We know it from looking at the brain. So it seems like, you know, because

dopamine is all about the warning system. It's not about the liking system, right, opiates and all that stuff that's liking. But so we can, like, you know, dope being signals possibility of a reward, but doesn't guarantee that we'll actually enjoy the reward once we obtain it. So would you say that, like the attachment system might be the only out of the three that's that's more associated with the liking. Wow,

that's a wonderful question. You can feel deeply attached to somebody who don't like you can feel deeply attached to somebody, you know, maybe all grip good points. So maybe it's independent of all three, Like all three can I there, you know, only stay in the in the in the wanting system. But it could also you can also like it, you know. I bet there's lots of people who have lost for for people that they actually can't stand. I

wouldn't be surprised. I mean, certainly you could be in love with somebody who doesn't share your values, your background, your interests. I mean, I remember reading a quote recently, you know, by a man who said, you know, I am so I am totally in love with a woman in the office or name is Emily, although I know that we have no chance of ever spending a life together. She is an obsession, you know. Oh yes, So the obsession thing is interesting because the obsessions happen when it's

people we we we shouldn't like. Yeah, yeah, and well, obsession can be for somebody you really do like to. But you know, the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference. And when you're feeling attachment that's not in diferent sex drives not in different, and romantic love is not indifferent. There's the the emotions can swing from hate to anger, to jealousy, to rage, to curiosity to intimacy, but they're not indifferent. I like that a lot. So we talk a lot of in

society use the phrase animal attraction. Yeah, I mean, are we all animals? Like you know? So all these systems, even love, could be considered animal attraction as well in a way. Right. Oh you know, I've written five books and my very favorite chapter is in my fourth book called Why We Love, and it's the second chapter on animal magnetism, and oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. So I I maintain that the basic animal attraction is

romantic love. You know, when you look at prairie bowls, like a little field mouse, a little prairie ball, and you look at the males. When he suddenly attracted to a female, the amount of activity in the dopamine system increases by fifty percent. So these animals are feeling the wanting when they look at that individual. Now they're not writing poems, they're not singing songs, they're not building castles to a partner, but they're feeling that feeling of attraction.

And it is that feeling of attraction that you and I have come with our big cerebral cortex to call romantic love. And when you take a look at everything from elephants to to oh, there was one quote that I found from black rhinos, and it was a female black rhino. This is from an ethologist, you know, describing

rhino black rhino behavior. And the female was just standing there looking at the male, and the male was parading in front of her, and he was marching back and forth, and he was pulling up bushes and tossing them in the air and swizzling his little swinging his little tail around. And then I remember the quote looking for all the world as if he were dancing. And you see this

throughout the animal community, and even among birds. You see jealousy among birds too, and certainly anger and fear, et cetera. So I think that romantic love is a basic brain system that evolved along with the fear system, the anger system, and many other brain systems, but one of the basic survival mechanisms in all mammals that drive us to choose one individual rather than another. So what's more irrational or

crazy love or lust? Well, let me say this, and you go and you ask somebody to go to bed with you and they say no, thank you. You don't kill yourself. Well, some males, you know, do go crazy over that. But yeah, they go crazy. But that people in the crimes of passion around the world are not from the sex drive because they walked into their own bedroom and with another man and that kind of thing. So I feel like there might be a sex difference

in that. You know, for men, maybe getting rejected sexually might be like worse a feeling than being rejected romantically, whereas maybe the reverse is true for women. Do you think that's possible. I actually think it's the reverse. The data show that men are two and a half times my likely to kill themselves when a romantic relationship is over. Yeah, oh yeah. And it's been in books for a long

time by psychologists. Elaine Hatfield wrote about it. You know, I do this annual study with match dot Com called Singles in America, and we don't pull the match population. We pull the American population, and so it's based on the US. Since it's a representative sample. We got the right neurow, blacks, Whites, Asian, Latino, gay, straight, oral, suburban, urban, every part of the country, every age group, et cetera. And I've always you know, we have been busting myths

about women for fifty years. I'd like to bust some of these myths about men. And one we find this over every single year we find this. Men fall in love more often, they fall in love a lot faster because they're so visual. When they do fall in love, they want to introduce the women to friends and families sooner, They want to move in sooner. Men have more intimate conversations with their wives than women do with their husbands.

Because women have their intimate conversations with their girlfriends and or two and a half times more likely it kills themselves and the relationship is over. So you know, women are the sticky sex. They're the what sex, picky picky sex. So, I mean, this is so interesting because you know, people have so many of these stereotypes and these preconceptions in their head. You know, let's talk about the hookup scene, the hookup culture which has become very prominent in college campuses,

which are mutual friends. Justin Garcia, do you still talk to Justin? Oh? I spoke to him yesterday. Oh, it's so cool. Yeah, I know, I know he thinks very highly of you. Yeah, you know. He's done some interesting research showing that a hookup is never really just a casual hookup, that most men and women, you know, boys and girls in college campuses, really do have some sort of thing in the back of the head, the hope that they hope it kind of turns into something. You know.

His original study in Binghamton University, apparently fifty one percent of both men and women, when asked why they went into a hookup, said that they were hoping to create a romantic relationship. And with our Singles in America study, we did this same thing, and of course this was a national study of a much larger and more varied group, and I can't remember, I guess about fifteen to twenty

percent wanted to get to know the person better. What's interesting is then I asked the question, have you ever had a hookup or a one night stand that turned into a long term partnership? And every year I ask it, over thirty five percent say they've had that experience. And I think, just like what you said, you know, casual sex is not casual unless you're so you can't remember who it was. It's happened in the brain. I mean it triggers five of the ten craniallerves. You really see them,

smell them, hear them, taste them, and touch them. I mean, you know, and you know, any stimulation of the genitals can drive up the dopamine system and push you over the threshold. And tell me about it, Tell me about it. Oh yeah, well that's what happened to me. And of course with orgasm there's a real flood of oxytocin and vasi present, and you can get real feelings of attachment to the person too. So casual sex is not casual.

And you know I've often said to people is that you know, there's two ways to get the boy or the girl. Either you spend months discussing their college plans, or you get them into bed tonight and trigger these brain circuits for romantic love and attachment. And in many respects, I think this hook up culture is actually, oddly enough, oddly enough, I think it's part of them, something that I call slow love. I've come to believe that I've been thinking to myself and you as a as a

as a scientist. Also, I mean, what is all this casual sex about? Is it casual? What's going on here? I mean, it's a lot of metabolic energy. When you have sex with somebody, You're spending your time, You're spending your energy. You get your feelings hurt, you can get sex diseases, women can get pregnant. There's kind of just some reason for this. And so I've come to believe we are in an age of what I call slow love,

fast sex, slow love. It comes from a lot of studies that I've done, but one of them was a particular point particularly pointed to me. Apparently sixty seven percent of Americans are who are living with somebody are terrified of divorce, terrified of it. And so I've come to believe that what we are doing now is a long pre commitment stage before we tie the knot. You know, get to know them first with having sex with them. Then do go into friends with benefits so you see

them more regularly, but not as a couple. Then you begin to introduce yourselves as a couple. Then you begin to live together. Then you get a pre nupti just in case that marriage doesn't work. Marriage used to be the beginning of a relationship now it's the finale. Yeah, you've said a great quote. I forget wherever you said, if you don't want to get attached to someone, you'd be better off not just not sleeping with them. Absolutely, that there really is. You know, it's good to consider here,

you know, because casual sex very rarely is just casual sex. Right, you off really fast too? They could watch turn you off really fast too, you know that stuff by Gordon Gallup and others studying kissing and they asked I think over a thousand people, and I think over fifty percent it had, you know, the kiss of death. I mean they didn't even get in bed together. Just kissing the person one time was the end of it. But they were beginning to pall for somebody. Then the person kissed

them and they said, nope, I can't do this. So that was a deal breaker. Do their breath stink or something to the person's breath stink or something? Maybe yeh, mouthful and like a rhinoceros. Who's who's to know? Or maybe he was who knows? I didn't that wasn't been the academic article. But we've probably all been there at some point, you know, And yeah, all the way through courtship. There's these breaking points and escalection points. Yeah, that's true. Yeah,

I think something. I think both me and you are probably fundamentally romantics. You know. I really do have this sort of like this romantic ideal in my head about what things should look like. Do you think there's great value in like? Can that be dangerous? Like being too romantic? Nobody gets out of love alive unless you don't play the game at all. Nobody gets out of level life. Everybody at times of tremendous ecstasy and tremendous agony, tremendous despair.

I once there was a study of years ago and they asked, you know, if you've been rejected in love? And over ninety three percent of both men and women. They asked the question, have you ever dumped somebody who was really in love with you? And the next question was have you ever been dumped by somebody who you were really in love with? And about ninety five percent of both men and women said yes to both. And

these people were in college. I mean they've also now they got their twenties, thirties, forties, fifteen, sixties, seventies, and eighties to get dumped again or to dump somebody. So I mean, it's one of the most powerful brain systems the human animal has ever evolved, and it's gonna be with us as long as we survive. I think that's a very poetic, beautiful phrasing. So we can we can, we can wrap this up. But before we leave, I want to I want to make clear like I really

do believe you are. You know, I've heard you talk a lot, and I do think you're a romantic you know, and like even though you studied by all, what do you saying, I'm a complete room. Yeah, And you know, even though something so unique about you and you're such a leader, you're like, by far like a leader in this field is because you you bring in so many perspectives that most people don't and tie all together. So you don't just study the biology, but you study the

cultural aspect and you study contextual aspects. I have a call here. I think that you said to Krista Tippitt in a recent interview with her, you said, if I die tomorrow, I want people to really know this, that I believe this that the more we know about the brain, the body, and human evolution, the more we will come to understand the power of culture to change that biology. Biology, culture, religion are all part of humanity. They don't threaten each other.

They enhance one another's chills reasons I'm crazy about you. It is exactly true. I think I could say it even better than that. You know, people are scared of biology. The more we get to understand the biology, the more we're going to come to understand the power of culture to change that biology. They go hand in hand. Well, I say we leave on that note because I can't think of a better note than that. Thank you so much for having this chat with me today. Ippreciate it great.

Thank you too. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as an informative and thought provoking as I did. If you don't like to read the show notes for this episode or here past episodes, you can go to the Psychology Podcast dot com.