Unrequited (33 page)

  95       
 
an increase in positive emotions:
A 2008 study looked at levels of cortisol release in women described as doing “a high amount of relationship-focused thinking” compared to women who don’t tend to think about relationships as much. The women who thought more about relationships had a higher increase in cortisol. See Timothy J. Loving, Erin E. Crockett, and Aubri A. Paxson, “Passionate Love and Relationship Thinkers: Experimental Evidence for Acute Cortisol Elevations in Women,”
Psychoneuroendocrinology
34 (2009): 939–46.

  96       
 
the heat of desire:
Ferrand,
A Treatise on Lovesickness
, 230.

  96       
 
cover and authority to successfully win over their love interests:
In the worldview of the Renaissance era, women were considered less rational than men and in need of male protection. Dressed as men, women could travel alone, bear arms, and interact with their beloveds with increased authority. In several of Shakespeare’s plays, female characters dress as men to pursue the men they love and take some control over the courtship process. Examples include Julia in
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
and Viola in
Twelfth Night
. See Jean E. Howard, “Cross-dressing, the Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England,”
Shakespeare Quarterly
1988 (39): 418–40.

  96       
 
her redemptive self-sacrifice for Marius:
Les Misérables
was published in 1862. Adèle left for Halifax in 1863.

  97       
 
where she would live for the rest of her life:
Adèle’s affect after her return has been described by Hugo biographer Graham Robb as “emotionless”; she would talk to voices in her head. Graham Robb,
Victor Hugo
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 475.

  98       
enter places otherwise forbidden to women:
My description of Adèle Hugo’s life is based on two sources: Robb’s
Victor Hugo
and Leslie Smith Dow,
Adèle Hugo: La Misérable
(Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions, 1993).

  99       
 
“she is in a long-term relationship with exactly
none
of the men she has pursued!”:
Tracy McMillan,
Why You’re Not Married . . . Yet: The Straight Talk You Need to Get the Relationship You Deserve
(Ballantine Books, 2013), 162.

100       
 
Straight women say they initiate about 40 percent of their relationships:
Catherine L. Clark, Phillip R. Shaver, and Matthew Abrahams, “Strategic Behaviors in Romantic Relationship Initiation,”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
25 (1999), 713.

100       
 
tease information out of mutual friends:
Stacey L. Williams and Irene Hanson Frieze, “Courtship Behaviors, Relationship Violence, and Breakup Persistence in College Men and Women,”
Psychology of Women Quarterly
29 (2005), 252.

100       
 
women engage in pursuit behaviors at similar rates to men:
Results of these studies are published in the following articles: H. Colleen Sinclair and Irene Hanson Frieze, “Initial Courtship Behavior and Stalking: How Should We Draw the Line?,”
Violence and Victims
15, no. 1 (2000); Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al, “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: Unwanted Pursuit Behaviors Following the Dissolution of a Romantic Relationship,”
Violence and Victims
15, no. 1 (2000); Leila B. Dutton and Barbara A. Winstead, “Predicting Unwanted Pursuit: Attachment, Relationship Satisfaction, Relationship Alternatives, and Breakup Distress,”
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
23 (2006): 565.

101       
 
while a man thrives on competition:
Why You’re Not Married . . . Yet
mingles evolutionary psychology with New Age gender essentialism: “The woman grounded in her Feminine understands that her investment in her egg is
way, way, way
bigger than the man’s investment in his sperm. Guys are sperm factories . . . if you let someone fertilize the egg, that’s gonna be eighteen-plus years of your life that you invest in that egg.
Of course
you need to be selective.” See McMillan,
Why You’re Not Married . . . Yet
, 70. Sherry Argov, the author of the “Bitches” series (
Why Men Marry Bitches, Why Men Love Bitches
),
also taps in to superficial evolutionary clichés: “Women need to understand that men love the ‘thrill of the chase’ and are highly competitive. They like racing cars, engaging in athletics, and hunting. They like to fix things, to figure things out, to pursue.” See Sherry Argov,
Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl
(Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2009), 26.

102       
 
to see if humans could survive trips to the moon:
Bergner also discusses a speed-dating study at Northwestern University that shows that eliminating even one minor gendered norm in courtship can have an impact on the male pursuer/female pursued paradigm. The study showed that when women were the “rotators” in a speed-dating scenario (they were the ones to get up and approach new prospects—speed-dating sessions almost always give that role to the man because it’s “more chivalrous”), women were more likely to feel attracted to more of the men. Giving women the approach role “eradicated sex differences in romantic selectivity.” The power to approach made women feel more confident and more likely to say they wanted to see the prospect again. Daniel Bergner,
What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire
(New York: Ecco Press, 2013), 43–66.

103       
 
Women outnumber men on college campuses nationwide:
Women get 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees and 60 percent of master’s degrees (at SUNY New Paltz, where the female-to-male ratio is 65 to 35, most of my journalism classes are less than a quarter male). Interestingly, attending a majority-female campus is linked to later motherhood—and increased professional success. A study by researchers led by University of Texas at San Antonio professor Kristina Durante found that the scarcer bachelors were in college, the greater the percentage of women who entered high-paying careers and delayed having children. Hans Villarica, “Study of the Day: Gender Gap in College Leads Women to Prioritize Work,”
The Atlantic
, May 7, 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/05/study-of-the-day-gender-gap-in-college-leads-women-to-prioritize-work/256795.

106       
 
Intense pursuit and expressions of need:
Evolutionary psychologist Marco Del Giudice hypothesizes that because males have less at stake, reproductively speaking, from sexual intercourse, males living under conditions of high environmental stress will show higher levels
of avoidance than females, which is part of a low-investment, low-commitment strategy. Anxiety, on the other hand, may be a way for females living under the same environmental conditions to secure and extract investment (attention and protection for themselves and their theoretical or real offspring) from both family members and sexual partners. Glenn Geher and Scott Barry Kaufman,
Mating Intelligence Unleashed: The Role of the Mind in Sex, Dating, and Love
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 103
.

107       
 
“pre-relationship” stalking as a strategy to win a mate:
See Joshua D. Duntley and David M. Buss, “The Evolution of Stalking,”
Sex Roles
66 (2012): 311–27.

107       
 
sexual infidelity, which could trick them:
See David M. Buss,
The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex
(New York: Free Press, 2000).

108       
 
engage in the world in a focused and secure way:
R. Chris Fraley and Phillip R. Shaver, “Adult Romantic Attachment: Theoretical Developments, Emerging Controversies, and Unanswered Questions,”
Review of General Psychology
4 (2000): 136–38.

108       
 
Men and women react to separation and loss:
There is an “emerging consensus among neurobiologists and social-personality psychologists that both parent-infant bonds and long-term couple relationships draw on the
same
attachment motivational system.” Behavioral and psychological displays of bond formation, separation, and loss are similar in adults and children, and these similiarities are reflected in neurochemistry and neuroanatomy. Geher and Kaufman,
Mating Intelligence Unleashed
, 242.

108       
 
“protest response,” activated when emotional attachments are ruptured:
Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon,
A General Theory of Love
(New York: Random House, 2000), 75.

109       
 
Brain scans of men and women who have been rejected recently look similar:
Telephone interview with Arthur Aron on March 29, 2013.

109       
 
are less extreme than criminal stalking:
Kim S. Menard and Aaron L. Pincus, “Predicting Overt and Cyber Stalking Perpetration by Male and Female College Students,”
Journal of Interpersonal Violence
27 (2012): 2197.

109       
are more given to experiencing unrequited love:
Aron et al, “Motivations for Unreciprocated Love,” 787.

109       
 
romantic rejection in both opposite-sex and same-sex scenarios:
See Cupach and Spitzberg,
The Dark Side of Relationship Pursuit
, 96–97, and Valerian J. Derlega et al, “Unwanted Pursuit in Same-Sex Relationships: Effects of Attachment Styles, Investment Model Variables, and Sexual Minority Stressors,”
Partner Abuse
2 (2011): 318.

109       
 
insecurely attached:
Dutton and Winstead, “Predicting Unwanted Pursuit,” 576–81.

110       
 
The level of hurt, anger, frustration, resentment, loneliness, and jealousy all contribute to the likelihood of pursuit:
Ibid., 581, and Derlega et al, 318.

110       
 
A recent major personal loss:
In a telephone interview on February 14, 2014, forensic psychologist J. Reid Meloy said, “If you trace back in time what’s happened to individuals who become very obsessed or have pursued someone to the point of stalking, you’ll see a significant loss in their life in the weeks and months before the behavior began. You see a disrupted attachment, and the stalking becomes a way to defend against those feelings.” His published research shows that 38 percent of female stalkers had suffered at least one major personal loss, usually a relationship, in the year prior to the stalking. Seventeen percent reported multiple losses, such as a relationship, finances, child custody, and a home. J. Reid Meloy and Cynthia Boyd, “Female Stalkers and Their Victims,”
Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
31 (2003): 216.

110       
 
unwanted pursuit is more likely to happen:
Research on same-sex unwanted pursuit shows that in addition to attachment style and level of investment in a relationship, “group-specific stressors (i.e., lifetime experiences with prejudice and discrimination among sexual minority individuals) uniquely predict unwanted pursuit behaviors.” See Derlega et al, “Unwanted Pursuit in Same-Sex Relationships,” 318. These findings are consistent with the “social ecology of marriage” theory, which holds that it is important to consider “macrosocietal forces and the ecological niche within which couples live” to fully understand how marriages work. See Ted L. Huston,
“The Social Ecology of Marriage and Other Intimate Unions,”
Journal of Marriage and the Family
62 (2000): 320.

110       
 
or grieving over the death of a loved one:
Fisher et al, “Reward, Addiction, and Emotion Regulation Systems Associated With Rejection in Love,” 57.

111       
 
be overly tied up in having a man:
See Robin W. Simon and Anne E. Barrett, “Nonmarital Romantic Relationships and Mental Health in Early Adulthood: Does the Association Differ for Women and Men?”
Journal of Health and Social Behavior
51 (2010): 178.

111       
 
it is a leading factor in suicide:
“Suicide Causes,” Suicide.org, http://www.suicide.org/suicide-causes.html.

111       
 
heightens the risk of illness or death:
See Pekka Martikainen and Tapani Valkonen, “Mortality After the Death of a Spouse: Rates and Causes of Death in a Large Finnish Cohort,”
American Journal of Public Health
86 (1996): 1,087–93, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1380614/.

111       
 
the protest response is linked to our survival instincts:
Lewis et al,
A General Theory of Love
, 77–80.

117       
 
the brain’s network for rage:
Helen Fisher writes that “love and hate are intricately linked in the human brain. The primary circuits for hate/rage run through regions of the amygdala downward to the hypothalamus and on to centers in the periaqueductal gray, a region in the midbrain. Several other brain areas are also involved in rage, including the insula, a part of the cortex that collects data from the internal body and the senses. But here’s the key: the basic brain network for rage is closely connected to centers in the prefrontal cortex that process reward assessment and reward expectation. And when people and other animals begin to realize that an expected reward is in jeopardy, even unattainable, these centers in the prefrontal cortex signal the amygdala and trigger rage.” Helen Fisher,
Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love
(New York: Henry Holt, 2004), 164.

120       
 
More than half of the women in my online survey:
In response to the question “In your experience of unrequited love, what
descriptions best fit your reaction?,” 55.72 percent of respondents checked “I felt like I was losing my mind”; 41.33 percent checked “I acted in ways I regret.” The online survey was launched on May 1, 2010. Results were retrieved on March 19, 2014, at which point the survey had 261 complete responses. See http://www.lisaaphillips.com/survey/index.php?sid=24932&lang=en.