Why We Love (16 page)

Inanna, queen of ancient Sumeria, called her beloved “my fearless one / my shining one.”
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In the Song of Songs of the Old Testament, written between 900 and 300
B.C.
, the woman crooned: “My love is shining and ruddy. / He is the tallest in a crowd of ten thousand men / His arms are like rods of gold / His legs are pillars of marble.”
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And in a nineteenth-century poem by an anonymous Somali woman, the poet gushed, “You are strong as woven iron. / You are poured from Nairobi gold, the first light of dawn, the blazing sun.”

No wonder a man’s self-respect is more tightly linked to his general status at work and in the community.
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No wonder men are also more likely to jeopardize their health, safety, and spare time to achieve rank. Men intuitively know that to attract youthful, healthy, energetic women, they must try to appear fearless, strong as woven iron, as powerful as the blazing sun.

Women also prefer men with distinctive cheekbones and a strong jaw—for another unconscious reason. Masculine cheekbones and a rugged jawline are built with testosterone—and testosterone suppresses the immune system. Only exceedingly healthy teenage boys can tolerate the effects of this and build a rugged face.
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Not surprisingly, around the time of monthly ovulation women become even more interested in men with these signs of testosterone. Now they can get pregnant, so they unconsciously seek males with superior genes.

Curiously, women who are likely to get pregnant are also more attracted to men with a good sense of humor—perhaps because wit has been associated with sharper general intelligence.

Biologist Randy Thornhill believes that women express two basic preferences. Around ovulation they seek men with good genes, a remnant of estrus found in all mammals. At other times of the menstrual cycle they favor men who display signs of commitment. Indeed, when instructed to manipulate computer images of male faces until they found the most attractive image, both British and Japanese women preferred more masculine male faces around the time of ovulation and softer, more feminine male faces at other times of the menstrual cycle.
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New data suggest, however, that women without a partner still seek signs of commitment at ovulation.

To be expected,
all the time
women are attracted to men who are willing to share their rank, their money, and their position. In fact, women are more pragmatic and realistic when they love, whereas men tend to be either more cynical or more idealistic and altruistic.
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Perhaps this feminine pragmatism explains why women fall in love more slowly than men do.

Casual Passion

The sexes become more flexible in their romantic choices when they are looking for short-term love, such as when they are on vacation or seeking a temporary romance while pursuing other interests.

Historically, women looking for short-term passion choose free-spending men with resources—bestowers of gifts, lavish vacations, fancy dinners, and social or political connections.
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Frugality was not acceptable to a woman on a fling. But today’s women are wealthier and more independent than in the historical past and those pursuing casual passion are somewhat more eager to choose tall, symmetrical men with chiseled cheekbones and rugged jaws, men who are likely to have sturdy genes.
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Some of these women are testing their own mate value—seeing what kind of man they can attract.
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Others use a casual relationship as a form of insurance policy; they want a backup in case their own mate defects or becomes ill and dies. But many women also use casual sex to “try out” a particular person for a longer relationship.

Psychologists know this because women are less enthusiastic than men about engaging in a one-night stand with someone who is married or involved in another love relationship. Not only is this lover unavailable but his resources are directed elsewhere. And since he is cheating on his established partner, he is likely to be unfaithful to her as well. Most women don’t lower their standards for brief love affairs either. They still seek a partner who is healthy, stable, funny, kind, and generous. For women, casual sex is often not as casual as it is for men.
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When men seek short-term love, they tend to overlook a woman’s lack of intelligence.
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They also choose women who are less athletic, less educated, less loyal, less stable, less humorous, and of a wider age range.
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And unlike women, they may even be attracted to a woman with a reputation for promiscuity. As Mae West so aptly put it, “Men like women with a past because they hope history will repeat itself.”

As men think of committing to a long-term mate, however, they become picky about basic virtues. When it comes to wedding, both sexes are attracted to partners for reasons that arise, in part, from their primordial (and often unconscious) need to breed.

“Tell me where is fancy bred, / Or in the heart, or in the head? / How begot, how nourished? / Reply, reply.”
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We can answer much of Shakespeare’s question. A taste for symmetry; men’s love of youthfulness and beauty and their need to help women in distress; women’s attraction to men’s wealth and status: these biological predilections can potentially trigger the brain circuitry for romantic love. An element of mystery, along with similarities of background, education, and beliefs, guide our tastes. Chance, timing, and proximity can also play a part in who we choose.

But of all the forces that guide your mate selection, I think the most important is your personal history, the myriad childhood, teenage, and adult experiences that have shaped and reshaped your likes and dislikes throughout your life. All these combine to create your largely unconscious psychological chart, what is called your “love map.”

Love Maps

We grow up in a sea of moments that slowly sculpt our romantic choices. Your mother’s wit and way with words; your father’s zest for politics and tennis; your uncle’s love of boats and hiking; your sister’s interest in training dogs; how people in your household use silence, express intimacy and anger; how those around you handle money; the amount of laughter at the dinner table; what your older brother finds challenging; your religious education and intellectual pursuits; the pastimes of your school chums; what your grandmother finds polite; how the community you live in views honor, justice, loyalty, gratitude, and kindness; what teachers admire and deplore; what you see on television and in the movies: these and thousands of other subtle forces build our individual interests, values, and beliefs. So by the teenage years, each of us has constructed a catalog of aptitudes and mannerisms we are looking for in a mate.

This chart is unique. Even identical twins, who have similar interests and lifestyles, as well as similar religious, political, and social values, tend to develop different styles of loving and choose different types of partners.
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Subtle differences in their experiences have shaped their romantic tastes.

This idiosyncratic psychological chart is also enormously complex. Some people seek a partner who will agree with what they say; others like a spirited debate. Some love a prank; others want predictability, order, or flamboyance. Some want to be amused; others wish to be intellectually excited. Many need a partner who will support their causes, quell their fears, or share their goals. And some choose a partner for the lifestyle they wish to lead. Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, felt that love must be unselfish, filled with devotion for the beloved. But some are uncomfortable with a doting mate. Instead, they want a partner to challenge them to grow intellectually or spiritually.

Love maps are subtle and difficult to read. A good example is a friend of mine who grew up with an alcoholic father. She acclimated to the unpredictability around the house. But she resolved she would never marry a man like dear ol’ dad. Indeed, she didn’t. She married an unpredictable, chaotic artist instead—a match that suited her largely unconscious love map.

“Love looks not with the eyes, but the mind, / And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind,” wrote Shakespeare.
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This is probably why it is so difficult to introduce single friends to one another and why Internet dating services often fail: matchmakers don’t know the intricacies of their clients’ love templates. Often men and women don’t know their own love map either.

The Lover’s Psyche

Hundreds of psychologists have tried to understand the dynamics between romantic partners, and many offer interesting ideas about why we choose one mate rather than another. I will review just a few.

Psychologists Elaine Hatfield and Richard Rapson believe that adults express one of six “attachment” styles.
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“Securely attached” men and women tend to choose sweethearts they can be close to; they also make and keep friends easily. “Fickle” people get bored. If they win a lover, they become restless; if their mate departs, they pursue. Others “cling”; they prefer mates with whom they can maintain constant contact. “Skittish” types feel pushed and smothered easily; they like their independence and flee from intimacy and deep attachments. “Casual” lovers are not willing to invest too much time or energy in loving. They like dating, but reading, traveling, or working takes precedence over commitment to a romantic partner. And a small number of men and women are uninterested in romance; they make no effort to woo or retain a sweetheart.

According to psychologist Ayala Pines, we choose a mate who is similar to the parent with whom we have unresolved childhood issues; unconsciously we are seeking to resolve this natal relationship in adulthood.
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Harville Hendrix maintains that we choose partners who suffered similar traumas in childhood and are stuck in this same stage of development.
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Murray Bowen believes we choose partners who display the same level of “differentiation” or independence of identity as ourselves.
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We are seeking partners with a compatible ability to handle anxiety. And psychologists Cindy Hazan and Philip Shaver
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build on the theories of John Bowlby
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and Mary Ainsworth,
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proposing that we fall in love and form attachments that mirror the type of childhood attachment we made to our mother, be it “secure,” “anxious-ambivalent,” or avoidant.

Elliot Aronson
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would adhere to poet Theodore Roethke’s feeling, “Love begets love.”
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He maintains that some people choose those they think love them; this belief initiates a cascade of pleasant experiences that lead to the altar. Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedict are good examples of this; both fell in love with the other after hearing of the other’s romantic ardor for them. Theodore Reik believed men and women choose mates who satisfy an important need, including qualities they lack. As Reik put it, “Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are and, more especially, who you want to be.”
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There is undoubtedly some truth to all of these ideas. But they all stem from a fundamental proposition: we each have a unique personality, built by our childhood experiences and particular biology. And this largely unconscious psychic structure guides us to fall in love with one person rather than another.

Individual “love maps” probably begin to develop in infancy as we adjust to countless environmental forces that influence our feelings and ideas. As Maurice Sendak wisely noted, childhood is “damned serious business.” Then as we enter school and make new friends, we engage in infatuations that further mold our likes and dislikes. As we develop more durable love affairs as teenagers, we continue to expand this personal psychological chart. And as we ride the waves of life—and experience a few romantic disasters—we trim and enrich this mental template.

So as you walk into a room of potential mating partners, you carry within your brain an extraordinary sum of infinitesimal, mostly unconscious biological and cultural preferences that can spoil or spark romantic passion.

To make matters even more complex, our suitors are, themselves, enormously varied. Do you know any two people who are alike? I don’t. The variety of human personalities is remarkable. Some are brilliant musicians; others can write a touching poem, build a bridge, make the perfect golf shot, perform Shakespearean roles from memory, deliver witticisms to thousands from a bandstand, philosophize coherently about the universe, preach effectively on God or duty, predict economic patterns, or charismatically lead soldiers into battle. And that’s just the beginning. Nature has provided us with a seemingly infinite variety of individuals to choose from—even within our social, economic, and intellectual milieu.

And here is the focal point of this chapter. It is my belief that along with the evolution of humanity’s outstanding variety came the fundamental mechanism with which we choose a mate—the brain circuitry for human romantic love.

The Mating Mind

Why are we all so different from one another?

My thinking on this matter stems from Charles Darwin’s fascinating idea of sexual selection.

Darwin was annoyed by all the ornaments he saw in nature.
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Crimson ruffs, blue penises, pendulous breasts, whirling dances, melodious trills, particularly the peacock’s cumbersome tail feathers: he felt these seemingly superfluous decorations undermined his theory that all traits evolved for a purpose. As he complained, “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze on it, makes me sick.”
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But with time Darwin came to believe that all these flashy embellishments evolved for an important purpose: to attract mates. Those with the finest courtship displays, he reasoned, attracted more and better mating partners; these dandies disproportionately bred—and passed along to their descendants these seemingly useless decorations. He called this process sexual selection.