Like so many single woman, friendship is an important support system for me. My single male friends, in particular, come in handy not only for the more banal aspects of life, like handy man jobs, but for the more social aspects for to participate in activities where "plus one" is far more enjoyable.
So it came with some shock in the past few weeks, that not one, but two platonic male friends have fallen into the depths of love and will be shortly walking down the aisle. Having become fond of not having to share my space with a significant other, it appears strange that they would so abruptly leave the club of the unmarried, but to one I replied, "love is a drug so enjoy the buzz". And actually that is not far from the truth.
Love is a Drug
Elation, mood swings, sleeplessness, and obsession—these are the tell-tale signs of someone in the throes of romantic passion. In the new book, Why We Love, renowned anthropologist Helen Fisher explains why this experience—which cuts across time, geography, and gender—is a force as powerful as the need for food or sleep.
Why We Love begins by presenting the results of a scientific study in which Fisher scanned the brains of people who had just fallen madly in love. She proves, at last, what researchers had only suspected: when you fall in love, primordial areas of the brain “light up” with increased blood flow, creating romantic passion. Fisher uses this new research to show exactly what you experience when you fall in love, why you choose one person rather than another, and how romantic love affects your sex drive and your feelings of attachment to a partner. She argues that all animals feel romantic attraction, that love at first sight comes out of nature, and that human romance evolved for crucial reasons of survival. Lastly, she offers concrete suggestions on how to control this ancient passion, and she optimistically explores the future of romantic love in our chaotic modern world.
Provocative, enlightening, and persuasive, Why We Love offers radical new answers to the age-old question of what love is and thus provides invaluable new insights into keeping love alive.
And How Long does Love Last? How about the Seven Year Itch?
In a recent 20/20 program, Ms. Fisher was interviewed about the myth of the Seven-Year Itch. Is there anything to the belief that spouses are most likely to feel the urge to stray after seven years? Actually, according to evolutionary anthropologist Helen Fisher, it happens a lot sooner, and the reasons for this may go back to the dawn of humanity.
"As it turns out, the standard period of human birth spacing was originally four years. We were built to have our children four years apart and I think that this drive to pair up and stay together at least four years evolved millions of years ago so that a man and a woman would be drawn together and stay together, tolerate each other, at least long enough to rear a single child through infancy," said Fisher.
Following the urge to find a new partner after that four-year period, she says, may have been a way that humans added more variation to the gene pool.
So there is an itch — it's just a four-year itch, according to Fisher.
"People around the world tend to divorce during and around the fourth year of marriage," she said.
But what about the myth of seven years came from — why seven years? One possibility is that it was adapted from an old wives' tale about poison ivy — that if you ever get poison ivy, the itch will return every seven years. But what Fisher seems to suggest is that humans lack the persistence of poison ivy.
So if the seven-year-itch isn't a total myth, it's just a little mistake in math.
