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- [00:00]
A
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- [00:31]
B
Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Dr. Anna Machen. Dr. Machen is a British evolutionary anthropologist, writer and broadcaster at the University of Oxford, best known for her research on the neuroscience, genetics and psychology of love. In this episode we discuss common misconceptions about evolutionary psychology. We talk about what love actually is from a scientific perspective. We talk about the unique challenges and pitfalls associated with dating apps. We talk about attachment theory. We talk about polyamory. We talk about so called sex and love addiction. We talk about whether pheromones are real. We talk about the effects of birth control. Dr. Machen debunks the myth of menstrual synchrony. We talk about the concept of love languages. And finally, we talk about whether having kids really makes you happier. So without further ado, Dr. Anna Machen. Okay, Anna Machen, thank you so much for coming on my show.
- [01:41]
A
It's great to be here.
- [01:43]
B
So we're going to get into a lot of topics related to evolutionary psychology. Love, romantic relationships, friendship, love in the context of friendship, love in the context of family relationships. Really, as you put it in your book, a a 360 degree conversation about love informed by the best science that, that we have. So I've got a lot of questions and this is one of those topics that is relevant to anyone who loves, which is hopefully everybody in the audience, probably almost everybody except the couple, you know, non anxious, non attached or non anxious, avoidant people. We're going to get into that sort of stuff. So it's great to have you on. Before we get into everything, can you give my listeners just a short summary of who you are? How did you come to be interested in this topic? What drew you to it and what you studied?
- [02:39]
A
Okay, so yeah, I'm an evolutionary anthropologist, which is somebody who studies humans, but I study it from an evolutionary point of view. So the questions are why did something evolve? What was its purpose? You know, what anatomical neural changes did we undergo to achieve that particular purpose? So that's What I do in terms of love, I kind of, with most things in my career, I kind of fell into it. And I did a very early version of my PhD, the evolution of social and sexual behavior. And then I went to work, work at Oxford with a very prominent professor called Robin Dunbar. And he employed me to do close human relationships within his social and evolutionary neuroscience research group.
- [03:17]
B
And he's the Dunbar of Dunbar's number.
- [03:19]
A
He is the Dunbar of Dunbar's number. So, yeah, our whole research group was very, in looking at social networks, and all my colleagues looked at sort of the macro side things, which is looking at social networks, healthy social networks and unhealthy, how they formed, how they decayed. And my job was to look at the micro level. So look at all those little separate dyads within that social network. So whether they be romantic or friendships or, you know, relationships with friends. And then when I started, I think I was a little naive about how complicated love was. And lots of people had sort of studied love in one area. So like the psychology of love or the neuroscience of love or, you know, the behavior associated with love. But as an anthropologist, you have to understand a human behavior at all levels. So that means that, yeah, my 360 work is really, I try and understand it at every single level, but when you try and do that, you realize how complicated it is. But it's incredibly rewarding to understand something which I believe really underpins our humanity.
- [04:19]
B
Okay, so before we talk about the evolutionary biology of love, the neurochemistry of love, there are kind of two obstacles that I want to puncture for people in this conversation, and they're ones that always come up. So one is, from an evolutionary point of view, the purpose of something is not necessarily the same as how it shows up for you in your, in your everyday psychology. Right? And when I learned this, the terms I learned for it are the proximate cause versus the ultimate cause. I don't know if those are. So can you explain the difference between those two things?
- [05:00]
A
Okay, so the proximate cause is what's happening in that immediate environment in your body, in your behavior that is causing something to happen. So let's say you see someone across a crowded room and the proximate cause of your behavior is, you know, you're attracted to that person, you've got a load of neurochemistry, your eyes dilate, you neuro, you know, noradrenaline floods your body, etc, and you feel that sensation of love. Okay, so that's the proximate cause. But the ultimate cause of love is an evolutionary explanation as to why love evolved. And love evolved for survival. But that doesn't mean, as you say, that the, the ultimate reason for love evolving is necessarily going to be the explanation for your behavior in that moment that I'm falling in love with this person because it's absolutely critical for my survival in this moment. Because it probably isn't, to be honest. Love as a whole is critical for your survival. And the ultimate reason it evolved was survival. But that doesn't touch on why people necessarily do it today.
- [05:58]
B
That's right, yeah. So when you see that hot person across the bar and your whole body lights up with attraction, the reason for that evolutionarily is because the people who had that feeling were more likely to replicate their genes and so forth. But that doesn't mean you're thinking about making a baby in that moment.
- [06:17]
A
Exactly. There was lots of reasons why evolution has, is driving you to do things, but it doesn't mean you necessarily follow that evolutionary path to its end. Exactly. Children is the perfect example. All our, all our mate choice behavior is predicated on the fact that you are looking for a reproductive partner, because that's the evolutionary cause. That's the ultimate cause. But you might be sitting there thinking, absolutely don't want children. And absolutely that's fine. It just means. But your behavior is being driven to find a reproductive partner.
- [06:45]
B
Right. And then the second thing is, you know, when I took philosophy of science in college, we would talk about multiple levels of explanation for the same phenomenon. So when we use the language of love, we're thinking at the level of emotion in psychology. But everything we can describe in the language of psychology and emotion, you can also describe in the language of neurochemistry. So let me just pull one sentence from your book that you know, is likely to trip this wire for the people that haven't done the proper recalibration. So you write, for instance, at its most basic level, love is biological bribery. It is a set of neurochemicals which motivate you to. Motivate you to, and reward you for commencing relationships with those in your life who you need to cooperate with. Friends, family, lovers, the wider community, and then work to maintain them. So some people will hear that and say, oh my God, is she just reducing love to a set of neurochemical, you know, relationships? Like, is that all? What is she some kind of robot? Is she a psychopath? But no, you're describing these two things are not incompatible. Love is what it is emotionally and psychologically in all its richness and all its poetry. It can also be described at the level of neurochemistry. Those two things aren't opposites. They're two different layers of explanation for the same thing.
- [08:09]
A
Absolutely. And we, we refer to that as Y, sort of the level of explanation. So if we ask the question what is love? Then one of the answers to that is its biological bribery. It's this set of neurochemistry. But another answer to that is the psychological explanation with which is, it's a form, it's attachment. There's the neural explanation, which is about a set of activations in your brain. There's the physiological explanation, which is about what happens in things like your heart rate and your body temperature and your blood pressure. And then there's obviously the cultural explanation and the explanations we found in art and your individual explanation for what love is. And all of those are right. But that's why love, so complicated is there isn't a single answer to exists at many multiple levels. And, and my role is to try and answer the question at all those multiple levels and then you put them all together. And that's why I wrote my book, because most books on love give you one answer to the question what is love? And it might be the psychological answer, which is, you know, it's, it's a, for its attachment or you know, some people talk about it in terms of emotion. I argue it's not an emotion actually, but, but you know, that's the psychological answer. But actually I think to truly understand ourselves, you have to understand it at all these different levels of explanation. So no, I'm not a cold hard scientist saying that's all love is. Love is multi layered, multi complex. And also you will have your own answer to the question what is love? Which is what I think is, is so wonderful about studying it is everybody has their own answer to that question and all of those are right.
- [09:38]
B
So when you say love isn't an emotion, what do you mean by that?
- [09:42]
A
Okay, so love emotions evolved to be short term responses to something in the environment which you either need to pay attention to because it's a threat, or you pay attention to it because it's going to bring you some form of benefit. So if we think of happiness, you know, happiness, we're not all walking around in a state of happiness the entire time. But when we feel happy, that's because we're doing something which is benefiting us in some way. If you feel disgust, let's say there's some rotten food in front of you and you feel disgust, what that's going to do is make you averse to eating the food, but you don't walk around in a state of disgust the entire time. So they're very short lived emotions. And love is too complex and too enduring to be in emotion. The closest we can say it is, is actually love is a need more akin to things like hunger and thirst and trying to find food and water. So it's, it's a physiological need. Some people have heard of the pyramid of needs, which is, which at the moment places love at the psychological level. As a psychological need. Actually, it's actually a physiological need. So if you don't have love in your life in the same way that you don't have water, you don't have food, you get that feeling of craving it and you will go and find it because it's so critical to your survival. So we don't say that love is an emotion any longer because it's too complex. It also involves lots of emotions in itself. So it's definitely not a primary emotion, even not a secondary emotion. It's too, because it involves too many emotions in itself. So we say it's a need akin to water and food. And it's. If we look at the neural pattern of love in the brain, it closely resembles the dopaminergic system. It has some extra bits activating as well. But that circuit within your brain, which is actually your circuit of motivation. And so the closest thing we can say about love is it's a need and it's a motivational need. It points you towards something that you really need in your environment to survive.
- [11:44]
B
Okay, so that's interesting. And not. That wouldn't be obvious to me. Another question in defining love is we talk about, we use the same word, love to describe romantic love. The love you can have for your friends, the love you have for your family. Is that just an artifact of our arbitrary choice of language here or is there actually something common, a common thread between the love you have for, say, your romantic partner, your brothers and sisters and your friends, and if so, what is the actual commonality between, between those things?
- [12:23]
A
Okay, it is partly down to our language. It's an artifact of that because there are many languages which have many, many more words for love and they kind of divide it down. So if you think of sort of the Greek system, there are seven words for love and they refer to, you know, Platonic love and they refer to romantic love and they refer to, you know, love of friends, et cetera, et Cetera, we do have a very inadequate language to describe love. We have this one word which isn't particularly helpful. But, yes, there are common threads underpinning all love, and the main one is the neurochemistry. So people always think that the basic neurochemistry of love differs between different sorts of love. It doesn't. It's exactly the same. So the four neurochemicals that underpin love, which are oxytocin and dopamine, serotonin and beta endorphin, underpin all forms of love. Obviously, when we have romantic love in the mix, we also add the sex hormones to that particular cocktail. But apart from that, all forms of love have exactly the same neurochemistry. And I think that's something that some people don't realize. What differs between them, if we're talking about the neuroscience, is the activations in the brain and the areas of the brain that are activated when you're in a particular form of love.
- [13:33]
B
So it seems like love and sexual attraction are just two totally different. They have to be.
- [13:38]
A
They're completely separate. They're completely separate things. Yeah. And one can exist without the other, obviously.
- [13:44]
B
So the phrase love at first sight, then is just B.S. this is just. I mean, how could you possibly have love at first sight as opposed to physical attraction at first sight?
- [13:54]
A
You're absolutely right. Love at first sight doesn't exist. It's a. It's. It's a myth. You're right. What you're actually feeling is lustful attraction to somebody. Love is a much deeper, more intense experience, which isn't there initially. It's underpinned by. So attraction is underpinned by oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin. Love is underpinned by beta endorphin, essentially. And it's also, you know, love. We would say the most intense loves are attachment relationships. You don't perform an attachment the moment you clap eyes on someone across the room. So there are lots of differences between that attraction, step, age and the love that comes later on. So, yes, love at first sight doesn't exist. People talk about it, I think, because they, they. Yeah, they. They misconstrue that intense feeling, that chemical feeling that you get when you first are attracted to somebody with being love. But it's not the same sensation.
- [14:48]
B
So what explains the ubiquity of love at first sight as a meme in the culture? I mean, going back to Shakespeare and. And before. Is it that. Is it just that that's an interesting and unrealistic Fantasy that, that that is good for entertainment value? Or is it that love. People used to think of love as attraction and the definition of love has changed over time.
- [15:14]
A
No, it's not the latter. It's actually a study was done a few years ago which was quite interesting looking into when. When do people, why do people say love at first sight? Is there a nature of the particular relationships which, where people refer to love at first sight? And actually what they found was first of all, there is a sort of person who will quite regularly say the sensation they've had was love at first sight. And every now and then that will coincide with a relationship that becomes long term. So they actually say, so it's just actually a probability game of eventually I'll say it and it will be to the person that I am in a long term relationship with. Secondly, lots of people say it in hindsight and it's kind of, we're not, our memories are not the most reliable things. And so when you ask someone a few years down the line, you know, what was that sensation when you first saw your partner? Oh, it was love at first sight. Generally the memory is misconstrued. And secondly, there is a relationship between people who say it and people who are actually trying to shore up their relationship. So they will say it because it sounds like, you know, it's a compliment to the other person in the relationship. It's saying, look, our relationship was destined from the moment it started. So there's lots of correlates in relation to people's behavior to not having the best, most reliable memory. And also if you say it often enough, one day it will correlate with the relationship that ends up being long term.
- [16:33]
B
That makes sense because I, you know, I remember feeling attraction at first sight to my fiance that later became love. And I, I'll, I'll tell her that. And she's like, yeah, like, how could you ever have love at first sight? It doesn't even really make sense. But yeah, it would make sense that the type of person who says that eventually does hit the right person and then, and then you get that. Yeah, but I guess, you know, does that explain the ubiquity of it in movies, for instance, in stories?
- [17:02]
A
I think so, because it's a bit fairy tale, isn't it? I think, I mean, it's certainly something that's very much a Western phenomenal phenomenon. There are many cultures where in fact love at first sight would be a horrific incidence. There are many cultures where in fact experiencing love before, for example, you marry is not something that we would. We would want to happen then. Actually, you fall in love after you marry. It's not the basis for marriage. So it's very much a Western concept. It kind of goes on along the whole romantic trope of there being the one that you fall in love at first sight with the one. And it's that romantic Disney story. And I think people like the idea of that kind of bolt of lightning happening. Unfortunately, it's not the most helpful trope because we get quite a lot of people who think that's what has to happen on your first date for this date to be worth pursuing. And that's a bit of a shame, because actually there are many relationships which did not start with the bolt of lightning. They have a slow burn, and actually they're very successful.
- [17:58]
B
Yeah, that's, you know, the most interesting thing to me, as a very American Western person, has been watching Bollywood movies as an adult. So, like, the. The shape of the love stories are often just very different because there's totally different baked in assumptions about love and about marriage and. And about a child's relationship to their parents than we have in individualistic Western cultures. Like, for instance, there's one movie called Rabna Bana di Jodi. I'm probably mispronouncing it, but very popular Bollywood movie where a father asks her daughter on his deathbed to marry his top employee because he knows that employee is a solid man. He'll have a good job, he's honorable, he'll be a good husband. She's not in love with him at all. She's not even attracted to him. Like, not. Not anything. But out of pure loyalty to her father, she marries him, and they have an unhappy. What we would say in the west was like an unhappy marriage for years. And then he develops an alternate identity. He poses as someone else, and she falls in love with his alternate identity, not knowing that it's her husband. And then at the end, he reveals that this cool guy he's invented is actually the boring old husband. And then they fall in love. Right. And so it's just like a very. Like, the whole notion in a Western movie that you would even marry someone out of loyalty to your father is almost ridiculous on its face. Like, people just wouldn't even accept the premise of the movie. But I think that's. It's very interesting to. We can be a little bit. Especially because America so much dominates entertainment. Even, like, you know, Hollywood movies are popular around the world. We can look at that template as if it's as if that's the only way human nature could arrange love. But it's actually not true.
- [19:52]
A
No, absolutely. And one of the other things that really fascinates me is how your culture really impacts how you define love. So again, I write about this in the terms of. It's highly culturally specific how you define love. So in the west, we do, we have a romantic definition of love, you know, and it's, it's positive, it's happy, it's individualistic, it's, as I said, it's about the one, it's about the bolt of light. And actually, if we go to other cultures, you can end up with negative definitions of love where it's, it's more about self sacrifice, it's more about unrequited love, it's about pain. Or you might go to other cultures where romantic love is actually sort of positive. Yes. In terms of family. So you marry, you find that kind of love as, as, as a commitment to your family, as you said in the Bollywood movie. Or it might be more spiritual, it might be something that, that you find love, but it's through the love of God. So actually, how you define romantic love is really powerful in terms of how you view that in your life. It's one of the most powerful things that impacts your personal definition of love.
- [20:56]
B
So I'm curious, what do you see happening right now in the modern love landscape, let's call it. And I'm thinking disproportionately about young people, single people, people that are looking for love. You know, it seems to me they're encountering or they're unknowing guinea pigs in a kind of, the kind of experiment of rapid technological progress. You know, we're in. I mean, there's so many threads to pull on here. One is like people are having babies less and less. There's a fertility decline all around the world. What the conventional step progress in life from like, you know, for a long time it's just get married when you're young and immediately begin having kids. Many innovations messed with that, tinkered with that. Whether you think those are good or bad is a separate question. But obviously birth control, the pill availability and legality of abortions, the just it being normal to be a working woman, the allowing women into the workplace, all of these things really shook up what was a stable norm for a long time. And then you've got now dating apps, you've got polyamory, which I want to talk to you about because you've got some controversial thoughts about that what do you see as the biggest or newest challenges facing young people looking for love today that were not challenges for our parents or our grandparents?
- [22:31]
A
I think mainly they've been kind of sold a little bit of a pup when it comes to how you find that partner. And obviously in the old days with, with our parents and grandparents and indeed myself, I, I met my husband in the old fashioned way. I met him in person, you know, we met at work, we went on a date, you know, and we met that way. And we've now got this, this plethora of, of dating apps, of, of digital platforms which have basically said, okay by the fact they're called dating apps. You know, we will help and we will help you find a successful relationship. And unfortunately they, they aren't really fit for purpose in doing that. And what the stage we're at at the moment, certainly with the people who approach me when I give public talks, is that people are becoming very demoralized and very frustrated with using dating apps to try and achieve love. And the main reason for that from, from my perspective, from someone who works in human behavior, is they've not been designed to work in concert with the way we actually find long term partners. They've been designed from first principles of more tech, first principles of algorithms and what works well in AI, rather than saying, well, what's the tool we can give people that runs alongside their natural abilities to find a date. Because if we look at romantic love, romantic love is half a million years old. And our brains have been evolving for those half a million years to be really quite good at spotting who is a good mate for you. And we have the most amazing algorithm on our head that takes in so much information. A lot of it's sensory, you're not even aware you're doing it. To go into that algorithm to work out whether or not this person you spotted across the bar is somebody it's worth going to have a chat with. Unfortunately, the way dating apps have gone, particularly those that are based very much on visual images and really very little other information, is they actually handicap your brain. They make it much harder for your brain to take a choice. And there's several reasons for that. First of all, as I said, the first information you get about a potential data sensory. So you're not aware you're getting it and you're using all those sensory modalities to take in that information, particularly your visual, auditory and olfactory. So you're taking in all of that information when all you've got is an image and it's not even moving. You are cutting down all that sensory information so much. Your, your algorithm is screaming with a lack of information. It's like there's literally nothing I've got here. Secondly, the neurochemistry that's released when you are in person with, with somebody, which is there to help you. So oxytocin makes you more confident, dopamine gives you motivation. Neither of those things are released on a dating app. So again, you are not being given any help to be this confident, motivated person who's going to find this date. Thirdly, the choice, particularly if you are female and particularly if you are good looking, whether you're male or female, is enormous. And we then get into the paradox of choice, which is your brain has not evolved to be able to take a decision out of all those people. So what you actually end up doing is not taking a decision and constantly swiping and never committing to actually one particular person, for example. And that makes it much more difficult. Finally, in terms of visual prompts on these, on these apps, how somebody looks is what we prioritize in a short term relationship. Because particularly if you're a woman, how somebody looks, as in how attractive they are, is linked to the power of their genes, the health of their genes. And particularly if you're a woman in a short term relationship, if you were to become pregnant from this person, and again, this is an ultimate explanation, but if you became pregnant from that person, all you would get from that, that father would be his genes. So you want them to be really, really good. So you prioritize looks and short term relationships. In long term relationships, whether you're a man or a woman, looks come quite a way down the list in terms of long term priorities. Obviously, it might be the looks that first draw you in, or you might be the slow burn. You might initially have not found that person physically attractive. But there's lots of other things. The top one for men and women is kindness. But there's things like your personality, your values, your creativity, your sense of humor. All of these things are more important than how you look. But because those apps are based on images, they, they ultimately become mostly hookup apps because that's, that's, that's the way they're biasing you towards picking a partner. So they're not helpful if, if actually what you want to do is find love. They handicap your brain, they make it much, much harder, and they make you prevaricate more. That makes you not take a decision. And what we've actually found is it becomes a game a little bit and people start to gamify, and it's about actually catching the potential mate out rather than necessarily being truthful about who you are. It's about catching them out and playing the game. And that's a real pity, because if you're looking for love, to you, it's more serious than a game. It's not a game. It's actually something that's. That's something that's really important and serious to you. So apps aren't going to go away, but we have to work and find an app that, that works in concert with the human brain and also an app that encourages people to see it more as an introductory tool. So this app is going to introduce you to some people, but the dating bit of it has to happen in person, right?
- [27:57]
B
That's a, That's a really interesting way to frame it because that, I agree with you. They're not going anywhere. And I think, you know, it's easy to point out all the problems with a tool and then just like, reject it wholesale. But then the more interesting thing is, okay, how do we use this tool, knowing what its weaknesses are? Try to correct for it with knowledge and like, you know, try to use it in a way to, to our advantage. So, like, the first thing you said, which is that you don't. You're getting very little data about a person from their profile. Deceptively little, because that's, that's the crucial thing. If you knew, if you knew you were only getting a tiny bit of data, then I guess you'd be armed with the ability to respond in the right way. You would say, okay, you know, I don't know if I'm attracted to this person, but I know I'm not getting enough information to know if I'm attracted to this person. However, I think the way people actually react is they assume they're getting, like, the whole picture somehow, right? And so they make snap judgments and they. So the lesson of that would seem to be if you're serious about meeting someone, you should broaden the scope of people you're. You'd be willing to go on one date with. Even people that you might not be super attracted to based on their profile. That would be the. That would be one takeaway from that. But then from your second point, which is this paradox of choice thing, this, like, swiping becomes an alternative to dating rather than a way of dating, right? I guess. What, what would, what would the lesson from that be? Would be? Would the lesson be People just need to get self control or get off the apps altogether. Or is there a way to rewire yourself so that you're not doing that?
- [29:43]
A
I mean, the self control thing is difficult. I think this because, you know, the swiping in itself is kind of addictive. So it's very. You have to be so self aware to do that. I mean, you're right. What we, what we need to do is, is design these apps in concert. You know, I am in fact have. Having said I would never work with a dating app, I've actually just started working on a new one with a group of two female founders which the whole idea behind it is to combat these problems and actually come at it from a neuroscientific human behavioral point of view. That is our first thing. The tech is the back end. We're not, you know, we will say this is what we want to achieve. And you tech guys have to find a way to do that rather than here's some really shiny tech, we don't really care whether or not it's going to work for people, but it's really shiny tech. And that's the idea. And actually the way we're doing it is we're not based, we're not basing initially on visual looks because as you said, you need to understand that the visual thing is giving you very little or you give people more information. And that's what we're going to try and do and get people to actually, because I know from my work that long term compatibility is not based upon that chemical attraction to looks. Long term compatibility is on the meeting of minds and finding deep attraction in that mind, finding love within that other mind. And so the way we do it is, is at lovejack is we have five words which you have to input and you have to change them often to sum up who you are. And they can be silly things like five words of how you're feeling in this moment or what you had for breakfast or they can be really profound about who you are at your core. And the thing is what that does is that sparks curiosity. And that's okay, this person is saying this to me. You're getting more information about who their mind or what their mind is. Because ultimately you fall in love with someone's brain, their personality, their values, their creativity, their, their sense of humor, whatever that is. And the looks are very secondary. So by presenting the words first, you, you do get to look at an image eventually, but it's down the line, you have to. And we restrict the number of people you can swipe through. So it's, that's the way we're going to have to work in the future because they're not going away. We have a whole generation of people who, that's how they think they do it. And actually they feed, they feel de skilled. So they actually say to me, how do you meet someone in real life? And actually you need to say to people, well, the instinct is within you. It's not something we were all trained in. The instinct is, is in with you, it's within you and your brain is there to help you do it. So I think we've got a really confused generation at the moment.
- [32:11]
B
Yeah, I mean, one thing I hear from all of my, like, fiance's girlfriends is they, they wish they were approached more when they go out to places. Now, obviously there's an other side to that, which is that if you're approached by someone, you don't want to be approached by it. It can come across as creepy and obviously like unwanted. So there are two sides to that coin. But I do think that young men now are not in the habit of approaching women in real life and that it's just like it sends a very different signal to a woman if you're willing to approach her in real life than if you're really willing to. Anyone can swipe right on an app. It means nothing to a woman that you did that, that for her.
- [32:56]
A
It's what we call. Yeah, yeah, it's low cost. And that's another problem with the apps, is that relationships are supposed to be costly. They're supposed to cost you something to show how important they are to you and show your commitment to them. So you're absolutely right. If you, as a, as a, you know, I understand entirely why some young men today are concerned about approaching women. I also have young men come up to me and say, I, I actually don't know what the rules are about approaching women anymore because I don't want to come across as creepy and I don't want to come across as. So it's, it's a really difficult picture out there, I think. But the whole idea is it's supposed to be costly, so it's supposed to maybe be a little bit scary and you commit your time to it because it's so valuable. And the problem with apps is they, they don't cost you anything. You can swipe through it while sitting on, on, you know, on the subway, watching telly. You know, there's no investment there. And that's another problem. That's why people kind of do it so much, is it's not costing them anything. And actually it's supposed to, it's supposed to cost you something to show your commitment.
- [33:51]
B
Yeah. With regard to the creep question, the. I don't know if you know Chris Williamson. He's a podcaster. Yeah. So he had, he said what I thought was the most interesting and true thing about this, which is the lesson of the kind of feminist era for to young men has been like, don't be a creep. Like, don't be like the bad men that, that are too aggressive with women.
- [34:17]
A
Yeah.
- [34:17]
B
And the, the guys that have internalized that and really taking, taking that seriously are, we're generally like not most of the problem to begin with, but there is a small slice of guys that are just extremely aggressive, extremely overbearing, have fully ignored the feminist lessons of the past, you know, 10 or 20 years. And so, you know, the guys who have internalized the advice are kind of the ones that didn't need to and actually don't benefit from it because on the margin they need to be told to be a little more confident, a little more assertive and, and I don't know what you do with, with the perpetual problem of like quasi predators that might just be with us forever, but yeah, that's it. It's a, is a well intentioned lesson to project to, to men, but it really has this like, dual effect that is not necessarily good for either sex, I think.
- [35:12]
A
Absolutely. No, you're absolutely right.
- [35:16]
B
Hey, Coleman here. If you're enjoying the show, then you probably care about how political decisions really get made. If that's you, I want to tell you about the new podcast On Notice, produced by the nonpartisan newsroom Notice. Each week, journalist Reece Gorman sits down with lawmakers for candid conversations, not just about the headlines, but about what makes them tick and what brought them to Washington in the first place. On Notice gives you an insider's view of the people shaping policy in the U.S. reese's approachable style has earned him trust on both sides of the aisle, unlocking unguarded conversations that you won't hear in traditional interviews. So tune in to On Notice. That's Notice spelled N o T u S. It's available every Monday wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube. So I'm curious, do you. Have you done any research or looked into arranged marriages? Because I've seen some counterintuitive and like, interesting data and arguments from people that, like, my bias is against arranged marriages, as is like any Western individualists. But I have seen some people argue that actually people in other countries kind of do okay with arranged marriages or they're happier than you would think. Have you looked into that?
- [36:29]
A
Arranged marriages actually have a reasonably high success rate and actually they tend to turn out with most people being no less satisfied, in fact, than those where we've, we've like come together ourselves. I mean, obviously you need to make a difference between an arranged marriage and a forced marriage. Obviously, forced marriages are never acceptable, but in many cultures, arranged marriages are done. And obviously it's, it's the parents, it's the family of the two young people who come together and, and choose who's going to, to meet. I think it's, it's not as extreme as it once was in most cultures, which is you may in fact not meet your potential partner until the wedding. Generally these days, people are allowed to meet. Sometimes it always has to be chaperoned. Other times it can be that they can also meet after a period of being chaperoned separately. And in many cultures it's now acceptable for either one of the parties to say, actually no, this is, this isn't who I want to marry. But actually from a predictor, predicting success point of view, having your partner, or at least being introduced to a partner that has been chosen by your family tends to work quite well because your family know you really well and for them to choose somebody for you in some ways is, is, for example, more successful than most dating app algorithms because they know you really, really well. So personally, I don't have an issue with arranged marriage. I mean, I'm an anthropologist and therefore I, I study cross culturally. I don't have an issue with arranged marriage at all. It also, you need to understand also that these are often in cultures where the idea of being in love before marriage is not one that exists. So they're looking at it from a very different perspective. The idea is you get married, you hopefully like the person in a platonic way, you get along. But actually romantic love is something that would come after married and romantic love is something that would grow. And in many marriages it actually does. So it's, you're looking at it from a, I think looking at, from a Western perspective where everything is based upon experiencing very powerful love for the person. It's hard for us to grasp that. But if you think in that there's a culture where that actually isn't important and you haven't been brought up to think that's important to think that actually I trust my family and they will find someone who is good for me, and I, you know, will like that person before I marry them, but I won't love them. That's. That's perfectly normal. And they've also been brought up in families where their parents had arranged marriages. So it's. It's something that works very well within many cultures.
- [38:54]
B
Okay, what about polyamory? I mean, polyamory is like. I don't. I don't remember when the idea of polyamory first, like, really entered the mainstream culture. I don't really remember hearing about it as a young kid. But what. What is polyamory, and what's your view on it? Is it. Do you think too many people are getting into polyamory, or more people should try it? And how do you view it from. From a perspective of love?
- [39:21]
A
Okay, so polyamory is. Is as an. Any form of love. It's just. It's not something that's talked about particularly. So polyamory is having multiple loving relationships at one time. So it's not the same as a sexually open relationship where you have sex with lots of people. Polyamory, as it says, it's amory, it's love. So you have multiple romantic love relationships at once. It's more open today, I think, just simply because a lot of our discussions around love and sexuality are more open. And so people have come out into the open and talk about it.
- [39:52]
B
It.
- [39:52]
A
The percentage of people who practice it is selling incredibly small. And I will say, and I think this is a little bit of confusion that goes along some of my work, I don't have an opinion on it. I have scientific data on it. For those people who are polyamorous that I've worked with, it works incredibly well for them. And, you know, it's a personal choice. And many people I know have views on it in terms of it not being particularly moralistic, of it being sort of condoning infidelity, as it were, and of these people being, you know, sexually promiscuous, for example, that tends to be some of the attitude surveys you get to people with polyamory. But polyamorous people, and again, I'm not saying I agree or disagree with them, would argue that actually it's an incredibly ethical way of having a relationship because they are being open about the fact that they are falling in love with more than one person at once, whereas people who have affairs are not open about that. So actually, people who are monogamous and have affairs are, in a way, have less morals than people who are polyamorous is their argument because they are actually saying, yes, I have fallen in love with somebody else. I'm being completely open with you about it. It's. You know, there's a lot of communication in the relationship about what the boundaries are about being open, about how you feel about different people. And people who are polyamorous, they're. They're fascinating in one sense, because they're. They. They experience something called compassion. And compassion is feeling joy from seeing somebody else you love, being loving and being loved by somebody else. And that's what polyamorous people experience. So they. Rather than feeling jealous that their partner is loving somebody else, they feel compassion, they feel joy that that person has found love somewhere else. So it's. I don't think it's necessarily any more. It's. It's not something that's a new term. It's a term that's been around for many, many years. You know, we had polyamory in, you know, in Greek civilization, for example, in, you know, the classics. But it is something, I think people talk about more and it's less hidden because they feel that they can be more open without being attacked for it. But whether or not I think more people should do it, I. I genuinely think that when we talk about love, I think, you know, it's very much a personal choice what you do. Personally, I know I couldn't be polyamorous. I. I am not that kind of person. I. My levels of jealousy would not cope with it. But for some people, it works very, very well. And that's. That's their choice.
- [42:16]
B
Yeah. So my. My view on it has. Has always been that it's. It seems to me clearly the right decision for a small set of subset of people that have. I. I guess I would put it a psychological disposition appropriate for it, which is much lower jealousy than the average person has. And you said compersion. Is that the word?
- [42:42]
A
Yeah. So that. Yeah, they feel conversion. Yeah.
- [42:44]
B
So it seems to me that psychological profile is rare. Not in the sense, you know, not like it's one in every 10,000 people, but it's like more than that. But it's. It's. I don't know how, you know, is it in the single digits? In the tens?
- [42:59]
A
Maybe it's in the. It's in the single digits.
- [43:01]
B
It's in the single digits.
- [43:02]
A
Right.
- [43:03]
B
So it seems to me that polyamory should be a thing that those people pursue without too much stigma, I think without any stigma, really. But I have seen many polyamorous people pushing it As a. As a better way of being in general. Like, I'm talking about, like, influencers online that will basically give you arguments why polyamory is actually a better way to be for humans in general as opposed to, you know, for instance, like, gay guys don't say it's better to be gay. They say, I'm gay. Like, I'm built that way, you're built that way. Let's. Let's be free. Let's be ourselves. Let's pursue our happiness with. Whereas there is a certain. A certain message I've been seeing online which pushes it as a positive good with arguments which to me misses the point of what it's good for, which is like, if you have that disposition, it's better for you, but it's a.
- [44:00]
A
Relatively rare disposition, and it's a natural disposition. So I don't. I don't think it's one of the. In the same way as you say, being gay is a natural disposition. I don't think you can say to people, you need to try this because this is so much better for you. There is no evidence that it's any better than any other form, you know, monogamy or whatever. It's an. It's an absolutely personal, individual choice, and you have to have the drive to want to do it. You can't learn the drive to want to do it. So for somebody to, say, adopt this lifestyle because it's better seems a little bit. Well, it's just. It. It's not. It's not real. It's not naturalistic because it's. It's a drive. And if you don't have that drive, then you wouldn't adopt it. So, yeah, it's not a lifestyle choice, so it's not a choice that you make.
- [44:44]
B
Do you watch the show Couples Therapy?
- [44:46]
A
I don't. No. No, I don't.
- [44:48]
B
It would be really interesting for you to watch it and react to it because, you know, I don't know what kind of couple is comfortable having couples therapy in public. So it pre selects for a certain type of person. But the couples therapist, Dr. Orna, is brilliant, and she's, you know, she's just a kind of masterfully wise person in terms of getting couples that are having deep conflicts to connect and actually communicate about it. But she does deal with polyamorous couples as well. She has gay couples. She has all kinds of couples. And, you know, one thing I noticed about some of the polyamorous couples, and I've noticed this about polyamorous people that I know as well is that some of them really thrive in it because they're very low jealousy. But there are some that are closer to the normal end of the spectrum in terms of jealousy. But, but reframe, you know, if, if you happen to be in like a polyamorous subculture and say like, it's actually not meant for you, but you're experimenting and you're young and, or whatever the language of jealousy because like most people don't understand like what sexual jealousy is in that subculture really gets like retranslated by constantly talking about boundaries and constantly talking about this. And it kind of gets translated and you use other words to express what is at bottom, the fact that like you actually have a level of possessiveness that you haven't accepted about yourself yet. And I see some of that sometimes on Dr. Orna's show.
- [46:24]
A
Yeah, I mean like, like all relationships, I think, I think with polyamorous relationships you're going to get some people who, as you say, thrive in them, some people who find it a little more difficult in the same way, you know, some people thrive in monogamous relationships and some people find them restrictive. So.
- [46:37]
B
Right.
- [46:37]
A
You know, you're always going to get people who are, who are more suited to a particular way of living and it's, and it's an exploit exploration, particularly as a young person, as to where you fit in that particular spectrum.
- [46:49]
B
Okay, so. So I want to talk about the attachment styles. I've been hearing about attachment styles for many years. I've never looked into it. I've never actually quite understood even, or taken the time to understand what it means. People talk about having a secure attachment style, an avoidant attachment style. First of all, where do these concepts come from? Who invented this? And is it based on a body of research? What is it?
- [47:16]
A
Yeah, so attachment theory is based on a very strong, powerful and, and quite, quite well grounded set of research. It started with a psychologist in the 1950s known as John Bowlby. It continued on with a psychologist known as Laura Ainsworth. And John Bowlby started by looking at attachment between mothers and children and the idea that children remained with their mothers not because they were the source of food or that they were source of safety, but because of some deep seated psychological bond which underpinned that child's development and particularly their emotional development. And that's where the idea of security came from. That if that was a good and powerful and healthy bond, they had what was known as a secure attachment, which was that child knew that they could rely on that adult Come what may, to protect them, to do what was good for them. And that's known as a secure attachment. And the idea behind attachment theory is if you have a secure attachment as a child, what you should be able to do is use that secure attachment as like a safe haven from which you go out into the world as a confident, well developed individual and you cope with all the knocks that are out there. Safe in the knowledge that you can come back to that, that source of secure attachment to put you back together if it all goes wrong, or emotionally support you or whatever it might be. And that's what a secure attachment is. And he did a lot of studies confirming that, confirming that particular idea of attachment. And that's been built on since the 50s to add in, you know, romantic relationship attachment. There are some people who work on friendship attachment, though attachments in friendships are less common. And ultimately in the last 20 years in the other field that I work in, including father to child attachment. So attachment relationships are absolutely fundamental to children. And as I say, a secure attachment is, is the gold standard that we would like all children to have. So that they are, you know, resilient, they're well, they're well formed in terms of their development, they have lovely healthy social brains and they can go off into the world and be successful, safe in the knowledge that, you know, mum or dad or whoever brought them up, whoever they had the attachment to is there. But unfortunately not all children grow up in that particular circumstance. And that's where the idea of the insecure attachment styles comes from. And they are sort of. So you talked about avoid, avoidant attachment style. So avoidant attachment styles are children's individuals who avoid forming these forms of relationships. And they either avoid them because in the sort of dismissing avoidant profile, they either avoid them because actually they just really don't need them in their lives. There are, it's a very small percentage of people who are dismissing avoidant or we have the fearful avoidant profile. Fearful avoidant people avoid relationships so they don't get hurt because they have very, very high fear of abandonment. So the way they deal with that is they just don't get attached to anybody. And then we have sort of the anxious attachment style people. Anxious attachment style people also have a fear of abandonment. But the way they deal with it is actually by, in, in, in academic terms, maintaining proximity to the person they're attached to. We would call it in, in sort of of normal parlors. They're clingy, they will cling to the person because the way they will avoid being abandoned is to spend all their time with the person they're attached to. So basically they cannot be abandoned. And so that's. Those are sorts of the, the attachment styles and the attachment styles we see in romantic relationships, but they are very much grounded in your childhood experience of attachment.
- [50:52]
B
Interesting. So I have many questions about this. So are these attachment styles stable personality traits that. So for instance, if I am dismissive, avoidant, does that mean I'm going to be dismissive like I. Does that mean not only do I need not need a romantic partner, I don't need friends? Or are there people that are like secure with friends and dismissive avoidant?
- [51:16]
A
So, so it's, it's relationship specific. So you could be, you know, yeah, insecure with your partner but secure with your friends, for example, or you might be secure with some friends and insecure with other friends sense. So it's very much relationship specific. Secondly, they can change so they're not set in stone. And in fact, some people work very hard to change their attachment styles, particularly in adulthood, particularly if it's not helpful in terms of what their goals are. So let's say you are dismissing avoidant, but actually you're not one of the dismissing avoidant people who, you know, isn't interested in relationships. Actually you do want a relationship, but maybe you have a real fear of intimacy and proximity, for example. So they can do work to change their attachment style. You can move from one profile to the other. Sometimes it's relatively easy, sometimes it's really, really difficult and it would take a lot of work to do it. But it is a possibility.
- [52:07]
B
So is there, is it, you know, if, if you have one of these attachment styles, these kind of insecure attachment styles, is it always the case that that comes from the, a mirrored attachment style to one of or both of your parents? Or are there people that have secure relationships with their parents but develop insecure relation attachment styles for other reasons?
- [52:33]
A
There are. You are less likely to form an insecure attachment style if you have secure attachment to both parents. Because you, because what's happened when you are developing so your, your social brain, the bit that controls things like attachment controls, particularly the sort of cognitive aspects of relationship relationships sort of start a relationship and maintaining relationships grows in the first two years of your life. And if you are brought up by secure, with a secure attachment to your parents, then that area of your brain is in a way bathed in sort of the perfect environment to build a really good social brain. So you are unlikely to suffer from insecure attachment styles or anxious styles when you are older, but you can do, it might be that you, you have a series of really bad experiences with romantic relationships. For example, maybe you go, go out with a series of people who undermine that secure attachment style and then yes, you, you can certainly develop an insecure attachment style through experience in your adult life. Definitely.
- [53:34]
B
So as I was reading your book on these attachment styles, I was trying to locate myself in anything. And so I've, I'm, I'm engaged now and I've, I've always, like, I've, I've always been comfortable in relationships, probably more so than I was comfortable single. But I was trying to say, okay, like when, when I was single or in, in various relationships, like, what made me anxious? And the reason I think I, I didn't resonate with the paradigm is because I was never anxious about being abandoned. Like, I understood that, like, it's possible for people to break up with me and that that would be super unpleasant. But it wasn't something that was an active anxiety didn't keep me up at night. My active anxiety was of me choosing the wrong person. In other words, me committing to the, to, to someone based on reasons at the time. And then it turns out in retrospect that was a really bad decision because of either how she evolved or how I evolved or how we evolved. And I just end up like, super unhappy in, in the future because of a stupid decision I committed to in the past. That's like what made me anxious.
- [54:44]
A
Okay, so attachment style is measured on a very specific form of, of anxiety, which is anxiety of abandonment. Obviously, there are many other forms of anxiety in relationships that you can have, including the one you've suggested. So what I would say is if you, I mean, I, I, I can't do a full attachment interview on you now, but, but the two, the two dimensions on which attachment in romantic relationships are fear of abandonment and how comfortable you are with proximity. So physical intimacy. And if you are comfortable with proximity and you have very low sense, very low fear of abandonment, then you're secure. Generally, the other anxieties that come in relationships are things we all worry about. And that's just you ruminating in your massive brain because we are human on various aspects of a relationship. But that isn't an indicator of, for example, an insecure attachment style. So I would say off the top of my head, you know, if you can say that you, you aren't anxious about abandonment, that you're fine with physical emotional intimacy, then you are probably secure, right?
- [55:46]
B
So another, another way of saying that is like if, if you're worried about, worrying about being with the wrong person is a normal worry.
- [55:53]
A
And yes, and it's a good one.
- [55:55]
B
Because it provoked, provokes you to think about, in fact, is this the right person? What qualities define the right person?
- [56:01]
A
Right. Yeah, absolutely.
- [56:03]
B
It makes sense. Okay, so a few more questions. I, I, I learned in your book, I had been taking it for granted that pheromones are a real and important aspect of human attraction and dating. And I learned from your book that we don't know that for sure.
- [56:24]
A
No. And in fact, there's increasing evidence that we don't actually have pheromones or indeed act upon them, I'm afraid. And there is sort of several reasons that pheromones are used in the lesser mammals for, yes, for attraction purposes. So lesser mammals, there is no conscious contemplation during attachment attraction at all. They take in all the sensory information that I talked about at the start in relation to whatever little furry creature you're talking about, and they also use pheromones to attract other, the opposite sex. There is no evidence that we produce pheromones. There's been intensive investigation on this. There are lots of techniques we can use to find pheromones. None have been found in humans. Also, the particular connection between the brain and your olfactory equipment, your nose, which we see in other mammals, which allows you to assess pheromones, to smell and assess pheromones, actually isn't connected in humans. It's, it's basically lost its connection over time. And for those of us who study humans, this makes sense because to be attracted to a human is the way we do attraction is, yes, there is a mammalian part of it, that sensory intake of information, but beyond that, most of our attraction is actually based in our conscious brain because you start really thinking about, is this person funny? You know, do we like the same things in person? Actually does, does their voice sound really irritating? Oh my God. My friends will love them, hate them, whatever. These sorts of thoughts go on in your brain. So to be attracted as a human is a very, is a much more complicated thing than it is to be a mammal. And therefore we've really lost. Pheromones wouldn't hack it in our world, just because you've got a pheromone drawing you towards somebody. It could be as soon as they opened their mouth, they said something absolutely unconscionable and you were like, right, no, that's it. So the thing that really attracts Us to each is our brains. The other thing to say about why we don't have pheromones is we've given up most of the olfactory part of our brain and that's because we grew a massive social brain. So the bit that we lost, as well as making our brain six times bigger than it should be for a mammal of our size, is we lost a major part of olfactory equipment. So we don't have the olfactory system that most mammals do. So I'm afraid there's no evidence of pheromones at all.
- [58:42]
B
Interesting. So I mean that must be just a massive case of like science journalists getting it wrong or like, like, you know, boosting sensational studies.
- [58:52]
A
Yeah, it's, it's just completely wrong. You know, it's a really nice idea that we all give off somebody that makes us unbelievably, you give off something that makes us attractive. It's a nice idea. But yes, it's, it probably is a case of science journalism or as you say, quite awful studies which have been picked up by people who didn't necessarily interpret them correctly and then spread this idea that we have pheromones, but we don't.
- [59:14]
B
Okay, so if, if that's true, then I have two questions. One is I strongly believe in every relationship, every serious relationship I've ever been in, that I can tell when she is ovulating by smell. Now it's possible I'm self deceived about that, but I feel like I've subjected it to like fairly good analysis and it's like mostly accurate that I can smell like for one and two days. There's like a sweeter smell that I can detect.
- [59:44]
A
It's not an area I'm a specialist in by any stretch of the imagination. I would say that if you can. It's not a pheromone you're smelling. You're smelling a change in hormonal balance within the body and in certain secretions. You can smell it, I imagine, but it's not a pheromone.
- [59:59]
B
So then what, what is a pheromone?
- [60:02]
A
So a pheromone is, is, is a, a smell that is given off which goes into the cell, goes into the air, which has an element of being attractive in some way to the opposite sex. So insects do it. And that's so like their pheromones can, for example, match the smell of a particularly favorite flower. So the, so the, so the female, it's usually males. You give them off, the female will come across and Think, actually I'm going to a flower and then, in fact, they'll encounter a male and he's really hoping that he, she finds him attractive and then they mate. So quite often in other species, it mimics something in the environment that is attractive to the opposite sex. But there is no evidence that we, that we do that at all.
- [60:42]
B
And so the difference between pheromones and hormones would be pheromones would be like, individually tailored in some way. Whereas if, if, if, if all women, you know, have different hormones when they ovulate, then there'll be one phenomenon that's the same, basically.
- [60:56]
A
What you, what if, if, if it is. I mean, as I say, it's not my area. What you will be smelling is this is a, a slight change in hormonal balances between progesterone and estrogen. And that's probably what you're smelling.
- [61:09]
B
So is it. I also learned, I think you said in your book, it's a, it's a menstrual synchrony is a myth.
- [61:15]
A
Yes, it is. There was one.
- [61:17]
B
So it actually doesn't happen.
- [61:18]
A
It doesn't happen. There was one rather bad study done on a very small population of girls in a boarding school which did not control for variables at all particularly. And it, and obviously it sounds again, like an amazing phenomenon that everyone starts cycling together, but there is, it's never been replicated and there's no evidence that it happens.
- [61:40]
B
So why do people believe this? Because in my mind, I don't think it's because of a study that people believe this. I think this is just like a widespread myth.
- [61:48]
A
Yes, but that study started it. So that study started it, that study was reported, and then this became a thing. Because at the time it wasn't refuted. Because unfortunately there is. I think it's like when I look on social media and people put things up saying, scientists say, so just because scientist says something doesn't mean that it's necessarily true or that it was based on good studies. Because, as you know, having, you know, studied psychology, for example, there is good science and there is not so good science. And actually what you need to do is you need to interrogate the methods used in this study. How big was the population? How did you control for variables? What statistical analysis did you do? Can we replicate the findings of this study, which is the ultimate test, because you should be able to replicate the findings of the study if it's actually a fact. And there are many studies out there where that is not true and that has not happened. But unfortunately, people who write things in the press and now these days on social media don't interrogate studies in that way and therefore they will report on it. As facts act as truth. And that means, unfortunately, some quite bad science gets out there and some myths are built up about certain things.
- [62:57]
B
Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about sex and love addiction. This is a phrase I've heard a lot. I've heard people that are self described self sex and love addicts. They go to 12 step programs similar to Narcotics Anonymous and have various degrees of success, you know, becoming happier people. Is sex and love addiction a real thing? What do you know about it and, and what can you say about it to people that are experiencing it?
- [63:28]
A
Okay, first thing I would say is I know very little about sex addiction if or if not it, because I don't study sex, I study love. And they're two entirely separate phenomenon in terms of love addiction. I mean, using the word addiction is interesting because addiction is a very particular physiological and neurological response to something. So when we talk about addiction in terms of like drug addiction or alcohol addiction, it's a very particular neural room physiological response. I'm not aware that love, when people say they have love addiction, that they are presenting in this in the same neural and physiological way as we would, for example, a drug addiction. So I think the word addiction, if you talk to an addiction specialist, they would probably feel quite uncomfortable using the term addiction in that sense. There are certainly some people who, let's use the word addiction, are addicted to, for example, the start of a relationship. There are certainly some people who are happier when they're in relationships. And there are genetic predispositions to that. There's a, there's a part of the oxytocin receptor gene which either makes you more or less motivated to be in long term relationships. People who carry a certain version of it, they are much happier when they're in relationships. And they tend to be the people who stack relationship after relationship after relationship. There are certainly some people who are more susceptible to, yes, the early bits of relationship, because the early bit of relationship has a high level of example of dopamine. And if you're particularly dopamine seeking character, you can find the first bit of a relationship, the attraction stage, really exciting. And they're the kind of people who love that first bit. Then it gets to start moving into, to love and companionate love and being underpinned by beta endorphin. And then they lose interest and then they will go, they will end that relationship and start the first bit again with somebody else. You certainly get people who do that pattern. You will also get some people who, because of their attachment profile, will seek out relationships because as a search for some form of security. And that again, is generally to do with their upbringing and their psychological profile. So you certainly get some people who crave love, seek love, seek certain bits of the relationship trajectory more than others. And we certainly know that there are some people, for example, who find the end of relationships much more physiologically and psychologically painful than others. So you can see why people would discuss love addiction, but I don't think that's what we're talking about. Addiction is a physiological response. Many of these circumstances are more psychological than physiological.
- [66:02]
B
Okay, two more questions for you. One, you know, I've had a lot of conversations about birth control with various women in my life. You know, my family members, my fiance and friends and stuff. And, you know, one of the things, One of the common themes I've heard is that birth control has a variety of effects that are way deeper and more extreme in some ways than women anticipate. And then, you know, I also went down the Reddit rabbit hole of people telling their stories. And there are entire Reddit threads devoted to a common story where woman either goes on birth control or off birth control after a long time. And suddenly I'm not attracted to my husband of 20 years. I'm attracted to a totally different kind of guy, which is like, Jesus, a nightmare scenario. But. And often there are like, very important reasons why they had to go off of birth control or whatever. You know, this. Anyway, what do we know about birth control? And do you agree with, like, the theme that I've heard, that people are much too casual or people are sold it much more casually than. Than the impact that it can have?
- [67:21]
A
That's not something I'm going to comment on because I'm not a specialist in birth control. The one thing I will comment on is I would say that again, unfortunately, the idea that birth control alters who you're attracted to is again, based on one very awful study. And I think, again, it got picked up. It was a really big theme on social media about a year ago and there were a lot of videos about it. And actually, again, it's.
- [67:45]
B
It.
- [67:45]
A
There is no evidence that, that, that, that it alters who you're attracted to in any way. Again, it was one study which suggested it, which was not a good piece of science. So I would say at the moment, we have no evidence that that is the Case.
- [68:00]
B
Okay. Okay, final question. And, and this is one where I. I'm certainly hoping the answer goes one way, but I've seen. I've seen some pretty depressing Gallup polls to suggest the opposite. Does having kids make you happier?
- [68:16]
A
Oh, do you know what? It really depends. I think, again, it's not really my area of specialization, having whether or not having kids makes you happier. But as a parent and as somebody who studies fathering, I think it really depends upon where your starting point is. So if you are having kids within a nice, healthy relationship where, you know you've got it all down, you've got your mutual respect, you've got mutual compassion, the communication is good, you know how to handle. Handle conflict, then I would say, yeah, absolutely. They, they can certainly make relationships happier. The, the issue comes is when people have children thinking it's going to fix a problem in a relationship. And I can tell you from my own experience, but also having studied thousands and thousands of men who've become fathers, that is not a way to fix a hole in your. In your relationship. Having a child is really hard. It's one of the biggest pressures on a relationship, if not the biggest pressure a relationship will experience, because you are adding a new person to your little team. And we all know that adding a person to a team is a problem anyway in terms of everyone having to jiggle around and find their new roles within that team. But this person is completely unpredictable. And you are trying to deal with somebody who is completely unpredictable with no sleep. And it's amazing how many arguments, obviously that can cause. And that will cause arguments in the best relationship because it's really hard. So I would say, yeah, obviously if you have a good relationship, then generally it. When I've spoken to fathers about this and said, you know, how has it affected your relationship? Many of them say it's made it stronger. You know, we have this real shared goal now. You know, it's wonderful to have something that we're both investing in so massively, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But at the same time, you will also hear people say that, you know, no, you know, we did this because we thought that it would make it better, and it doesn't. So I would say never have a child to patch up a relationship. It doesn't work.
- [70:12]
B
Okay, well, I have to ask, like, one or two more questions now because I realize I haven't asked you about your specialty of research on fathers.
- [70:18]
A
Yes.
- [70:19]
B
Which is, I'm guessing, a kind of more rare specialty, because there's a lot of research on mothers, how mothers bond with children, very little fathers, I guess, get less love in the. In the research department. And fathers are famously, you know, famous for abandoning their families. Like, this is a frequent theme in life is men abandon their families. Men abandoned children at a rate that, you know, all of us can go, you know, just like one friend into our contact list to know someone by their father. So it makes sense why there's less of an emphasis, but in some ways, that would lead you to want to study that phenomenon more. Right. And so I'm curious, like, what. What is it that your research on father's attachment to children revealed? That would not be obvious to the layperson?
- [71:10]
A
Okay. I suppose the thing that's not obvious to the layperson is that, well, first of all, fathers do have attachment relationships with their children. When I began two decades ago, people said they didn't, but that was simply because no one had looked. So they definitely have attachment relationships. That attachment relationship is as powerful as that between a mother and a child, but it's actually, crucially, a different sort of attachment. So mother's attachments are based on nurture. So that secure base is developed through having a very nurturing relationship with a child. Fathers is also based on nurture. Fathers are just. Are evolved to nurture as much as. As. As mums are. But it also has an added dimension which we call challenge or stimulation, and that's really critical to your child's development. And that's because they use that nurturing base, that secure base they've developed through nurture to actually kind of push the child's developmental boundaries, to push them mentally and physically. And that's really important in terms of building their resilience, particularly their mental resilience. And really, what we say is fathers scaffold the child's entry into the world beyond the family. And what we mean by that is that attachment is the foundation for how successful your child will be in the world. Because fathers underpin some areas of development much more powerfully than mothers do. And again, this is something we've only learned recently. So things like mental resilience. Absolutely. Developing mental resilience is an input from the father. Developing the skills that you need to be a social being. So social language, pro. Social skills like sharing, caring, helping, emotional regulation, behavioral inhibition, all of these things. Things are very influenced by the attachment a father has with his child. And I think most people don't realize that we are sold in our society that fathers are very much a secondary parent. And in fact, that they're dispensable, you don't really need them. And actually, when we look at the evidence that's out there and, and it makes sense to me as an evolutionary anthropologist, because we are the only ape species and one of 85% of mammals that have investing fathers. So fathers who, okay, yes, some of them leave, but a lot of them stick around. And that's a rare thing. And that, that evolved in our line because it's critical to child development. And I think most people don't realize that. And that's why when we look at the, the outcomes for children who don't have a father figure, it doesn't have to be the biological father, but they don't even have a father figure. So like an uncle or grandfather, whatever it might be, those outcomes are, are sometimes quite difficult because there are things like increases in antisocial behavior, increases in addiction, increases in mental health issues. And that's often because this, this developmental input that the father figure should have had wasn't there.
- [73:48]
B
One of the big memes you see nowadays is about love languages. Like, what is your love language? Is this a real phenomenon and what do you know about it? What can you tell me about it?
- [73:59]
A
If anything, it is a real phenomenon. They have been found to be psychologically pretty robust in terms of. When we look at people's behavior. Most people tend to have. Have one, sometimes two, which reflects how they value love and how they see love, perceive love coming from another person. So they are helpful in that sense. I would say they're not as powerful as people think they are. So what people tend to do is they. With love. They tend to say, right, this, this is the answer to everything. If you just understand the other person's love language, then everything's going to be fine. Or, you know, or your own love language, everything's going to be fine. It's not that powerful. I mean, it's a helpful thing to know, but it's not the be all and end all of everything. And there are many other things which are more important in terms of compatibility than I think love languages are. For example, you know, compatible attachment styles, for example, are quite important. So I would say it's a helpful thing to know. And if you feel like there is a mismatch between you and your partner in terms of how you express love and how you receive love, maybe it's a good idea to name what your love language is so that you understand that actually when you're your partner, makes you a cup of coffee, that's his act of service and that's his way of showing you love. And then you kind of know that you're supposed to value that. That. I suppose that is helpful, but they're not as critical as I think maybe some, some particularly social media posts would say.
- [75:19]
B
Okay, then also there's a lot of social media content that sort of tries to sell you the secret of unlocking the other sex, unlocking attraction in a woman as a man or vice versa. Is there, is there any good research? And if so, do you ever counsel people on like actually how to attract a mate more or do you think it's just something. We've got instincts to do it and really the more important thing is to just put yourself out there and, and so what can you say about sort of like how to attract a mate?
- [75:51]
A
Okay, definitely. I think you have instincts and you should just put yourself out there and really just, just stop overthinking it. Because I think the problem is if we all followed all the advice we had on social media, we would never do anything at all. I think in terms of, yeah, this idea of like triggering the protective, you know, instinct in a man to be attract, it's just based on really quite outmoded ideas about gender roles and what, you know, that like the stereotype of what a man is and a stereotype of what a woman is and the stereotype of what a woman will find attractive in a man. So I don't think it's particularly helpful because those stereotypes generally aren't. Aren't particularly predictive. The other thing I would say, I think probably where it's come from is our first stage of attraction. The unconscious stage of attraction is based upon trying to take in information from that other person through your senses about how likelihood they are to be reproductively successful and how we. The indicators for reproductive success are different in men and women because they bring different things to the reproductive table. So if we talk about heterosexual couples, men are looking for indicators of things like health and fertility and women because men bring in the evolutionary story protection and provision would look for elements of protection and provision in the male. And I think maybe that's been misread to be like, okay, so the way you make a man be attracted to you is make him feel protective. There is literally no evidence on any of that. I think it's a misinterpretation on understanding how attraction science works. And I think it's based on really unhelpful gender stereotypes as well. Actually, people are really individual. And actually the thing as I said earlier, the thing that's the most attractive to both men and women, ultimately, if you're looking at long term love, isn't protection and all that kind of thing. It's, it's who are they in their brain, who are they who, what's their personality, all those kind of things. And that's a really individual thing and you have to trust your instinct on that.
- [77:50]
B
Okay, and finally, one piece of advice for young people out there looking for love. Obviously, besides buying your very good book, why We Love, what piece of advice do you have?
- [78:02]
A
I would say two things. First of all, if you're looking for a romantic love, change your attitude to the apps. So see them as an introductory tool. Obviously, when my LoveJack app comes out, you sign up to that, but you, you change them as a, as a, as an introductory tool and you get in the room with that person as soon as possible. You have this amazing brain that's really good at this and you are completely handicapping it at the moment. So do it that way and don't be scared of what we call old fashioned dating. We didn't all go on a training course. You have the instinct to do it. Secondly, I would say there are some people out, young people out there who aren't that interested in romantic love and then they think in some way that their lives are lacking and actually there is no hierarchy of love. Romantic love doesn't sit at the top of the pinnacle of achievement of love love. It's actually a flat spectrum. So what you need in your life, absolutely, you need love in your life. But one of the great things about being human is there are so many options for that love. You could have friendship love. You can have love of your family, you can have, you know, love of your community. You can have religious love. You can have love with your pet dog. There are so many different ways of loving. So seek out the love that you have in your life and it doesn't necessarily have to be romantic if that's not something you want.
- [79:17]
B
All right, thank you very much. Thanks for your time. And people can buy your book, why We Love. And if they can follow you on Twitter or website, now would be the time to plug it.
- [79:26]
A
Yeah, so my website is just animation. Com and I'm on Instagram at Dranimachan.
- [79:31]
B
All right, animation, thanks so much.
- [79:33]
A
Thank you.