Why We Love: The Nature and Future of Romantic Love by Helen Fisher

From the Publisher

Based on Groundbreaking Research, a Renowned Anthropologist Sheds New Light on the Mysteries of Romantic Attraction.

The experience of romantic love -- the elation, mood swings, sleeplessness, and obsession -- cuts across time, geography, and gender. Until now, our understanding of love has largely been shaped by the wisdom of poets, the anecdotes of the lovestruck, the observations of psychologists, and the musings of brokenhearted musicians.

In Why We Love, Helen Fisher offers new insight into this universal phenomenon based on her innovative scientific research. Working with a team of scientists to scan the brains of people who had just fallen madly in love, Fisher and her colleagues proved at last what psychologists had only suspected: when you fall in love, specific areas of the brain "light up" with increased blood flow. Using this data, she concludes that romantic passion is, in fact, hardwired into our brains by millions of years of evolution. It is not an emotion; it is a drive as powerful as hunger.

In this fascinating look at our most fundamental urge, Fisher reveals exactly what you experience when you fall in love, why you choose one person rather than another, and how romantic love biologically affects your sex drive and your feelings of attachment to a partner. She shows that all animals feel romantic attraction, that love at first sight comes out of nature, and that human romance evolved for reasons crucial to survival. She also discusses differences in the male and female brains, and what this means for the way we love. Last, she offers concrete suggestions on how to control this ancient passion, and she Optimistically explores the future of romantic love in our modern chaotic world.

Provocative, enlightening, and persuasive, Why We Love offers radical new answers to age-old questions: What is love? Why do we fall in love? And how can we keep love alive?

The New York Times

Written in a deceptively simple manner, in language that is over nobody's head, Why We Love mixes her new research with prior scientific findings to build a thesis with startling ramifications. If, as Fisher states, 90 percent of prairie voles stick with one mate for life because they're good dopamine producers and have a sprig of DNA that enhances loyalty, and if norepinephrine automatically floods the brain of a ewe who's on the prowl every time she sees a slide of a ram's face, and those same chemicals burble through the human brain in love, will people one day be able to modify and medicate passions we once regarded as ungovernable? Will not only lust but love be buttressed, cured or even created with a prescription? — Liesl Schillinger

The Washington Post

Anthropologist Helen Fisher's Why We Love is another highly ambitious attempt to decipher what love is, why we go about loving the way that we do, why we suffer and why, so often, our spurned or frustrated feelings turn to hate. Through a rich combination of psychology, neuroscience, literary readings and cross-cultural and cross-species comparisons, Fisher seeks to define and understand love right down to the molecular level of the brain chemicals that produce it. This is an original and uniquely contemporary approach to a sensation that, for millennia, has been considered purely emotional -- "the pulsing rush of Longing" for Homer, "a deity stronger than I" for Dante, "an involuntary passion" for George Washington, "that furious storm" for Walt Whitman. And it makes for often fascinating reading. — Judith Warner

Publishers Weekly

Anthropologist Fisher argues that much of our romantic behavior is hard-wired in this provocative examination of love. Her case is bolstered by behavioral research into the effects of two crucial chemicals, norepinephrine and dopamine, and by surveys she conducted across broad populations. When we fall in love, she says, our brains create dramatic surges of energy that fuel such feelings as passion, obsessiveness, joy and jealousy. Fisher devotes a fascinating and substantial chapter to the appearance of romance and love among non-human animals, and composes careful theories about early humans in love. One of her many surprising conclusions suggests that, since "four-year birth intervals were the regular pattern of birth spacing during our long human prehistory," our modern brains still deal with relationships in serially monogamous terms of about four years. Indeed, Fisher gathered data from around the world showing that divorce was most prevalent in the fourth year of marriage, when a couple had a single dependent child. Fisher also reports on the behaviors that lead to successful lifelong partnerships and offers, based on what she's observed, numerous tips on staying in love. And though she's certain that chemicals are at love's heart, Fisher never loses her sense of the emotion's power or poetry. (Feb.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

What People Are Saying

E. O. Wilson
. . . If you want to understand this central quality of human nature to its roots, read Why We Love.
—(E. O. Wilson, university research professor emeritus, Harvard University, author of Consilience)

Harville Hendrix
. . . I could not put it down. It will become a basic reference and a classic.
—(Harville Hendrix, author of Getting the Love You Want)

David M. Buss
. . . the most gripping and scientifically sound book yet written about this most bafflingly complex human experience.
—(David M. Buss, author of The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating)

David P. Barash
. . . Read . . . and learn . . . important lessons anyone can achieve: how and why we -- and other living things -- love.
—(David P. Barash, professor of psychology, University of Washington, author of The Survival Game and The Myth of Monogamy)

Product Details

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Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

The world, for me, and all the world can hold
Is circled by your arms; for me there lies,
Within the lights and shadows of your eyes,
The only beauty that is never old.

James Weldon Johnson
"Beauty That Is Never Old"

"Fires run through my body -- the pain of loving you. Pain runs through my body with the fires of my love for you. Sickness wanders my body with my love for you. Pain like a boil about to burst with my love for you. Consumed by fire with my love for you. I remember what you said to me. I am thinking of your love for me. I am torn by your love for me. Pain and more pain. Where are you going with my love? I'm told you will go from here. I am told you will leave me here. My body is numb with grief. Remember what I've said, my love. Goodbye, my love, goodbye." So spoke an anonymous Kwakiutl Indian of southern Alaska in this wrenching poem, transcribed from the native tongue in 1896.

How many men and women have loved each other in all the seasons that preceded you and me? How many of their dreams have been fulfilled; how many of their passions wasted? Often as I walk or sit and contemplate, I wonder at all the heartrending love affairs this planet has absorbed. Fortunately, men and women around the world have left us a great deal of evidence of their romantic lives.

From Uruk, in ancient Sumer, come poems on cuneiform tablets that hail the passion of Inanna, Queen of Sumeria, for Dumuzi, a shepherd boy. "My beloved, the delight of my eyes," Inanna cried to him over four thousand years ago.

Vedic and other Indian texts, the earliest dating between 1000 and 700 B.C., tell of Shiva, the mythic Lord of the Universe, who was infatuated with Sati, a young Indian girl. The god mused that "he saw Sati and himself on a mountain pinnacle / enlaced in love."

For some, happiness would never come. Such was Qays, the son of a tribal chieftain in ancient Arabia. An Arabic legend, dating to the seventh century A.D., has it that Qays was a beautiful, brilliant boy -- until he met Layla, meaning "night" for her jet black hair. So intoxicated was Qays that one day he sprang from his school chair to race through the streets shouting out her name. Henceforth he was known as Majnun, or madman. Soon Majnun began to drift with the desert sand, living in caves with the animals, singing verses to his beloved, while Layla, cloistered in her father's tent, slipped out at night to toss love notes to the wind. Sympathetic passersby would bring these appeals to the wild-haired, almost-naked poet boy. Their mutual passion would eventually lead to war between their tribes -- and death to the lovers. Only this legend remains.

Meilan also lived by dying. In the twelfth century A.D. Chinese fable "The Jade Goddess," Meilan was the pampered fifteen-year-old daughter of a high official in Kaifeng -- until she fell in love with Chang Po, a vivacious lad with long tapered fingers and a gift for carving jade. "Since the heaven and earth were created, you were made for me and I was made for you and I will not let you go," Chang Po declared to Meilan one morning in her family's garden. These lovers were of different classes in China's rigid, hierarchical social order, however. Desperate, they eloped -- then were soon discovered. He escaped. She was buried alive in her father's garden. But the tale of Meilan still haunts the souls of many Chinese.

Romeo and Juliet, Paris and Helen, Orpheus and Eurydice, Abelard and Eloise, Troilus and Cressida, Tristan and Iseult: thousands of romantic poems, songs, and stories come across the centuries from ancestral Europe, as well as the Middle East, Japan, China, India, and every other society that has left written records.

Even where people have no written documents, they have left evidence of this passion. In fact, in a survey of 166 varied cultures, anthropologists found evidence of romantic love in 147, almost 90 percent of them. In the remaining 19 societies, scientists had simply failed to examine this aspect of people's lives. But from Siberia to the Australian Outback to the Amazon, people sing love songs, compose love poems, and recount myths and legends of romantic love. Many perform love magic -- carrying amulets and charms or serving condiments or concoctions to stimulate romantic ardor. Many elope. And many suffer deeply from unrequited love. Some kill their lovers. Some kill themselves. Many sink into a sorrow so profound that they can hardly eat or sleep.

From reading the poems, songs, and stories of people around the world, I came to believe that the capacity for romantic love is woven firmly into the fabric of the human brain. Romantic love is a universal human experience.

What is this volatile, often uncontrollable feeling that hijacks the mind, bringing bliss one moment, despair the next?

The Love Survey

"O tell me the truth about love," exclaimed poet W. H. Auden. To understand what this profound human experience actually entails, I canvassed the psychological literature on romantic love, culling those traits, symptoms, or conditions that were mentioned repeatedly. Not surprising, this potent feeling is a complex of many specific traits.

Then, to satisfy myself that these characteristics of romantic passion are universal, I used them as the basis for a questionnaire I designed on romantic love. And with the assistance of Michelle Cristiani, then a graduate student at Rutgers University, as well as Dr. Mariko Hasagawa and Dr. Toshikazu Hasagawa at the University of Tokyo, I distributed this survey among men and women at and around Rutgers University in New Jersey and the University of Tokyo.

The poll began: "This questionnaire is about 'being in love,' the feelings of being infatuated, being passionate, or being strongly romantically attracted to someone.

"If you are not currently 'in love' with someone, but felt very passionately about someone in the past, please answer the questions with that person in mind." Participants were then asked several demographic questions, covering age, financial background, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and marital status. I also asked questions about their love affairs. Among them: "How long have you been in love?" "About what percent of an average day does this person come into your thoughts?" And "Do you sometimes feel as if your feelings are out of your control?"

Then came the body of the questionnaire (see the Appendix). It contained fifty-four statements, such as: "I have more energy when I am with ____." "My heart races when I hear ____'s voice on the phone." And "When I'm in class/at work my mind wanders to ____." I designed all these questions to reflect the characteristics most commonly associated with romantic love. Subjects were required to indicate to what extent they agreed with each query on a seven-point scale from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree." A total of 437 Americans and 402 Japanese filled out the questionnaire. Then statisticians MacGregor Suzuki and Tony Oliva assembled all these data and did a statistical analysis.

The results were astonishing. Age, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, ethnic group: none of these human variables made much difference in the responses.

For example, people of different age groups answered with no significant statistical differences on 82 percent of the statements. People over age forty-five reported being just as passionate about their loved one as those under age twenty-five. Heterosexuals and homosexuals gave similar responses on 86 percent of the questions. On 87 percent of the queries, American men and women responded virtually alike: there were few gender differences. American "whites" and "others" responded similarly on 82 percent of the questions: race played almost no role in romantic zeal. Catholics and Protestants showed no significant variance on 89 percent of the statements: church affiliation was not a factor. And where these groups did show "statistically significant" differences in their responses, one group was usually just a little more passionate than the other.

The greatest differences were between the Americans and the Japanese. On most of the forty-three questions where they showed statistically significant variations, one nationality simply expressed somewhat greater romantic passion. And the twelve questions showing dramatic differences all appeared to have rather obvious cultural explanations. For example, only 24 percent of Americans agreed with the statement, "When I am talking to ____, I am often afraid that I will say the wrong thing," whereas a whopping 65 percent of Japanese agreed with this declaration. I suspect this particular variation occurred because young Japanese often have fewer and more formal relations with the opposite sex than Americans do. So, all things considered, within these two very different societies, men and women were much alike in their feelings of romantic passion.

*endnotes have been omitted

Copyright © 2004 Helen E. Fisher