The Great Mate Debate by Chemistry.com

Topic: Is there an age at which it’s too young to get married?

I’m not in the “should” business. I think people need to do what they need to do. But here are some facts: The older you are when you wed, the more likely you are to remain married. I have looked at data collected by the United Nations between 1947 and 1992 on 58 societies and the pattern is the same everywhere: Marriages among the very young are fragile. But what’s wrong with marrying at sixteen? Some people, particularly the very poor, are likely to have a difficult road ahead. At sixteen, they are still in good enough health to bear and raise a child, and they still live with kin who can help them with their young. There are many economic, physiological and psychological reasons that the young marry, reasons that are grounded in good Darwinian logic. Besides, try telling a sixteen year old girl who is madly in love with a sixteen year old boy that he has no job and three heads, and you will get a totally black stare. The heart is not well connected to the brain. These “body loops,” as the neural pathways between one’s thoughts, emotions, motivations and bodily feelings are called, are swamped by romantic love. You simply don’t think clearly while Cupid is dancing in your head. As Pascal said, “The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.”

“You can only be intimate with your equal.” I have always loved this anonymous quote. And, for this reason, I admire men who go out with older women. I reason that they must be smart--because older women have more experience, and hence they are more likely to be interesting and sexy. I know some utterly boring older women, of course, as well as some intriguing younger ones. But, all things considered, age does give some perks. And the younger man who can sustain the interest of an older woman is likely to be equally evolved. But I think there is a Darwinian reason that people gawk at this combination: it’s not a logical reproductive match. Older women are less likely to bear viable young. So the young man who goes out with an older woman may not send his DNA into tomorrow, genetic suicide. In our bones, we feel this combo is unnatural. But today a lot of men and women don’t wish to have children. So why not follow your heart? In fact, I think these couples are part of a much larger 21st century trend: of dating, loving, and marrying whom we please. So to me, these pairs are much more than just another success story for Cupid; they express a vast departure from the rigidly traditional marriage culture of the past 10,000 years, the morning of a new age.

Topic:   Which sex is more romantic – men or women?

The psychological data report that men are more romantic than women are. They fall in love faster, because they are so visual. Men are more dependent on their girlfriends or wives because they have fewer close friends and fewer ties to family. More men remarry. And more men kill themselves when a relationship ends. Men even alter their daily schedule more regularly, waiting for a woman to call or write. And new data indicate that men are also more eager to marry and happier in their marriages. Scientists believe that women are somewhat more cautious about entering a relationship, and sustaining it, for a good Darwinian (unconscious) reason: it is the woman who will bear the fetus for nine months, and do the vast majority of daily childcare during the child’s infancy. Feminine caution is adaptive.

But women seem to express romantic feelings more regularly than men. Women, on average, are more emotionally expressive. They buy and send more greeting cards. They arrange the social schedule, including birthday parties and anniversary events. Women are better at remembering the history of the relationship, so they are good at reminiscing. And our data on the brain chemistry of romantic love suggest that women feel ever so slightly more of the intense exhilaration when they fall in love.

So which sex is more romantic? Both. The sexes just express it differently. But we are built to continually chase one another--as Keats brilliantly summed it up in his Ode on a Grecian Urn, saying, “What mad pursuit.”

I was once told by a man that one of men’s deepest held secrets is that they don’t always want to have sex. Women keep secrets too. And one of our secrets is that we don’t really like very muscled men. Dr. Martie Haselton, a fine evolutionary psychologist at UCLA and graduate student in psychology David Frederick have proven this scientifically. In a series of experiments, they have established that women are attracted to muscle building men for short liaisons and affairs. But for a long term relationship, they seek more average looking guys.

Most interesting is women’s reasoning. Women report that very muscled men tend to be domineering, volatile and philandering. And for a long term relationship, they prefer men who are more faithful and romantic.

Why is this so interesting? Because these women are accurately (yet unconsciously) reading biology. Muscle builders trigger the production of testosterone to develop their muscles. And elevated testosterone is associated with being domineering, volatile, and unfaithful. In short, as women look at these muscles they are intuitively linking them with specific biological mechanisms that produce specific psychological traits.

My point is this: looks count. They say subtle things about your biology--and your personality. And people naturally pick up on these cues. So this summer, when everyone is out parading, don’t think you are shallow as you ogle potential mates. Listen to your heart. You are often much smarter than you think you are.

The Psychiatric University Clinics in Basel, Switzerland did a study in which scientists asked 113 teenagers (around the age of 17) to keep a diary of their sleep patterns; they were studying mood and behavior. Apparently 65 of these teens were “in love.” And the love struck men and women displayed signs of “hypomania,” a less intense form of mania. These men and women slept an hour less each night; they impulsively spend too much money; and they were twice as likely to report that they were filled with energy and creative ideas. Last, they took more risk, particularly while driving. The scientists concluded that being in love is a “psychopathologically prominent stage.”

What is “pathological” about being in love? Journalists and apparently scientists seem to want to make this natural human euphoria, associated with true bliss, intense energy and heightened creativity, into a disease. Romantic love is an extremely powerful brain system, indeed when it hits, it is an obsession. And we all know that love can be dangerous, psychologically and physically. But a disease? Well, if romantic love is a disease, just about all the world wants to contract this fever and live with it forever.