Sex Talks With Emma-Louise Boynton - Why we love with evolutionary anthropologist, Dr Anna Machin

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

In this episode, Emma-Louise is joined by evolutionary anthropologist, Dr Anna Machin, to discuss the topic of love - why we love, how we love, what's happening in our brains and in our bodies when we fall in love.... If you've ever felt like you're going a little crazy when in the early stages of romance, Dr Machin explains why. In a similar vein, she also breaks down some of the most enduring cultural myths surrounding love and romance, outlining why we get this topic so very wrong. The idea of 'the one'? Bullsh*t. But there is a biological explanation for the notion of soulmates. If you're curious to learn more about the ideas discussed in this episode make sure to read Dr Machin's book, Why We Love, which we found fascinating. Finally, if you want to join a live recording of the Sex Talks podcast you can find details here.

Hello and welcome to the Sex Talks podcast with me, your host, Emma Louise Boynton. Sex Talks exist to engender more honest, open and vulnerable conversations around typically taboo topics, like sex and relationships, gender inequality, and the role of technology is playing in changing the way we date, love and fuck. Our relationship to sex tells us so much about who we are and how we show up in the world, which is why I think it's a topic we ought to be talking about with a little more nuance and a lot more more curiosity. Each week I'll be joined by a new guest whose expertise on the topic I'd really like to mine and do well just that. From writers, authors and therapists to actors, musicians and

founders, we'll hear from a glorious array of people about the stuff that gets the heart of what it means to be human. If you want to join the conversation outside of the podcast, sign up to my newsletter via the link in the show notes or come along to a live recording of the podcast at the London Edition Hotel. Enjoy the show. In today's episode, I'm joined by Dr. Anna Maitchen, an evolutionary anthropologist whose work includes over a decade researching the science and anthropology of close human relationship. She's the author of Why We Love, the definitive guide to our most fundamental need, and the life of dad, the making of a modern father.

In this episode, we focus on the former title as we delve into the topic of love, which isn't just the stuff of poetry and prose and Ed Sheeran songs. Instead, it's the linchpin for our survival as humans. Humans are, Anna writes, the most cooperative species on the planet. we need each other to survive. And it's love that motivates and rewards us for maintaining relationships with the people we need to cooperate with. Friends, family, lovers, the wider community.

At its most basic level, she says, love is biological bribery. But what are we actually talking about when we're talking about love? What's really happening in our brains and in our bodies when we fall in love with someone new? Do men and women experience love differently? I often wonder that. These are all questions Anna and I discussed in the episode.

And I hope it proves as reassuring to you as it did me to learn that there is in fact a very good reason as to why I fully in love can make you feel so crazy. And if you're single and thinking, I do not want any more reminders that I need to find a bloody partner, fear not. Anna confirms what we all already knew, that female friendships really are the greatest romances of our lives.

Good morning. I'm so excited to be joined today by Anna Machen, who's the author of a book I have absolutely devoured why we love. And I was just saying to you before we joined this podcast recording how this book has really helped me feel a little bit less crazy in my dating exploits and those of my friends. So I really, really appreciate it. So the purpose of today's conversation, I was really keen to have you on the podcast because a lot of the themes that you touch on in the book, I feel the ones that we cover at sex talks, love is obviously one of the most kind of universally talked about, discussed, written about, agonised over topics. And yet one, I think we get so fundamentally wrong. And it's interesting reading your book really, I guess, emphasised to me the, I guess, the disparity between

our kind of cultural ideas around love and it's the role we and the role it plays in our lives and how we approach it versus our kind of biological, neurological, the reasoning behind why and how we love. So having that kind of scientific kind of anthropological backdrop to love, I think is really helpful, as I said, in making people feel maybe a little bit less lost and crazy in what they're going through when they're falling in and out of love, going through heartbreak, etc. So today I really wanted us to just deep dive into this brilliant book, Why We Love. But before we get started, I think it would be helpful for people to, and myself included, to just to understand a little bit better what an evolutionary anthropologist actually is.

Okay, well, so anthropology is the study of the human species. And an evolutionary anthropologist studies how evolution has shaped us. So it's a biological science, basically. The difference between biologists, I suppose, and anthropologists is we also take into account the culture that's a heavy element of being human. So I've studied the evolution of social behavior initially and then moved into close, what we call close diadic relationships. So I'm interested in how love evolved, why we've arrived at where we are today, what underpins love, what are the mechanisms and how culture impacts your experience of love. And the way we study it, gosh, we study it in lots of different ways. spent a lot of time putting people in scanners and seeing what happens in their brains.

We spent a lot of time, not very nice, taking people's blood and finding out what happens with their hormones. We spent a lot of time just talking to people about their relationships, studying their behaviour, looking at the psychology of it. And we also do that in more than just the West. So we do it around the world because, particularly in the West, we have quite a narrow view of love. And it's quite helpful to see love from other perspectives from other countries. So it's a really multidisciplinary job, really. I mean, it sounds fascinating. Now you start the book by explaining how critical love is to our very survival. The stuff of are you going to hand down some genes the next generation or not stuff as you articulate?

Now, you just mentioned there that in the West particularly we're fixated on one specific type of love, far above all the others, and that obviously is romantic love. I mean, it's a whole movie genre, music genre, etc., etc. But your book explores lots of different types of love. We have romantic love, of course, but then also platonic love for music, love, a kind of a whole plethora of different types of love. What is, how do you define love? What is love? And what are we really talking about when we talk about love? Wow, that's really tricky because that's my job title. I've tried to answer that question. I haven't done it yet.

It's really complicated because love is really multifactorial. What I say is you can split love into two areas and the factors that affect it. So the first one is the biological dimension of love. So that's things like what happens in your brain, your neurochemistry, your genetics, your psychological headspace, your attachment style, all that kind of thing. And that's, that's the biological dimension of love. And all those different things feed into your experience of love. And then we have the cultural dimension, which is things like the religion you grew up with, the laws in your country about love, the family stories you know about love, you'll meet how the media impacts your ideas about love. And all of that comes together to define what love is. So I think the tricky

thing is, is it in the past scientists have tried to come down to like a single answer. But that answer will only answer that question at a particular level of explanation. So someone might just say, it's neurochemistry. And that is a correct answer. One part of love is neurochemistry, but that's not the only answer. So there isn't a single answer to the question, what is love? It's very, very complicated. And because it's so complicated, actually, our individual experiences of love are quite special to each of us, because we've got so many different factors coming into them. So how I feel when I'm in love and how I behave when I'm in love is probably very different to how you do. And that's actually what's so special about it. So I'm afraid there is.

There isn't an answer. There isn't a formula. That's why it's so fascinating to study. As scientists, we know more now than we ever have before about what happens in your brain and in your body and behaviourally. But that doesn't give you an absolute answer to the question. That's why I wrote the book. And there's 10 chapters. And each chapter is a good answer to the question, what is love? But none of them is the complete answer. And I found that really interesting, actually, as I was reading it, just thinking how, to your point, how subjective our experience of love is. So we can be, in a long-term loving romantic relationship with someone and we're both experiencing love in a completely different way and what love means to us might be quite different and how we receive it and obviously then how we communicate around it is so different now i know i mean the world health organization last year declared loneliness to be a pressing global health threat with the u.s surgeon general dr vivick murthy saying that its mortality effects are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day now love as you write in the book is kind of

kind of a key way, a kind of key to survival, as I said, and has the largest impact on our health and happiness, longevity and satisfaction. And in many ways we know, kind of love is the counterbalance to loneliness. We've just touched on the fact that in the West we prioritise or we idealise in many ways romantic love above other forms of love. Is there an order of priority in terms of the type of love that is most beneficial or impactful to us for those health benefits that you discuss in terms of longevity, happiness, et cetera? Not really, no, actually. And that's where we get it wrong, I think, in the West, is that we do think romantic love is

like the pinnacle of love. And that's the one that you've really got to capture. But no, all sorts of love, as long as they're intense enough, have the same health benefits. It's the same neurochemistry. So they all have the same health benefits. So whether your most powerful love is for your family or for your friends or even for God, that's fine. That's absolutely fine.

You will get the same health benefits as romantic love. It's just we've been persuaded in the West, I think, because it's such a multi-billion dollar industry. And there are so many stories that we weave around romantic love. We've just become convinced that that's the one you need to get. But actually it's not. And for example, friendship love is incredibly powerful. I always quote, Phoebe Waller Bridge said some time ago that female friendships, the greatest romances of our lives. And I've now co-opted that quote and

say it often at sex talks as we've had discussions about the importance of elevating the significance of different types of love rather than just being completely obsessed with finding a romantic partner and thinking that if we don't find that romantic partner, we're screwed and we're not going to achieve the levels of happiness and success as our counterparts. So I think having you highlight the science actually sits behind that is really comforting. And I think you particularly feel it. Like I'm in my 30s and a lot of people come to sex towards kind of late 20s, early 30s. And you do feel that pressure. You feel that pressure to find the one. Otherwise your life will be less good if you don't. But that's just objectively not true, I guess. Yeah, it's completely untrue. And actually, female friendship in particular, we've done quite a lot of work on female friendship. And it's incredibly powerful. And actually, there's an increasing number of women who actually don't want to partner. And for example, don't want children, which is the other sort of love you might. might want to have in your life. And for them, they're what we call survival critical relationships. So the one that will give them all the good health and the benefits that

are their friendships, are their female friendships? And in the book, I spoke a lot to women about their female friends. And it is a really powerful love and it's a really nurturing love because it's a very non-judgmental sort of love. It's a non-competitive sort of love. It's a love that will see you your good times and your bad times. And often women's female friendships last longer than their romantic relationships. That is the friend. friendship in the background that will keep going through however many partners you have. So I think we need to sort of recalibrate what we think is important, actually. And as long as you have, you do have to have love in your life.

But quite often I will get messages from people saying, yes, but I don't have a partner. You say this and it's really difficult because I don't, and I'm just like, well, what about all the other sorts of love you have in your life? Where are they? Look around you and focus on where are the other loving relationships in your life? Because you probably do have love in your life. You just don't have romantic love, and that's fine. And you just said there that female friendships can be this incredible source of, I guess,

life sustenance and actually some of our most enduring relationships. Is that the same for men and male friendships? I was reading a study that said that men typically find it much more difficult to have a close group of friends and typically have fewer friends than their female counterparts. So is romantic love more important for men because of that? I don't know whether it's more important. I think men do do friendships. Men very rarely will have a best friend or a couple of really close friends.

What men tend to have is a group of friends. And that group of friends is quite often underpinned by a particular shared interest. They don't tend to use their friendships in the same way. So we did a study very early on at Oxford looking at comparing romantic relationship behavior and best friend behavior for men and for women. And what we found for women is they are more emotionally intimate with their female best friend than they are with their partner. So they feel like they can be more emotionally vulnerable to their female best friend.

men don't do that with their friends what they tend to find is they still find it as a source of non-judgmental support but what they say is they just find it a very relaxing environment to be in very lots of humour involved that kind of thing so it's it's a different way of having friendships

it's not necessarily that they have less friends but they're just a different sort of friend I think and as I say they're less like to have those very intense diadic relationships where you share a lot Let's go then to romantic love and think What actually makes us attracted to someone romantically?

Because you talk earlier on the book about our mate value And the mate value of women is calculated according to health, fertility and fidelity Whereas with a man is linked to their ability to protect, provide and commit to their family. Women were vulnerable when they lived in a world in which they were pregnant or breastfeeding, hence this is why we've evolved to be attracted to these sort of characteristics. Now, my feminist cultural conditioning and the work I do to try and unpack reductive gender stereotypes when it comes to sex, relationships, romance, etc., obviously has me bristle at reading this. Surely biology is not this deterministic and we've moved beyond these seemingly kind of gender biological deterministic ways of being attracted to people, reasons being attracted to people. And it just made me think, as I was reading as I was a highlight in this section,

fundamentally is biology just sexist? Yeah, I'm afraid so. I mean, the thing about the feminist argument, and I do address it in the book, because when I do talks, obviously, you can feel the audience bristling. The reason why we have made choice like that, and we share it with a lot of other mammals,

that particular pattern, particularly where you have investing fatherhood, is we bring different things to the party. All that evolution wants you to do is reproduce, whether you consciously want to or not, that's what your unconscious drive is. And women and men bring different things to the party. So a woman, she will be reproductively successful if she's young and she's fertile, she can become pregnant, she can bear that child and she can raise it because she's healthy enough.

And a man, obviously, he doesn't actually having the child is no cost to him at all really, a bit of sperm. So he brings different things to the party. And in an environment in which we evolved, and this all kind of came out about half a million years ago, women were incredibly vulnerable. You couldn't control your contraception or your fertility and therefore you had to be protected and you had to be provisioned. and you wanted a man who was going to commit to you and not run off over the horizon with somebody else. So that's where it all formed half a million years ago, okay? Evolution works really, really, really slowly.

I mean, half a million years in the evolutionary time is like nothing, really. The problem we have with the feminist argument is, first of all, feminism is great, but feminism is really young. A hundred years ago, women were still in a position where they couldn't really own property. The only way you could be protected as a woman was to get married, to be financially safe. And 100, so let's say in the 60s, we started seeing a bit of feminism. We still got quite a long way to go, actually, in that fight.

But we saw that, that's nothing. That's like a milly, mill, mill, mill, millise second in terms of evolution. So not enough to change something as fundamental as mate choice behaviours. The second thing I would say about the feminism thing is, unfortunately, the majority of women in this world do not have feminism. And they are still in a position where they do have to be married or be protected by a male to have money, to live, to survive to have children in most non-Western contexts. So until that feminism is universal and all women have that equality, it's not going to change. And I think we have to remember that. Sometimes we can be very Western-centric and we can think, oh, well, I can protect and I can provide

and I don't. Yeah, I'm sure you can. And that's absolutely wonderful. But most women in this world can't. And so I think we just need to be a little bit careful and we need to look beyond the West and see, well, what are most women having to deal with? If you look at women who are women who are incredibly successful financially and perfectly capable of provisioning and protecting themselves. They tend to go for men who are even more successful than themselves. So they don't actually step back and say, I've got the protection and provisioning role. They go, because it's all unconscious this. They're not thinking they're thinking about it. They still are attracted to men who have even more money than they do and even more power than they do. And so they're still

honing in all that protection and provision thing. Because the main value bit is entirely unconscious. what happens is that you calculate the mate value of a potential partner in like the first nanoseconds you meet them and so the bit we call chemistry yeah is you finding a mate value person that matches you and you go yes great and all the oxytocin and dopamine kicking off so that's the chemistry you feel that's the only time mate value is really assessed and it's only a tiny part of attraction mate value and then obviously when your conscious brain kicks in there are lots of other things that you consciously think about the person. I would say mate value

is important because it's what all mammals do but it's a tiny part of attraction. So it's that small initial, I guess, point of attraction. That's what kicks off the chemistry. So when people say no chemistry what they mean is they did their brain did the mate value calculation and went

no, no. But it doesn't mean actually that person's not right for you because mate value is just a part of attraction. Let's paint a scenario then. So you see someone out. I mean, I know this happens less and less because more and more people meet you on dating apps, and we'll get to that shortly. Step on a date with someone, for example,

that still does happen in my experience, or you do meet someone out, you're at a party, you're at a work event, whatever. And you have that initial attraction. What is going on from a kind of neurochemical perspective, what is happening in those early moments of attraction as you then tend to go out. Okay, very early moments.

So what happens is, so you see someone across the room, your sense has taken lots of information about that person. We are very sensory being, and so you're taking lots of visual information, you smell, you hear, all those sorts of things. Take all that in. Your brain has a very complicated algorithm. It will put all that information through the algorithm,

including things like mate value. And it would do all that. And if that person is for you, it will go, ping, like spit out the three cherries, go, yes, this person's for you, then oxytocin and dopamine are released in your brain and in the limbic, in the unconscious area of the brain. And what oxytocin and dopamine do is sort of several faults. So first of what oxytocin we've all heard of. But what oxytocin does in actuality is it,

lowers your inhibitions to starting new relationships. So it orientates you towards a social situation. And then it lowers your fears about walking over and saying hello. So it's a nagging voice in the back of your head that saps your confidence about saying hello in case it's all embarrassing and they don't like you. It quartens that. It does that by quietening the amygdala, which is like your fear centre in your brain. So that's what oxytocin does. And so you become very chilled and you become very confident. Secondly, dopamine's released at the same time as oxytocin. We've all heard of dopamine ending everywhere at the moment. But dopamine is your general reward chemical. Okay. So you get a feeling of joy. That's dopamine. So if you get

enjoy doing something. And what happens is dopamine release and its job is twofold. First of all, to reward you for making the effort to go and talk to this person. So that's nice. But really it's the hormone of motivation. It's wired into your motor circuits. And it's really important because if you just had oxytocin alone, yes, you would be orientated to the person. And yes, you would feel chilled, but you might be so chilled and having such a lovely time on your bar stool that you don't move because it's just really nice. So dopamine is there. Give you a kick and go, no, you've actually got to go and do something now. And so they work together. And the other thing they do is they increase what we call the plasticity of your brain.

And that means your brain is much more efficient at changing. And it does that in two areas, learning and memory, because you have to learn lots of stuff about this new person, starting with what the hell they look like. And you have to encode that into your brain, into your memory. So it's there to access. So they do lots of very special things to make it as easy as possible for you to go and do this quite difficult thing, which is go and talk to somebody.

And that happens in the first, yeah, literally nanoseconds of you clapping eyes on someone who you find attractive. The other one that's involved, it comes in slightly later, and that's serotonin, and serotonin underpins obsessive love. And what's really interesting about serotonin is while oxytocin and dopamine levels go up, Serotonin goes down, which kind of confused us for a really long time, because serotonin is your happy chemical. And we were like, why are you not happy? People who have obsessive-compulsive disorder have low levels of circulating serotonin, and it makes you obsessive. And you do have to be

slightly obsessed about this new person to spend a lot of time focusing on them, to embed them into your memory, to embed them into your life, to change your identity to absorb them. And therefore, a little bit of obsession is important. So that's why when you do meet a partner for the first time, you probably spend a long time just daydreaming about them or looking at photos about them or boring your friends senseless. That's serotonin. But it's doing it to make sure that you do put them

at the centre of your life for a little bit. So there is an evolutionary biological explanation for the craziness that can often follow initial attraction to someone when you really fancy someone because that can be the most derailing, discombobulating feelings and you can still feel it seems at any age. I mean, I'm 31 now and I'm still shocked if and when that process happens.

I fancy someone new and I feel like I am 15 again and I could be writing their name all over a notebook and it just makes you feel crazy. Yeah, well it does and that's so that is serotonin. Wow, okay, I feel legitimised in that.

And then we often, I feel like the conversation around who you fancy meeting people on dating apps. Often we feel I think that we're doing the wrong thing when we're prioritising quite seemingly superficial attributes in a potential partner.

And those are things that we can prioritise, but then feel bad about prioritising because they're not the most important thing for a long, enduring relationship. But actually, I was surprised, I guess, and maybe a little bit galvanised, reading your book and discovering actually there is quite a kind of key reason as to why those things, smell, height, symmetry of face are actually quite important to us. Can you just explain that for me a bit? Yeah. So when I mentioned that you use your senses to assess someone and one of the most key senses is visual. So what does the person look like? And we get a lot of information about somebody's value as a mate from what they look like. So we mentioned that you want, for example, women have to be healthy and fertile. And actually there's a lot of bodily indicators of that. One of the particular one is the waist tip ratio. And the ideal waste tip ratio universally culturally, the most attractive one, regardless of whether you go into the Congo, jungle and hold up a picture, is point seven, which is the hourglass. And the reason for that is because point seven has a direct relationship, both to fertility and good health. So we have evolved to like that because that person is the most fertile and healthiest person. Symmetry is important because symmetry is related to good genes. So the closer you are to symmetry,

which nobody's symmetrical, but the closer you are to it, the stronger your genes are, So there is a universal attraction to things that are very nearly symmetrical, regardless of the animal, butterflies have it. And it's because it's an indicator of good genes. And obviously we want to have good genes for the offspring we're going to have. And particularly in short-term relationships where there's not going to be a long-term commitment. So particularly if you're a woman, you're not getting the protection, you're not getting the provision. If you become pregnant, all you're getting is the genes looks are much more important in short-term relationships to women than long-term relationships. Because all you're getting is this person's genes.

and therefore the fact that they are nearly symmetrical is really important because that shows they've got really strong genes. So actually, visual stuff is important. It is important. And it's one of the first things you look at. But it can be overridden by other things. So when we first attract to someone, it's an entirely unconscious process and you take all this stuff in.

But quite quickly your conscious brain kicks in as well. And that can override that unconscious bit. So, yeah, you could have somebody who's the most asymmetrical person on earth. they're not a 0.7, they're a 1 or whatever, but actually when they open their mouth and they start talking, they suddenly become incredibly attractive because actually I always argue your brain is actually your sexist organ in your body because it displays so much about who you are, about your qualities, about your values, about your strengths, that we can overlook what somebody looks like if they happen to be attractive in that way.

Particularly in long-term relationships, particularly as a woman, provision and protection are not about being good looking, on commitment. They're actually more about somebody's personality, somebody's values, that kind of thing. So in a long-term relationship as women, we are much more likely to overlook what somebody looks like because actually at their core,

they're an attractive person. So it's quite complicated. But yeah, visually, sensory stuff, like smell, really important initially, really important. And I guess what we're describing here now, this kind of initial attraction is really lust, I suppose, as opposed to love. How do you distinguish between the two?

And I guess what is actually really happening to us at a kind of neurological level when lust evolves into love? Okay, so love is a much more complex experience. Lust is very much an unconscious drive which we share with lots and lots of animals. Love, other animals do love, but our love is much more complicated.

So love is underpinned by a different neurochemical than lust. So we've mentioned dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin. they are themselves there in the background in love is like supporting chemicals but the problem with them all is they're very short lived in their effect and you can grow tolerant to them so they're not very good at underpinning long-term relationships and obviously we could be in love for decades so they're not good at that so we need a much more powerful chemical to underpin long-term human love and that's beta endorphin and beta endorphin is your body's opiate it's actually evolved as your painkiller it's like morphine but over evolutionary time it's transitioned into being a social chemical as well as Well, it just works really simply. It's just like any addictive opiate. So you interact with the person, you get a hit of beta endorphin, you feel euphoric and warm and calm and connected. And then you move away from the person and you go into withdrawal

and you get that absolute drive, that physiological drive to go back and be satiated again with your opiate. And that is a really simple mechanism that keeps people together for a very long time. And so long-term love, regardless of whether it's platonic or whatever, is underpinned by beta endorphine. And also love is, love is, as I said, an unconscious and a conscious experience. So while lust is unconscious, love involves your cortical areas of your brain as well. And that's where things like trust and empathy and reciprocity and things like conscious

contemplation of your relationship, decisions about how you're going to maintain the relationship, that kind of thing. They all sit in your conscious brain. So love involves a lot of conscious contemplation. It also is underpinned by various other things, which I think. to find love. So, for example, attachment, which is a big thing at the moment. And finally, we have a thing called biobehavioral synchrony when you're in love with someone. And what that is, it's actually the biological explanation of the idea of soulmates. And by a behavioral

synchrony occurs. When you're with someone you're attached to and you're in love with, we all know that if you like look at a couple and they're very much in love, they can mimic each other's behavior, like gestures and they take on the same voice tone. And that's something we all recognize. But if you look inside their body, that behavioral synchrony is matched by a physiological synchrony. So their heart rate and their body temperature and their blood pressure will come into synchrony. And then if you look in their brain, we will see identical brain activation. And we will see neurochemical levels coming into synchrony as well. So we all exist at different levels of all these bonding chemicals.

But when you are with someone you love, your neurochemical levels will fluctuate until they match. And it can happen really quickly, like in five minutes. being together if you're closely bonded. And what that means is, first of all, that love is so important that it engages every mechanism in your body to make sure you're as closely bonded to that person as possible. But secondly, what's happening is you're actually in a way becoming one organism because your brain and your body are doing the same thing. And that's when you get that intense feeling of this person completely gets me. That is probably by a behavioral synchrony happening. And it doesn't just happen in romantic relationships. It happens in parent-child and

that happens in close friendships. So I would say those are the things that signify love. So beta and dolphin, attachment, biobehavioral synchrony, those are all things that underpin love. So what you've just described there in terms of that kind of synchronicity that can develop in the term, when we're in love with someone with a partner. Obviously the cultural idea around a soulmate

is that there is just one person with whom we are destined to be with. Is that the case? Is there one person who we can synchronise with? Listen, I find this really funny. Because if that was the case, right, there are 8 billion people in the world. Can you imagine if there's only one person you could end up with who was going to be right for you? The species would have died out a heck of a long time ago. So the chance of you finding that one person would be like infinitesimally small.

So no, there is not one person. There are many people who you will end up with because first of all, there's no such thing as 100% compatibility. So there is nobody out there that is absolutely perfect. for you. All relationships have compromises and what you want will change over your life course. So no, there are many ones because there are so many things that feed into what makes people compatible that you can have like eight, let's just let's just pretend there were 10. There's many on that. There are many people who will have seven of them. And that's fine. That's a really good

relationship. So no, there is no such thing as the one. And it's, and there's no such thing as only having one soulmate because soulmates are not just romantic, their friendships, there's lots of different ways you can have a soulmate. So yeah, we have to ditch the idea of the one because it's really, really unhelpful. Really unhelpful. I think it can also lead people so quickly to dismiss people they really like. We're so fixated on this idea often of their being just this one person who is going to be our kind of perfect ideal other. And I think especially now, I think they're like social media flattening of discourse around dating, like the red flags, green flags, you need to pursue this.

It's created quite a kind of, I think, cutthroat approach to dating that is really focused on like, if this person doesn't show up from the beginning effect, and meeting your needs, serving you is exactly in the way you need to be served as the queen that you are. I can see how this language has developed and I can see the kind of, I think the goodwill behind it often, you know, empowering women to feel more confident. they're dating and go for what they want and have boundaries and stuff like that. I do still think it's quite damaging because I do think it perpetuates this idea that we are looking for someone to show up in our lives who is this cookie cutter, perfect other for us

to be with. I think that's just so not the case. Obviously love takes work because Esther Perel says love is in action. It's about doing. It's about actually putting in that time, putting in that energy and cultivating something. And I guess making the choice. And I think what you've described in this conversation is all the, from a, from a kind of biological, neurological perspective, all the things that are happening, hormones that are

secreted in early attraction, and then as lust turns to love. But alongside that, I suppose, there is, as you say, the kind of conscious decision-making that also sits around that, the actions we choose to take, the way we choose to show up with people. And that obviously has a huge bearing on the prospect of a relationship evolving. Now, one thing that you mentioned there, the obsessive element of love through, the suppression of serotonin in that, I guess, early stage development of being attracted to someone, loving someone. This is something I found fascinating the book. In that you mention, you cite research that suggests there is a potentially close neural link between romantic love

and the sort of euphoric states that we associated with, we associated with getting high on drugs. Is love akin to a drug like cocaine? One of the people who first suggested that love was an opiate, was a psychiatrist who treated drug addicts. And he said, and he realized that the sort of, the sort of things they said about the drug was like, the experience of the drug was like the experience of being in love. So the idea of like this intense craving for the drug, the way that you feel euphoric when you've got it,

the way you feel awful when it's not there. And he was the first one, Lieberman, who suggested that actually, is it possible that actually love isn't underpinned by things like oxytocin and dopamine, but it's underpinned by something that is like cocaine, or heroin or something. And that's it, yeah. I mean, beta and dorphin is an opiate.

And you get exactly the same effect from it as if you had injected heroin, basically. So, yeah, when people say love is a drug, to a certain extent it is. I mean, obviously, we were being very reductive there and just reducing it down to its neurochemical underpinnings. But yes, it's an addictive, it's an addictive drug, basically. And because of that, it also means that sometimes

it's not particularly good for us because it makes us do things that aren't necessarily good for us, or be in relationships that are necessarily good for us because that need for that hit of opiate overrides your sort of sensible brain, basically, which is going, actually, this is not very good for you. And that's one of the downsides of love. And I talk about that in the book

because I think we always, we talk about love in a very positive way and it's overwhelmingly positive. It really, really is. It's so good for you. But as with all adaptations, it has a negative side because not all adaptations generally are 100% helpful.

and that is the fact that because we crave it so intensely, and it's a physiological craving, it's an absolute need, that's why the book's called one of it is, it can be either that we take decisions that aren't helpful to us, we stay in relationships we shouldn't stay in, or we actually get into relationships that are controlling or abusive because of it. And I think we have to acknowledge that side of it, whilst also saying that 95% of it is great.

I've interviewed love addicts in the past, to people who have defined themselves as love addicts. Typically, two or three people I've interviewed before, it's been associated with sex addiction as well. But the way they've described their relationships and the, I mean, to your point, like the extremes to which they went, like becoming suicidal when someone would not text them back, just becoming so fixated on someone.

And the reset is, it's interesting with love addiction as to how it's understood. because it's so, from what you've described, we all become a little bit addicted to love. It does act in this. The kind of neurochemicals that are released in us when we begin to fall in love with someone do have this addictive capacity to them and we do go a little bit crazy and that's normal.

And I guess to be expected and probably has, as you've articulated, an evolutionary benefit keeping us pursuing someone against all odds. But where does it become an addiction? Where does it become a negative addiction, I suppose? or something that becomes deleterious and is akin to being addicted to a substance that actually becomes harmful in someone's life.

I think it becomes difficult, yes, when you put yourself at risk in a relationship because of it or you stay in a relationship because you are addicted to that person. I would say that the addiction alone probably isn't enough for you to remain in a bad relationship. Generally what we find with people who do, there is also something going on in terms of attachment, for example. there might also be so you talked about somebody who was suicidal when someone dumped them

there is a there is a genetic predisposition it doesn't necessarily come out but there is a genetic predisposition for some people to take social rejection much much much more painfully than others it's it's a gain of function gene it's to do with one of the opiate receptors so it's complicated as to why people would be the sort of person who gets themselves into unhealthy relationships and stays there and is addicted to the wrong sort of person but yeah I mean I mean it's a phenomenon that happens but I think it's probably a complex interplay between sort of attachment

yes, the neurochemical and how susceptible they are to the neurochemical release probably something to do with genetics and probably something to do with sort of family culture and how they were brought up and all of those things come together for somebody to put themselves at risk or become yes, as you say suicidal

in relation to being dumped or whatever it might be. And then anecdotally Some most powerful, incredible women I know in my life who are CEOs, they're founders, they lead big teams, they are so smart, they are financially secure, all these things. And then they fall in love or they start fancying someone. And it's just their Achilles heel. I totally count myself in this. I'm not in any way being judgmental of any of my wonderful friends. But it feels it seems to be the kind of the undoing of otherwise very done up women.

And I just wondered with that whether there is a difference between the sexes in terms of the neural fingerprint of romantic love. The short answer to that is no, actually. A lot of the differences in behaviour you're talking about there tend to be cultural, actually. So it's because we've said to men you don't express emotions and you're not allowed to be crazy or soppy or whatever about love. You've got to be like really serious. So a lot of that is culture.

No, the differences, so if you put somebody, in a scanner, for example, and nobody tells you what sex they are. You can't tell by the brain activation at all. And you can't tell by the neurochemical levels. There is much more difference within the sexes between individuals than there is between the sexes. So this idea that men aren't emotionally literate and men aren't is actually because they've been told not to be emotionally literate. If you look at it in other cultures, there are other cultures where men are very emotional and very expressive about love and very comfortable with it.

So actually, most of the differences we see are just entirely culturally. They've been told that that's how they should behave. You see a real change in boys' behaviour towards love around puberty when they're so young boys, if we ask young boys to draw pictures of love and little girls,

they tend to, at preschool, early primary school, they tend to draw the same thing. So it'll be lots of hearts and flowers and bunny rabbits and loveliness. And then at about the age of about nine or ten, and you ask them to draw something representing love. The girls are still there doing parts and bunny rabbits and flowers and butterflies

and the boys start doing strong man looking after woman. And that's because they've taken it in. Because if you think about all our media, if you think about all the movies or television programs these kids are watching or the stories they've been told or what they've observed, that's what boys are told they're supposed to be. You're the rock, you're the strong one, you're the protector, you don't cry and you don't get emotional.

you know um so a lot of it is is cultural you mentioned before the role of beta endorphins when it comes to the longer term evolution of love in the context of a long term relationship and i was interested in the book and the research that you did in in terms of kind of beta endorphins and the role that they play in making a relationship i guess more enduring and i think you wrote at one point that you can tell you can predict potentially the longevity of a relationship based on the beta endorphins that are released earlier on when those people meet. Is that right?

To a certain extent you... Which couples are going to work out? To a certain extent you can, yes. I mean, it's not powerfully predictive because there's so much that comes into it. But yeah, you can to a certain extent that the amount of beta endorphin that's released you can tell to a certain extent

who's going to last longer than others. You can do it with oxytocin as well. So the amount of oxytocin that is released when a couple meets. you can give a certain, but it's complicated because it's not, if you exist at a higher level of oxytocin, for example, you are more likely to be a sociable relationship type of person anyway. Because oxytocin, one of the differences that, one of the things that underpins the differences in all of us in terms of how sociable we are is our baseline level of oxytocin.

Some of us exist at quite high levels. Some of us have quite low levels. The higher level you have, the more likely you are to be a sociable person, to be open to new relationships, to want to be in relationships. So it's quite difficult because those people might have come into those relationships with high oxytocin anyway. And in a way, you could put them in any relationship and it would be more likely to last longer because they are the sort of person who really enjoys relationships and will work to stay in it. Whereas you'll get other people who are lower oxytocin and they might be less inclined to put that work in. So it's really complicated actually as to how predictive it is. But yeah, you can.

And we've studied so many long-term relationships. There's lots of things we can say make it more likely for a relationship to last. So, for example, compatible attachment styles. It's like a no-brainer, really. But have a compatible attachment style. If you don't, your relationship is much less likely to last because it's compatible attachment styles is like the foundation of the building. And if they're not compatible, it's quite rocky. So we can predict that, for example.

So if you, for example, if you have like a, a. dismissing avoidant person and an anxious, a preoccupied person together, that's going to be a little bit unstable, basically, compared to like, let's say something else. What would then the kind of characteristic indicators of an enduring relationship look like? So things that you would see, I guess, maybe like day to day, just more the kind of the nuances of people's day-to-day relationships that would be indicative of the fact that they have this deeper level of compatibility and a likely chance of the relationship lasting. it's interesting it's things like it's really silly things like touch do they touch often even like

like just a tap eye gaze is really important so maintaining eye gaze when you're talking eye gaze is very powerful for bonding things like do they laugh because laughter is really important do they even when you're watching them is there a set is they like um not necessarily a synchrony but there's like people who are very get on really well there's like a reciprocity is a really nice flow between them of give and take and give and take and it doesn't jar and things like empathy so a lot of understanding of the other person's perspective and a lot of wanting to understand the other person's perspective and take that on board so there's just these little things that you look at people and you think yes that's that's a strong relationship but they're like little

nuanced things that you you might observe if you if you watch them carefully I've been watching couples therapy recently at the BBC show which I've become obsessed with and it's really interesting seeing that because it is those small things you can see in the couple dynamics, the touching of the hair, the like the familiarity, the kind of points of like that look between two people that says like something that you don't and then you can really see where it's very absent in the relationships and I found it fascinating watching that like giving that like shining a magnifying glass up to as you say that. those small little details in people's relationships that it can be so revealing as to what's

really going on, I guess, behind closed doors and at an emotional kind of deeper level. Though I have found it confusing because I feel like some couples do seem to demonstrate all the kind of outward signifiers of this deep compatibility and this familiarity. And then verbally they're like, I hate you. I hate you. And I'm like, whoa. Like, there's one couple particularly, I was like, you were the eye. had my money on you as being the ones that were like 100% going to laugh and then verbally yeah they'd be

like I just find you I don't want to be with you I'm absolutely shot and taken it back I found this so interesting and as I said I found reading your book just so illuminating because I think sometimes as I said I think the social media conversation around love and relationships can be so flattening and I think we can be missoled I mean culturally missed sold so many confusing ideas around what love should look like and how we should feel. And we can feel really crazy in that process. And I think it's really reassuring to understand what's actually happening in our brains and in our bodies during that process of attraction as lust evolves into love, we hope, in certain circumstances. And I think it's really empowering.

I mean, it's obviously to say, but knowledge really is power when you can actually understand what's happening in that process, I think can really help you keep a kind of handle on it, I guess, in terms of how you're feeling. in relation to that person and what that process is looking like with that in mind, I just wondered, with the research that you've done, having written this book, what do you think is the most damaging cultural myth surrounding love that you'd like to see us move away from? Okay, there's probably two. The first is that there's the one, and we've talked about that. The second is that chemistry is really important. So I get a lot of people who will say to me, I had a day there was no chemistry, so I'm not doing anything else. And that's really damaging, because chemistry, all chemistry is, is that first initial calculation,

unconscious calculation in the brain about the mate value thing we talked about. That's all it is. And as I said, mate value is important, but it's not the be all and end all. And actually, the slow burn so that you didn't get chemistry initially, but you get to know somebody and slowly over time, get, oh, actually, I really like you, is arguably more important because chemistry will go, because it is just, the initial attraction bit. It's nothing. And actually the slow burn where you really get to know someone and actually it's that that's attractive about them. Their brain is attractive.

And okay, they're reasonably good looking, but you didn't get chemistry. I think chemistry doesn't mean you're compatible. Chemistry is just your unconscious brain going, I like your body. That's all it's doing. Okay. So don't, the tyranny of chemistry, I think I would like to get rid of, the idea that you have to have it for it. Remember, attraction isn't compatibility. You can be attracted to somebody who is completely incompatible with you in the long term. So just give it time. Okay, don't rush and think.

So, because on a first thing, then, what should you be looking out for? If it's not, if it's trying not to be too fixated on that initial attraction, what should you really be looking out? Just ask the question, did you have a nice time? Did you have a nice time? Great, you had a nice time. We'll see them again then.

If there wasn't any chemistry, it doesn't matter because that can come. That really can come. Because actually what you might find sexy about this person isn't whether they've got the right waist tip ratio or shoulder waist ratio or all that kind of stuff. It's actually their conversation and their humor and their values and all this. And that takes time to reveal itself. And so I suppose, the trouble is, I grew up. I dated when we dated in real life and that really gave you time. Yeah?

Because you wouldn't be like, oh God, I've got to go. And some people, I know some people are really good at it, but some people, they'll have three dates a day and give. the person 20 minutes and it's just like how can you possibly expect anything to happen so I just think don't become obsessed by chemistry if you get chemistry that's fab but do not confuse it for compatibility because it's not it's a different thing do you think with that in mind do you think dating apps have then slightly I don't want to say ruin because I think I don't like any sort blanket demonisation of any form of technology is obviously how we use it but what I what then has been the impact of dating apps on us being able to ascertain

that like longer and more enduring compatibility when there is dating apps by default it's about it's a probability game it's meet as many people as possible meet as many people as possible it does ingrain the idea

that you just want to be quick in your decisions like okay cool yes no yes no yeah exactly and that's what's ingrained I will say dating apps are good because they but you need to use them as an introductory tool they're not a selection tool they're not an attraction tool because particularly dating apps

You know all that sensory information I spoke about when you see someone across a bar. You get nothing, literally nothing from a dating app. So you cannot decide whether you're attracted to somebody from a dating app. It's just impossible. So you have to meet them. Okay, fine. But they are an introductory tool. And I think, yes, because they are so efficient, because they're so low cost.

In the old days, when you wanted to meet someone, you had to get dressed up. You had to go out. You had to find someone to go, and it cost quite a lot. And you put therefore quite a lot of effort into it. And you weren't going to dismiss that person in 20 minutes because you've just spent two hours getting dressed. So whereas I think with dating apps, because it's so efficient, you can literally sit on the tube and go, no, no, no, yes, no. Or watch the telly and do it. It's very low cost. I think that's made us think that we don't have to make too much effort and it's very efficient. Dating's not supposed to be efficient and relationships aren't supposed to be efficient. They are so important to you that you are supposed to invest time in them. That's the point. So I think they've made us think it's efficient. I think they've made us think we can just select somebody on looks alone. And I think they've taken away our ability to really Let our brain do its job, which is to assess somebody. And it's really good at it, but it can't do it on a screen.

It's just not evolved to do that. So they've been great to introduce new people. They've been great, I think particularly for LGBTQ plus people, when sometimes it was hard to find your people. And now there's loads of apps, specialist apps, and that's brilliant. That's really good. But you've got to remember, as you said, it's a tool. It's not the be all and end all.

So remember that the best way to do it is give somebody time, let your brain do its job with recess. them and yeah they just they they just have made us think that it's just a as you say a probability and it's not really a probability game it's yeah it's a bit of a shame really and i've loved this conversation and as i said i really loved your book i really urge everyone to read it i just found it such an illuminating insightful exploration of love and you've given me so many new perspectives i think on thinking about love and the different forms of love that exist in my life so thank you so much Oh, thank you. It's been a great conversation.

Thank you so much for listening to Today's Sex Talks podcast with me, your host, Emma Louise Boynton. If you'd like to attend a live recording of the podcast, check out the Eventbrate link in the show notes, as we have lots of exciting live events coming up. In the meantime, don't forget to submit whatever ag-dient question you'd like us to tackle on a future podcast episode via the Sex Talks website. That's sextalks.com.uk. And finally, if you enjoyed the show, I hope you did. Please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to this on, as apparently it helps others to find us.

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