Men don't need linguistic talent; they just need courage and words.
It certainly would have been adaptive for ancestral man to have a chubby wife during stressful times of famine. Not only would she have had more calories to burn, and thus more energy and endurance, but since fat stores estrogen, she would have remained fertile for longer.
There exists no culture in which adultery is unknown, no cultural device or code that extinguishes philandering.
Today, most women are surrounded by ingenious gadgets. They don't grow the peas or raise the chicken that they serve for dinner; instead they hunt and gather in the grocery store. They go through catalogs or department stores to buy clothes instead of shearing sheep, carding wool, and weaving cloth for skirts and coats and blankets.
Blushing is thought to be linked to increased levels of norepinephrine in the brain, which may be associated with romantic feelings. It signals that we are interested and excited, which is attractive to men.
Women are better at reading body language everywhere in the world. As a matter of fact, it's associated with the female hormone estrogen. Women are better at figuring out of tone of voice, reading your face and posture and gesture.
When you fight, anger drives up testosterone in both men and women.
Of all the foods we share, there is nothing more primordial than meat. It's no surprise that meat-eaters still want a partner who will give, receive and share this primordial symbol of a budding partnership.
As social animals, we need to exchange juicy tales about someone - to connect with one another. For millions of years our forebears must have sat around the campfire, whispering about everyone they knew.
For so many generations, a woman's only career path was to marry well and to marry up. Those days have changed.
Men couldn't care less if your strands are perfectly styled and neat. In fact, he might like you more with some wildness or bedhead, since it shows you're carefree and relaxed.
Along with our many human propensities, we evolved a huge cerebral cortex with which we make decisions.
People have often asked me whether what I know about love has spoiled it for me. And I just simply say, 'Hardly.' You can know every single ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake, and then when you sit down and eat that cake, you can still feel that joy.
Research shows that couples who have a lot of similarities, including intellectual compatibility, end up staying together.
You fall in love with somebody who fits within what I call your 'love map,' an unconscious list of traits that you build in childhood as you grow up. And I also think that you gravitate to certain people, actually, with somewhat complementary brain systems.
I think romantic love evolved to enable you to focus your mating energy on just one individual at a time, thereby conserving mating time and energy.
The brain was not built to walk into a bar, where you know nobody, and start a conversation. That's not the way humanity has courted.
A lot of people head into courtship looking for fireworks. Don't pass up a chance by dumping someone after a first date because you don't feel the fireworks. The fireworks can happen at any time and be maintained.
In courtship, who wins and who loses will determine who passes on their DNA to tomorrow.
The human brain is built to compare; it's Darwinian to consider an alternative when one presents itself.
