December 5, 2018 • 37 mins
Anthropologist and love expert Helen Fisher helps us understand the rules that apply to mastering attraction in a tech-driven mating culture.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
We can give you somebody who's the right background and
education and interests, et cetera. But you can walk into
a room and everybody's from your background and level of
education and same religious and social values. We can give
you people so that you kiss fewer frogs, but you
have to do the word. The only real algorithm is
your own brain. Hey, welcome to you Turns. This is
(00:37):
the podcast. Are we talking about change in all areas
of our life, including relationships? I am Lisa Oz and
I'm Jill her Sake. You know, one of the things, Lisa,
that we have in common, many things in common. Number
one are vertically challenged. Just so we talk about that
(00:57):
is that we are both in long, long, long term relationships.
It's going to make it sound like we're eighty years old.
We're not eighty years old. But I have been with
my husband Robert for thirty three years. I thought you were, Oh,
you've been married for We've been married for almost twenty
five been together for thirty three years, and we've known
each other since we were six years old. So it's
(01:19):
just been it's like the bulk of my life. Robert
has been part of my life. How long? And you
and moment are celebrating. We've been married for thirty three years,
together for thirty five. Yeah, we're like a gazillion and
dog age. Very long relationship, very very long relationships. But
what one of the things we talk about just girl talk,
(01:42):
is that there are plenty of you turns and kind
of weird curveballs that you get thrown even in a
long term relationship. UM kind of doesn't matter. You terns
are you know, love is a huge bending force our
men that always jokes that we've been married like four times,
because he's been married four different women, because I was like, yeah,
(02:03):
you had one young woman when really old, when couple
middle aged women. Anyway, we are joined today with someone
who can help us navigate those ups and downs in
our relationships. UM Helen Fisher, the biological anthropologist and author
of six international best sellers. UM is going to help
(02:25):
us define what a successful relationship actually looks like. Welcome Helen.
I'm delighted and delighted to be with you. You know, um,
you know, I and my colleagues put people into brain
scanners and study romantic love. And one of our studies
was people who were long term happy marriages. And when
I heard the two of you talking about that, and
we discovered that you can remain in love with somebody
(02:48):
long term, not just loving, but in love with them
long term. You've got to pick the right person, and
you've got to know how to argue, and you've gotta,
you know, uh, get through these different kinds of changes
in partnership. I love that when you said that, Lisa,
because I think that that's quite true. You can have
very different relationships with somebody, and that's good. I mean,
(03:09):
you're constantly innovating and growing and and finding new ways
to be together, and it's you know it can work
because I know something about the brain. My husband gets
bored very easily. So I have lots of disguises. Good
for you keep at it. So what what does make
a successful relationship? Is not success? Isn't just the thirty three,
fifty sixty year your marriage success. You have a different
(03:34):
definition of what makes a successful relationship. It doesn't have
to be forever um, that's for sure. But over fifty
percent of Americans do marry for life. So we're always
hearing about all the ones that divorce, but we're not
hearing about the ones that remained together and are actually
in successful marriages. And in fact, I recently did a
study of eleven married people long term married, all married
(03:54):
more than twenty years, and I asked them a lot
of questions, but one of the questions was would you
read you marry the person you're currently married to, and
said yes, so it is possible, but anyway, and you
feel certain that they weren't saying that just because listen,
it's the down I know just to this person. Um,
(04:15):
we didn't through the internet, and all the studies show
that you are more honest on the internet because you're
anonymous and there's no payoffs for winning are losing, so uh,
and you people can lie, and people can lie to themselves,
not so much asking if they lied, but if part
of it was I'm comfortable with this person. I know them,
(04:35):
I know they're they're good and bad sides, and knowledge
and predictability is better than going out there and maybe
facing somebody, somebody who's a complete mystery. Well I think
that there's that that's the psychological. But when we put
them into the brain scanner, we saw activity in brain
reaches linked directly with romantic love, as well as brain
(04:58):
regions linked with attached and so, um, you're talking about
the long term sort of attachment which a great many
married people, UH express. But the bottom line is, in
these people we put in the machine, they had maintained,
they had told us in the lab that they were
in love, not just loving, but in love with this person,
which is distinctly different. And indeed we found activity in
(05:19):
brain regions linked directly with being in love. But anyway,
you asked at least about you know, what makes a
long term happy marriage, and you know, psychologists will say
all kinds of things, and I agree with all of them.
I mean, don't show contempt, don't threaten divorce, do new
things together, etcetera, etcetera. But this is what the brain says.
We put these people who are long term happy marriages
(05:41):
into the brain scanner and we found activity in three
brain regions linked with happiness. One brain region was was
a brain region linked with the mirror neurons linked with empathy,
showing empathy towards the person. The second is brain regions
linked with controlling your own stress and your own emotions,
and the third is a brain reagion link with positive illusions,
(06:04):
the ability to overlook what you don't like about the
person and focus on what you do. So what I'm
trying to add is the neuroscience addition to what the
psychologists tell you, and there are certainly are brain readers.
You've gotta be empathetic, you gotta control your own emotions
and your own stress, and you got to overlook what
you don't like focus on what you do. Fascinating because
(06:25):
your reality really is determined by what you focus on.
Exactly what you're seeing in this room, what you think
is this room is what you're focusing and not on
not all the other things that are going on in
the corners. Absolutely, and I often wonder how I mean,
I'm sort of it's a great human train to be
able to get into other people's heads and see what
they're thinking, you know, and responding appropriately to that. Uh.
(06:47):
It also kind of explains when you meet a married
couple and you think, how can say that guy put
up with that woman is the most annoying person I've
ever met. Snails on a chalkboard. I can't even stand
to be with her. Three dinner And he's beaming at
her and puts his arm around her and helps her
enter at the car, and you think, no, no, no,
(07:08):
he loves her. It's it's the what illusion? What did
what did you call positive illusions? It's so interesting. It
was Tolstoys in the beginning of Ana Karen, and he
said that all happy marriages, what do you remember this one?
All happy marriages are the same, and all bad marriages
are different. I think it's the reverse. I think all
(07:28):
happy marriages. You don't know, it's just like you just
said with that couple where you couldn't stand the woman,
but in fact they have all kinds of intricate connections
to each other that we don't know, don't see, and
it's good for them. So, you know, part of it's
the main thing we don't see as their sex life, right,
Sex could be a big part of it. And I
do think that, you know, I've I've long maintained that
(07:51):
we've evolved three distinctly different brain systems from mating and reproduction.
One is the sex drive, second is feelings of intense
romantic love, and the third is feelings of deep attack
each min And I do think in long term marriages
you should keep all three of those brain systems cooking,
so continually do have sex with the person it does
you know good? Uh? Any stimulation of the genitals that's
(08:13):
that's welcome, drives up the dopamine system in the brain
and can help sustain feelings of intense romantic love. And
with um orgasm, there's a real flood of oxytocin, and
that's associated with feelings of deep attachment. So sex drive
can help to stimulate those other two brain systems, romantic
love and attachment. So if you want to get along
(08:33):
with somebody, keep the sex of life novel things together
because that drives up the dopamine system and can sustain
feelings of romantic love. And stay in touch, hold hands,
walk arm in arm, learn to sleep, at least start
sleeping in the person's arms at night. Any kind of
touch can sustain feelings of the oxytocin system. So the
more we know about the brain, we know all kinds
(08:55):
of sort of natural mechanisms to find actually a person,
the right person, and sustain the relationship. You know, we
we have had conversations kind of marveling at couples we
know who admit that they're in sort of a sexless marriage.
I mean, maybe I don't tell you this right away,
but you kind of find out and they've somehow made
themselves okay with that? I think that does that work.
(09:17):
I think there's different personality styles. You know, I study personality,
the biology of personality, and we've evolved for very broad
styles of thinking and behaving link with the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone,
and estrogen systems. And those people who are very expressive
of the traits in the serotonin system tend to have
less of a sex drive, and sex is less important
(09:39):
to them in the partnership. These people tend to be traditional, conventional,
follow the rules, respect authority, concrete rather than theoretical thinkers
tend to be more religious and very dutiful, and sex
is not a great priority for them. So, I mean,
that's one of the type. That type I was aried to,
(10:00):
that type like that that for you if I had been,
I mean it just it seems like so do types
need to find similar types? Um um High to dopamine people,
risk taking, noveli seeking, curious, creative, spontaneous, energetic people tend
to be drawn to people like themselves. High serotonin people, traditional, conventional,
(10:22):
following the rules, etcetera. Tend to be drawn to people
like those themselves. In those two cases, similarity attracts but
high to toss your own. People tend to be drawn
to high estrogen and vice versus. You mentioned evolution and
for millennia, for most of human history, we didn't get
to pick on match dot com. So I'm just wondering
when you were talking about the different types, can you
(10:44):
make a relationship where you're not compatible actually satisfying. Yeah,
I think you can. But by the way, I mean, um,
we're never always completely compatible with anybody. I mean we do.
A good forty six of our traits come from our biology,
but another forty six come from our childhood. And you know,
you can be very high dopamine, but be scared of
(11:06):
jumping off bridges. I don't want to jump off bridges,
you know, And if my partner wants to jump off bridges,
E can do allow me um but um um. Yes,
these these brain systems evolved, and I think that once
you get to know who your partner is and how
they're built and what they need, you can do all
kinds of work arounds, even around the parts that are incompatible. Definitely. Okay,
(11:29):
when we come back, we're gonna do a deeper dive
into love with Alan Fisher. You're having a conversation about
love with Dr Helen Fisher, and we've just been talking
(11:52):
about evolution, and I was pointing out that for for
a lot of the population, arranged marriage as our reality
and have for been for millennia. But you have a
different perspective on that. I want to get into that
a little bit. Great. Well, I'm an anthropologist, and of
course I spent a lot of time studying hunting and
(12:13):
gathering societies because that's where all of our evolved talents
and techniques and drives evolved. And in hunting and gathering societies,
they did not have arranged marriages. Nobody had any property. Uh,
and and that wouldn't have worked. Uh. We lived in
little hunting and gathering groups, and women were just as
economically and socially and sexually powerful as men. They went
(12:36):
off every morning or a few mornings a week to
gather their fruits and vegetables. They came home with six
of the evening meal a lot. Women could express their sexuality,
and they could choose partners that they like. We lived
in egalitarian societies where the double income family was the rule,
and women and men chose partners for love. Did repair
(12:57):
bond or did they have more like a harem situation.
It was pair bonding. Uh yeah, very few harems in
hunting the gathering societies because how could a man provide
for a whole pile of women? And what were all
those extra men gonna do except sneaking out of the
bushes and you know, sleep with they liked um, etcetera.
So in hunting the gathering society is the only way
(13:19):
you can get several women to follow you is if
you're very charismatic. But they don't own any property. They
keep on moving. So you're not going to marry the
man for his fifty fruit trees because he's gonna be
gone tomorrow, you know, with the fruit trees. So bottom
line is, uh, we have probably been evolved pair bonding,
forming a pair bond over four point four million years ago.
(13:41):
And along with the evolution forming pair bonds to rear
our young, we evolved these very strong brain systems for
romantic love and deep attachment to a long term partner.
Only three percent of mammals do pair up to red
their young. Nine do not, and we are one of
those special species, if you want to call us, who
(14:01):
formed pair bunds long term. And along with that came
all kinds of of beliefs about romance and attachment. Yeah,
in hunting the gathering societies, they've got myths and legends
and songs and dances, dances, and you know, people get
terribly jealous and they divorced a good um sounds like
a nighttime So well, we're going back to that today.
(14:22):
What what really changed for humanity is when we settled
down on the farm and then suddenly women lost their
ancient roles as gatherers. They were stuck on the farm.
Men's roles became much more powerful and important. They had
to move the trees, move the rocks, fell the trees,
plow the land, and go off to local markets and
come home with the equivalent of money. So you see
(14:42):
a real skew towards patriarchy and uh in in for
the last ten thousand years. What's so wonderful about today
is were shedding that farming lifestyle. Women are moving back
into the job market. You know, people will always ask me,
is technology changing love? We can get into that, but
the bottom line is the really powerful modern trend is
(15:04):
not technology. It's women piling into the job market and
cultures around the world. And with that we're moving forward
towards women's economic, social, sexual power. You can see that
today in front of our eyes, the rise again of
the double income family. Um, you no longer have to
stay in a very bad partnership. You can divorce and
(15:24):
find somebody knew who's more suitable to you. And the
millennials have gotten it. I'm very impressed with millennials. I
study them through match dot Com. They're very ambitious. They
don't want to catch feelings and and get into a
long term partnership until they're positive they knew this person is.
We're seeing the extension of of what I call the
(15:44):
pre commitment stage of relationships. We're getting to know these
people so that by the time we walk down the aisle,
we know who we got, we know we want who
we got, We think we can keep who we've got,
And I think marriages may become more stable. And I've
definitely noted and been been kind of buoyed by your
sense that I think you call it slow love, kind
(16:06):
of slow extended courtship. I do, and and it's it's
a very sort of optimistic way of looking at courtship now.
But I used on facts totally anecdotal but I've noticed
that for some people's slow love really is no love.
(16:29):
And I'm not just talking about um, you know, kind
of women at midlife where I'm at. You know, I
have a dear friend and her two daughters have are
both incredibly smart, accomplished, super attractive, zero romantic lives. They
are in the middle to end of college now, no
(16:51):
serious boyfriends, no sex so far as anyway, their mom knows,
and and this mom knows a lot about their lives.
It seems as though for some people, um, the kind
of slow let's test this out, let me kind of
go out in groups, let me be casual, may be
friends with benefits before I commit to you. For some people,
(17:14):
it's just slowing to a crawl into nothing. Well, you're
talking about people who are still in college, and uh,
people still in college really want to get their career together.
I mean, I've got data on thirty five thousand Americans
through Match dot Com. We don't pull the match members,
we pull the American public. So it's a representative sample
based on the U. S Census. And college kids don't
(17:35):
want to get hooked up long term. They really don't.
And I would guess that if those girls went to
their mother at AG eighteen, nineteen twenty whatever they are,
and said, I want to get married next month. The
mother would say you're too young. In a totally different
period of time. In many respects, I regard that it's
very healthy and and um, they're probably having sex now
(17:58):
and then and not telling them other now since when
does anybody tell their mother about their one night stay?
But uh, bottom line is this is what the young
are doing, these long long pre commitment slow love stage.
Both of those girls will fall in love. It's a
basic brain system. It's a drive. This is a survival mechanism.
(18:20):
I mean, we put, as I said, people in brain scanners,
and the brain circuitry for romantic love lies very near
the brain circuitry for thirst and hunger. Thirst and hunger
aren't gonna go away. Romantic love isn't gonna go away,
even if we live a million years from now, and
those girls in college by the time their twenty seven,
they'll both be married. But there's girls in college are
(18:41):
going to age. And I have several friends who focused
on their careers postponed commitment. Had multiple boyfriends who are
lovely men who are either gone to college with them
as they approached forty and in their late thirties, and
we're getting desperate, not even so much of a partner,
(19:02):
but to have a child. And their options had limited
dramatically because the men who were available, who were thirty eight,
we're dating twenty five year olds. They weren't interested in
the old model. So you kind of shut yourself out
of the market. Three of these girls I know personally
settled for guys that they never would have dated in
college because that was what was available to them and
(19:25):
they really wanted to have kids. So what do you
do about that phenomenon? Well, I mean, I'm not advocating
slow love. That's what I end up. That's the data,
and that's what I'm reporting. I'm a reporter. So is
that healthy evolutionary response to that situation where you just
said yourself, Look, this is where i'm at. I want
a kid. I found a guy I'm I'm moving on
(19:49):
with that. They may fall in love down the road.
I mean, I'm not four, I'm not in the should business.
I'm in the business of data. I do think that
it gets more and more angels as you get older. Uh,
but some people settle in their twenties because they want
to have the child right then too. And maybe we
all settle in some ways at all kinds of ages.
(20:11):
I'll tell you who doesn't settle. I have one questionnaire
on match dot Com. Two of my favorite questions where
would you make a long term partnership with somebody who
had everything you were looking for but you were not
in love with that person? And another question was would
you make a long term commitment to somebody who had
everything you were looking for but you did not find
that person sexually attractive? The least likely to compromise our
(20:36):
women over sixty, and you know I'm not surprised. I mean,
I'm over sixty and I've met men. One man I
met in Arizona and he had everything I was looking for,
but I didn't I wasn't in love with him, and
I did not find him sexually appealing. Would I move
to Arizona from the middle of Manhattan to go out
(20:57):
with somebody I was not in love with and did
not find sech retractive. No, the young will compromise, and
the young compromisure life was too built by that time,
and you were too happy with and and so are
most women over sixty, right, It's built by then. Uh,
but the young need to compromise, they need to get
on to having a family. So you'll see the young
(21:17):
moving across the country to a place they don't know,
building whole new friendships, etcetera. I would suggest, and I
don't know any data for or I guess it that
the young are more likely to settle than older people.
You said that you weren't in love with this gentleman
in Arizona, and you're a neurobiologist and anthropologist and you
(21:39):
study the chemistry of what it means to be in love,
like what what's going on hormonally in our bodies. But
Jill and I were talking about this earlier, and you
had a question about the spiritual. Jill, Jill, my resident atheist,
had a question about the spiritual. Yes, I am an atheist,
but um, and I can't even say I'm spiritual but
(22:01):
not religious. I just think I'm I wear lead shoes
and clump along. I'm exactly like you, and I give
tremendous joy out of knowing the universe, of knowing human relations.
I mean, I think there's just great joy and power
and connection with every living thing without having to believe
(22:22):
in a god. All I can say, I show up
in the world very enthusiastically. I think that's I think
that's the end of story. But my question for you was,
you know, you know the biology of love in such
intimate specifics. Do you feel like, with your understanding of
the chemistry and the biology of it, that there is
(22:43):
a spiritual component to love, that there is something that
transcends because of course that is what we feel, that's
what we feel when our brains are lighting up like that. Um.
I you'd have to define spirituality for me to really
understand that question. But I do think that you know, Um,
(23:04):
religiosity has a genetic component, and it's in the serotonin
system in the brain. And some people can much more
easily believe in in in a god. Other people are
less predisposed to doing that. But when you're madly in love,
(23:25):
I mean, you can believe anything. I mean, these positive
illusions are just you think you can fly, you know.
But I guess I would question exactly what you mean
by spirituality. I guess I'm just wondering, you know. Put
aside the great love style songs and the Hollywood movies,
(23:46):
I think when you're deeply in love with someone, you
feel like there's something in your bond that is more
powerful than either one of you. I think that's true
because it's I mean, Okay, So the back to these
three brain systems, sex right, feelings of intense romantic love,
and feelings of deep attachment. When you're madly in love
with somebody, you are pumping up the dopamine system, and
(24:07):
with that comes uh positive illusions overlooking the negative. All
of a sudden, you regard this person as special. Everything
about them is special. Their houses, special street, they live
on a special Their car is different from every other
car in the parking lot. Everything is special. You feel
elation when things are going well, moved tweaks into horrible
(24:27):
despair when things are going poorly. Intense energy, you can
walk all night and talk till dawn. Butterflies in the stomach,
dry mouth, wobbly kneeds when you're around them, self conscious,
possessive of them, craving to kiss and hug with them,
uh and also obsessive thinking about them, intense motivation to
win them, and a real craving for emotional union with them.
(24:49):
Sure you'd like to go to bed with them, but
what you really want is to have them say I
love you, you know, be mine? So is that spiritual?
You can certainly convert the it into a spiritual feeling
about somebody. If that's the way you're that's a very
strong belief system anyway. Sure, yeah, so we all feel
the intense romance. I mean, everywhere in the world people
(25:10):
pine for love, they live for love, they kill for love,
and they die full of one of the most powerful
brain systems the human animal has ever evolved, and it
evolved for him an important reason to enable you to
focus your many mating energy on just one individual and
start the mating process and send your DNA into tomorrow.
I mean, you know, thurst and hunger keep you alive today.
(25:31):
Romantic love and attachment drive your DNA into tomorrow and
make you enable you to survive. So they're powerful things,
and if you want people converted into a spiritual experience,
so be it. I've been talking about love and marriage.
When we come back, we're going to talk about dating.
Let's talk about breakups to break ups too. We were
(26:02):
just talking about marriage and love with Dr Helen Fisher.
I want to talk about that early stage that gets
us to to marriage eventually possibly maybe sometimes not um
How have the rules of dating changed with technology and
birth control and me to the me too movement? Where
what are we dealing with now that we haven't had
(26:25):
to deal with or hadn't hadn't dealt with in the past.
Such a big question. Sorry, let's see where to begin. Well,
you know, technology cannot change love. Love as a brain system,
romantic love as a brain system, attachment as a brain system.
These are going to be with us as long as
we survive as a species. These are brain systems, like
the fear system, or the anger system, or the disgust system.
(26:46):
It's a real brain system. It's not going to change.
But the way we are according is dramatically changing. Um
you know we I mean in my day they called
you on the telephone. Well, these days they text you,
they mail you, you swipe you, they swipe you. They
swipe you absolutely. Uh and uh. One of the things
(27:06):
that you know, as I say, I work with Match,
but one of the um uh what they find now
actually is that uh when we ask at Match, where
where did you meet your last first date? Uh? Of
singles say on the internet, only say through a friend,
and uh lesson eight percent say at church uh or
(27:31):
in a bar, So you can't say at work anymore, no,
although they do, um, we do ask about that, and
there's no question about it that people do meet people.
People meet people who are around, and you really get
to know people at work. Now. Of course, we're seeing
a great um entrepreneurial rise, so more and more people
(27:52):
are working at home and you know, telecommuting, etcetera. So
that's changing too. And what we I mean, we're marrying
so much later that uh, by the time you're even
in your early thirties and forties anyway, um, you know
everybody in your social circle, you know everybody at work,
and so people are turning to the dating sites to
(28:15):
uh to court and that makes a lot of sense.
I mean, I'm too old to stand in a bar
and wait for the perfect boy to come by. It's
not gonna happen. But they've actually heard that people in
their twenties find it creepy when somebody approaches them at
a party or in a bar. It is not a
(28:36):
it doesn't feel like a clean um interaction. They would
much rather have it facilitated through technology. Well. One of
the recent findings comes from the out of the University
of Chicago is that people who dated and missed their
partner on the internet are less likely to divorce. Uh.
And I can only guess why. At first I thought,
(28:57):
I don't know, it's only one studying doesn't Why wouldn't
make any difference whether you met in a in a bar,
or on a boat or in the Museum of Natural History?
I mean, why would it make any difference? But my
hypothesis is that you know, you really get to know
some things about somebody on the internet before you even
meet them. So there's a probably a lot of pre selection. Uh,
you know, Oh, he he's a golfer. I can't stand golf.
(29:20):
I don't want to spend every Saturday with him. Gone,
I'm gonna go look for another. But the biggest problem.
First of all, there's something that a couple of things
that people don't understand about the Internet. One of them
is that it's a new technology and you have to
learn how to use it. And one of the problems
is that the human brain gets swamped. It's called cognitive overload.
You've probably heard that term. And you know, after a
(29:43):
certain number you meet a certain number of people, you
don't even you don't go out with anybody. So one
of the things that I say to people who are
going to work meet on the internet is after you've
met nine people. The sweet spot in the brain is
apparently between five and nine, And after you've met nine people, stop,
stop meeting people and get to know one or more better.
(30:07):
Psychologists clearly say that the more you get to know somebody,
the more you like them, and the more you uh
are going to think that that person is for you.
So you've gotta it's like perfumes at a department store.
That's a very good And the other thing is that
what people don't understand is that the only real algorithm
(30:29):
is your own brain. At match, at any one of
these other sides, we can give you somebody who's the
right background and education and interests, et cetera. But you
can walk into own room and everybody's from your background
and level of education and same religious and social values.
The only real algorithm is right above your neck, your
own brain. We can give you people so that you
(30:50):
could kiss fewer frogs, but you have to do the work.
You've got to get out there and look at the people.
So the two things that I say is a stop
after nine people and be think of reasons to say yes.
He is so picky. Oh he has brown shoes. I
love somebody with black shoes. That's nonsense. You've got to
(31:10):
get to know somebody just you know, think of reasons
to say yes instead of no. When you're going through
a dramatic change in your love life. You're falling in love,
you're falling out of love, you're breaking up, someone's betrayed you.
What's going on in your brain? And how can you
how can you cope with it? We have put over
a hundred people into this brain scanner, as I've mentioned
in and a good number of them were people who
(31:32):
have been rejected in love. And in fact, the brain
really has a fire going on. Um. The dopamin system
is going wild because you're still madly in love with
the person. Attachment regions are becoming act are remaining active.
You still feel deeply attached to this person. That three
brain regions become active linked with craving and obsessive thought,
(31:55):
and a brain region becomes active that is linked with
physical pain. It's exactly the same brain region that becomes
active when you have a toothache. So you are in
real trauma when you are breaking up with somebody and
I've long felt that it can turn into a real addiction,
an obsession with somebody. So how do you manage that.
(32:18):
I would use some of the basic things of of
of addiction and otherwise get rid of the cards and letters.
Don't write, don't call, uh, don't show up, get a
lot of exercise, be around old friends, hug and kiss them.
Drives up the oxytocin system, because you're you're missing that
oxytocin that you've gotten from your relationship contact um, your
(32:38):
daily habits and the daily hugging and kissing and stroking
and talking gives drives up the and sustains that oxytocin system.
And when that person is no longer there um, the
oxytocin will probably plummet. Uh, sarahtonin will probably plummet. You
can get into a state of complete panic. And so
what you've got to do is sooths. One of the
(33:00):
problems is that women talk about it too much. It
is good to talk about it, uh. In fact, there's
a whole brain region linked with figuring out your gains
and your losses. So when you have been rejected in love,
the brain is naturally trying to figure out what have
I gained? What have I learned? What have I lost?
How do I get that back? Let's find out did
I lose the dog? That I lose the house? Did
(33:21):
I lose the children? Did I lose the neighbors? Did
I lose my job? Did I lose my economic stability?
What did I gain? Did I gained some knowledge that
I gained the dog in the house and the children?
And can I now move on from a difficult relationship?
So the brain is very well built for um coming
to grips with this. One of the problems that women
have is that they talked after a while, they talked
(33:43):
too much about it, and what they're really doing is
just raising the ghost and retraumatizing themselves. With me, one
time with a man had been just really just in
the dumps and quite rejected and find and my girlfriends
were very nice to be saying, well, how are you
feeling today? And I finally ended up saying, you know,
let's not talk at them, let's talk about this thing
that I read. Just get out, get them out of
your head. There's somebody camping in your head. Man express
(34:06):
their depression differently. They kill themselves more often, but they
also drive too fast. Drink too much, hold up and
watch TV. Uh, you know, persecute themselves in other ways.
So we did find that, um, time does heal. We
have proven that the farther you get away from that
movement of of relationship collapse, the less activity there is
(34:29):
in brain regions linked with attachment. But anyway, in your
other question about you know that, how do you manage
real change, whether it's a breakup or whether it's really
just moving to another city or moving to a new
house or getting a new job. Um, what you really
want to do is drive up the dopamine system in
(34:49):
the brain. It's dopamine that gives you that energy, that focus,
that motivation, uh, that optimism. And so I'm not a nutritionist,
but this is apparently some of the things you could
eat and do to sustain the dopamine system. Not in
a romantic relationship, although I would add that to it,
but in any kind of transitional time. Um. Apparently, Uh,
(35:12):
these are the things that drive up dopamine in the brain. Watermelon,
green tea, ripe banana is not too ripe. Apples, uh, spinach,
broccoli and cauliflower a gen sing all seem to help
burst uh you know, trigger dopamine in the brain, and
in terms of behavioral patterns, UM exercise drives up the
(35:35):
dopamine system, gives you that feeling of energy and relaxation.
Meditation apparently is very good for balancing all of the
neuro transmitters and hormones and controlling your weight. So that's
less sugar, less carbs, so all it's getting healthy. Actually
it's just a it's a dopamine trigger. Yes, isn't that interesting?
I only discovered that today. Is interesting? And we have
(35:57):
heard that for a lot of people dealing with change,
the first step is saying, I'm going to try and
get health here. I'm gonna try and take care of myself.
And it's interesting. Maybe there is that really a human
instinct to preservation instinct that isn't just hey, I want
to control and get a grip on my health and
my body, but more I need to cure this and myself.
(36:20):
Isn't that interesting? And I would add one thing that
I do UM, and it's probably I had recently heard about.
I mean, I've always known about cognitive behavioral therapy, but
I didn't realize I was doing it. But what I'll
do when I think, oh my god, I can't do this, Helen.
You you just can't do this. And I say, wait
a minute, and I start repeating to myself over and over,
I can do this, I can do this, I can
(36:43):
do this. I can't do this over and over and over,
and it really helps. Whether that sort of psychological boost
drives up the dopamine, I don't know, but study that
I would imagine you would find. Uh, you always find
something in a brain scer. Helen, thank you so much.
(37:04):
It's been a very elucinating conversation that I really enjoyed
having you. Thank you, Thank you very much, bull of you.
Thank you so much, Helen. And to our listeners. To
get more from the wise and wonderful Helen Fisher, just
go to the Anatomy of Love dot com. That's the
Anatomy of love dot com and reach out to us
(37:24):
at You Turns Podcast. You want to hear from you.
Tell us your story is a transformation and relationship change.
We can give you somebody who's the right background and
education and interests, et cetera. But you can walk into
a room and everybody's from your background and level of
education and same religious and social values. We can give
you people so that you kiss fewer frogs, but you
have to do the word. The only real algorithm is
your own brain. Hey, welcome to you Turns. This is
(00:37):
the podcast. Are we talking about change in all areas
of our life, including relationships? I am Lisa Oz and
I'm Jill her Sake. You know, one of the things, Lisa,
that we have in common, many things in common. Number
one are vertically challenged. Just so we talk about that
(00:57):
is that we are both in long, long, long term relationships.
It's going to make it sound like we're eighty years old.
We're not eighty years old. But I have been with
my husband Robert for thirty three years. I thought you were, Oh,
you've been married for We've been married for almost twenty
five been together for thirty three years, and we've known
each other since we were six years old. So it's
(01:19):
just been it's like the bulk of my life. Robert
has been part of my life. How long? And you
and moment are celebrating. We've been married for thirty three years,
together for thirty five. Yeah, we're like a gazillion and
dog age. Very long relationship, very very long relationships. But
what one of the things we talk about just girl talk,
(01:42):
is that there are plenty of you turns and kind
of weird curveballs that you get thrown even in a
long term relationship. UM kind of doesn't matter. You terns
are you know, love is a huge bending force our
men that always jokes that we've been married like four times,
because he's been married four different women, because I was like, yeah,
(02:03):
you had one young woman when really old, when couple
middle aged women. Anyway, we are joined today with someone
who can help us navigate those ups and downs in
our relationships. UM Helen Fisher, the biological anthropologist and author
of six international best sellers. UM is going to help
(02:25):
us define what a successful relationship actually looks like. Welcome Helen.
I'm delighted and delighted to be with you. You know, um,
you know, I and my colleagues put people into brain
scanners and study romantic love. And one of our studies
was people who were long term happy marriages. And when
I heard the two of you talking about that, and
we discovered that you can remain in love with somebody
(02:48):
long term, not just loving, but in love with them
long term. You've got to pick the right person, and
you've got to know how to argue, and you've gotta,
you know, uh, get through these different kinds of changes
in partnership. I love that when you said that, Lisa,
because I think that that's quite true. You can have
very different relationships with somebody, and that's good. I mean,
(03:09):
you're constantly innovating and growing and and finding new ways
to be together, and it's you know it can work
because I know something about the brain. My husband gets
bored very easily. So I have lots of disguises. Good
for you keep at it. So what what does make
a successful relationship? Is not success? Isn't just the thirty three,
fifty sixty year your marriage success. You have a different
(03:34):
definition of what makes a successful relationship. It doesn't have
to be forever um, that's for sure. But over fifty
percent of Americans do marry for life. So we're always
hearing about all the ones that divorce, but we're not
hearing about the ones that remained together and are actually
in successful marriages. And in fact, I recently did a
study of eleven married people long term married, all married
(03:54):
more than twenty years, and I asked them a lot
of questions, but one of the questions was would you
read you marry the person you're currently married to, and
said yes, so it is possible, but anyway, and you
feel certain that they weren't saying that just because listen,
it's the down I know just to this person. Um,
(04:15):
we didn't through the internet, and all the studies show
that you are more honest on the internet because you're
anonymous and there's no payoffs for winning are losing, so uh,
and you people can lie, and people can lie to themselves,
not so much asking if they lied, but if part
of it was I'm comfortable with this person. I know them,
(04:35):
I know they're they're good and bad sides, and knowledge
and predictability is better than going out there and maybe
facing somebody, somebody who's a complete mystery. Well I think
that there's that that's the psychological. But when we put
them into the brain scanner, we saw activity in brain
reaches linked directly with romantic love, as well as brain
(04:58):
regions linked with attached and so, um, you're talking about
the long term sort of attachment which a great many
married people, UH express. But the bottom line is, in
these people we put in the machine, they had maintained,
they had told us in the lab that they were
in love, not just loving, but in love with this person,
which is distinctly different. And indeed we found activity in
(05:19):
brain regions linked directly with being in love. But anyway,
you asked at least about you know, what makes a
long term happy marriage, and you know, psychologists will say
all kinds of things, and I agree with all of them.
I mean, don't show contempt, don't threaten divorce, do new
things together, etcetera, etcetera. But this is what the brain says.
We put these people who are long term happy marriages
(05:41):
into the brain scanner and we found activity in three
brain regions linked with happiness. One brain region was was
a brain region linked with the mirror neurons linked with empathy,
showing empathy towards the person. The second is brain regions
linked with controlling your own stress and your own emotions,
and the third is a brain reagion link with positive illusions,
(06:04):
the ability to overlook what you don't like about the
person and focus on what you do. So what I'm
trying to add is the neuroscience addition to what the
psychologists tell you, and there are certainly are brain readers.
You've gotta be empathetic, you gotta control your own emotions
and your own stress, and you got to overlook what
you don't like focus on what you do. Fascinating because
(06:25):
your reality really is determined by what you focus on.
Exactly what you're seeing in this room, what you think
is this room is what you're focusing and not on
not all the other things that are going on in
the corners. Absolutely, and I often wonder how I mean,
I'm sort of it's a great human train to be
able to get into other people's heads and see what
they're thinking, you know, and responding appropriately to that. Uh.
(06:47):
It also kind of explains when you meet a married
couple and you think, how can say that guy put
up with that woman is the most annoying person I've
ever met. Snails on a chalkboard. I can't even stand
to be with her. Three dinner And he's beaming at
her and puts his arm around her and helps her
enter at the car, and you think, no, no, no,
(07:08):
he loves her. It's it's the what illusion? What did
what did you call positive illusions? It's so interesting. It
was Tolstoys in the beginning of Ana Karen, and he
said that all happy marriages, what do you remember this one?
All happy marriages are the same, and all bad marriages
are different. I think it's the reverse. I think all
(07:28):
happy marriages. You don't know, it's just like you just
said with that couple where you couldn't stand the woman,
but in fact they have all kinds of intricate connections
to each other that we don't know, don't see, and
it's good for them. So, you know, part of it's
the main thing we don't see as their sex life, right,
Sex could be a big part of it. And I
do think that, you know, I've I've long maintained that
(07:51):
we've evolved three distinctly different brain systems from mating and reproduction.
One is the sex drive, second is feelings of intense
romantic love, and the third is feelings of deep attack
each min And I do think in long term marriages
you should keep all three of those brain systems cooking,
so continually do have sex with the person it does
you know good? Uh? Any stimulation of the genitals that's
(08:13):
that's welcome, drives up the dopamine system in the brain
and can help sustain feelings of intense romantic love. And
with um orgasm, there's a real flood of oxytocin, and
that's associated with feelings of deep attachment. So sex drive
can help to stimulate those other two brain systems, romantic
love and attachment. So if you want to get along
(08:33):
with somebody, keep the sex of life novel things together
because that drives up the dopamine system and can sustain
feelings of romantic love. And stay in touch, hold hands,
walk arm in arm, learn to sleep, at least start
sleeping in the person's arms at night. Any kind of
touch can sustain feelings of the oxytocin system. So the
more we know about the brain, we know all kinds
(08:55):
of sort of natural mechanisms to find actually a person,
the right person, and sustain the relationship. You know, we
we have had conversations kind of marveling at couples we
know who admit that they're in sort of a sexless marriage.
I mean, maybe I don't tell you this right away,
but you kind of find out and they've somehow made
themselves okay with that? I think that does that work.
(09:17):
I think there's different personality styles. You know, I study personality,
the biology of personality, and we've evolved for very broad
styles of thinking and behaving link with the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone,
and estrogen systems. And those people who are very expressive
of the traits in the serotonin system tend to have
less of a sex drive, and sex is less important
(09:39):
to them in the partnership. These people tend to be traditional, conventional,
follow the rules, respect authority, concrete rather than theoretical thinkers
tend to be more religious and very dutiful, and sex
is not a great priority for them. So, I mean,
that's one of the type. That type I was aried to,
(10:00):
that type like that that for you if I had been,
I mean it just it seems like so do types
need to find similar types? Um um High to dopamine people,
risk taking, noveli seeking, curious, creative, spontaneous, energetic people tend
to be drawn to people like themselves. High serotonin people, traditional, conventional,
(10:22):
following the rules, etcetera. Tend to be drawn to people
like those themselves. In those two cases, similarity attracts but
high to toss your own. People tend to be drawn
to high estrogen and vice versus. You mentioned evolution and
for millennia, for most of human history, we didn't get
to pick on match dot com. So I'm just wondering
when you were talking about the different types, can you
(10:44):
make a relationship where you're not compatible actually satisfying. Yeah,
I think you can. But by the way, I mean, um,
we're never always completely compatible with anybody. I mean we do.
A good forty six of our traits come from our biology,
but another forty six come from our childhood. And you know,
you can be very high dopamine, but be scared of
(11:06):
jumping off bridges. I don't want to jump off bridges,
you know, And if my partner wants to jump off bridges,
E can do allow me um but um um. Yes,
these these brain systems evolved, and I think that once
you get to know who your partner is and how
they're built and what they need, you can do all
kinds of work arounds, even around the parts that are incompatible. Definitely. Okay,
(11:29):
when we come back, we're gonna do a deeper dive
into love with Alan Fisher. You're having a conversation about
love with Dr Helen Fisher, and we've just been talking
(11:52):
about evolution, and I was pointing out that for for
a lot of the population, arranged marriage as our reality
and have for been for millennia. But you have a
different perspective on that. I want to get into that
a little bit. Great. Well, I'm an anthropologist, and of
course I spent a lot of time studying hunting and
(12:13):
gathering societies because that's where all of our evolved talents
and techniques and drives evolved. And in hunting and gathering societies,
they did not have arranged marriages. Nobody had any property. Uh,
and and that wouldn't have worked. Uh. We lived in
little hunting and gathering groups, and women were just as
economically and socially and sexually powerful as men. They went
(12:36):
off every morning or a few mornings a week to
gather their fruits and vegetables. They came home with six
of the evening meal a lot. Women could express their sexuality,
and they could choose partners that they like. We lived
in egalitarian societies where the double income family was the rule,
and women and men chose partners for love. Did repair
(12:57):
bond or did they have more like a harem situation.
It was pair bonding. Uh yeah, very few harems in
hunting the gathering societies because how could a man provide
for a whole pile of women? And what were all
those extra men gonna do except sneaking out of the
bushes and you know, sleep with they liked um, etcetera.
So in hunting the gathering society is the only way
(13:19):
you can get several women to follow you is if
you're very charismatic. But they don't own any property. They
keep on moving. So you're not going to marry the
man for his fifty fruit trees because he's gonna be
gone tomorrow, you know, with the fruit trees. So bottom
line is, uh, we have probably been evolved pair bonding,
forming a pair bond over four point four million years ago.
(13:41):
And along with the evolution forming pair bonds to rear
our young, we evolved these very strong brain systems for
romantic love and deep attachment to a long term partner.
Only three percent of mammals do pair up to red
their young. Nine do not, and we are one of
those special species, if you want to call us, who
(14:01):
formed pair bunds long term. And along with that came
all kinds of of beliefs about romance and attachment. Yeah,
in hunting the gathering societies, they've got myths and legends
and songs and dances, dances, and you know, people get
terribly jealous and they divorced a good um sounds like
a nighttime So well, we're going back to that today.
(14:22):
What what really changed for humanity is when we settled
down on the farm and then suddenly women lost their
ancient roles as gatherers. They were stuck on the farm.
Men's roles became much more powerful and important. They had
to move the trees, move the rocks, fell the trees,
plow the land, and go off to local markets and
come home with the equivalent of money. So you see
(14:42):
a real skew towards patriarchy and uh in in for
the last ten thousand years. What's so wonderful about today
is were shedding that farming lifestyle. Women are moving back
into the job market. You know, people will always ask me,
is technology changing love? We can get into that, but
the bottom line is the really powerful modern trend is
(15:04):
not technology. It's women piling into the job market and
cultures around the world. And with that we're moving forward
towards women's economic, social, sexual power. You can see that
today in front of our eyes, the rise again of
the double income family. Um, you no longer have to
stay in a very bad partnership. You can divorce and
(15:24):
find somebody knew who's more suitable to you. And the
millennials have gotten it. I'm very impressed with millennials. I
study them through match dot Com. They're very ambitious. They
don't want to catch feelings and and get into a
long term partnership until they're positive they knew this person is.
We're seeing the extension of of what I call the
(15:44):
pre commitment stage of relationships. We're getting to know these
people so that by the time we walk down the aisle,
we know who we got, we know we want who
we got, We think we can keep who we've got,
And I think marriages may become more stable. And I've
definitely noted and been been kind of buoyed by your
sense that I think you call it slow love, kind
(16:06):
of slow extended courtship. I do, and and it's it's
a very sort of optimistic way of looking at courtship now.
But I used on facts totally anecdotal but I've noticed
that for some people's slow love really is no love.
(16:29):
And I'm not just talking about um, you know, kind
of women at midlife where I'm at. You know, I
have a dear friend and her two daughters have are
both incredibly smart, accomplished, super attractive, zero romantic lives. They
are in the middle to end of college now, no
(16:51):
serious boyfriends, no sex so far as anyway, their mom knows,
and and this mom knows a lot about their lives.
It seems as though for some people, um, the kind
of slow let's test this out, let me kind of
go out in groups, let me be casual, may be
friends with benefits before I commit to you. For some people,
(17:14):
it's just slowing to a crawl into nothing. Well, you're
talking about people who are still in college, and uh,
people still in college really want to get their career together.
I mean, I've got data on thirty five thousand Americans
through Match dot Com. We don't pull the match members,
we pull the American public. So it's a representative sample
based on the U. S Census. And college kids don't
(17:35):
want to get hooked up long term. They really don't.
And I would guess that if those girls went to
their mother at AG eighteen, nineteen twenty whatever they are,
and said, I want to get married next month. The
mother would say you're too young. In a totally different
period of time. In many respects, I regard that it's
very healthy and and um, they're probably having sex now
(17:58):
and then and not telling them other now since when
does anybody tell their mother about their one night stay?
But uh, bottom line is this is what the young
are doing, these long long pre commitment slow love stage.
Both of those girls will fall in love. It's a
basic brain system. It's a drive. This is a survival mechanism.
(18:20):
I mean, we put, as I said, people in brain scanners,
and the brain circuitry for romantic love lies very near
the brain circuitry for thirst and hunger. Thirst and hunger
aren't gonna go away. Romantic love isn't gonna go away,
even if we live a million years from now, and
those girls in college by the time their twenty seven,
they'll both be married. But there's girls in college are
(18:41):
going to age. And I have several friends who focused
on their careers postponed commitment. Had multiple boyfriends who are
lovely men who are either gone to college with them
as they approached forty and in their late thirties, and
we're getting desperate, not even so much of a partner,
(19:02):
but to have a child. And their options had limited
dramatically because the men who were available, who were thirty eight,
we're dating twenty five year olds. They weren't interested in
the old model. So you kind of shut yourself out
of the market. Three of these girls I know personally
settled for guys that they never would have dated in
college because that was what was available to them and
(19:25):
they really wanted to have kids. So what do you
do about that phenomenon? Well, I mean, I'm not advocating
slow love. That's what I end up. That's the data,
and that's what I'm reporting. I'm a reporter. So is
that healthy evolutionary response to that situation where you just
said yourself, Look, this is where i'm at. I want
a kid. I found a guy I'm I'm moving on
(19:49):
with that. They may fall in love down the road.
I mean, I'm not four, I'm not in the should business.
I'm in the business of data. I do think that
it gets more and more angels as you get older. Uh,
but some people settle in their twenties because they want
to have the child right then too. And maybe we
all settle in some ways at all kinds of ages.
(20:11):
I'll tell you who doesn't settle. I have one questionnaire
on match dot Com. Two of my favorite questions where
would you make a long term partnership with somebody who
had everything you were looking for but you were not
in love with that person? And another question was would
you make a long term commitment to somebody who had
everything you were looking for but you did not find
that person sexually attractive? The least likely to compromise our
(20:36):
women over sixty, and you know I'm not surprised. I mean,
I'm over sixty and I've met men. One man I
met in Arizona and he had everything I was looking for,
but I didn't I wasn't in love with him, and
I did not find him sexually appealing. Would I move
to Arizona from the middle of Manhattan to go out
(20:57):
with somebody I was not in love with and did
not find sech retractive. No, the young will compromise, and
the young compromisure life was too built by that time,
and you were too happy with and and so are
most women over sixty, right, It's built by then. Uh,
but the young need to compromise, they need to get
on to having a family. So you'll see the young
(21:17):
moving across the country to a place they don't know,
building whole new friendships, etcetera. I would suggest, and I
don't know any data for or I guess it that
the young are more likely to settle than older people.
You said that you weren't in love with this gentleman
in Arizona, and you're a neurobiologist and anthropologist and you
(21:39):
study the chemistry of what it means to be in love,
like what what's going on hormonally in our bodies. But
Jill and I were talking about this earlier, and you
had a question about the spiritual. Jill, Jill, my resident atheist,
had a question about the spiritual. Yes, I am an atheist,
but um, and I can't even say I'm spiritual but
(22:01):
not religious. I just think I'm I wear lead shoes
and clump along. I'm exactly like you, and I give
tremendous joy out of knowing the universe, of knowing human relations.
I mean, I think there's just great joy and power
and connection with every living thing without having to believe
(22:22):
in a god. All I can say, I show up
in the world very enthusiastically. I think that's I think
that's the end of story. But my question for you was,
you know, you know the biology of love in such
intimate specifics. Do you feel like, with your understanding of
the chemistry and the biology of it, that there is
(22:43):
a spiritual component to love, that there is something that
transcends because of course that is what we feel, that's
what we feel when our brains are lighting up like that. Um.
I you'd have to define spirituality for me to really
understand that question. But I do think that you know, Um,
(23:04):
religiosity has a genetic component, and it's in the serotonin
system in the brain. And some people can much more
easily believe in in in a god. Other people are
less predisposed to doing that. But when you're madly in love,
(23:25):
I mean, you can believe anything. I mean, these positive
illusions are just you think you can fly, you know.
But I guess I would question exactly what you mean
by spirituality. I guess I'm just wondering, you know. Put
aside the great love style songs and the Hollywood movies,
(23:46):
I think when you're deeply in love with someone, you
feel like there's something in your bond that is more
powerful than either one of you. I think that's true
because it's I mean, Okay, So the back to these
three brain systems, sex right, feelings of intense romantic love,
and feelings of deep attachment. When you're madly in love
with somebody, you are pumping up the dopamine system, and
(24:07):
with that comes uh positive illusions overlooking the negative. All
of a sudden, you regard this person as special. Everything
about them is special. Their houses, special street, they live
on a special Their car is different from every other
car in the parking lot. Everything is special. You feel
elation when things are going well, moved tweaks into horrible
(24:27):
despair when things are going poorly. Intense energy, you can
walk all night and talk till dawn. Butterflies in the stomach,
dry mouth, wobbly kneeds when you're around them, self conscious,
possessive of them, craving to kiss and hug with them,
uh and also obsessive thinking about them, intense motivation to
win them, and a real craving for emotional union with them.
(24:49):
Sure you'd like to go to bed with them, but
what you really want is to have them say I
love you, you know, be mine? So is that spiritual?
You can certainly convert the it into a spiritual feeling
about somebody. If that's the way you're that's a very
strong belief system anyway. Sure, yeah, so we all feel
the intense romance. I mean, everywhere in the world people
(25:10):
pine for love, they live for love, they kill for love,
and they die full of one of the most powerful
brain systems the human animal has ever evolved, and it
evolved for him an important reason to enable you to
focus your many mating energy on just one individual and
start the mating process and send your DNA into tomorrow.
I mean, you know, thurst and hunger keep you alive today.
(25:31):
Romantic love and attachment drive your DNA into tomorrow and
make you enable you to survive. So they're powerful things,
and if you want people converted into a spiritual experience,
so be it. I've been talking about love and marriage.
When we come back, we're going to talk about dating.
Let's talk about breakups to break ups too. We were
(26:02):
just talking about marriage and love with Dr Helen Fisher.
I want to talk about that early stage that gets
us to to marriage eventually possibly maybe sometimes not um
How have the rules of dating changed with technology and
birth control and me to the me too movement? Where
what are we dealing with now that we haven't had
(26:25):
to deal with or hadn't hadn't dealt with in the past.
Such a big question. Sorry, let's see where to begin. Well,
you know, technology cannot change love. Love as a brain system,
romantic love as a brain system, attachment as a brain system.
These are going to be with us as long as
we survive as a species. These are brain systems, like
the fear system, or the anger system, or the disgust system.
(26:46):
It's a real brain system. It's not going to change.
But the way we are according is dramatically changing. Um
you know we I mean in my day they called
you on the telephone. Well, these days they text you,
they mail you, you swipe you, they swipe you. They
swipe you absolutely. Uh and uh. One of the things
(27:06):
that you know, as I say, I work with Match,
but one of the um uh what they find now
actually is that uh when we ask at Match, where
where did you meet your last first date? Uh? Of
singles say on the internet, only say through a friend,
and uh lesson eight percent say at church uh or
(27:31):
in a bar, So you can't say at work anymore, no,
although they do, um, we do ask about that, and
there's no question about it that people do meet people.
People meet people who are around, and you really get
to know people at work. Now. Of course, we're seeing
a great um entrepreneurial rise, so more and more people
(27:52):
are working at home and you know, telecommuting, etcetera. So
that's changing too. And what we I mean, we're marrying
so much later that uh, by the time you're even
in your early thirties and forties anyway, um, you know
everybody in your social circle, you know everybody at work,
and so people are turning to the dating sites to
(28:15):
uh to court and that makes a lot of sense.
I mean, I'm too old to stand in a bar
and wait for the perfect boy to come by. It's
not gonna happen. But they've actually heard that people in
their twenties find it creepy when somebody approaches them at
a party or in a bar. It is not a
(28:36):
it doesn't feel like a clean um interaction. They would
much rather have it facilitated through technology. Well. One of
the recent findings comes from the out of the University
of Chicago is that people who dated and missed their
partner on the internet are less likely to divorce. Uh.
And I can only guess why. At first I thought,
(28:57):
I don't know, it's only one studying doesn't Why wouldn't
make any difference whether you met in a in a bar,
or on a boat or in the Museum of Natural History?
I mean, why would it make any difference? But my
hypothesis is that you know, you really get to know
some things about somebody on the internet before you even
meet them. So there's a probably a lot of pre selection. Uh,
you know, Oh, he he's a golfer. I can't stand golf.
(29:20):
I don't want to spend every Saturday with him. Gone,
I'm gonna go look for another. But the biggest problem.
First of all, there's something that a couple of things
that people don't understand about the Internet. One of them
is that it's a new technology and you have to
learn how to use it. And one of the problems
is that the human brain gets swamped. It's called cognitive overload.
You've probably heard that term. And you know, after a
(29:43):
certain number you meet a certain number of people, you
don't even you don't go out with anybody. So one
of the things that I say to people who are
going to work meet on the internet is after you've
met nine people. The sweet spot in the brain is
apparently between five and nine, And after you've met nine people, stop,
stop meeting people and get to know one or more better.
(30:07):
Psychologists clearly say that the more you get to know somebody,
the more you like them, and the more you uh
are going to think that that person is for you.
So you've gotta it's like perfumes at a department store.
That's a very good And the other thing is that
what people don't understand is that the only real algorithm
(30:29):
is your own brain. At match, at any one of
these other sides, we can give you somebody who's the
right background and education and interests, et cetera. But you
can walk into own room and everybody's from your background
and level of education and same religious and social values.
The only real algorithm is right above your neck, your
own brain. We can give you people so that you
(30:50):
could kiss fewer frogs, but you have to do the work.
You've got to get out there and look at the people.
So the two things that I say is a stop
after nine people and be think of reasons to say yes.
He is so picky. Oh he has brown shoes. I
love somebody with black shoes. That's nonsense. You've got to
(31:10):
get to know somebody just you know, think of reasons
to say yes instead of no. When you're going through
a dramatic change in your love life. You're falling in love,
you're falling out of love, you're breaking up, someone's betrayed you.
What's going on in your brain? And how can you
how can you cope with it? We have put over
a hundred people into this brain scanner, as I've mentioned
in and a good number of them were people who
(31:32):
have been rejected in love. And in fact, the brain
really has a fire going on. Um. The dopamin system
is going wild because you're still madly in love with
the person. Attachment regions are becoming act are remaining active.
You still feel deeply attached to this person. That three
brain regions become active linked with craving and obsessive thought,
(31:55):
and a brain region becomes active that is linked with
physical pain. It's exactly the same brain region that becomes
active when you have a toothache. So you are in
real trauma when you are breaking up with somebody and
I've long felt that it can turn into a real addiction,
an obsession with somebody. So how do you manage that.
(32:18):
I would use some of the basic things of of
of addiction and otherwise get rid of the cards and letters.
Don't write, don't call, uh, don't show up, get a
lot of exercise, be around old friends, hug and kiss them.
Drives up the oxytocin system, because you're you're missing that
oxytocin that you've gotten from your relationship contact um, your
(32:38):
daily habits and the daily hugging and kissing and stroking
and talking gives drives up the and sustains that oxytocin system.
And when that person is no longer there um, the
oxytocin will probably plummet. Uh, sarahtonin will probably plummet. You
can get into a state of complete panic. And so
what you've got to do is sooths. One of the
(33:00):
problems is that women talk about it too much. It
is good to talk about it, uh. In fact, there's
a whole brain region linked with figuring out your gains
and your losses. So when you have been rejected in love,
the brain is naturally trying to figure out what have
I gained? What have I learned? What have I lost?
How do I get that back? Let's find out did
I lose the dog? That I lose the house? Did
(33:21):
I lose the children? Did I lose the neighbors? Did
I lose my job? Did I lose my economic stability?
What did I gain? Did I gained some knowledge that
I gained the dog in the house and the children?
And can I now move on from a difficult relationship?
So the brain is very well built for um coming
to grips with this. One of the problems that women
have is that they talked after a while, they talked
(33:43):
too much about it, and what they're really doing is
just raising the ghost and retraumatizing themselves. With me, one
time with a man had been just really just in
the dumps and quite rejected and find and my girlfriends
were very nice to be saying, well, how are you
feeling today? And I finally ended up saying, you know,
let's not talk at them, let's talk about this thing
that I read. Just get out, get them out of
your head. There's somebody camping in your head. Man express
(34:06):
their depression differently. They kill themselves more often, but they
also drive too fast. Drink too much, hold up and
watch TV. Uh, you know, persecute themselves in other ways.
So we did find that, um, time does heal. We
have proven that the farther you get away from that
movement of of relationship collapse, the less activity there is
(34:29):
in brain regions linked with attachment. But anyway, in your
other question about you know that, how do you manage
real change, whether it's a breakup or whether it's really
just moving to another city or moving to a new
house or getting a new job. Um, what you really
want to do is drive up the dopamine system in
(34:49):
the brain. It's dopamine that gives you that energy, that focus,
that motivation, uh, that optimism. And so I'm not a nutritionist,
but this is apparently some of the things you could
eat and do to sustain the dopamine system. Not in
a romantic relationship, although I would add that to it,
but in any kind of transitional time. Um. Apparently, Uh,
(35:12):
these are the things that drive up dopamine in the brain. Watermelon,
green tea, ripe banana is not too ripe. Apples, uh, spinach,
broccoli and cauliflower a gen sing all seem to help
burst uh you know, trigger dopamine in the brain, and
in terms of behavioral patterns, UM exercise drives up the
(35:35):
dopamine system, gives you that feeling of energy and relaxation.
Meditation apparently is very good for balancing all of the
neuro transmitters and hormones and controlling your weight. So that's
less sugar, less carbs, so all it's getting healthy. Actually
it's just a it's a dopamine trigger. Yes, isn't that interesting?
I only discovered that today. Is interesting? And we have
(35:57):
heard that for a lot of people dealing with change,
the first step is saying, I'm going to try and
get health here. I'm gonna try and take care of myself.
And it's interesting. Maybe there is that really a human
instinct to preservation instinct that isn't just hey, I want
to control and get a grip on my health and
my body, but more I need to cure this and myself.
(36:20):
Isn't that interesting? And I would add one thing that
I do UM, and it's probably I had recently heard about.
I mean, I've always known about cognitive behavioral therapy, but
I didn't realize I was doing it. But what I'll
do when I think, oh my god, I can't do this, Helen.
You you just can't do this. And I say, wait
a minute, and I start repeating to myself over and over,
I can do this, I can do this, I can
(36:43):
do this. I can't do this over and over and over,
and it really helps. Whether that sort of psychological boost
drives up the dopamine, I don't know, but study that
I would imagine you would find. Uh, you always find
something in a brain scer. Helen, thank you so much.
(37:04):
It's been a very elucinating conversation that I really enjoyed
having you. Thank you, Thank you very much, bull of you.
Thank you so much, Helen. And to our listeners. To
get more from the wise and wonderful Helen Fisher, just
go to the Anatomy of Love dot com. That's the
Anatomy of love dot com and reach out to us
(37:24):
at You Turns Podcast. You want to hear from you.
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