Crazy Little Things (Second Verse)

"Always pretend that you are afraid of spiders...even if you're not."

- advice on attracting a man from Barbara Cartland, romance writer

"They say love conquers all.
You can't start it like a car;
you can't stop it with a gun."

" - Warren Zevon, musician and lyricist

Alright, lovers...let's gather round for another dissection of romantic love and see if we get any closer to revealing its dual nature. Sadly, and this is a grievous loss for humankind in general and the written word in particular, what follows is a cobbled together version of what this column was intended to be. I had paragraph after paragraph of precise and erudite language so insightful that it made me weep just to read it. My genius astonished me.

Then, somehow, I made an error saving the document last night and my work was gone, gone, gone. I know that when you lose your document you just take your laptop and shake it upside down. Then, like change stuck in a piggy bank, the file should just fall out. This didn't happen.

But I had enough bits and pieces saved on another computer to pull out a few sentences. So, we'll do what we can with what we have while I grieve for my lost words.

When we left off, I suggested that romantic love is first and foremost about biological self-interest. Romantics like to call love a connection of the soul, without which our lives are barren and only half-lived. I can hardly argue with that since, like almost everyone, I've fallen under romantic enchantment many times. The fact that neither divorce nor death nor deceit nor disappointment has made me choose a celibate life filled with volunteer work and scrapbooking says a lot about the tenaciousness of romantic longing.

And so it is for most people. We patch up our wounded hearts and survive to love another day. But what fascinates me is our collective willingness to believe that romantic love comes to us from some sort of higher spiritual place. That it's completely the domain of the heart and soul, and can be understood through the soft focus blur of poetry and emotion. In our relationships we are constantly asking why we can't find love or someone doesn't love us and it's an absurd question because romantic love starts in biology and then moves to the airier realms of the spirit.

Still, we've been ignoring this obvious truth for eons and have been commenting on love and lovers ever since we invented written communication. I imagine that Egyptian hieroglyphics have encrypted messages like "Amenhotep Hearts Isis 4Ever" and "Ramses has a Tiny Pyramid." At Maes Howe, in wild Scottish Orkney, archaeologists have discovered a burial chamber dating from around 3000 B.C. Apparently the local sweethearts started using it at a make-out venue soon after, and the walls are covered with graffiti. One happy lover wrote "Ingigerd is the sweetest woman there is." Another bragged "Thorny bedded Helgi" (way to go Thorny, you Norse stud, you!).

We aren't going to change our orientation and suddenly understand that romantic love is an illusion that distracts us from recognizing that we are engaged in a fierce winner-takes-all competition for genetic success. But just because romance is a magic show full of smoke and mirrors doesn't mean that we can't get some insight from knowing how the biological wizard performs the trick.

When running evolutionary biology down, it's important to consider that biology evolves at a much slower (much, much slower) pace than cultural evolution (not that that's a racehorse, either). For example, although most American males of today aren't consciously trying to fertilize as many females as possible, the evolutionary imperative that got us to this point in time hasn't lessened even though the context of our culture has driven it underground. The same is true for females; even though women compete in the workplace and have the finances to feather their own nest or may not even want children (or are past childbearing), it is against female instinct to be attracted to a lower status man who, in biological terms, would waste her genetic potential.

As you may imagine, research to prove the above abounds. For example, in one study 75% of surveyed men agreed to go to bed with an attractive female stranger who approached them (most of the rest asked for a rain check or expressed deep regrets). Absolutely zero percent of the women surveyed agreed to the same when approached by a jaw-dropping handsome guy.

What men see in the gorgeous woman is perhaps more obvious; but the female response to the pretty man is equally driven by instinct. Until a female can determine whether the status of a male either increases or decreases her own status and, by extension, the security of her potential offspring, there is not a biological payoff for her. What high status man would be out trolling for dates in the street? Where is his car? What kind of job does he have? If her circumstances don't demand that she aligns herself with just any available male (and she isn't a fictional character on television, under the influence or on spring break), statistically speaking, she'll hold out until she has some idea of what the man has to offer her beyond just his body.

What are the most important attributes a woman is looking for in a man? Wealth, status, and height. What do men most want when they are out hunting down females? Really want � not what they settle for, but really want? Youth and beauty. Whatever heartfelt sentiments we may have about finding a soul mate or a life-long companion, the truth is that we tend to pursue people who come as close to meeting our biological needs as we can get. For men it's about youth; for women, it's about status and stability. Obviously, there aren't enough older billionaires or young swimsuit models to go around, so almost all of us have to find our mates from a pool closer to our own age, status and socio-economic bracket. Then, depending on what we have to offer in terms of our own looks, education, interests and personality traits, we refine our choices from there.

The reason for all of this maneuvering is primitive by modern cultural standards, but we all still have an evolutionary message looping around in our decision making. You wouldn't believe it just looking around you, but humans don't conceive easily at all and the window for optimum female fertility is narrow (Michelle Duggar and Nadya Suleman notwithstanding).. Pregnancy is long, and without the support of a mate who could do a little hunting and gathering on the child's behalf, the cave-era infant had slim chances of survival. Equally important is that if a male doesn't stay on site, there is no guarantee that a female won't take her love to town and consort with some other stud negating the success of his mating by producing young from a competing male.

From a female's point of view, her chances of passing on her genetics are comparatively small. DNA evidence suggests that Genghis Khan, that rogue, fathered around a thousand children. At peak and throwing everything she's got at the project, a fertile female who starts early enough has the potential to achieve twenty or so pregnancies in a lifetime. While the male's success relies on numbers, the female's victory in sexual selection relies on what anthropologist Helen Fischer termed "the sex contract", or "pair bonding."

Pair bonding seeks to mediate the inherent conflict between our biological demands and gives both male and female humans advantages that we couldn't realize if we had stayed with the more free-wheeling primate mating system. But, because males and females have different genetic agendas, monogamy is a precarious arrangement. Both males and females have a propensity for checking out the other primates in the tribe for a little extra-marital grooming and both sexes like to pair bond upwards of their status if they have the option.

If you aren't sensitive to the underlying truth that your biological instincts are not your romantic friends, you could end up like Mark and Sherry. Theirs is a cautionary tale and I offer it as the perfect illustration of what happens when lovers get strung up by their internal agendas.

Mark was a successful land developer who owned the office building in which we both worked (I did not work with him - the firm for which I worked rented offices in his building). Mark had left his wife for a much younger woman, Sherry, whom he married. Biology 1: Romantic Love 1 (maybe...we'll give them the benefit of the doubt).

Sherry dressed like a�well, I'd say "tart" if that wasn't too pejorative. She was far away from being actually pretty, but high heels, a tight dress and a bottle of Clairol's Beach Shimmer Gold on long hair had worked their magic on Mark and gave her the chimera of youth and fertility. Biology 1: Romantic Love 0.

Mark had a resentful expression permanently etched into his face and he was charmless. Tall and rich and completely lacking in charisma. Biology 1: Romantic Love 0.

The females in the building took endless delight in watching Sherry bravely keeping up a pretense of affection for her grumpy, boring husband. Seeing her waggle along on those high, high heels to attract his drifting attention was just a constant source of evil merriment. Mark and Sherry were living the clich� of themselves and we agreed that no other two people were ever born who were more suited for one another.

But not in a good way.

One day I wandered by and noticed that Sherry seemed uncharacteristically piqued. I inquired (purely because I am a compassionate person and NOT because I enjoyed her misery in any way) and she said she was upset about her new car. I had seen the car, a gorgeous dark blue late model Lexus and couldn't imagine why she wasn't satisfied with it. "Oh, it's not the car really. It's how much I had to pay for it. It's Mark's old car and he cheated me on the price."

As I was absorbing the astonishing news that a husband would sell his own wife his car, Mark yelled out from his office, "I don't know why she's whining about it. I gave her the Blue Book value!"

Sherry and Mark - lovers for the ages.

My point being is that males and females have very little awareness that they are behaving out of instinct. We label many behaviors as being romantically motivated (Mark's leaving an older wife to marry a young wife, for example) that are not about love at all. Mark, possibly, didn't really want to leave his first wife, but to have continued sexual access to Sherry, he had to pair bond.

Where we run aground is when we confuse biological hankerings with love. Netscape 64-year-old billionaire Jim Clarke married a 28-year-old swimsuit model in March. He's very likely to pass his genes on through that mating, but even though his new wife may be a perfectly charming young woman, the odds for a happy marriage with her are not in his favor.

Happily married people tend to be alike and share similar interests, world views and experiences. Young Mrs. Clarke may have shot the moon in terms of gaining wealth and status, but if her husband thinks a great evening is sitting down with a glass of Courvoisier and Sinatra, and her idea of a terrific time is taking 10 of her BFFs out in the limo to go clubbing, they might as well be living on different planets.

We might pursue money and beauty and height and social status, but none of those make your heart happy in the long term. Just because your 6'-2" partner has a few bucks or your young blonde has a bikini-licious body does not mean they make good companions. It only means that their packages have a lot of appeal. Whether or not he'll be there to hold your hand when you're going through chemo, or of she will stand by you after you lose your wealth and start to crumple from age is another story all together. That requires strength of character and commitment. A person's status or looks are no indicators of those sterling qualities. (If you are a man and looking at Kristy's picture thinking, "Who cares if they're soul mates? Just look at her!" then you have made my point.)

And that's where we grind to a halt. I was trying to say that when you think you are either falling in love or rejecting an opportunity for love, it's not a bad idea to check your biology. Your heart may be being manipulated by evolutionary saboteurs, and it doesn't hurt to have all of the information at hand.

All that said, you can't stop it with a gun. You really can't.

*Ref: Decoding Love: Why It Takes Twelve Frogs to Find a Prince, and Other Revelations from the Science of Attraction, Andres Trees, 2009.

Thanks to Amy for the Barbara Cartland quote; she once interviewed the Grande Dame of Romance and came away with that gem of time-tested advice.

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Ingrid lives on San Juan Island.

While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

editor@sanjuanislander.com

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