Why We Love? Why We Stray?
Helen Fisher has the broadest study of relationships. She is an Anthropologist and Biologist who has studied over 80 different cultures looking for the universals of relationships. This is a discussion of her work.
Here's what we discussed...
Transcript
Welcome to honest talk about heartbreak, dating and relationships, relationships, the podcast helping you navigate your path to happy ever after with your host, Rob McPhillips. So tonight, we were talking about the work of Helen Fisher and Helen Fisher talks about relationships as being life's greatest prize. And so we talked about. The various formats of relationships, whether they were monogamous, whether they were, is it natural for us to be monogamous? Is promiscuity natural?
What's the like? What what format of relationship works? How do our narratives affect the way that we relate? And. How does the history of patriarchy and social control, how does that affect our relationship and essentially what we were trying to work out with which is which comes first, like the nature or nurture. And of course, both nature work within a context of nurture. OK, all right. So let's start tonight. So the topic tonight is life's greatest prize.
And so this is really what Helen Fisher talks about. She says that. Life's greatest prize is finding a mate, and it's the way that we have children, it's the way that we have companionship. And so we'll talk through all aspects now. Handfish work is probably the broadest of all the like. There's loads of books on relationships, but. They although, you know, like you got five love languages, which is probably one of the best selling, which is basically communication, you've got the government, which is about their shared house model.
You've got lots of other people that talk about relationships. We talked about stand talking before, but that's attachment theory. So they all talk about a small section of it. Whereas what Helen Fisher has done is she's an anthropologist and biologist. And so she's looked from like she goes back to 21 million years ago as to climate changes, as to, you know, that caused changes in. Primates that led to all the way that we interact today, so I mean, Herberg so why him?
Why her, why we stret, why we love. So what I want to do to start with is because they are so, so broad. I was looking at, you know, what are the questions we can put in the breakout rooms and this so much. So what I would like you to do is put in the chat box any particular questions that you would like to cover. So really what? So to give you some idea, just as a hands up, he's read the blog post that summarizes it.
OK, and so if you can write any questions that you have from that or anything you'd like to talk about tonight, we'll go from there. So if you knew down the bottom there's a chat box and you can write in there. Anything that you're interested in talking about? OK, so just and then we'll start tonight. So I'm just going to give you some housekeeping, so. What we're here for really is a safe place to explore, a safe place to explore ideas, to discuss relationship ideas and to come away with.
Some perspective that helps us in our relationships away from here, if you can if you can have your video on, so it just helps people see who they're talking to, especially when you go into the breakout rooms. Now, the discussion here is the audio is recorded and so you can listen to any meetup that you haven't attended, but the breakout rooms are private. So in the breakout room, you in a small group and it's just a chance to to talk because in the main room, we can't all get a chance.
Not everyone's comfortable talking to everyone else. Okay.
So right, so what we're going to do is we're going to discuss some topics, we're going to go breakout rooms to discuss them privately and come back and share one couple of bits of housekeeping is.
One of the first eral was asked a couple of meet ups ago about how he kept faith in dating in the face of. Failure, and he he was kind enough to share down his ideas, and so there's a blog post Woodchopper in the chat later, if you haven't had a chance to see it, and he's here to answer any questions so we can bring that up if anyone has anything to say in terms of etiquette. We have one person talking at a time, and if you have something that you want to contribute, then just put your hand up and if your camera's off, you can put your in.
I think it's some reactions, isn't it? You can put your hand up participants for you. Okay, so everyone's been hit by default just to block out background noise, if you want to jump in just a minute yourself or hand up. Okay, so the idea of monogamy is. I forgot the central idea is this one, yeah, one spouse, one spouse, that's it. So the idea of monogamy is one spouse, so.
From looking at. All of history and. The nature of relationships depends on the culture that they live in, so patriarchal relationships are very different from hunter gatherers and she talks about that. She talks about basically the 10000 years since we became agricultural.
We from hunter gatherers to farmers is really about.
Both men and women needed each other and members particularly needed because of the weight of the plow. And so this is basically where patriarchy came from because men had men were needed more. And so when you look at patriarchy is really. Catering to men's fears, it's controlling women, it's controlling the narrative, and so. Making so there's been so when you look at. Like the essential, essential evolutionary goals are, when you look at evolutionary psychology, the goals are for a man to perpetuate his genes and for a woman to ensure the safety of his children.
So. Every woman pretty much knows. That her children are has no man can really be sure. And so when you look at. Taking away money, independence from women, and that's really about. Limiting access, their access and their freedom to. To basically cheat so that the man knows his children, that his children and his OK, so one.
So one so that's really where monogamy in the patriarchy has generally been, not unless men had the resources, when men had the resources, it was only about like in cultures where polygamy, multiple wives is is available to something like five to 10 percent of men who have the resources. And she uses the story. A lot of she talked to a Negaunee man who had three wives, I think, and she said, well, how many wives would you like?
He said, none. And basically, she talks about the problems of jealousy because while you can. Okay. I think we need to backtrack to the central premise of Helen Fisher is that there are three wives. There's the sex drive. There's the romantic drive and there's deep attachment. And so what she shows from her brain. The neuroscience research is that they operate on different. Different aspects. So they're driven by different hormones. But she says all three of them are cool.
They come from the like the reptilian brain, the cool brain stem. So they're as important to us as. Hunger as first, and so he says that they're equally. Equally important, however, they work independently of each other and so we can find someone attractive and be sexually attracted to them. But the Rachmat, so she talks about, OK, so the sex drive is basically testosterone driven and so tested testosterone and estrogen. I think it is so that works on lust.
The romantic drive. Is. I can't remember which Doberman and the romantic drive is about. Focusing on one person, it's focusing your attention on one person and then a deep attachment she proposes is an idea, is a mechanism to attach parents, which seems to be for about three or four years, because when she looks historically at relationships and she looks even like way back in the past that there tended to be, she says all societies had a form of divorce.
It didn't used to have any stigma or shame to it. It was just like they're not happy together. And about a third, probably about a third of couples would divorce and they would just but they would always remarry, which is why she says it's an instinctive drive and.
So those three work independently of each other, which is why. Why we. Why we why there's so much infidelity and she looks back and she says there's always been infidelity and it used to be quiet, like she she gives examples of cultures where they sort of turn a blind eye to it, sort of like Italy and. Where unless it was blatant in their face, they just accepted that they had other partners. So. Am I making clear does anyone have any any comments or.
But the discussion, more or less, this ignores matriarchy. Yeah, make sure it's. It deals with it, it deals with the issue of infidelity in a way in a different way. You can you talk a bit more about that?
OK, like, for example, that group of people, that tribe I can't remember the name in China near the border with Nepal and Tibet. I think it is they have something called a walk in marriage. And the men don't live with the women and the women. The children belong to the village because sometimes they don't even know who their fathers are. And the men have to be invited to spend the night with the woman and at her place and hence the walking, because then he walks back home to his mother every morning in the morning and it can be a different mind all the time.
And they're all they're all OK.
The men don't fight each other in terms of jealousy over the particular woman, because I suppose those who are in favor would probably also have many partners, but it seems to work out and the children belong to everybody in the village. So they're all parents. Of all the children and you know, hmm. Yeah, there are cultures where there is a cultural comment. Which one it is, but I believe that when a woman is pregnant, she will try and mate with.
All the men in the village that have characteristics that she she wants her child to have, and I believe that they all contribute to the child. And so someone who's intelligent, someone who's a great warrior, someone who's kind, someone who's this. And so there's also the idea that.
Which is one of the reasons they say, like, why do women was like, why do women cheat? Or I'm part of it is that they are protecting their children. If if everyone knew his father, who was the father of a child and they were rivals for powerful resources in that tribe, they could be killed, which is one of the reasons why. Monogamy is what Helen Fisher says, monogamy is basically the way that we work, because while we can be poly, poly, polygamy, polyamorous or have different arrangements, we haven't evolved past jealousy.
And it's those basic. So when she talks about relationships where there were multiple and she does talk about multiple husbands, will they that's that's a lot rarer there.
There's like children being poisoned, his wives fighting each other constantly. And so. It just seems to complicate things, so her view is that. The best the one that works best is monogamy, although she talks about because we want that commitment, so it's commitment, but also we've planned clandestine affairs. And. I read a really good book, actually is called Sex at Dawn, and it was recommended by Sarah Pasko, actually a comedian, and yeah, she was likening human beings to saying that we were closely aligned to bonobos.
But it was it was quite interesting at looking at the polyamorous, um, aspect of it from an anthropological point.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, usually, you see, I think one of the problems is that because we've had 2000 years of Christianity and I mean, we I'm talking having come from a Western society, which is mostly Christian in more of, you know, the culture. And so what's happened is sex has become stigmatized and shamed. And so we look at. Monogamy as being moral. Whereas she's not saying that at all, because if you look at different societies, they'd have different arrangements and the arrangements, determine the arrangements and determine basically by the culture, which is determined by the environment and the situation of the people.
So we can have relationships in all kinds of ways. And that's basically practical, but. Predominantly, it's one man, one woman, and it doesn't mean one man, one woman for life, she talks about there being a three or four year high, which is like the attachment stage. And after that. It's kind of like the high point and I think the problem. With that is because we don't have a. Mechanism for dealing with relationships past that up till then.
I don't think we have so she's very positive about relationships, she talks about, you know, the agricultural thing and now women are increasingly getting their independence. So we're now reverting back to pre agricultural because what's happened with the industrial revolution is that you've separated resources from the relationship because a husband and wife had to stay together because if one left, the other couldn't cope and one had to leave with nothing because you couldn't separate farm. Whereas now when you have, you got to work, you earn your money, you have resources that can be separated.
So monogamy is one monogamy as one spouse. So it can be one at a time, so you're like lifelong monogamy would be. Yeah, so whether it's staying together forever or serial monogamy. OK, so. Pete, I'm not sure did I answer that question or is there any more? You know, like when you said about sorry to go back, hi, my name's Sarah. Hi, guys. You said about that a man needs to know who their child is.
I think you made a pretty good point about the woman. Always knows, obviously, where you know her child, but the man might think that the child is someone else's. But that is not just that does not correlate just with why men need to dominate the woman. The reason why a man historically needed to dominate a woman wasn't just to do with that. That issue was to do. You're talking about an insecurity in the man and a lack of trust in the relationship, whereas the reason why women were dominated historically was a multilayered I mean, how long if you go.
But it's to do with power and control society. And historically, a woman was dominate it because of power and control. And I still think to some extent that is true politically. If you look at the political background that we're living in, 80 percent of the houses of parliament is made up by man. Whereas in New Zealand I've lived in New Zealand, that's what I know. It's about 70 percent of women that they are in parliament and culturally New...
