Helen Fisher

Quotes by Helen Fisher

• Anthropologists have found evidence of romantic love in 170 societies. They've never found a society that did not have it.

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• There's biology in everything, even when you're feeling spiritual.

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• People have often asked me whether what I know about love has spoiled it for me. And I just simply say, 'Hardly.' You can know every single ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake, and then when you sit down and eat that cake, you can still feel that joy.

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• It certainly would have been adaptive for ancestral man to have a chubby wife during stressful times of famine. Not only would she have had more calories to burn, and thus more energy and endurance, but since fat stores estrogen, she would have remained fertile for longer.

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• Until recently, we regarded love as supernatural. We were willing to study the brain chemistry of fear and depression and anger but not love.

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• Romantic love allows you to focus mating energy. Attachment sustains that relationship as long as necessary to raise your baby.

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• Your sweetheart calls you by another's name. His eyes linger too long on your best friend. He talks with excitement about a girl at work. And the fire catches. Jealousy - that sickening combination of possessiveness, suspicion, rage, and humiliation - can overtake your mind and threaten your very core as you contemplate your rival.

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• The women's movement is just a symptom of basic changes in the economy that are favoring women.

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• Once you fall for someone, their smell can be a powerful thing. Women will wear their boyfriends' T-shirts, and throughout tales in history men have held on to their lover's handkerchief.

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• Women are very attracted to a low voice because it's linked to testosterone, which for millions of years was a sign that men had very good spacial skills and would have been very good at hunting and finding their way back home.

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• Saliva has testosterone and estrogen. When you kiss, you're having a chemical experience.

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• Real competition can drive up testosterone, which boosts libido.

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• When you fight, anger drives up testosterone in both men and women.

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• Every time you cuddle with your children, you're likely to be driving down your testosterone.

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• I think romantic love evolved to enable you to focus your mating energy on just one individual at a time, thereby conserving mating time and energy.

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• Natural beauty really entices men. They will tell you this time and time again, and studies consistently prove it.

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• When people tell you to walk a certain way, it's like not thinking of a purple tomato. You can't not do it.

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• A woman will toss her head and a man will say, 'Oh she's trying to pick me up,' when in fact she's not doing that at all. So, women actually have to be a little careful with what they do, because men will pick up things that they didn't mean.

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• Why do we feel jealousy? Therapists often regard the demon as a scar of childhood trauma or a symptom of a psychological problem. And it's true that people who feel inadequate, insecure, or overly dependent tend to be more jealous than others.

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• It's almost as if men who get tribal tattoos are trying to signal that they are dangerous, they're to be respected, and they're powerful.

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