Love is a stranger thing than I thought...

After talking to a couple of my friends about a) boyfriend problems b) parents-of-the-boyfriend problems c) singlehood problems and d) what I should finally do about Dragonfly, the above title is the conclusion that I have come to.

Love, is a strange, strange thing.

I recently found a book at the library titled, "Love at First Sight", published by DK. Not a trashy romance novel, but a informative book about what kind of people we would find attractive, and why we find them attractive.

The book states 3 theories on why we find some people attractive.

1) Echoism - People whose features harmonise our own are deemed more attractive.
2) Harmonism - People whose features are symmetrical are deemed more attractive.
3) Patronism Copulist- People whose features are most similiar to the first bond in our lives are deemed more attractive. So, for example, if you were close to your mom when you were young, you would look for someone similiar in features to her.

Pretty interesting no? The book was even chock-full of pictures of celebrity couples, comparing which couple would make it, and which wouldn't.

So apparently, our decision on finding a mate depends rather heavily on these unconscious perceptions of people's faces. Because your brain already has a checklist in it, every time you look at someone to check out their potential [or beoh them, to put them in plain terms] you're actually subsconsciously ticking off those items on your mental checklist.

However, compatibility obviously goes beyond the physical. We also check out a person's sensation-seeking levels, as mentioned in a previous post. According to that other study, couples who have the same level of sensation-seeking are more likely to stay together longer. This is because their sense of adventure, or exploration, mirrors each other. They are more likely to be more communicative with each other, and open-minded with each other.

And then you have the other societal cues that are also indoctrinated in us from birth. Our [potential] husband must be able to support the family, pull in a good salary, be faithful and loyal, be a good father, and generally help with the housework. All these also stem from primitive urges, very caveman-like.

We think of ourselves as a civilised people, but we never realise how caveman-like we still are at heart. Because women are the ones who carry the child through pregnancy, they are also the only ones who are sure that the child is theirs. Hence, they have a stake in caring for the child, because that's the only way their genes will get passed down. That's also why, through the years, women have also been delegated the household chores, and the rearing of the children. Because they are positive of the 'ownership' of the child.

Men, however, can never be 100% certain that the child is theirs, because they didn't give birth to it. [well, er, nowadays, they can more or less be, due to DNA testing] Thus, they feel less of a need to participate in the long term care of the child. It pretty much depends on how the man feels is the best way to sow his wild oats, and hence pass on his genes. He can either f**k as many women as he wants, hereby ensuring a number of offspring bearing his genes, or he can dedicate his time to one child, hereby ensuring that that child will survive to a ripe old age.

In this way, this is why young men are, well, so ready to spread the love. Because since they're young, their best chances of genetic survival is to spread the love around as much as possible, so that they have as many of their kids running around. And unfortunately, the instincts of the women they f**k are geared towards long term care. So men will tend to marry later and have kids, because by then, the chances of that kid surviving will be higher.

What an unfortunate match. But that's the way to keep the human race running.

So you see just how abysmally difficult it is to find a perfect match?
1) Your mate has to have the right set of features
2) Your mate has to have the same level of adventure as yourself
3) Your mate [for women] has to be old enough to want to devote themselves to long term childcare rather than massive spreading of sperm.

Complicating the matter are other things, like the human chemical makeup that gears everyone towards sex. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and the usual estrogen/testosterone, all running around in our blood, urging us to go forth and f**k. All the while with the above subconscious cues wired in our brain.

Let's not talk about the esoteric part yet, which brings in the zodiacs, western and eastern, the 8 characters, the palms and others...

Let's also not talk yet about the implications for homosexuality, asexuality, transexuality, whatever-sexuality.

And we see

Just wat a blardy f**ked up thing love is.

*Sigh*