Helen

Golf is the ultimate gentleman’s game — and women crave a gentleman.  In the bedroom, with her parents, with their future children, in almost any social situation: women want a gent.  And to play the game of golf well, you need to be patient, calm under pressure, well dressed, orderly, and honorable — because golf runs on the honor system.  Golfers are expected to follow the rules — even when no one is watching.  What a wonderful trait for raising babies or just sharing life.  But golfers come with more perks.  Golf is also a social game; one rarely plays alone.  So golfers tend to enjoy social situations, and have ‘people skills’ — indeed, golfers are often charming in a group.  Last, golfers offer prized trait: time.  Golfers can pull themselves away from the desk to relax; they chose to spend that precious time out-of-doors in elegant surroundings; they have a passion; and they have enough money to enjoy their passion. Who wouldn’t want a gracious, elegant, honorable and financially stable squire who will spend his time relaxing — with you. 

Gift giving time is coming.  O my.  Scientists know a lot about giving gifts to grandma, your school chums, your office buddies, even your spouse. You can’t go wrong if you give them what they want.  As it turns out, the thought’s not always the thing; it’s often the gift that counts.  Yet a very thoughtful gift can be a winner, if you got the right thought.   Scientists have also proven that your brain gets a rush of pleasure chemicals when you give, as does that of the receiver. Moreover, most gift givers don’t care if the gift-receiver proceeds to give the gift to someone new—but ‘regifting’ generally makes the gift receiver feel horribly guilty when they do it. 

 But gift giving isn’t just risky for the giver; it’s often pressure on the receiver.  Nothing worse than feigning joy when you hate what you just received–even compromising the thought, the moment and possibly the relationship. 

But what about giving gifts to a potential lover. Scientists don’t know much about that. Here, you’re on your own.  And it can be a land mine — because this is the big leagues—the wrong gift might even break a budding partnership. Too practical — you’re boring.  Too romantic: the receiver might feel threatened that you want to have their babies.  Too inexpensive: you’re cheap.  Really expensive — they might think you’re rich and want your dough. So many would-be lovers give food or a fancy dinner — relatively safe, albeit transient, presents (and perhaps you can enjoy some of the gift yourself).   

We are generous creatures.  For millions of years we gave gifts to cement relationships and express our feelings. But giving can be a minefield when you court.  So I’d like to make a novel suggestion: 

As you may know, I think we evolved four broad styles of thinking and behaving, what I call:  the Explorer (curious and energetic); Builder (cautious and traditional); Director (analytical and tough minded); and Negotiator (socially skilled and empathetic).  We are all a mix of all these styles, but we express some more than others.  So I would try to appeal to the basic nature of your receiver.  

I would give the Explorer an experience, rather than a gift — a night out on the town in a pedicab, a trip to an amusement park or a bizarre restaurant, and make it a surprise.  I would do something very traditional for the Builder — Christmas cookies, tree ornaments, a seasonal musical event or a jaunt to a national monument.  I would give something practical to the Director (like a traveling alarm clock, some steak knives, or the newest tech device). And I would give something highly personal to the Negotiator — a poem you wrote for him or her (even if it is awful), or any kind of keepsake that will increase in sentimental value with time.  And if you can be amusing, all the better.  Laughter is good for the mind — and the body.   

It has long been said that we should do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves.  I don’t agree. I propose that we do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.  And you may win life’s greatest prize — a mating partner. 

With the shortening days of autumn, melatonin elevates in the brain—making people more sluggish and eager to lounge at home, preferably with a sweetheart.  Then testosterone rises in November, triggering even more desire to snuggle with a lover.  By then, the “cuffing season” is in full bloom.

Big boys don’t cry.  It’s true.  Men are far less likely to shed tears than women in all countries where this has been surveyed, including the vastly different cultures of the United States, India, China and Japan.  And although men are often characterized as stunted, shallow, aloof, emotionally stingy or lacking compassion, men’s “emotional containment,” as scientist’s call men’s lack of emotional expressiveness, evolved for important reasons.  For millions of years, men’s jobs were primarily to protect the little hunting/gathering band and kill large animals for dinner. 

Sobbing could not have helped an ancestral man as he stared into the yellow eyes of a charging lion, slit the throat of a baby gazelle for supper, raided an enemy camp or stabbed an intruder in the heart.    Men needed exceptional vision, strength, endurance, special skills and cunning to do their daily jobs.  To their daily work, they were obliged to hide their feelings of weakness, fear, sadness and vulnerability. As a result ancestral men evolved the capacity to internalize their feelings, keeping them to themselves.  Little boys cry just as often as little girls.   But as testosterone begins to flood the brain in teenage, young men  begin to camouflage their feelings of anxiety, grief, guilt and hurt with silence.  Instead, they become fluent in “joke speak,” all the quips, gags and seemingly nonchalant remarks that boys and men employ to mask their feelings of despair and apprehension.   Testosterone puts on the breaks.   Today many even drive their emotions into their unconscious; they don’t even know how they feel.  

Men try to avoid emotional conversations too.  During an argument with a wife or lover, for example, they often flee from verbal confrontation, retreating into stormy silence.   Faced with a partner’s negative feelings, men can become mute.   Known as “stone walling,” even this is adaptive.  Men are more physically sensitive to discord than women are.  Their autonomic nervous system flies into action quicker: adrenaline and stress hormones begin to course through their mind and body–revving them up for “fight” or “flight.”  Even worse, more men experience “emotional flooding.”  Their heart pounds; their blood pressure rises; they begin to sweat; their breathing quickens; their muscles tense and burst into spontaneous, irrational fury or debilitating sorrow.  Moreover, once aroused, men recover from these bodily symptoms more slowly than women do.  So scientists now think that men shut avoid emotional conversations, and try to shut off their feelings during a marital argument to preserve their health.  Men are well built for shutting down their emotions too, because the male brain tends to be more compartmentalized.  Men have fewer neural connections between distant brain regions, a compartmentalization that can breed geniuses, but may also help men avoid their feelings.

If men are naturally emotionally contained, women are built to express their emotions. Ancestral females needed to care for tiny helpless babies, and for this they needed a different skill: “Emotional attunement,” the ability to feel what the baby feels.  This largely feminine ability to get into emotional synchrony with another is an evolutionary mechanism that most likely evolved to motivate new mothers to arise from cozy sleep to comfort a lonely, wet or frightened infant in the black of night.  Women achieve this, at least partially, with their more expressive faces.  As a woman (or man) moves their facial muscles, they trigger nerves which trigger brain activities that make them feel in specific ways.  This is why we feel happier when we smile.  (And why men and women who use botox to paralyze facial muscles feel less depressed.) But women respond more than once a minute to their infant’s squeals and gurgles, yawns and cries—and as they mimic their infant’s facial poses, they coordinating their mood with that of their little one.   Around the world, most women are more emotionally expressive than most men–it’s their inheritance.   Moreover, women are well built to cry tears. Women’s tear ducts are smaller than those of men.  So their tears spill onto their cheeks sooner. Moreover, Women had some 50% more circulating prolactin, a primary component of tears.

All animals cry; but none except people cry tears.   No one knows why.  But surely social signaling is among them.  Tears are an honest and powerful social signal.  When someone cries, we instantly listen, comfort and try to help.  With tears, people inform, demand, plead–and often get what they seek.   And a woman’s tears have a powerful physiological effect on men.   As part of a recent experiment, 24 men sniffed three women’s emotional tears and then rated photos of 18 women.  Results?  Sniffing tears reduced their sexual interest in these women, as well as decreasing feelings of sexual arousal and levels of testosterone.   Once again, this appears adaptive.  With less testosterone, men feel more empathy.  This is why aging men, with reduced levels of testosterone, cry more easily, as well as express more compassion.

We are entering the age of women.   Social standards are beginning to reflect the aptitudes and needs of women.  IN short, we are now living in a society where intimacy is  defined by emotional expression rather than doing things together.  As a result, men are becoming required to respond to stress as women do: with words and tears. Emotional containment is not longer fashionable.  Can men express themselves as women do?  Sure, we can flexible creatures with a tremendous desire to please the ones we love.  But next time the man of the house ducks a vicious verbal missile or walks out in the middle of a heated argument, you might try to remember:  he’s a man.  He was built for important life-saving jobs, jobs in which it was dangerous to weep.  

Stalling?   Cold feet?   Why buy the cow if you’re already got the milk?  Many see a long engagement as an irritating lack of commitment—stemming from the natural hope to see relatives reproduce and spread their mutual DNA.  But the world will see a lot more long engagements.  In the old days, when marriage was a person’s passage to adulthood and prior virginity was a must, just about everybody wed—young and fast.   But these days, when divorce rates are high, infidelity is rampant, many have their children later and we are living longer, more couples figure: “why rush; let’s build a strong partnership before we wed.”  Long engagements are just another part of the current worldwide Marriage Revolution.

Ever since I went to see the Beattles sing in Forest Hills, New York, with three college girlfriends (back in the Pleistocene), I have wondered why people get so worked up over celebrities.  Not because the Beattles arrived in a helicopter and sang to some 20,000 people.  But because one girlfriend fainted from exhilaration; the second peed in her jeans; the third sobbed throughout the concert.  I was, as they say, the only ‘man’ left standing.  Why do we get our knickers in a twist about Michelle’s Inauguration dress, Roman Polanski’s dabblings with a teenage girl, or Eliot Spitzer’s sexual escapades?  I have a theory.  It’s another one of my riffs on the loss of local community.  Those (millions) of us who live and work in urban areas can no longer talk to our friends about the girl next door or the boy down the street: our friends don’t know these people.   Our pals at work don’t know our neighbors, our children, even our suitors, lovers or spouses.  And those who share our home life barely know our friends from work, the gym, or other social circles.  The only people you and I are likely to know in common are people in the news–politicians, journalists and celebrities.  And here’s the catch.  As social animals, we need to exchange juicy tales about someone—to connect with one another.  For millions of years our forebears must have sat around the campfire, whispering about everyone they knew.  How Og failed to hit that buffalo.  How Ug danced with flare.  How Ig fashioned her hair or grass skirt.  With all our chatter, we built intimacy with each other by airing our views, learning from the perspectives of our friends, setting local standards, even ostracizing those we feared or loathed.  Today, particularly in our cities, we can’t share these local stories with our friends.  The only way we can connect with many of those around us is to yak about people we “know” in common.   Celebrities serve this vital human purpose.  They enable us to measure our failures against theirs, as well as emulate their better values.  But most important, as we discuss them, we reach out to friends and family, unifying our relationships with communal jokes, thoughts and feelings. Why my girlfriends were so overwhelmed at that Beattles concert, I still don’t know.  But their behavior has been the butt of many good humored jokes ever since—a bit of permanent glue among comrades in what, long ago, would have been a tight-knit little hunting/gathering band so necessary for survival.  

Testosterone may be involved.  Testosterone levels rise in men when they win and plummet when they lose. And testosterone is linked with energy, motivation and sex.   So it’s possible that rising testosterone is fueling Republican men’s elevated dating activity; while plunging testosterone is reducing libido and the drive for romance among male Democrats.  Women are less governed by this hormone–however, depression can also stifle yearning and motivation.  But Democrats will revive—because love is, ultimately, more powerful than politics. ”  

Have you ever wondered what people actually mean when they say “we’ve got chemistry.”  As I have said in previous blogs, there are many things that draw you to one person rather than another.  Timing is important.  If you’re not ready, you won’t notice a perfect partner, even if he or she is sitting on your lap.  We tend to fall for someone of our same socio-economic background, with the same level of intelligence and good looks, and the same religious and social values.  But does basic body chemistry also play a role?  This is what I set out to investigate at Chemistry.com.  And with time I stumbled on some natural patterns of attraction. 

If, for example, you are highly expressive of the dopamine system in the brain, what I call an Explorer, you tend to be risk taking and novelty seeking, as well as spontaneous, energetic, curious and creative.  And after studying the dating choices of 28,000 members of Chemistry.com (anonymously, of course; I only look at numbers, never people), I found that Explorers gravitate to other Explorers.  Be they the type that backpacks around the world or spends their Saturday evenings at the symphony or avidy reading poetry, Explorers are drawn to individuals who will join them in their physical or intellectual adventures.   Builders, those highly expressive of the serotonin system instead, also seek a partner like themselves.  These men and women are traditional.  They are also cautious (but not scared) and social. They respect authority, follow the rules, and tend to be orderly, conscientious and loyal to their values.  And they want a partner equally eager to build family home and community.  But the last two biological types, the Director and Negotiator, seek their opposite: one another.  Directors, expressive of testosterone, tend to be analytical, direct, decisive, tough minded and good at things like math, engineering, mechanics or computers.  And they are particularly attracted to the high estrogen type, Negotiators, those who see the big picture, and are imaginative, intuitive, verbally skilled, compassionate and warm with people.   Bill Clinton is probably a high estrogen type (he cried at Chelsea’s wedding) who married a high testosterone type, Hillary.   Angelina Joli and Brad Pitt are probably both Explorers.  And most likely Collin Powell and his wife are both Builders.

We all express all of these chemical systems, of course–along with the constellation of traits associated with each. But we do have personalities, based in part on this brain chemistry.  And this biology guides us as we make our way through the sea of mating opportunities.   So if you are looking for a cosmic connection to another, let nature help. Get to know more about yourself at Chemistry.com or from my book, WHY HIM? WHY HER?   Then try a few dates with people who naturally fit your type.   There will always be magic to love.   But chemistry can help.

On a mountain top?  At a beach resort?  In your hometown with all your friends around? Women spend a lot of time planning their weddings.   This is acceptable.  But it has not been acceptable for a woman to pop the big question: “Will you marry me?”  Women often drop weighty little bombs, like: “Is this serious?”  “What are your plans?”  “Are we in for the long haul?”  But women don’t get down on one knee and propose.  They wait. 

Is proposing the man’s job?  In our annual study of Singles in America, I and my colleagues at Match.com ask single Americans of every age and background about their dating lives.  And each year over 90% of men report that they are comfortable with a woman asking them out.  So why shouldn’t a woman propose as well–even plan the “ultimate proposal.”  

I hope you know what I mean by the “ultimate proposal.”  It begins as your would-be spouse naively enters the proposers set up.  Soon friends, relatives, dancing girls, marching bands, even jugglers and acrobats appear to sing and dance before the astonished partner—a gala surprise performance concluding as the proposer emerges from the chaos to pop the question.  And it’s all recorded—a film that regularly lands on YouTube.

People love to watch these pregnant moments.   Certainly I do.   There’s something incredibly special about the words:  “Will you marry me.”  I suspect they were used more than 200,000 years ago as the human brain took its modern shape.  And a proposal is still special.  With this person you will build the core of your future social, economic and intimate life.  With this person, you may also bear young, parent, and pass your DNA on toward eternity.  So why not make this moment of profound commitment dazzling.  And why not encourage women to join the fun.  One piece of advice, of course:  Be sure you know in advance that he (or she) will say “yes.” 

Indeed, as female planners join the festivities, the “ultimate proposal” might become the newest art form, one of many ways that singles are transforming modern courtship.  And it’s a good idea.  From the biological perspective, the more metabolic energy you invest in a partnership at the start, the more you are obliged to sustain it.  Moreover, in our 2012 Singles in America study, over 80% of American married people reported that they would remarry their current spouse.  And 75% said they were still “very much in love” with him or her.  Marriages can–and do–work.  And the ultimate proposal surely is the definitive way to tell the world: she (or he) is mine.   

January is the month of love.  Men and women pour onto the computer, seeking romance with someone who respects them and makes them laugh, someone whom they can confide in and whom they find physically attractive.  Why is January the busiest month in the search for love?  

Well, the holidays certainly remind us of our single-hood.  Friends and family wonder why you are alone at their merry gatherings.  And all the festivities of Christmas, Chanukah and New Year’s Eve can drive home the reality that you are alone.  The weather may contribute, too.  Who doesn’t want to cuddle up with a sweetheart in the dark of winter?   

But the January surge to Match.com, Chemistry.com and probably other dating sites may represent a deeper human craving:  the result of millennia of annual rituals linked to the return of the sun–and with it renewal and rebirth.

Around the world men and women have celebrated the return of the sun in mid December, when the days begin to lengthen, banishing the dark.  We are sun birds, flocking to the light.  The ancient Romans surrounded the Winter Solstice (on December 21^st) with festivities to celebrate their sun god: Sol.   In ancient Machu Picchu, Peru, Incan priests ritually tied the sun to a sacred stone so it would not escape—thus honoring their sun god, Inti.  The Saami reindeer herders of northern Finland, Sweden and Norway smeared butter on their doorposts to celebrate the new journey of Beiwe, their sun-goddess of fertility, across the sky.  The Maori of New Zealand marked midwinter with the Sun’s return to his summer-bride.  China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Pakistan, Iran, Greece, Mali, England, Ireland: Humankind may have began to celebrate the midwinter return of the sun long before they started marking calendric symbols on their bone tools some 12,000 years ago, perhaps even with the dawn of human consciousness.  

     Sunlight does renew.  It triggers the serotonin system in the brain to elevate mood.  It boosts the dopamine system, bestowing energy and optimism.  It suppressed melatonin production, reducing winter torpor.  And it creates Vitamin D that may counteract depression, improve memory and perception and boost the immune system.

     So like sunflowers, we turn toward the sun.  And as we emerge from the frenzy of the winter holidays, we keenly sense this primal urgency for a new beginning.  And what is more rejuvenating than love?  So let’s light candles to the forces of light and love: may January bring you life’s greatest adventure: a new and enduring romance.  

     Happy New Year, Helen