6/1/2007 Love At First Sight: Finally Some Answers

6/1/2007 Love At First Sight: Finally Some Answers

It's not pretty. It's hard to accept. It's not quite “nice guys finish last”, but it's close.

It's Evolutionary Psychology, and it pretty much explains everything. Of course, human beings are complex, and have reasons for what they do that transcend any kind of generalization that we may come up with. But this field of study comes up with a lot.

David M. Buss pretty much laid it out. Just when we had scaled our ivory towers of post-modernism, he goes and gets scientific on us. And as usual, it explains all about the way our minds work.

In his article, “Sexual Strategies Theory: An Evolutionary Perspective On Human Mating”, he takes us through the paces. First, he explains that fully 80% of human societies permit men to take multiple wives or mistresses. Hmmmnn, I wonder what the ladies think of it? But just when you thought these societies were heaven for males, understand that many of the men in those societies don't mate at all. The few men who do mate do so with more than one women, leaving many men without any mate at all. Starting to sound familiar? This is interesting to me as I have read in the past that there are some animal species that travel in groups. In these species, the alpha male of the group is the only one who mates. So, heaven for men, or heaven for women? Would a women rather have an aging fat bald guy slump down on her couch every night, or be one of 100 wives of Brad Pitt? I have heard men say this before, that 90% of women are only attracted to 10% of men. The rest of us they settle for, with not a little bit of disappointment. If you find your soul mate, are you disappointed?

I find that to be such an interesting question that I am going to leave off my examination of Evolutionary Psychology for now and let anyone who sees this answer, if they will. (My blog is only a bit over a week old, and so I am not getting more than 5-7 hits a day, and likely there will be few responses, but I cannot quell my curiosity on this issue.) Next post: The rest of evolutionary psychology and how it applies to love at first site, if at all.