The logical way to find love
When it comes to choosing a partner, we should forget about romance and let science be our guide, claims the author of a new book. Ifu Ifeacho discovers how
It's no secret that finding love isn't easy, but at least we're not alone in the hunt. There's a wealth of self-improvement guides out there to help us, from The Rules to He's Just Not That Into You. But just how much assistance do these books really provide? Not much, according to Andrew Trees, acclaimed author and journalist. After listening to sisters and friends wax lyrical about one dating manual after another, Trees tried to delve deeper into what made them so popular, but came up empty as it soon became apparent that most could be summed up by a zippy catchphrase and few contained any research or evidence. Want-ing to find out more about the science of attraction, Trees did his research and set about writing Decoding Love, the anti-dating-advice book. Drawing on a variety of studies from different arenas including economics, game theory and evolutionary psychology, Trees uses scientific enquiry to create a more substantial insight into love.
Forget about finding The One
Trees warns that extravagant expectations are counterproductive. "Western romantic myths of the perfect someone actually cause a lot of harm in dating and relationships ... it turns out that our idea that you have to find The One is not very healthy." Consistent with the underlying message of his book, we must be willing to step out of the boundaries of our existing notions about dating. The sad fact is that a lot of us nurture inflated notions about our "market value" and this interferes with what we expect in a partner. Like it or not, Tree found a number of studies that indicated factors such as height and income dictate a man's value while physical beauty is important in determining a woman's, and that there are trade-offs of these qualities that take place in relationships.
Using the findings from a study, "From Pride and Prejudice to Persuasion: Satisficing in mate search", by evolutionary psychologists Peter F Todd and Geoffrey F Miller, Trees illustrates if we are willing to accept a partner that is simply good enough rather than faultless, we should adopt the "try a dozen" rule. After you've dated 12 potential partners, the next person that is better than those 12 will be a good fit. Unfortunately, this is likely to average out as the 33rd person you date – yikes.
Don't compare the market
We live in a world where choice and variety are easily accessible. So much so, we don't have to commit to anything without making a thorough assessment of everything available to us. This should be making dating easier but instead it's immobilising our ability to decide and "distorts what you're looking for," says Trees. He offers an interesting analogy using a group of consumer researchers that set up a jam-tasting stand over two days in a supermarket. Customers were encouraged to taste the jams available and if they liked them, were offered a discount voucher to buy them. On one day, there were six jams and on another, there were 24. When there were six jams available, 30 per cent of samplers went on to buy whereas when there were 24, only 3 per cent became sales.
Too much choice also results in buyer's remorse. Examining your choices so closely forces you to look at the trade-offs you've made or leads you to believe you could be satisfied further. Surveys show that those that stress the most over decisions are the most dissatisfied. Trees advocates we spend time enjoying what we have rather than worrying about what we think we don't.
Eggs are precious but sperm are cheap
In a culture of nifty dating one-liners, this probably wouldn't make the cut, but according to evolutionary psychology it's the natural order of things. This school of thought argues that because women ovulate once a month and are pregnant for nine months at a time, whereas men are able to ejaculate hundreds of millions of sperm several times a day, human mating behaviour has evolved with these biological considerations in mind. Or to put it another way, in heterosexual relationships, men should do the chasing and women should do the choosing.
To illustrate his point that the power really lies in women's hands, Trees cites Matt Ridley's sex and evolution book The Red Queen. He presents linked propositions: that monogamous society will prevail if women find monogamous relationships more advantageous – unless men can force them otherwise. Alternatively, polygamous society will be the result if females prefer choosing men already attached (eg, would you rather be the second wife of Johnny Depp or the first wife of, say, John Prescott?) – unless the women with a partner can persuade them otherwise (don't mess with my man, capice?).
