Anatomy of Love

Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery and Divorce is Helen Fisher's account of human mating as a natural historian would describe it. Drawing on anthropology, on data from many societies and on the study of other species, Fisher traces the origins of courtship, marriage, adultery, divorce and remarriage back across some four million years of human evolution, and argues that the patterns visible in modern life are inherited rather than invented. The book takes the sequence in order, beginning with flirtation and the gestures and postures by which attraction is signalled, which she argues are remarkably consistent across cultures, then the chemistry of attraction and attachment in the brain, then pair bonding and the rearing of the young. From the cross-cultural record she argues for a human tendency towards serial pair bonding rather than lifelong monogamy, and reads the timing of separation in relation to the demands of raising a child. Her wider claim is that these behaviours make sense as evolved strategies, and that understanding them clarifies patterns in modern courtship and married life that otherwise seem hard to explain.

Written from the public record for the book.

What this vault takes from it

Reliability

Not audited here. 1 note in this vault draws on it.

People

• Helen Fisher