Unlock the mysteries of your heart as we traverse the captivating landscape of love with the guidance of Dr. Helen Fisher. This episode promises a profound understanding of the intricate dance between brain chemistry and romance, as we delve into why we fall for the partners we do, and whether that intense spark of new love can blossom into a lifelong flame.
Join me in this heartfelt conversation with Dr. Fisher, where we dissect the essence of limerence and its metamorphosis into enduring love. Ever wondered if there's a science to staying happily in love? We've got you covered, sharing secrets on maintaining passion, the art of emotional regulation, and the magic of 'positive illusions'. Prepare to be enlightened by the anthropological undercurrents of relationship dynamics and practical strategies for rekindling romance, armed with wisdom from both Dr. Fisher and relationship expert, John Gottman.
As we wrap up our journey with Dr. Fisher, we shed new light on how novelty, personality, and even the biological forces at play shape our romantic relationships. Explore the four personality styles that dictate our love lives, and understand the profound implications of love in our later years. We'll also unveil the biological patterns that often lead to divorce and why long-term commitment holds the key to a healthier, more fulfilling life. This episode is not just a treasure trove of insights—it's a roadmap for deepening the connections that mean the most to us. Let's dive in!
Today's Guest: Helen Fisher, PhD Biological Anthropoligist
HELEN FISHER, PhD BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGIST, is Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute; and Chief Science Advisor to Match.com . She uses brain scanning (fMRI) to study the neural foundations of romantic love, attachment, rejection in love, love addiction and long-term partnership happiness. She has written six internationally best-selling books on mate choice, romantic love, marriage, gender differences in the brain and the evolution and future of the family in the digital age. Her books include: ANATOMY OF LOVE (2 ND ed); WHY WE LOVE; and WHY HIM? WHY HER?. Fisher is currently studying the biological basis of personality--using her fMRI data and data collected from her questionnaire, the Fisher Temperament Inventory, now taken by 15+ million people in 40 countries. She is currently writing her 7th book, applying these data on four foundational temperament dimensions to business and personal living. Her personality questionnaire has been called “a disruptive technology” and “the next Myers-Briggs.” Helen is the co-founder of a business consulting company, NEUROCOLOR. She is in the media regularly. She is a TED All-Star with over 21 million views of her TED talks, a recipient of the American Anthropological Association’s Distinguished Service Award for her work at presenting anthropological data to the public; and chosen in 2015 by Business Insider as one of “The Fifteen Most Amazing Women in Science.”
LINKS:
Website: https://helenfisher.com/
Personality Test
Books: https://helenfisher.com/books/
Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships
Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 200,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming
WE HAVE A NEW WEBSITE!!
Visit www.itstartswithattraction.com to check it out!
Unlock the mysteries of your heart as we traverse the captivating landscape of love with the guidance of Dr. Helen Fisher. This episode promises a profound understanding of the intricate dance between brain chemistry and romance, as we delve into why we fall for the partners we do, and whether that intense spark of new love can blossom into a lifelong flame.
Join me in this heartfelt conversation with Dr. Fisher, where we dissect the essence of limerence and its metamorphosis into enduring love. Ever wondered if there's a science to staying happily in love? We've got you covered, sharing secrets on maintaining passion, the art of emotional regulation, and the magic of 'positive illusions'. Prepare to be enlightened by the anthropological undercurrents of relationship dynamics and practical strategies for rekindling romance, armed with wisdom from both Dr. Fisher and relationship expert, John Gottman.
As we wrap up our journey with Dr. Fisher, we shed new light on how novelty, personality, and even the biological forces at play shape our romantic relationships. Explore the four personality styles that dictate our love lives, and understand the profound implications of love in our later years. We'll also unveil the biological patterns that often lead to divorce and why long-term commitment holds the key to a healthier, more fulfilling life. This episode is not just a treasure trove of insights—it's a roadmap for deepening the connections that mean the most to us. Let's dive in!
Today's Guest: Helen Fisher, PhD Biological Anthropoligist
HELEN FISHER, PhD BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGIST, is Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute; and Chief Science Advisor to Match.com . She uses brain scanning (fMRI) to study the neural foundations of romantic love, attachment, rejection in love, love addiction and long-term partnership happiness. She has written six internationally best-selling books on mate choice, romantic love, marriage, gender differences in the brain and the evolution and future of the family in the digital age. Her books include: ANATOMY OF LOVE (2 ND ed); WHY WE LOVE; and WHY HIM? WHY HER?. Fisher is currently studying the biological basis of personality--using her fMRI data and data collected from her questionnaire, the Fisher Temperament Inventory, now taken by 15+ million people in 40 countries. She is currently writing her 7th book, applying these data on four foundational temperament dimensions to business and personal living. Her personality questionnaire has been called “a disruptive technology” and “the next Myers-Briggs.” Helen is the co-founder of a business consulting company, NEUROCOLOR. She is in the media regularly. She is a TED All-Star with over 21 million views of her TED talks, a recipient of the American Anthropological Association’s Distinguished Service Award for her work at presenting anthropological data to the public; and chosen in 2015 by Business Insider as one of “The Fifteen Most Amazing Women in Science.”
LINKS:
Website: https://helenfisher.com/
Personality Test
Books: https://helenfisher.com/books/
Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships
Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 200,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming
WE HAVE A NEW WEBSITE!!
Visit www.itstartswithattraction.com to check it out!
If you've ever heard the word limerence, then you don't want to miss today's episode. If you've ever wondered about what it's like to fall madly in love with someone, or why we do that, or the biological mechanisms behind it and all of the anthropology and sociology and all of the super nerdy fun stuff, you're going to love today's guest. Her name is Dr Helen Fisher and she has been a pioneer in the field of anthropology. She took the work of Dr Dorothy Tenov, who was the original researcher to coin the term limerence, and she has been the person to spearhead that work. She has studied romantic love and what it means to fall in love and to be madly in love and how to stay madly in love with someone for the majority of her research history. She's a biological anthropologist, a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, and she's the chief science advisor to matchcom. She's conducted extensive research and written six books on the evolution and future of human sex, love, marriage and the brain, and even how personality styles shape who you are and who you can fall in love with.
Speaker 1:She's a fascinating guest. I loved my conversation with her and I was totally fan-grilling the whole time. Let's dive in to today's episode. Dr Helen Fisher. I am so thrilled to be speaking today. To say that I'm fan-grilling is maybe an understatement. Thank, you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's so funny because my husband actually, I think in the past, maybe in the past six months he recently read your book why Him, why Her, and he has been on a mission to like understand the four personality types that you outline in that book, which I know is something that you want to go into today, and I absolutely want you to, just as we kind of give people an understanding who maybe don't yet know of you. How did you get started in research and what are some of the fascinating things you have researched over your very distinguished career?
Speaker 2:That's a big question. Well anyway, I'm a biological anthropologist. I've studied love all my life. My PhD dissertation was on why we bothered to form a partnership at all. I mean, 97% of mammals do not pair up to rear their young and people do.
Speaker 2:That led me into trying to understand not only why we marry, but why we divorce, why we are adulterous, why we remarry, and then on into what happens in the brain when you're madly in love with somebody. I and my colleagues were the first in the world to put people in brain scanners and study the brain circuitry of romantic love and attachment. As a matter of fact, when I wrote my first academic paper on the brain circuitry of romantic love, one of the four reviewers said you can't study this. I mean, love is part of the supernatural. I thought to myself no, wait a minute here. Anger is not part of the supernatural, fear is not part of the supernatural. Why would love be part of the supernatural?
Speaker 2:So anyway, since then I've gone on to study why you fall in love with one person rather than another, and for the last 19 years I've been the chief science advisor to the dating site matchcom. I do their science, I collect data for them. I don't collect data on their dating site, I use a national representative sample of singles, so I've got a clear review, really, of singles today in America, where we're headed. I'm actually rather optimistic about the future and I've written six books on love and I'm working on number seven. This is amazing.
Speaker 1:What next question do I want to ask you out of all of that? Well, here's actually the first question I thought of as you were speaking. So, in your research you did for your dissertation, how did you do the study? Was it a meta-analysis or did you do your own original study in there? And if so, what did you do to understand all of those things about love?
Speaker 2:In those days. Since then I've done a lot of original new research, all the brain scanning et cetera, et cetera, but that was really there was no way to. What I did for my PhD dissertation is. I looked at pair bonding in birds and mammals and, as I mentioned, 97% of mammals do not pair up to rear their young people do, and a lot of the birds do. I mean something like there's about 9,000 species of birds and about 8,000 of them do form a partnership to raise their babies. And so I began to think of okay, why do they do that? And, as it turns out, they do it because they have to. I mean, the bottom line is, you know, I mean somebody's got to sit on those eggs if you're a bird, and that individual is going to starve to death unless they have a partner who feeds them and they share the responsibility. So you know, I mean our very closest relatives, chimpanzees. Female chimpanzees carry the baby on their back. They can feed themselves, they can protect themselves by climbing into the trees. They don't need a long-term partner to help raise their young through infancy and, as a result, they don't. They come into estrus once a month. They populate with several males until they get pregnant. After a while they stick more to themselves and deliver the infant and eventually put the baby on the back and keep on going. So the bottom line is it takes very special circumstances to have evolved a brain system to drive us to form a long-term partnership with somebody else. So that led me way down the road to putting people in brain scanners. That's all solid, original research. I also looked at, oh, adultery in 42 cultures. I've looked at divorce in 58 societies well, actually in 80 cultures through the demographic yearbooks of the United Nations, and I do a lot of brain scanning.
Speaker 2:So one thing led to another. You know people will ask me you know, why do I study love? And it really started because I'm an identical twin. And as an identical twin, you know, long before I knew that there was a nature-nurture argument I mean as an identical twin you really, by the age of five and six, people asked me you know, do my twin sister and I like the same food? Do we have the same friends? Do we have the same captain on our teeth, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2:So long before I knew that there was this issue of how much it's culture and how much it's biology, I was very busy measuring the degree to which I was, you know, I had inherited some biological traits, and how much was totally cultural. Then, when I get to graduate school, it was a long time ago. In those days they believed that the mind was an empty slate and the environment inscribed your personality of who you were. And I thought to myself I don't believe that, I can't believe that everything we do is learned. I mean, we've sort of fallen in love naturally. We fear things sort of pretty naturally, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2:So I decided that for my PhD dissertation I would study love. Because I thought to myself okay, if there's one part of human behavior that would have been essential for survival, it would be our reproductive patterns. Because, as Darwin would have said, you know, if you have four children and I have no children, you live on and I die out. So the game of love matters. You know, the people who win it send their DNA into tomorrow and survive. So the bottom line is, I figured okay, some of these basic patterns of courtship and bonding and jealousy and, you know, attachment are probably somehow lodged in our DNA. And that got me wondering and studying love.
Speaker 1:So why do we love?
Speaker 2:Why do we love?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, if I wanted to. Well, first of all, I think that we've evolved three different brain systems for mating and reproduction, sex drive being one, feelings of intense romantic love being the second, and feelings of deep attachment being the third, and the very different brain systems that are run by different chemical systems, et cetera. So sex drive gets you out there looking for a whole range of partners. I mean, you can have sex with somebody but you're not in love with. Romantic love evolves, enables you to focus your mating energy on just one at a time. Focus on that, and then that third brain system of attachment enables you to stick with this person for a period of time, generally long enough to raise a baby, at least through infancy. So together, these three brain systems, they're survival mechanisms. They come from the oldest parts of the brain and they evolve.
Speaker 2:You ask, why do we love? We love because these brain systems drive us to form partnerships and send our DNA into tomorrow. They are basic survival mechanisms. It's very interesting because the brain system for romantic love is run by the dopamine system in the brain. When you're madly in love with somebody, you start to have activity in a tiny little factory near the very base of the brain called the ventral tegmental area or the VTA. That brain region, that factory, pumps out dopamine and gives you those feelings of elation, giddiness, euphoria, focus, motivation, et cetera. What's interesting about that is that that little factoring that pumps out the dopamine that gives you the drive to be madly in love with somebody lies right next to the factoring that orchestrates thirst and hunger. Thirst and hunger keep you alive today.
Speaker 2:Romantic love drives you to form a partnership and send your DNA into tomorrow. So these are survival mechanisms that evolved long, long ago. And then of course, we've got a whole emotional system that makes us be envious and jealous and craving, et cetera. And we've got huge cerebral cortex with which we write love letters and create movies and plays and symphonies and ballets and myths and legends and operas and poems and songs and dances et cetera. I mean the amount of intellectual artifacts really of this basic brain system are stunning. But you know, all kinds of animals feel that attraction. I mean they're not composing love songs. Actually some birds are, could have love songs. All kinds of animals have courtship songs, but anyway they're not writing them down, they're not writing books about it. But the bottom line is that it's a basic brain system romantic love that evolved millions of years ago to drive us to form partnerships and stay together at least long enough to send our DNA into tomorrow. It's a survival mechanism.
Speaker 1:What is the difference between romantic love and limerence?
Speaker 2:I don't think there is any difference. I know I used to know I can't remember her name. Now she wanted, let's just say, her name. Do you remember her name?
Speaker 1:Who originally started?
Speaker 2:the research on.
Speaker 1:Dr Dorothy Tinoff.
Speaker 2:Yes, dorothy Tinoff, I know her. I knew her and I guess she wanted to invent a new term and that was fine. I don't mind that. But I actually like the term of romantic love. Her concept of limerence was a rather sad one. It had a sad component to it. Anyway, she created a new term. It's a perfectly fine term. I could have used it myself. I decided not to because I felt that the term romantic love had meaning in society and I didn't see the need for a new term. But I certainly liked her work, I certainly read her book, I certainly knew her, I admired her and I didn't happen to adopt the term limerence. But if people want to use it, fine with me.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know if you know or not, but it's used a lot on YouTube now.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's up, Okay, whatever.
Speaker 1:What do you? Well, a lot of people who probably don't know anything about it talk about it. That's pretty much what's happening.
Speaker 2:Do they understand what it is? I mean, do they understand that it's basically infatuation, intense romantic love? I think it is.
Speaker 1:Did they have it? Yeah, I think they have it right. Yes, so it's that it's from, and this is my understanding of limerence. Is that it? It has a shelf life, but it is a feeling of infatuation, intense, that feeling of being madly in love that dominates your thoughts, it dominates several different behaviors that you may have, but because it is so intense, that's why it has a shelf life. And basically, I think what we believe is like three months to 24 months or 48 months, something like that, to which it begins to subside. But that and I was thinking of it when you were talking about the romantic love going into attachment because when the, that that super intense part of the being madly in love subsides, well, what's left to keep you together? Because you can't biologically, from my understanding, operate in that feeling of limerence for the rest of your life. It's too demanding mentally and physically.
Speaker 2:So I don't entirely agree, and I've proven that that's wrong.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about it. It's possible, yeah.
Speaker 2:It is. It's very intense, there's no question about it. I mean when you are madly in love. I mean people painful of, they live for love, they kill for love, they die for love. I mean when you are madly in love. It's hard to think about anything else. What people will do when they are madly in love or limerent, whatever you want to call it is very dramatic. And, of course, it evolved as in a very intense experience so that you could leave everything behind and focus on a particular individual and start the mating process. So I completely agree with that. I also do think that it's can subside to some extent.
Speaker 2:Americans do believe that it cannot remain long term. I've proven that to be incorrect. I and my colleagues have put over 100 people into the brain scanner using fMRI, and we had people coming into the lab who were I don't know. They kept on saying they were in their 50s and 60s and they kept on saying I'm still madly in love with him, I'm madly in love with her. All these people, the vast majority of these people, had grown children, but yet they were still in love not just loving, but in love with their partner, and so we put them into the brain scanner because Americans don't believe it, just like you said. And sure enough we found the same activity in those basic brain circuits among people who are, in long term, madly in love as in short term madly in love. So it can remain long term.
Speaker 2:But I have to say I mean that very early, intense thing where you can't eat, you can't sleep, you can't think of anything else. You're willing to move to China, quit your job, grow long hair, be a hit, whatever you're going to do. I do think that some of that does go Because, just like you said, it's not adaptive. But I disagree that it can't be sustained at a little bit more practical level. I, for example, have been madly in love, madly in love with a man for nine years. I wake up in the morning and I'm married to him, and I wake up in the morning and see if he's written me, if we're not together, if the phone rings, I hope that it's him, he that calls. I do think that you can remain in love. Now, that very early, intense no, I don't, I'm not up all night wondering why he said this or that, but I think it's a misunderstanding to think that it can't, on a more reasonable level, be sustained long term if you're the right person and know how to compromise.
Speaker 1:What do you think does lead to it being sustained long term in some people versus others?
Speaker 2:Well, I think you've got to pick the right person. Let's start with that. I mean just simply enough. No pressure. We all want to do it. We all want to pick the right person, that is for sure, and we certainly try over and over again. It's remarkable how people come back and respond again.
Speaker 2:I always thought you know, why is it that we struggle so much when everything has gone wrong? You know we thought we had the perfect thing or we were able to overlook the bad parts. We, you know. You know we had a fancy wedding, we have a nice house, we've got great children, everybody's got a decent job, et cetera, et cetera. Why can things go? Why do we suffer so much when it goes bad? I think that there's both biological and cultural reasons. I mean, first of all, you know, at the end of a partnership, you know you've lost your daily habits. You know you might have lost the cat, the dog, the children, money, friend, family. You know habits like Christmas or other routine annual events. I mean you've lost a lot culturally. But what you've also lost when you've lost a partnership is, if you were planning to have children, you've lost the opportunity to send your DNA into tomorrow, and if you have children with somebody, you've lost a parenting partner to help you send your DNA onto tomorrow. So we suffer. We suffer terribly when, when a relationship goes bad, but then we get back out there and we try again.
Speaker 2:I'm an anthropologist. It's interesting in hunting and gathering societies people do tend to have two or three long term partnerships during the course of their life. There's nothing really unusual about divorce, about the actual thing of divorce. What is difficult is that we've got so much property and, you know, in a hunting and gathering society there's no argument over who owns the children, because the children are part of a clan, you know, and the digging stick is hers and the bow and arrow is his. And they fight. I mean, if you read ethnographies of hunter-gatherers, they nobody gets out of love alive. We all struggle, we all suffer. We're all trying to win life's greatest prize, which is a mating partner. And what's amazing about human beings is how many of us recover from a bad partnership and go on and find another.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, I just did a study I was a couple of years ago with match, not using any of the match people. It was 1500 married people, long term married people and not part of match, obviously, and I asked a lot of questions to these people, but one of the questions was would you remarry the person that you're currently married to? And another question is are you still in love with the person you're married to? 80% said yes they would remarry the person they're currently married to and 76% said they were still in love not just loving, but in love with the person that they're married to. We got so many myths about love. This fact that you can't remain in love is not true. It's not going to be that early, very intense. Just like you said, it's going to be much more relaxed. It's going to come and go, but at least you can feel it. But anyway, I yeah.
Speaker 1:What about when a relationship does start to go bad but you want to try and make it work? What are the efforts that you've seen or done? Go from being frustrated in a crisis point to falling back in love with that same person again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's. There's several things. Well, first of all, I'm sure you know the data by John Gottman. He's the most famous guy. He says you know there's four Things you could, should never do. I might don't criticize, yeah, don't express contempt, don't stall stone wall and just try and avoid the issue and don't be defensive. So, right off the bat, those are the four horsemen of the apocalypse and you got to avoid that. What I would do is Okay, this is what I do. First of all, I and my colleagues Put 17 people into the brain scanner using fmri who were reported that they were still madly in love with the partner long-term, and we also gave them a lot of questionnaires and one of them was a happiness questionnaire.
Speaker 2:So we looked at just the people who scored very high on the happiness questionnaire. And these are the three things brain regions that become active in a long-term Very happy partnership. Now, psychologists will say all kinds of things about how you maintain a long-term happy partnership. All good, great, but this is what the brain says Three brain regions that become active in a long term or remain active in a long term happy partnership.
Speaker 2:Brain region link with empathy. A brain region link with controlling your own stress and your own emotions and a brain region linked with what I call positive illusions the ability to overlook what you don't like about somebody and focus on what you do. There is a huge brain region in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. For anybody who likes that part of science, that is linked with what is called negativity bias. We remember the negative. We are built to remember the negative for good Darwinian reasons. If you, kimberly, and I, were walking along in the grasslands of Africa a million years ago and we liked each other, great, but if we forgot who didn't like us, we could die. So the bottom line is we remember. The brain is built to remember the negative. When you're madly in love with somebody you are, you have the activity in that brain region reduces. You become able to overlook the negative and focus on the positive.
Speaker 2:So, right off the bat, if you want a long-term happy partnership, express empathy, control your own stress, your own emotions, skip the drama nobody likes that and and and try to overlook the negative. That's number one. The other thing that I would do is I would try to Activate or regenerate all three of these basic brain systems sex drive, feelings of intense romantic love and feelings of deep attachment. So have sex. You know, we plan every other part of our life. We plan what we're gonna do on Saturday night. We can certainly plan what we're doing on Saturday morning and have sex. I mean, sex is very good for the body and the mind. It can drive up the dopamine system and sustain feelings of romantic love and with orgasm there's a real flood of oxytocin feeling giving you feelings of deep attachment. So having sex with a partner if you like the partner, god saying gotta, like the partner it can help to sustain feelings of romance and attachment. In order to sustain feelings of deep attachment to partner, stay in touch, walk arm and arm, hold hands, get rid of the two arm chairs and sit next to each other on the couch when you watch television, start out sleeping in one another's arms. Any kind of touch and massage can drive up the oxytocin system and give you feelings of intense cosmic Attachment. And and in order to remain madly enough, go do novel things together.
Speaker 2:Novelty, novelty now. And you don't have to swing from chandeliers, you know. Ride your bicycles to a new restaurant instead of taking the car. Go someplace different for the summer vacation. Do something different on Saturday night.
Speaker 2:My husband and I are learning to dance. He gave me dance lessons for my my birthday and you know I I like to dance, but he learned to dance for our wedding, which and we're both in our 70s and now he wants to do it with. So every Monday night we go and ever dance lesson and then we go out for dinner and and you'll dance me out of a of a restaurant. I walked him to the elevator the other day and he did a little dance step on the way into the elevator. You know Something new, novel? So bottom line is express everything, control your own stress and your own emotions, overlook the negative, get into bed and make love with each other.
Speaker 2:Novelty, novelty. Now we do novel things together and stay in touch. And the last thing in terms of brain circuitry is Say nice things to your partner. As it turns out and this is not my data as it turns out, if you say complimentary, nice things to your partner, it not only boosts their immune system and Reduces cortisol, the stress hormone in in them and and cholesterol, but also in you. Wow, I would also say say some nice things to your partner.
Speaker 1:Those are all very Valid and valuable. A question that I'm sure my listeners are gonna have is so how often should I do each of those Specifically right? People want to know the prescription for each of those, so I mean, what is the ideal amount of like? How often should you have sex in a week? How often is once a week with a new, novel experience together enough? You know what are. What are we looking at for what's helpful?
Speaker 2:Well, everybody's gonna be different. But you know I have data on 60,000 singles in America. We started to. I do an annual study with match call singles in America and every year I and my colleagues cook up about 200 questions. They farm them out, they collect the data on 5000 Americans. It's a national representative sample of singles based on the US census. It is not. We do not poll the match members.
Speaker 2:It's real science and, as it turns out, I have asked on several years what do you think? This is all? Singles ages 18 to 71, black, white, asian, latino, gay, straight, everything in the middle Roll, suburban, urban, at every part of the country, etc. And they basically, when I asked the question, what do you think is the? How many times a week is the best for you to have sex? And Every time that I ask the question, people say two to three. I just think it's gonna vary. It's just gonna be with who you are. You just have to find what works for you. But two to three, it seems to be the standard answer for sex in terms of novelty.
Speaker 2:Some people don't need a lot of novelty, other people need a lot of novelty. I like to go out every night. I Like to do something new all the time. Yeah, I'm very high on the dopamine system and and other people might want something once a week. Maybe some people want something once. By the way, I mean, as I say, you don't have to do something spectacular, you know, just have a cocktail hour and recite a poem, for God's sake. So learn to cook something new together, or sit in a different room and play a game or, you know, make a walk after dinner. As you know, you don't have to. But novel, novelty drives up the dopamine system in the brain and gives you energy and focus and motivation and Optimism and can help to sustain feelings of, of romantic and romantic love is good for you, you know. What's interesting is, why do we Retain this brain system for romantic love?
Speaker 2:way after the years of reproduction or over. I mean, what's the point? If this evolved originally so that you can form a partnership and have babies together, why would it this? Why doesn't it? Why doesn't? Why do we sustain this Ability to fall in love in your 70s and 80s and 90s? And it's? The answer is because it's healthy for you. I mean, if you are in a good partnership, you can live five to seven years longer. Yeah, that's not saying something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now, as you were talking about the novelty part, it reminded me of your four Personality types. So can you, to our listeners who may not be familiar with that, can you explain what those are, kind of, how you researched them and how they came to be and how I mean I this could be like its whole hour long episode, I'm sure to just talk about how each of them connect with each other in in spouses or Dating relationships and those types of things.
Speaker 2:You're a sweetheart, kimberly, thank you. This is what my next book and and it was also my book why him, why her? And it's also in my most recent book, anatomy of love, second edition. But anyway, the bottom line is there's all kinds of cultural reasons that you fall for one person rather than another, and I don't ever want people to think that this just biology. A Good deal of who you are comes out of.
Speaker 2:Your childhood Is there and we do tend to fall in love with somebody from the same socioeconomic background, same general level of intelligence and good looks and education, somebody with the same social values, the same reproductive and economic goals. Your childhood always plays the role. But you can walk into a room and everybody's from your background and same level of education and and Etc. And you don't fall in love with all of them. So that made me begin to wonder could basic biology draw you naturally towards some people rather than others? And it was matchcom. I Probably wasn't gonna pursue this. But two days before Christmas in 2005, a long time ago, got a phone call and was matchcom and they called me. Said do you want to meet, kid? Could we, could we meet? Two days after Christmas I said sure Nothing happens in New York at Christmas. But anyway I met with them and in the middle of the morning they, the CEO, looked at me and he said why do you fall in love with one person rather than another? And I said I don't know, nobody knows. There are all these cultural reasons, the same background, level of education, etc. But that's what made me begin to think could biology play a role? So anyway, I began to look in the brain, looking for any trade at all Linked with any biological system.
Speaker 2:Now, there's all kinds of traits, all kinds of systems in the brain. Most of them keep the heart beating and the eyes blinking. They have nothing to do with personality, but there's four basic brain systems, each one of them linked with a constellation, a suite, a bundle of Personality traits the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen systems. So I wrote down I'll never forget, it was New Year's Day on Four sheets of paper. I put dopamine on the top of one sheet of paper, and serotonin, testosterone and estrogen. And I listed on those four sheets of paper the traits linked with each one of those four basic brain systems. And I looked at them, I put them on the floor and I was staring down and I said Helen, why don't you make a questionnaire to see to what degree people express the traits in each of these four basic brain systems and Then, on one of matches sites chemistry, calm at the time, what have? People take the questionnaire and then watch who they're naturally drawn to. So that's what I did. Over 15 million people have now taken the questionnaire. I've proven that the questionnaire measures these brain circuits with brain scanning. It's the only one of the world has done that.
Speaker 2:And here are the four types. I don't call them types Actually, I don't actually like the word types I call them styles of thinking, because we're not just one type, we are all a combination of all four, but we express some more than others. We have real Personality. So anyway, the bottom line is if you're very expressive of the traits in the dopamine system, I call you an explorer. Made up the term, not not great, but I got it you tend to be risk-taking. Now these seeking, curious, creative, spontaneous, energetic and mentally flexible. If you're very expressive of the traits in the serotonin system Mike Pence is a good example. Mitt Romney, I think, is a good example. General Eisenhower, I think, was a good example. The traits linked with the serotonin system are cautious, traditional, conventional, follows the rules, respects authority, detail oriented life plans, rules, schedules.
Speaker 2:The third, and I call those people builders. Should have called them guardians, but they I didn't, I wasn't smart enough. Anyway, the bottom line is the third I called directors. I wasn't great either. I should have called them drivers, but anyway, the bottom line is that people are very expressive of the testosterone system analytical, logical, direct, decisive, tough-minded, skeptical, good at what scientists call rule-based systems. Everything from math, engineering to computers to music is very structural. And the fourth is I call negotiators high estrogen People. They see the big picture, they see long-term, their holistic, synthetic, contextual thinkers. Very imaginative, good verbal skills, good people skills tend to be trusting, empathetic, nurturing people. So bottom line is I created the questionnaire you can take it on the internet or in any of my books and it's important that that we all Express all four of these brain systems to some degree.
Speaker 2:Now, for example, me, I'm very high on the dopamine scale, curious creator. I make my life writing books, making speeches, said it. Um, I mentally flexible, energetic, etc. I'm also horribly high on the estrogen scale. I cry at parades. I'm really. It's just disgusting. But anyway, the bottom line is I'm terribly empathetic, I'm quite trusting, I Write books and, hopefully, verbally skilled, etc.
Speaker 2:I'm not at all high on the testosterone scale. I am terrible at math. I could get lost in the bathtub, I mean I'm really. But. But I'm logical and I'm fair and those are. Those are two traits in the testosterone. I'm very low on a lot of the traits in testosterone system and I'm very low on the serotonin system. I don't follow the rules, I don't respect authority unless it it makes sense to me, etc. Etc.
Speaker 2:So the bottom line is 15 million people have taken this questionnaire. I've studied a hundred thousand of them mathematically. No two people answered this questionnaire the same way. I've never met two people who I thought were exactly alike. But there's patterns to culture, there's patterns to nature and there's patterns to personality and when you begin to understand those patterns you can understand who somebody is. Now Let me give you an example of my, my wonderful husband, very high on dopamine, just like me. We're going on Saturday off to Europe, actually for three and a half weeks. I haven't even. I don't even know where we're going. I've been too busy. I don't know what time the plane leaves and that's it and I know what country I'm going to.
Speaker 2:But that's it and I'll figure that out. But anyway. So we're very high on dopamine. I'm very high on estrogen. He's very high on the testosterone scale. He's very good at all kinds of techie things that are very that works fine he's. He's much higher on the serotonin scale than I am, and I'll give you an example. We were Going to the movies one night and I said to him I swear to God, do you have any water in your backpack? He said yeah, I do. I saw great, we can drink it in the movie house.
Speaker 2:He said no, we can't. You can't bring food or drink into a movie house. You've got a Biotic concession stand. Oh, says I.
Speaker 1:We can break that rule, yeah but we didn't.
Speaker 2:So the bottom line is I Profoundly believe and I'm very gonna be interested to see what your husband has to say about this and what your experience is. I'd like to hear from you. But the bottom lines are more Well, I think that Once you understand how the brain works, once you understand something about these four basic, profoundly basic brain systems and when your friends, your partners, your colleagues, your clients Land on these four basic styles of thinking, you can reach into their brain and connect with them. I actually don't even believe in golden rule and doing it there's this you would have done on your own. I believe in the platinum rule find out who somebody is and Give them the data, the way they can hear it not the way you want to hear it the way they can hear it, and you can, you can connect, and so, anyway, this is a whole new.
Speaker 2:I've stumbled on one of Mother Nature's recipes, basically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we sound very similar. I'm definitely the high dopamine type person. I love thrill seeking and spontaneity and new things, and my husband is the one who like when we do our date nights and I can't wait for him to listen to this episode. By the way, he already loves your stuff, so we'll be like did you hear what Dr Fisher said about needing to do new things on date night? Cause he's the one who could like do dinner in a movie every single time. He's the very more of the like logical routine. You know that. Probably more of the testosterone, I think, if I can.
Speaker 1:I'll have that yeah Well, but when he here's the thing, though when he took the quiz cause he had both of us take the quiz and both of us. Our highest was the dopamine, but mine was higher than his Cause. I looked at it and I was like no way Like I. You're not the thrill seeker that I am, at least not in the way that I perceive it. So I think that there may be like, but my second one was definitely estrogen and his, I think, was the test stock.
Speaker 2:Maybe it was the same, it was one of those two and You've had a lot of both, yeah, yeah, by the way, there's three ways you can take a question here with who you really are, with who you want others to be, who are what is the third? And with who you want to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you know, no questionnaire is perfect. You know real person taking the questionnaire, but I. It's interesting that he's higher on the serotonin than you are, because it's the serotonin that likes that routine. He loves a routine. He's more higher on the serotonin scale than you did I would have to go back into our into our stuff and see. Was he like rules?
Speaker 1:and plans and schedules. Loves a rule, plan and schedule.
Speaker 2:He was from a military.
Speaker 1:He's a pilot like he loves-.
Speaker 2:Oh, he's a pilot Rules, plans and schedules. That's also testosterone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and here's another question I have about it. So if people like, can people change based on if they take? Like if a woman is taking estrogen or if a man is injecting testosterone, like, does this change their personalities? Or if someone's doing something that's that will spike up their dopamine a lot more, like if they've gotten involved in an addiction. Like, does this change them over time?
Speaker 2:That's a basic question. Is the second chapter of my next book? Can we Change? The answer is yes, we can change to some extent, no question about it. But can you make a very curious person uncurious? They beat them so they never ask another question. Could you make Helen Fisher into Albert Einstein? Absolutely not. If my mother had been a math teacher in high school and my father had been an architect and my brother loved math puzzles, I'd be better at math, no question about it. Will I over? Be really good at it? Never. I mean, can you teach empathy? Sure, to some extent.
Speaker 2:But, can you ever really make a person who's not terribly empathetic into somebody who weeps at a parade? No, I don't think so. So there are parameters. We can act out of character. It's just tiring. I've studied this and it's funny because I have a second personality questionnaire called the Neurocolor Questionnaire, in which it's a business questionnaire and in that questionnaire I asked people to take the questionnaire twice what do you like at work and what do you like outside of work?
Speaker 2:And then I would ask because I do give a lot of speeches in the business community and I once asked a group of women in Singapore who I was at Shanghai, sorry and these people worked for a huge chemical company and they said they were much more themselves outside of work because at work everybody was very high testosterone. They had to get to the point, they had to be very assertive, they had to be very skeptical, they had to be all this stuff so they're at home, they could be more who they really were. Whereas I asked a lot of training at Deloitte and I asked a group of men are you more like yourself at work or outside of work? And they said they're more themselves at work. And, as one guy said, he said you know, I love my wife, I love my children, but at home I need to compromise.
Speaker 2:At work I can be entirely myself. Well, we have multiple authenticities. Now, for example, when you and I are talking, we are doing our dopamine system, really exploring how it is, but we're also and we are alike I thought that we were, as soon as I met you higher estrogen, you know, eager to please, eager to have a congenial conversation, nothing that was gonna be aggressive or attacking, et cetera. But if you were with somebody who was attacking you constantly, you'd probably rise up and defend yourself.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'd have some things to say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you'd have to defend yourself and you'd say you would go home afterwards I don't know, I'm guessing and say, wow, that wasn't the me I'm most familiar with. I did it, but it's not who I really am. So we can act out a character and we learn as small children to begin to act to fit in. You know, as a small child your mother will say smile for grandma. Can you smile for grandma? And we learn to fit in, we learn to adjust. We even in our friendships, at certainly at work, in our love affairs with our family, we learn what's appropriate behavior and we adjust ourselves. But I think people really are happiest when they've married somebody who lets them be who they really are and when they are in the kind of job that enables them to be who they really are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would agree. I would agree with that. Where can people take the personality test?
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, I guess almost anywhere on the internet you could certainly. My book why Him, why Her, has it? My book, anatomy of Love, has it. You can go to one of my websites, theanatomyoflovecom, and take the questionnaire, like it's apparently in a lot of places.
Speaker 1:We'll definitely link to that. There's a couple of other things that I wanna be sure to ask you before our time is up, because you're such a wealth of wisdom and experience and information and I'm so grateful that you've given your time to me today and to our listeners. I wanted to ask about one quick thing. Like I have to ask this because it was just a quick thing. You said so we're going back a bit, but when you were talking about Dr Tinov, when we were talking about Lemarance, and you said she had a sad like there was a sad part of the research she did, what is that? What was that?
Speaker 2:My memory of it and this is she wrote that book in 1979, and then she died pretty recently. Every night and she was sick and even the day that I met her at a conference she was with her son. She really needed for I don't know emotional or physical support. I felt she was that from my reading of it she sort of felt that Lemarance was a somewhat unhealthy experience, that it so overtook you and could lead to some disaster. And I don't Think that it evolved. I think it can lead to disaster and I think it can be unhealthy, but it can also be one of the most glorious Experiences the human animal has ever experienced and if you find the right person it can be just Overwhelmingly thrilling.
Speaker 2:We all remember just magnificent love affairs. I mean. I mean, look at the myths, the legends, the songs, the stories, the Poems and novels, the plays, the operas, the sitcoms, the symphonies, the ballets, the, the, the cards and letters and celebrations of this profoundly basic human experience. And it isn't all sad and threatening and it isn't going to vanish entirely from a good partnership. And I hope I'm representing her properly. But I I felt that her feel of limerence had a had a ephemeral sort of sadness and and Frightening loss of there's loss of control, but it doesn't have to be frightening and sad and it doesn't have to disappear. I hope I'm representing her properly, but that was my memory. I'm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. You also mentioned that You've done quite extensive research about infidelity and divorce across Dozens of cultures. What are some of the findings that you have found from those, those data that you've accumulated?
Speaker 2:Well, I was wondering why we did divorce. I mean, you know, you've spent so much time falling in love and having a wedding or whatever and moving in and building this thing.
Speaker 2:Why do people do this? And there's all kinds of cultural reasons, of course, but I wanted to know if there was some biological patterns. So I looked at divorce with the demographic yearbooks of the United Nations twice, once in 1992, for my first copy of my book Anatomy of Love, and then a second time when the second edition came out in 2016. So I did it twice and I looked in 80 cultures around the world at patterns of divorce and, as it turns out, if you're going to the divorce and not everybody does you tend to divorce during and around the third to fourth year of the marriage, in your middle 20s, rather than much later and Nobody's asked me this Kimberly for a while. Let me think here In your middle 20s and around the third or fourth year of marriage, oh yeah, and after you've had a single child. And I thought to myself that's pretty weird. Why are you divorcing in the middle of your reproductive years, after having most divorces occur with no children, but After and then a lot After one child, and after you've had two, three, four children, you're less and less and less likely to divorce. So I thought to myself this is pretty weird and it began to.
Speaker 2:I remember where I was standing In a line for a hors d'oeuvre thing when I finally dawned on me oh my god, maybe millions of years ago we evolved the drive to stay together at least long enough to raise one child through infancy. Then leave that partnership, form a new partnership with somebody else, have more children with the second individual and create more genetic variety in your lineage, maybe millions of now. Don't forget, we lived a little hooding and gathering groups for millions of years and After age about three or four A child could join what they did, join what I would call a multi-age playgroup. So in a hooding gathering society, a five-year-old was now being taken care of by the whole community, a seven-year-old, a ten-year-old, 15 year olds, aunts and uncles, etc. Etc. They lived in a in a little village, little community, little bank.
Speaker 2:So maybe it was for millions of years, a selective pressure To be restless in a long relationship. Have a child, break up after the child could be cared for by other members of the band and form a new partnership. Have more babies and thereby Create more genetic variety in your young so that in times of real survival stress Some might live, leaving in the human brain a restlessness in long partnerships, a tendency to break up and to fall in love again. Hmm, so okay, when you take a look around the world, everywhere where people can divorce, a lot of them do divorce and Former partnership. So interesting, because I will be at a conference and and a woman will come up to me there's an example and say oh, I've been so, I've been so bad at marriage. I said, oh dear, how come? I said well, she'll say well, I've had three marriages and none of them really worked. And I said, oh, my goodness, did you have any children? She said yeah. She said I had two children with the first marriage and one child with the second, and From a Darwinian perspective she actually won. From an evolutionary perspective, she had children by more than one partner and Million years ago that would have been adaptive. So I'm not saying it's a good idea, but the bottom line is I tried to understand why it is Hmm that we do.
Speaker 2:I express some restlessness in a long partnership. I'm actually extremely pleased about where we're headed right now, because what we're doing now Is what I call slow love. We're married much later, and I call it slow love. I mean in my day, long ago, people married in their very early 20s and now they're married in their late 20s or early 30s. Hmm, and all of my data from around the world shows that the longer you court and the later you marry, the more likely you are to remain together. If you court one to two years before you met wet wed You're in America, you're you're 20% less likely to divorce. And if you court for three or more years before you wed, you're 39% less likely to divorce. And that's exactly what we're seeing around the world. We're seeing people marrying later and later and later, and so what we're seeing is this long peer, a slow love, this long period of pre commitment.
Speaker 2:All in your 20s, when you're practicing, you're learning more about yourself, you're having your, your relationships, you're getting rid of the ones you don't want before you have babies and settle down, and so I think then, by the time you walk down that aisle, when you're late 20s, early 30s, oh do you get? You're gonna know more about who you are, you're gonna know more about who your partner is, you're going to know you got made the right decision and I think you're gonna be able to sustain a long trip round ship. I'm very impressed with the young today. They're very, very well, they're very dedicated to their career and they don't want to make that mistake. They're marrying much later and they're, in all these terms too, like DTR define the relationship. Now, in my day we did not define the relationship. These kids, you know, and I asked and my singles in America study with match and you know, when do you have that discussion of where we headed to find them?
Speaker 2:And they said four months, four months in really they are going and someone say, after the third date, you know they want. They want to know where they're going here and I do think that they are also courting much smarter. They're doing an awful lot of these video chatting before the first date. I think they're gonna kiss fewer frogs because they're gonna get to know who the person is before they go out and they're gonna get rid of the ones they don't want before they go out and spend their money and time on it. So there's many current trends that I think are going to that the younger bringing in that I think are gonna lead to relative family stability. I'm very optimistic about the young in the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, as a biological ologist, what would you say is the case for marriage and long-term commitment to one person?
Speaker 2:A long-term happy partnership, married or not married, you live an awful lot longer. You live a lot longer. We really were built to be, to be happy. I mean in real, positive relationships. That lowers blood pressure, lowest cholesterol and cortisol the stress hormone and a good relationship. It sustains memory, mood and mental ability.
Speaker 2:When you get the hugs from a partner, it drives up the oxytocin in the brain, gives you sense of calm, cosmic attachment. As you laugh with the partner, it drives up the dopamine system, giving you energy, optimism, focus, motivation. Boost the immune system. When you laugh with somebody, boost the endorphins for for a reducing pain. When you play with somebody, it leads to brain growth, emotional processing, decision-making, planning, helps with attention. We were, we were built to love. We were built to form a long-term partnerships and the beauty of today is we can have a whole lot of trial marriages so an anthropologist call them trial relationships and then Settle down to a good long, solid project. And you know, a good long, solid partnership does not have to be boring. Just like you and your husband, you got to go out and do things together, learn new things sure novelty, novelty, novelty.
Speaker 2:Have sex, do novel things together. Stay in touch. We are capable of sustaining a long-term partnership and it's gonna lead not only the long happy partnership but the longer life.
Speaker 1:Dr Fisher, thank you so much for your time. You are a A joy to speak to and it's great to. It's one of those instances where it's someone you know, whose work I've been familiar with in reading for 11, 12 years In my in my short career, and you are more than I expected and how fantastic it was to speak with you. So I so appreciate your time well definitely.
Speaker 1:We'll definitely link to your books and the, the personality test where people can take that, in the show notes where Everyone listens. But is there any other place you would direct people if they want to follow you and know more about your work?
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know. You can go to my website, helen Fisher. Calm, I can't. I'm very active on it. I just list everything, but I Don't know. I just. People are much better on the internet than I am. They'll find me. If they want me, they'll find you.
Speaker 1:That's it. They'll read your books. That's what they know, thank you. Thank you, kimberly. I can't even begin to narrow down just a few of the key takeaways from today's episode, because Dr Helen Fisher has been such a pioneer in the world of psychology and in what she's done that I believe every part of it was extremely important. But if I had to narrow down to what were my key takeaways from today's episode, then here's what I would say.
Speaker 1:There were several different things throughout the conversation that Dr Helen Fisher as a researcher looked at the biological drives to do certain things and the anthropological Kind of reasons or ways that people evolved in communities to act certain ways. But the last question I asked her I loved her answer to. I asked her what is the case for marriage, coming from a biological anthropologist and Commitment to one person, because there were several times throughout the interview where she talked about how for some women they may have been biologically driven to actually have several different mates and men because that could help and so In helping, you know, raising the child and and all of those things. And so I really wanted to end with this question because it's something I'm passionate about and I wanted to hear what her answer was a Long-term happy partnership.
Speaker 1:I you live longer, a lot longer. You tend to be happier. It lowers your blood pressure, lowers cholesterol, lowers cortisol and it sustains your memory, your mood, your mental ability. When you get a hug from the person that you love, it drives up your oxytocin, which gives you a sense of calm. That also helps with your attachment. When you laugh, it drives up your dopamine. It gives you energy. It boosts your immune system. It helps reduce pain. There's so many amazing things and amazing aspects and amazing benefits that happen from being in a committed, long-term relationship. This is why marriage matters, but even more than that, marriage can only be good when there are two people who are committed to being the best that they can be. I wouldn't say that it can only be good in those ways, but marriage tends to be the best that it can be. Your marriage can tend to be the best it can be. Your parenting relationship, any relationship in your life, tends to be the best that it can be when it starts with you Working on becoming the best you specifically can be, which we also talked about in today's episode, by working on becoming the best that you can be physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. That has a direct benefit to better relationships in your life as well, especially in marriage. And another thing that I loved was talking about how do you keep the love, how do you stay madly in love with your spouse for years, for decades, for as long as you both shall live, and I loved her answer.
Speaker 1:Don't express contempt, don't use the forehorseman that Dr John Gottman talks about, but also be sure that you touch each other, that you have physical touch which drives up that oxytocin. Be sure that you laugh together, that you go and you have fun, that you try new things together, that you go and you have those date nights where you're creating new memories together. So have novelty, do new things. So, specifically when it comes to your marriage, focus on what you do like about your spouse and don't focus on what you don't like about your spouse, because when you focus on the positive, it actually helps you to overlook the negative. Also, having sex. We know that all three of the basic brain systems that Dr Fisher was talking about can be activated and regenerated through sex drive, or the three regions are sex drive, feelings of intense romantic love and feelings of deep attachment, which sex can help strengthen. Every single one of those. And plus, there's a lot of oxytocin that happens when you have sex as well, which continues to just further bond you.
Speaker 1:Any kind of touch can also do that in your relationship as well. And then novelty going and doing something new, being sure that you're taking date nights in order to make memories together, to try new things. Novelty is a great way to have a great marriage. And then, lastly, saying nice things to your spouse. As she said, if you say complimentary things to your partner, it not only boosts their immune system and reduces cortisol, but it also boosts your immune system and reduces your cortisol. So many great takeaways from today's episode. I hope you loved today's episode. If there's someone that you believe could benefit from it, then please share it with them as well. Until next week, stay strong.