How Men Fall In Love And For How Long 

Data to the contrary is in the "paper" itself. If 50% of marriages end in divorce, and 50% dont, its clear there is no general tendency one way or another

Somebodys butthurt. This is what I hate about the feministic field of psychology, you have a large group of women that are mad because one or more boys didnt treat them right in high school. So now they spew a long paper or two about how men suck and the world is better of without them. Its propaganda at its worst. I am a male, I have been with the same female for more then 46 months. What about people who have been married all their life? Another thing you have to take into consideration, that power word "Evolution" paired with "instinct" Humans arent born with instinct, we're all born with needs, the baby does the only thing it can do to get attention, it knows this will get attention because in the past it has, thats called conditioning, not instinct. so what you call instinct is actually they way some males we're raised. Nothing more. I also hate the graphs presented in this work, they offer no real data what so ever, they have no validity at all. Oo Oo one more thing, Freud would have a field day with you.

Your logic is so dated, First,you assume it's still the first priority of a male to make offspring. As the world economy changes, so do the needs of the people. A common mistake people make is to assume that our natural wants are primal, and that they don't change with the individuals condition, which simply is not true. Most studies will show that the "men think about sex once every minute" theory is a dated truth, at most it is once a day. This is because finances and career take up most of the average persons thought. Especialy during a recession, being in a monogomous relationship has many more benifits than spreading your seed. If it's not that men are drivin by some "primal instinct" then you must think all men are born with these things "hard wired" into them, which is also a ridiculous concept. Society has changed so much in western culture that an individual's reproduction is not necessary for the survival of our people, and sucessful birth rates are so high that there is less reason to have many children. Of course after generations of this lifestyle our brains are going to adapt to living successfuly in our suroundings. This is why the average family now has 1-2 children as opposed to 9 or 10 that agricultural families would have in the past. As for divorce, it is true that divorce rates are higher than ever, but so are the rates of teen pregnancy and other not-so-comfortable truths about relationships. You cannot possibly hold all these faults to the sexual drives of men. A large factor is the change of the role of the Church in society. The Church has significantly less influence than in previous generations, and in many faiths, teaching has become more liberal and open to interpretation. Since their is no longer this large moral and social stigma against divorce, it has become more popular. From this you could suggest that "divorce must be natural then!" but this is also false. Most faiths also encourage marriage at an early age, especialy for women, which is an ideal that has held strong in western culture. Only recently have people began to accept the idea of marriage during late 30's and early 40's period of life. A period that, with our life expectancy rates, is only about half way through our lives. Therefore, high divorce rates can be seen as a period of "ajustment" within our culture. We were given more social freedome to choose who we want to spend the rest of our lives with, but still maintained the social stigma that it must be done whilst youthful, causing alot of poor choices and misguided conceptions about love. Once it is understood and more widely accepted in popular western culture that we need more time to emotionaly mature in order to maintain sucessful relationships that are guided by feelings rather than social constructions, Im sure the rate will go down once again.

According to your incredibly vague biography, you began thinking about emotion while you studied "evolutionary theory" at Harvard. How many of your classes did you sleep through? Did you even graduate? As a sociology major in my senior year of college, I can guarantee you I'd fail my classes if I wrote like this. You cite no data, spout conjecture at every turn, and completely go against standards of sex/gender analysis (i.e., there isn't scientific support for social theory of all "men" and all "women" because sex and gender aren't the same thing.) I wouldn't have a problem with you blogging about your ridiculously unfounded theories, but to publish a book and attempt to pass them off as social facts leaves people like the first commenter feeling doomed. Shame.

I have to agree with the last anonymous, but it is an enjoyable read... hugh grant going from gorgeous Liz Harley to a crack whore is definitely puzzling.

I fell in love with and married a woman I've known most of my life, since we were children. There goes the entire premise of this paper. This is not scientific at all, by the way. Where's the collected data? All there is is data on average lengths of marriages that end in divorce, that doesn't really prove anything because there are far too many other factors that have not been considered. Have people who get married to a single partner and stay married all their lives been considered, or have you discarded data that did not match your hypothesis? Not that you did any actual data collecting. Your grasp of biology as well is tenuous at best. All this can really be called is a hypothesis, at worse, a bitter diatribe posing as science. I lean towards the latter. You suck, Mark Devon.

What shit.

Insightful!

This is ignorant

Why do we fall in love:

'Beards evolved so men do not court men'??!!? What? I had to stop reading when I got to that point. Whatever the reason beards evolved for (probably a similar purpose to a lion's mane, but obviously nobody knows for sure), it certainly wasn't so we could tell men apart from women. I don't think men used to have sex with other men by mistake because they couldn't tell they were men without their beards.

yeah, but why did you have to submit it 4 times?

Your theory ignores a lot of fact. For one, there is no proof that men divorce because they fall out of love, on the contrary, most divorces are instigated by women. You are also ignoring the numerous people who say they have experienced "love at first sight", as well as people who fall in love with childhood friends later in life. You are also discrediting something that I personally have experienced - two men falling in love with me at the same time, and both of them proposing marriage. My mother and stepfather knew each other for over 20 years before they married, and he fell in love with her soon after they met. They still have the "spark".

Your theory ignores a lot of fact. For one, there is no proof that men divorce because they fall out of love, on the contrary, most divorces are instigated by women. You are also ignoring the numerous people who say they have experienced "love at first sight", as well as people who fall in love with childhood friends later in life. You are also discrediting something that I personally have experienced - two men falling in love with me at the same time, and both of them proposing marriage. My mother and stepfather knew each other for over 20 years before they married, and he fell in love with her soon after they met. They still have the "spark".

Your theory ignores a lot of fact. For one, there is no proof that men divorce because they fall out of love, on the contrary, most divorces are instigated by women. You are also ignoring the numerous people who say they have experienced "love at first sight", as well as people who fall in love with childhood friends later in life. You are also discrediting something that I personally have experienced - two men falling in love with me at the same time, and both of them proposing marriage. My mother and stepfather knew each other for over 20 years before they married, and he fell in love with her soon after they met. They still have the "spark".

Your theory ignores a lot of fact. For one, there is no proof that men divorce because they fall out of love, on the contrary, most divorces are instigated by women. You are also ignoring the numerous people who say they have experienced "love at first sight", as well as people who fall in love with childhood friends later in life. You are also discrediting something that I personally have experienced - two men falling in love with me at the same time, and both of them proposing marriage. My mother and stepfather knew each other for over 20 years before they married, and he fell in love with her soon after they met. They still have the "spark".

(crap, sorry - it's the same one!)

Here's another amazing talk by this great, great speaker, it's called "The Brain in Love":

I agree with the first guy, who said "as a male, this depresses me to the point of tears". I know I fall in and out of love so quickly I feel like I'll never be able to love a girl truly. I really hope it's otherwise. This TED talk might give us some hope:

[Citations needed]

I read the origin of emotion. When talking about children and sexual partners, it focus on women diversifying their offspring's gene pool by switching partners every child. It states that women are the ones who can only fall for strangers - it specifically states that men can fall in love with their female friends and women can not. Also, it says that men directly support the children in order to win the happiness of their mate, it doesn't say that because they support the woman, the child might be indirectly supported. This paper makes it sound like men are wired to be pigs. It makes no mention of its source material's assertion that women are incapable of loving a man at all, or the fact that it claims the infatuation a woman feels for a man is only a few months (6 - 8 approx.)

As a male, this depresses me to the point of tears that it is likely I will fall out of love with the woman I love. I just want to die. This pretty much condemned me. Congratulations on the thesis.