Bonded by Evolution

Description

We’re told that what men and women desire from relationship is different and at odds – he’s looking for novelty, she’s looking for commitment; he’s concerned with looks, she’s concerned with status. We’re told that we live in a hierarchy of romantic inequality, in which desirability is predetermined by a narrow set of characteristics and where some people are marriage material while others are wired for promiscuity. Such ideas have their roots in a branch of science called evolutionary psychology, and over the past few decades its ideas have permeated our culture and fuelled a narrative that inspires despair and anxiety – and, in its most extreme form, misogyny and violence. But the truth about human attraction – and the way evolution plays out in our romantic lives – is much more interesting and optimistic. This book offers a radical new picture of the roots of enduring chemistry.