Helen fisher quotes

We spend our lives trying to get along with people so we can keep our jobs, keep our marriages together, so that we can raise our kids properly.

It's almost as if men who get tribal tattoos are trying to signal that they are dangerous, they're to be respected, and they're powerful.

At first I assumed hate was the opposite of love. But it isn't. The opposite of love is indifference.

Good-looking people are always looking for other good-looking people.

Blushing is thought to be linked to increased levels of norepinephrine in the brain, which may be associated with romantic feelings. It signals that we are interested and excited, which is attractive to men.

When you're in the throes of this romantic love, it's overwhelming - you're out of control, you're irrational, you're going to the gym at 6 A.M. every day - Why? Because she's there.

Neither gender is routinely more jealous - although women are more willing to work to win back a lover, while men tend to flaunt their money and status and are more likely to walk out to protect their self-esteem or save face.

When you massage someone, the levels of oxytocin go up in the brain, and oxytocin is one of the chemicals that drives attachment.

Research shows that couples who have a lot of similarities, including intellectual compatibility, end up staying together.

High heels can literally raise your status because you're taller when you wear them.

You've got to remember that men are men and women are women. And although a lot of similarities, there are some real differences.

Saliva has testosterone and estrogen. When you kiss, you're having a chemical experience.

You know, when you've been dumped, the one thing you love to do is just forget about this human being, and then go on with your life - but no, you just love them harder.

Natural beauty really entices men. They will tell you this time and time again, and studies consistently prove it.

Today, most women are surrounded by ingenious gadgets. They don't grow the peas or raise the chicken that they serve for dinner; instead they hunt and gather in the grocery store. They go through catalogs or department stores to buy clothes instead of shearing sheep, carding wool, and weaving cloth for skirts and coats and blankets.

A hundred years ago, if you had a child out of marriage, you'd be a social disgrace. Today women feel comfortable enough economically and culturally to bring up a child without a recognized commitment from a man.

If two very different people pool their DNA, they'll create more genetic variety, and their young will come to the job of parenting with a wider array of skills.

The Internet lets women use words, which is their natural tool. Little girls speak in more complex, grammatical sentences than little boys do, and women never lose that superiority in verbal ability.

As societies continue to loosen their standards regarding what is appropriate female and male behavior, I think we are going to realize we have not only underestimated women, but also men.

Liberals and conservatives are looking for entirely different things. Their attitudes toward romance and how they court are really dramatically different. There's almost no overlap.

Young women today do not marry the men they met in high school, or even the one they go out with at college, because they do not need to.

You can get into a very fancy car and know everything about the engine, but when you drive in that car, you feel that rush. In the same way, I think the more you know about love, the more you can enjoy it. And knowing about your personality type, who you are and what kind of person you're dealing with gives you a great leg up.

In general, men are wired to notice obvious signs that convey interest in mating - a warm smile, for example - and ignore other subtleties, like if your lipstick is faded.

Mothers really were not built to raise babies not only by themselves, but with only a partner. For millions of years, a woman had much more than just her husband to help rear her young... This whole idea of 'it takes a village to raise a child' is exactly how we're supposed to live.

love is like Someone is camping in your head

There's all kinds of reasons that you fall in love with one person rather than another: Timing is important. Proximity is important. Mystery is important. You fall in love with somebody who's somewhat mysterious, in part because mystery elevates dopamine in the brain, probably pushes you over that threshold to fall in love.

Romantic love is an addiction: a perfectly wonderful addiction when it's going well, and a perfectly horrible addiction when it's going poorly.

Nobody gets out of love alive. You turn into a menace or a pest when you've been rejected.

Romantic love is not an emotion. ... It's a drive. It comes from the motor of the mind, the wanting part of the mind, the craving part of the mind.

Anthropologists have found evidence of romantic love in 170 societies. They've never found a society that did not have it.

When chimps threaten, they open their mouth and show their teeth. It's a little like waving a knife in front of you. It's very primitive, and therefore bizarre.

We are lied to by our love songs.

There is more and more data indicating that there is a biological basis to your political views.

Women's worst invention was the plow. With the beginning of plow agriculture, men's roles became extremely powerful. Women lost their ancient jobs as collectors.

You fall in love with somebody who fits within what I call your 'love map,' an unconscious list of traits that you build in childhood as you grow up. And I also think that you gravitate to certain people, actually, with somewhat complementary brain systems.

Women are better at reading body language everywhere in the world. As a matter of fact, it's associated with the female hormone estrogen. Women are better at figuring out of tone of voice, reading your face and posture and gesture.

Your sweetheart calls you by another's name. His eyes linger too long on your best friend. He talks with excitement about a girl at work. And the fire catches. Jealousy - that sickening combination of possessiveness, suspicion, rage, and humiliation - can overtake your mind and threaten your very core as you contemplate your rival.

Until recently, we regarded love as supernatural. We were willing to study the brain chemistry of fear and depression and anger but not love.

People live for love. They kill for love. They die for love. They have songs, poems, novels, sculptures, paintings, myths, legends. It's one of the most powerful brain systems on Earth for both great joy and great sorrow.

A Rolex watch or an expensive car are the things guys often use to show status, wealth, and basic desirability.

Most of us make up our minds in the first three minutes of meeting someone whether there's a potential for a relationship.

It's in our genes, we were built to wander.

There's biology in everything, even when you're feeling spiritual.

A lot of people have been romantically in love with somebody who they feel wasn't appropriate to marry.

We evolved in a tropical climate where the smells of plants and flowers were all around us. We spent a lot of time in the trees with a lot of sunlight and no clothes.

Any kind of novelty or excitement drives up dopamine in the brain, and dopamine is associated with romantic love.

Experiences shape the brain, but the brain shapes the way we view experiences, too.

When you look at the brain regions associated with picking up data from the body, a huge amount of the brain is devoted to picking up information from the lips and tongue.

I've always maintained that men were more romantic than women.

Despite the myth that men are less committed, they are predisposed to desire marriage.

If we remained perpetually infatuated, we couldn't eat, sleep or work.

That "ol' black magic" is a fickle force. The chemistry of romantic love can trigger the chemistry of sexual desire and the fuel of sexual desire can trigger the fuel of romance. This is why it is dangerous to copulate with someone with whom you don't wish to become involved. Although you intend to have casual sex, you might just fall in love.

Men couldn't care less if your strands are perfectly styled and neat. In fact, he might like you more with some wildness or bedhead, since it shows you're carefree and relaxed.

Sometimes we fall in love with somebody who will probably never love us, for reasons having nothing to do with us but with their own mindset, their chemistry.

As social animals, we need to exchange juicy tales about someone - to connect with one another. For millions of years our forebears must have sat around the campfire, whispering about everyone they knew.

Men have a psychological need to show off their courage and strength. When he sees you talking to another guy, that instinct kicks in and he jumps to protect you and prove he's worthy of your love.

It certainly would have been adaptive for ancestral man to have a chubby wife during stressful times of famine. Not only would she have had more calories to burn, and thus more energy and endurance, but since fat stores estrogen, she would have remained fertile for longer.

You size up someone physically in less than one second - too tall, too short, too fat, too thin, too old, too young, too stuffy, too scruffy.

Women like signs of money and education - things that indicate that not only is this guy going to have some resources, but he's also willing to share them.

From my studies of genetics and neuroscience I have come to believe that people fall into four broad personality types - each influenced by a different brain chemical: I call them the Explorer, Builder, Director, and Negotiator.

We're apt to fall in love with those who are mysterious and challenging to us.

Men are so visual, they see a woman who appeals to them physically, and it will trigger the romantic love system faster.

As women in industrial societies join the paid workforce, they gain the economic means to depart unhappy marriages more easily.

Today, American women bear an average of 2.2 children that live to adulthood. Across most of Europe, women bear even fewer young.

Globalization requires taking a broad contextual and long-term view.

Touch is the mother of the senses. Not only are women more sensitive when they touch, but they're also more sensitive to being touched.

What our grandmothers told us about playing hard to get is true. The whole point of the game is to impress and capture. It's not about honesty. Many men and women, when they're playing the courtship game, deceive so they can win. Novelty, excitement and danger drive up dopamine in the brain. And both sexes brag.

Women have never been as interesting as they are now. Not at any time on this planet have women been so educated, so interesting, so capable.

People have been looking for love potions since hunter-gatherer societies.

Women have a better sense of smell than men do, and it's even sharper in the middle of their menstrual cycle, when estrogen levels peak and women are more likely to be deciding whether a man's attractive.

My hypothesis is that conservative Republicans have very clear values, and when you have that, you're simply more relaxed.

For so many generations, a woman's only career path was to marry well and to marry up. Those days have changed.

Women are very attracted to a low voice because it's linked to testosterone, which for millions of years was a sign that men had very good spacial skills and would have been very good at hunting and finding their way back home.

There's magic to love... Millions of years ago we evolved three basic drives: the sex love, romantic love, and attachment to a long-term partner. These circuits are deeply embedded in the human brian. They're going to survive as long as our species survive on what Shakespeare called, this "mortal coil."

The human brain is built to compare; it's Darwinian to consider an alternative when one presents itself.

Games are the way we keep romance alive. They're based in human hardwiring. Playing hard-to-get or leaving a little to the imagination allows the woman to be wooed and appreciated and the man to be challenged and intrigued.

I don’t think we’re an animal that was built to be happy; we are an animal that was built to reproduce.

There were real reasons that you were attracted to somebody originally. The brain doesn't pick willy-nilly. Unless you part ways hating each other for some reason, that mechanism could get triggered again. You can literally fall in love again.

Romantic love is an addiction.

I can't conceive of caring more about my president than my own partner.

A woman of 40 or 50 or 60 can take estrogen replacements, get facelifts, spend her money in bars.

Women, it turns out, are built to lead - particularly in the modern world.

Like most animals, we're wired to associate height with power.

Both sexes like the exercise and challenge of sports, but for men it's also a basic display behavior for impressing and winning a mate.

There's a lot of talk about the positive aspects of love. We as a society downplay the danger, the anxiety, and the disappointment. We romanticize romance.

Women are naturally prone to compete over their mates.

Romantic love is an obsession. It possesses you. You lose your sense of self. You can’t stop thinking about another human being.

Hair that gleams can send a clear sign that you're young and in your prime, whatever your actual age.

Why do we feel jealousy? Therapists often regard the demon as a scar of childhood trauma or a symptom of a psychological problem. And it's true that people who feel inadequate, insecure, or overly dependent tend to be more jealous than others.

Keep an open heart. We are wired to find love.

Psychologists maintain that the dizzy feeling of intense romantic love lasts only about 18 months to-at best-three years

Whether you're married or not, relationships - and the satisfaction tied to them - are extremely important for increasing men's and women's quality of life.

The main characteristics of romantic love are craving: an intense craving to be with a particular person, not just sexually, but emotionally.

Real competition can drive up testosterone, which boosts libido.

Men want to think women don't cheat, and women want men to think they don't cheat, and therefore the sexes have been playing a little psychological game with each other.

Hair that looks like it's been naturally sun-bleached makes you seem youthful, like you spend a lot of time outdoors. And that appeals to most people.

You don't come home from the office to spend time with another job. Hopefully you come home to someone you can have a good time with.

Barriers tend to intensify romance. It's called the 'Romeo and Juliet effect.' I call it 'frustration attraction.'

There are cognitive processes and limbic reactions associated with basic emotions. And you can change brain chemistry, but you're still not going to change memories and experiences in a human being.

Office romances are few, short, and not usually destructive.

Almost always, when I'm on TV, the producers who call me, who negotiate what we're going to say, is a woman.

Women spend their lives trying to look good for men. So a woman who feels she's sending the right visual signals is pleased with herself.

[Women] tend to collect more pieces of data when they think, put them into more complex patterns, see more options and outcomes. They tend to be contextual, holistic thinkers.

I think romantic love evolved to enable you to focus your mating energy on just one individual at a time, thereby conserving mating time and energy.

Romantic love allows you to focus mating energy. Attachment sustains that relationship as long as necessary to raise your baby.

Scientists know that women gravitate to men who have a different immune system from theirs.

Throughout evolution, ostracism was death indeed.

Women apparently are quite drawn to men who have differences rather than similarities in their histocompatibility system. They pick it up by smell, and they can pick it up from kissing.

When you fight, anger drives up testosterone in both men and women.

The reason you take antidepressants is to feel calm. And romantic love is not calm -it's elation, it's mood swings, and you're killing all that when you take the drug.

Overdone lipstick is a deterrent to men. It rubs off easily onto their skin and the edges of their shirts, so it discourages them from kissing, touching, and coming closer to you, which is what they really want to do!

Men and women are like two feet; they can help each other get ahead.

Kissing is not just kissing. It is a major escalation or de-escalation point in a powerful process of mate choice.

A world without love is a deadly place.

In courtship, who wins and who loses will determine who passes on their DNA to tomorrow.

Men don't need linguistic talent; they just need courage and words.

Jealousy can even be good for love. One partner may feel secretly flattered when the other is mildly jealous. And catching someone flirting with your beloved can spark the kind of lust and romance that reignites a relationship.

People have often asked me whether what I know about love has spoiled it for me. And I just simply say, 'Hardly.' You can know every single ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake, and then when you sit down and eat that cake, you can still feel that joy.

You can really get poked in the back and not feel it very much, but just a feather around your lips and you really do feel it.

I think that property is very important in this day and age. It defines you; you worked hard to get it. It's meaningful to you, and when you divorce, a lot of people have a lot of battles over their property for good reasons.

Romantic love is one of the most addictive substances on Earth.

Falling in love was not really a choice; it just struck me.

I was married and divorced at 23.

The brain was not built to walk into a bar, where you know nobody, and start a conversation. That's not the way humanity has courted.

The only people you and I are likely to know in common are people in the news - politicians, journalists and celebrities.