Are you single and dating? Married and mating? Breaking up? Making up? Or alone on your own? Or never sleeping home?

Whatever your status, check your copy of "Men Are From Mars & Women Are From Venus" at the door, and open your mind to Dr. David Buss' "The Evolution of Desire," the definitive Unified Field Theory of Human Mating. You probably can't read the top line of the book's cover shown to the above left, but it says, "A drop-dead shocker. - Washington Post Book Review." That about sums it up.

For example, how about this little tidbit: beauty is NOT culturally determined. The evidence and reasoning for this (and most other conclusions in the book) are first indicated by cross-cultural surveys, and backed up by individual culture-specific studies, and then lastly, but perhaps most importantly, the assumption that our bodies more or less stopped evolving about 35,000 years ago. In humanity's early evolutionary environment, what we now call "beauty" was (and still is) simply an evolved mechanism for picking healthy mates (i.e., note the plural: "mates" - more on that shortly).

35,000 years ago, the smoothest skin, the most hair, and the best smile, among other things, meant that one wasn't diseased and was most likely not prone to be as diseased as one's pock-marked, balding, and toothless contemporaries, and therefore, one was/is a better choice as a mate. There's more reasoning given for this evolutionary view of beauty presented in the book, but you get the idea. Basically, the folks on Madison Avenue are just taking advantage of built-in mechanisms for selecting a mate. Maybe they've gone a bit over the top, but competition for mates breeds (pun intended) that sort of thing.

And (as promised) when Dr. Buss says "mates," he refers to serial monogamy, our apparently evolved preference reflected in contemporary cultures, religions, and civil laws. Here's the reasoning: even though men can spread their seed among multiple partners, on ye olde prehistoric Transvaal, the males that hung around long enough to raise a child to age 4 or thereabouts were more likely to have children that survived to reproduce, but why the magic age of 4? Because, from the available anthropological and archeological evidence, that's about when the tribe or clan could take over and raise a child collectively.

We seem to be genetically programmed for monogamous relationships of about 4 years in length to ensure the survival of progeny. Probably not coincidentally, the timing of modern divorces appears to cycle every 4 years whether a couple has children or not. The mythical "7-year itch" maps pretty well to approximately two cycles with divorce in year number 8.

Does this all sound too far fetched to you? Maybe that's because you are reading my review and not the book! But I'll add one more bit of circumstantial data to the 4-year serial monogamy cycle: the majority of contemporary marriages that end in divorce last 8-12 years.

In summary, Dr. Buss presents an integrated and very coherent theory of sexual selection based on multiple cross-cultural studies of human mating; including the largest survey of its kind ever conducted (e.g., 10,047 people, singles and couples, young and old, from America to Zambia). The technical jargon is clearly explained in non-technical (and sometimes entertaining) terms, but always, Buss is blunt. He calls them as his data "sees" them, and by the way, unless you've been a celibate monastic since puberty, you'll most likely find yourself in his empirical visions as well.

Also, if you're like me, even though the research will verify much of what you probably know already, at some point in your reading, you'll stop your nodding and drop your jaw when you realize that some rather huge assumption you've been taking for granted for years (e.g., one that caused you a break-up or two) is dead wrong. I'd give you specifics, but that would spoil the surprise (and give you way too much information about me!).

So be prepared for "A drop-dead shocker," but if you really want to make sense of the nonsense of dating and mating, "The Evolution of Desire" is the book for you.




Recommended: Yes