Page 20 - Advanced Romance

Advanced Romance* 17
of serotonin.14 The potions of love now become the potions of hate. And so, evolution’s influence can be chemically traced from the first exciting glance, the first date, the first sex, and, if applicable, to the first breaking-up tremors and fears.
But if these chemical influences are true at all, it’s almost impossible to deny that evolution maintains great power—even in the most spiritual of humans. If you are in a relationship now or are longing to be in one, Fisher contends that these chemicals are flowing through your veins. I think Fisher should go down with Rachael Carson, Freud, and Darwin for the importance of this finding. Unfortunately, love is too complicated and surrounded by thousands of shrill experts for Fisher’s insights to have yet gained their proper due. Of course, I could be wrong. Fisher could be wrong. But
to be wrong means that evolution may not be nearly as strong in the one area you’d assume evolution to be the strongest.
To put evolutionary influence in language that we incurable romantics can better swallow is a quote from Geoffrey Miller’s The Mating Mind: “The mind evolved by moonlight.” That is, as evolution helped create the frontal lobe, it also developed the mating chemicals stimulated by the frontal lobe’s perceptions—as well
as the poetic, heartwarming and courageous mating strategies of the big brain.
For the less romantic, Fisher maintains that “We