When you massage someone, the levels of oxytocin go up in the brain, and oxytocin is one of the chemicals that drives attachment.
Helen FisherRomantic love allows you to focus mating energy. Attachment sustains that relationship as long as necessary to raise your baby.
Helen FisherYou 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.
Helen FisherWomen'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.
Helen FisherI 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.
Helen FisherLiberals 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.
Helen FisherAny kind of novelty or excitement drives up dopamine in the brain, and dopamine is associated with romantic love.
Helen FisherHaiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere; some say the poorest in the world.
Helen FisherThe 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.
Helen FisherThat "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.
Helen FisherThere'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.
Helen FisherRomantic 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.
Helen FisherWhether 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.
Helen FisherA Rolex watch or an expensive car are the things guys often use to show status, wealth, and basic desirability.
Helen FisherWhy 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.
Helen FisherThe 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.
Helen FisherMen 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.
Helen FisherWhen people tell you to walk a certain way, it's like not thinking of a purple tomato. You can't not do it.
Helen FisherA 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.
Helen FisherAny time you choose not to hide your tattoo, you're limiting your social sphere, because they're not popular in big business.
Helen FisherThe Great Depression of the 1930s saw more American unmarried women working from nine to five, mostly in repetitive, boring, subordinate, dead-end jobs. But the number of working women doubled between 1870 and 1940. During World War II it doubled once again.
Helen FisherI don’t think we’re an animal that was built to be happy; we are an animal that was built to reproduce.
Helen FisherRomantic love is an addiction: a perfectly wonderful addiction when it's going well, and a perfectly horrible addiction when it's going poorly.
Helen FisherWomen 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.
Helen FisherYou 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.
Helen FisherMen are so visual, they see a woman who appeals to them physically, and it will trigger the romantic love system faster.
Helen FisherWhen 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.
Helen FisherYou 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.
Helen FisherAs 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.
Helen FisherPeople 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.
Helen Fisher[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.
Helen FisherSaliva has testosterone and estrogen. When you kiss, you're having a chemical experience.
Helen Fisher