Purpose: The primary evolutionary purpose of mate love has been to attract and keep mates ‘together’ to support child rearing. This ‘attachment’ to a mate evolved based on a mutual exchange of exclusive sexual/mating functions.

Mate love inspires a high degree of apparently altruistic and unselfish behaviour. Each mate accommodates the needs and desires of the other, even to the point of delaying or ignoring their own. This strategy creates a very appealing environment for each other. Actually, however, mate love is not truly unselfish. Each mate engages in this behaviour in order to nurture mate love in the other and to gain exclusive mating rights with the object of desire. This discussion will show why mate love necessarily depends on ‘mutual possession’ and is quite self-serving.

Love Exists Only Because It Is Useful
Because of the fact that for most of evolutionary history offspring often did not survive to reproduce, genetic continuation has always been a problem. This meant that a mating love bond was necessary to keep the parents together, thereby creating a safer environment for offspring. Human babies are so helpless and so dependent, for so long, that for most of human evolution the physical presence of both parents was critical, even just for protection.

So the same hostile physical environment that raised the need for a ‘protective and nurturing’ parent to child love bond also raised the need for parents to stay together. At least the environment favoured those that did stay together. All animals (including humans) have evolved different strategies for maximizing their own particular genetic success. For most of human evolution two devoted parents was a huge protective advantage. This protection would have significantly increased the likelihood of the offspring surviving to reproduce. Therefore, mate love, which kept parents together, was a strategic asset. It became stronger over time, and was reproduced in subsequent successfully surviving generations.

The success of the human species has resulted, not primarily from physical advantages, but rather from behavioural adaptations. Humans display a remarkable variety of behaviours as well as a remarkable flexibility and ability for new behavioural adaptations. Humans thrived by being smart and by adapting their behaviours in spite of physically superior competitors and predators. The primary reason why humans have large brains and well developed cognitive abilities is because it is the mechanism for learning new behaviours which is our primary evolutionary asset.

However, unlike physical advantages, new behavioural adaptations are not genetically inherited; they have to be taught from one generation to the next. Yet teaching requires the presence of parents. And the relatively high degree of behavioural differentiation between men and women (in the human species) meant that there was a significant component of learned human behaviours that was gender-specific. For example, if only the mother was ‘around’ learning of male offspring would be seriously handicapped. This meant that there would be an advantage for the offspring of couples who were able to remain together.

Emotionally attached parents allowed division of labour efficiencies and created a team-based nurturing environment that significantly enhanced the survivability of ones children from sexual reproduction. The mating love bond evolved because such a bond conveyed competitive advantage on the offspring of those who had it. In other words we love not because it is beautiful, not because humans are ‘special’, and not even because “God is Love”, but because it was useful for our evolutionary survival.

Mate love clearly characterizes many other living organisms (particularly animals), and certainly evolved first long before humans existed. Although it is possible that is unusually strong in humans this is only because of the relatively high dependency of human offspring compared to other species, and the relatively high marginal value of two-parent rearing.

Love Is Different For Men and Women
Remember that a prevalent male reproductive strategy (in humans) was to mate with as many females as possible creating many offspring and maximizing the chances that at least some of the children would survive. This strategy (if successful) would create a high number of offspring to offset the relatively low chance of survival of each. Due to biology this strategy was only available to males, and due to its prevalence in the male population, one can presume that it has been a relatively successful male reproductive strategy.

For females, a better reproductive strategy has been to mate with relatively few males, and to select them partly on the likelihood that they would support her and the mutual offspring.

Logic suggests that a woman that did not have exclusive sexual access to her mate would experience more competitive offspring (fathered by the man that she chose as a desirable genetic mate). Worse than that, she might have had to share his ‘fathering’ resources and attention or even lose them altogether to the other woman. Either one of these possibilities would have been a disaster for the reproductive success of the female in an already difficult and competitive environment. Logic suggests that females would carefully select males to ensure they were sufficiently ‘bonded’ for ‘exclusive’ mating.

Observation of typical female behaviour confirms this logic. Human females often delay sex with a male till some degree of ‘bonding’ occurs, and then carefully guards sexual exclusivity. Although his sexual infidelity may result in her not loving him, his lack of ‘post-sex commitment’ will almost certainly cause her to do so.

For males, lack of sexual exclusivity would be even worse. It could mean that the subsequent offspring is not even his. In this case he would have lost his chance of producing children with that (presumably genetically desirable) female for 1-3 years. Worse still, he might never know the offspring was not genetically his and would invest his fathering resources raising the offspring of another male.

From the point of view of a man, if mating and reproductive rights are not exclusive he could be creating a nurturing family environment that then protects another man’s genetic offspring. A biological disaster for him in evolutionary terms; Therefore, the definition in this model implies that men in particular will go to great lengths to avoid non-exclusive sexual possession.

Because a man’s primary reproductive vulnerability came from his mate’s sexual non-exclusivity, his ‘mate love’ came to depend on her sexual fidelity (more than any other thing). And because a woman’s primary reproductive vulnerability came from the man’s lack of continued or non-exclusive physical presence, her ‘mate love’ came to depend on this dependability or ‘stickiness’, (more than any other thing).

So for normal mate love to prosper a man promises to be exclusive, but above all things, to ‘stick around’ after sex and the woman promises to ‘stick around’, but above all things to be exclusive. The final result is similar but not symmetric for males and females; mate love is intrinsically associated with mutually exclusive mating, i.e. ‘possession’. In the long run, significant deviations from this implicit exchange will counter or dissipate mate love.

The importance of love between mates is that it had to create a complete mutual commitment to a single shared objective in spite of the fact that male and female reproductive strategies were not aligned. Almost all gender (mating) issues are a natural but inevitable result of this asymmetric biology.

How Does Love Function?
According to biologists, the primary way in which this particular bond functions is that the brain releasing chemicals during activities associated with the presence of this individual. Since sexual activity is the primary mechanism for accomplishing genetic reproduction, particularly powerful neurotransmitters are released prior to and during sex. According to biologists, the schedule of release of these neurotransmitters appears to last from 18 months to five years, depending on who you ask.

Whatever the period is exactly, it coincides (logically enough) with most vulnerable period of life for human offspring. If we need empirical support for the notion that the purpose of mate love is to keep parents around to rear the offspring, here it is; it appears to last as long as human children are vulnerable, and then declines.

Mate love functions in that we are highly motivated to hold onto the source that evokes these powerful and pleasurable chemical neurotransmitters; the source in this case being the person who triggers, in us, the release of these neurotransmitters. The chemical neurotransmitters are, like many other drugs, extremely pleasurable and highly addictive. The desire for sexual and other mating activities is based on the drive to reproduce the pleasurable feelings from the powerful neurotransmitters.

Love and Desire
Mate love is a desire for, and attachment to, another person based on a perception of their desirability and availability as a ‘mate’.

If the simple definition above is reasonably good, you would expect the mating bond to be most affected by the perceived desirability and availability of the person, as a mating partner. In other words, this definition says, that feeling this type of ‘love’ is directly related to your perception of another’s sexual attractiveness and their availability to you for mating. If the simple definition above is reasonably accurate, you would also expect the strength of a mating bond to weaken if:
1) Perception of ‘mating desirability’ decreases significantly, or 2) if the other person is not available, or becomes, unavailable (other things being equal).

Furthermore, since, (according to this definition) the evolutionary purpose of the mating bond is to keep parents together to protect their offspring, if:
1) Significant mating (sexual) activity occurs, or
2) Children result,
This model predicts that a subsequent decrease in sexual desirability (other things being equal) does not necessarily have to cause a significant weakening of the bond. The presence of children, for example, can produce strong bonds with even incompatible couples, keeping them together (happily or otherwise), for years.

In other words, this definition suggests that if you have a lot of sex and/or children early on, your ‘love’ will be more robust to decreases in sexual attractiveness. Women who fight hard to stay thin and then put on 70lbs six months after getting married, and women who get pregnant to ‘save the relationship’, are recognizing these realities even though they will swear they are romantic and believe that “true love lasts forever”.

What Is The Connection Between Jealousy And Love?
Since mate love is based on genetic desirability, other things being equal, the greater the perceived genetic desirability of the mate, the greater will be the likelihood of ‘mate love’. Also however, other things being equal, the greater the love bond, the more is lost from lack of exclusivity. The departure of a desirable genetic father, or having your female mate impregnated by another male are biological catastrophes for the individual. Based on this logic, we would expect mate love would be characterized not just by a strong desire for mating activities, but also extreme intolerance of non-exclusive mating. Mate love is a powerful behaviour-changing condition that exposes the individual to considerable risk by mitigating its ‘normal’ tendency to behave in its own self-interest. This is the flip side of the precarious balance of ‘love’. A genetically desirable mate that is sexually unfaithful could then suddenly change from ‘desirable mating partner’ (requiring unselfish behaviour to attract them) to ‘strong genetic competitor’ (requiring aggressive behaviour to compete with them). Jealousy is the mechanism that counteracts mate love to allow return to ‘normal’ selfish behaviour. It counters the tendency to behave unselfishly towards a mate at a time when it appears no longer in their interest to do so. To deal with the radical change in status of a mate departing from exclusivity, humans (and other animals too judging by behaviour) must have evolved neurotransmitter reactions sufficiently powerful to ‘overcome’ those associated with mating love. A sort of ‘love cure’; as strong as the chemistry is to inspire mate love, jealousy neurotransmitters would have to be, and are (if you ask me), equally, or more ‘overpowering’ in order to allow the individual to revert to behaving selfishly in it’s own interest once again. The key to note here is that the model predicts that far from being totally altruistic, mate love elicits ‘nice’ behaviour only as long as exclusive mating is maintained. Functionally, the desire alone to avoid the loss of these intensely powerful pleasurable chemical neurotransmitters could motivate strong reactions. But mate love neurotransmitters are so powerful, that they require equally powerful antidotes. The resulting combination of powerful chemicals in the body is unavoidably ‘overpowering’ or destabilizing. Thus jealousy can evoke uncharacteristically harsh, even violent, behavioural reactions. Also, judging by the way sexual jealousy feels subjectively, I would assume that these are a quite different set of neurotransmitters. Judging only by our own subjective feelings, we might conclude that, not only does perceived infidelity by a mate counter the neurotransmitter effect of love, but that ‘jealousy’ itself is the result of a different set of neurotransmitters. And they are not as pleasant. Threats to any organism’s important life resources must be vigorously contested. They typically evoke its most harsh behavioural reactions. Functionally, protection of reproductive assets is similar in many ways to protection of food (in an environment where such resources are very scarce). It is likely, therefore, that the chemistry is similar. There is ample evidence that in environments where food is scarce, humans, much like other animals, react forcefully and even violently to compete for food resources. Therefore, from a behavioural point of view jealousy is equivalent to the feeling of someone stealing your food when you are starving. In animals, the reactions also look similar.

Love Is Necessarily Selfish
This model of different types of love bond, does not suggest (as the Dictionary does) that what we call ‘love’ is selfless or altruistic, except to the degree that being unselfish brings personal benefits. Mate love is at its core a desire for mating ‘possession’ and is therefore essentially self-serving. We know this to be true from both logic and observation. The purpose of the mating bond is not to benefit the ‘loved’ person per say, but rather to inspire love for oneself and to create a nurturing family environment for ones own offspring; this is logical, because after all, unless socially altruistic behaviour conveys some definite personal advantage it would not be ‘selected’ for, or survive the natural selection process.

Mate love is clearly characterized by unselfish (‘other-serving’) behaviour. Yet although we think of mate love as altruistic, the love bond clearly only lasts as long as it is perceived to be mutual. This behaviour is therefore unselfish, but self-serving. Perceived lack of ‘mutuality’ will usually squash mate love and associated unselfish behaviour before it ever develops. Also, if, and only if, love is self-serving, would perceived lack of mutuality logically cause a need for self-correction to mate love?

Sure enough real life behaviours are consistent with this notion. We only love our mate as long as they love us back, and we are only unselfish as long as it is in our interest to be so. Mate love is still self-serving in that sense, and would not exist, in fact, if it did not effectively perform this self-serving function. Mate love exists because it maximizes ones own genetic success. It is part of the reproductive strategy of the human species.

True Love?
The ultimate test of such a model of course, is does it explain and predict real-world behaviours? Ask yourself; are these assertions consistent with your observations of actual human psychology and behaviour? Do they allow you to consistently describe and/or predict actual human behaviour, regardless of how ‘shallow’ the behaviour may seem?

To test this model, try to remember how you usually feel when your ‘love interest’ wavers, does not love you back, or departs from the exclusive mating arrangement. If you cannot ‘possess’ her/him does it quickly turn to something far less ‘romantic’? After all, if there were such a thing as ‘true love’ then wouldn’t you presumably love them forever regardless of whether they loved you back?

How many times have you seen that?

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You might also enjoy reading:-

• Four Types of ‘Love’
• What’s Wrong With Romance?
• Why Men Are More Visual
• Altruism may enhance sex appeal
• Why Do Women ‘Tease’?

Posted by Scott in Psychology, Sociology

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