Why We Love (23 page)

This second phase of rejection—resignation coupled with despair—is well documented in other species. Infant mammals suffer terribly when they are separated from their mother. Remember the puppy? When you isolate it in the kitchen, at first it protests. Eventually, however, it curls up in a corner into a despondent heap. Abandoned infant monkeys suck on their fingers or their toes, clasp themselves, and often curl into a fetal position and rock.
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The feeling of despair has been associated with several different networks in the mammalian (including human) brain.
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Among them is the brain’s reward system and its fuel: dopamine. As the abandoned partner gradually realizes that the reward will never come, the dopamine-making cells in the midbrain (that became so active during the protest phase) now
decrease
their activity.
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And diminishing levels of dopamine are associated with lethargy, despondency, and depression.
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The stress system also contributes. As you may recall, short-term stress activates the production of dopamine and norepinephrine and suppresses serotonin. But as the stress of abandonment wears on, it drives levels of all these potent substances down below normal—producing profound depression.
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Shakespeare called the brain the “soul’s frail dwelling place.” It is also a frail dwelling place for romantic love.

Depression as an Adaptation?

Like abandonment rage, the despair response may seem counterproductive. What’s the point of suffering pain and misery when you have lost a sweetheart? Isn’t it better to recover your energy than waste it crying?

Many scientists now believe, however, that there are good reasons for depression, so good that this complex brain circuitry evolved as a coping mechanism millions of years ago.
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Some maintain it originally emerged to enable abandoned infant mammals to conserve stamina, discourage them from wandering until their mother returns, and keep them quiet and thus protected from predators. Depression thus enabled animals to conserve energy in times of stress. Depression also could have driven ancestral humans to abandon hopeless ventures and adopt more successful strategies to achieve their goals—particularly reproductive goals such as getting married.
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Despair is such a debilitating experience that it must have evolved for many good reasons. A related purpose I particularly like is proposed by anthropologist Edward Hagen, biologist Paul Watson, and psychiatrist Andy Thomson. These scientists believe that the very high metabolic and social cost of depression is actually its benefit: one’s depression is an honest, believable signal to others that something is desperately wrong. Hence depression evolved, they say, to enable stressed ancestors to signal for and acquire social support in times of intense need,
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particularly when they were unable to verbally persuade or use force to get friends and relatives to support their cause.

An example would be a young woman living a million years ago whose husband openly pursued and copulated with another woman in their camp. At first the young wife bitterly protested, flew into jealous rages, and tried to persuade her husband to dismiss the interloper. Furious, she also appealed to her father and other kin to support her request. Unable to influence her spouse or relatives with words or tantrums, however, she became deeply depressed. This affliction further disrupted camp life, not to mention her ability to gather vegetables and help take care of kids and other kin. So eventually her despondency galvanized her kinfolk to drive out this flagrantly unfaithful husband and console her until she could recover her vitality, find a new man, and contribute more food, child care—and gaiety—to the group.

Aeschylus, the classical Greek dramatist of the fifth century
B.C.
, saw another merit in depression. As he proclaimed in
Agamemnon,
“He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of god.” Depression, in short, can give you insight. Scientists can now explain why. Mildly depressed people make clearer assessments of themselves and others.
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As psychologist Jeffrey Zeig puts it, “They suffer a failure of denial.” Even severe and prolonged depression can push a person to accept unhappy facts, make decisions, and resolve conflicts that will ultimately promote their survival and capacity to reproduce.
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So, like the protest response, the despair of rejection probably evolved for a number of reasons. Among them, depressed lovers were able to assemble familiar, loving, patient, compassionate friends and kin around them and use their heightened mental acuity to appraise themselves and their failed love affairs, set new goals, review their courtship tactics, and try their luck again—perhaps even win a more suitable mating partner. The pain rejected men and women endured probably even steered them away from making similar bad choices in the future.

In discussing the evolutionary value of despair, one must distinguish, of course, between the sorrow of romantic rejection and the depression that can accompany a severe, long-term, internal mental disorder, such as bipolar depression. What we are concerned about here is the deep grief that
normally well-balanced
men and women feel for a period of time when they are cast aside by someone they adore.

Not everyone suffers to the same degree, of course. How we react to rejection depends on many forces—including our upbringing. Some people make secure attachments as children and have the self-esteem and resilience to overcome a romantic setback relatively quickly. Others grow up in loveless homes fraught with tension, chaos, or rejection—leaving them clingy, or defenseless in other ways.
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As we venture into life, we develop new feelings of competence or incompetence, different sorts of romantic expectations, and different coping mechanisms that affect how we weather lost love.
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Some people have more mating opportunities than others; they easily replace a rejecting partner with amorous distractions that mitigate their feelings of protest and despair. And we are all wired differently; some are simply less angry, less depressed, more self-confident, and more relaxed about life’s disasters in general or about romantic rejection in particular.

Still, we human beings are intricately wired to suffer when we have been spurned by a beloved. Everywhere on earth men and women can recall the bitter details of their distress—even many years after the turmoil has defused.
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For a good evolutionary reason. Those who love and mate and breed will pass on their genes toward posterity, while those who lose in love and sex and reproduction will ultimately die out.

We are designed to suffer when love fails.

Alas, the feelings that accompany rejection can lead some men and women to deeds that earn the deadly mark of Cain.

Crimes of Passion: Jealousy

“We must in tears / Unwind a love knit up in many years. / In this last kiss I here surrender thee / Back to thyself. Lo thou again art free.”
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Poet Henry King was able to let a departing lover go.

Some people find this impossible to do. Even before a partner actually leaves a relationship men and women can be exceedingly possessive of “him” or “her.” Jealousy is common around the world.
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In fact, as discussed in chapter two, this possessiveness is so common in all of nature that scientists call it “mate guarding.”

When a relationship is threatened by a rival suitor, some jealous people sulk. Others monopolize the mate’s spare time, conceal the loved one by not taking him or her to parties, or even scold a mate who talks to others in social situations. Some try to make a sweetheart jealous in return. Many also try to appear more important, sexier, richer, or smarter than a potential competitor, as well as irresistible themselves. Some shower a beloved with presents and affection to keep the beloved’s undivided attention. And some threaten to kill themselves if their partner leaves them for another.

Men and women become jealous over many of the same things. When either sex sees a partner flirting with others, they can become ferociously possessive. Catching a mate kissing, fondling, or copulating with another seriously unhinges most men and women.
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At different times in life and in different societies, men and women vary in what makes them jealous.
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But young men and women do show some consistent differences in what triggers feelings of rejection and how they manage a jealous heart.

Men bristle over actual or imagined sexual infidelity.
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This male bias may have an evolutionary origin. A man runs a considerable risk if he is cuckolded: he could expend an enormous amount of time and energy raising another man’s DNA. And men are more likely to challenge a rival, assailing him with nasty words or heavy fists. In many societies, men are also more likely than women to divorce a spouse they believe is sexually unfaithful—which may be a reflection of the male tendency to fear cuckoldry.

If men fear being cuckolded, women fear being abandoned—emotionally and financially.
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So if the relationship begins to founder, women take steps to overcome the obstacles. Women are more likely than men to overlook a mate’s “one-night stand” or temporary sexual fling with a rival. But if a woman thinks her mate is building a serious emotional attachment to another woman, or knows he is spending valuable time and money on this competitor, she can become exceedingly jealous.

This behavior also makes Darwinian sense. For millions of years ancestral women needed mates to help them rear their young. Hence, women have evolved brain mechanisms to make them exceedingly possessive when a mate threatens to withdraw resources or emotional support or abandon the relationship for another.

“Love’s like a torch, which if secured from blasts, / Will faintlier burn; but then it longer lasts. / Exposed to storms of jealousy and doubt, / The blaze grows greater, but ‘tis sooner out.” So wrote poet William Walsh.
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At first glance, jealousy appears to be a death knell to a love affair. But psychologists believe it can stimulate a mate to soothe the mistrustful partner with declarations of fidelity and attachment. Indeed, these reassurances can contribute to the durability of the relationship.
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Jealousy can undermine a love affair, however, and this response can also be adaptive. Jealous men and women are often picking up genuine signals that the relationship is failing. And every day they remain tied to uncommitted partners, they lose opportunities to catch more suitable mates—as well as risk picking up sexually transmitted diseases.

So jealousy has reproductive payoffs. It can strengthen a partnership or destroy it. Either way, jealousy is useful. As a result, this unpleasant trait has become deeply threaded into the skein of human romantic love, part of an array of powerful feelings our forebears needed on the grasslands of ancient Africa to win the courtship game.

When a lover departs for good, however, jealousy, the drive to protest, feelings of depression, and all the other disruptive forces that accompany lost love can lead to violence—and tragedy.

Stalking, Battering, Killing

Men stalk. They obsessively follow and often threaten or harass a lover who has left them.
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Some shower a departed woman with vile or entreating messages. Some steal valuables or personal items such as underwear. Some follow a former partner in their cars. Others loiter near the partner’s home or place of work to jeer or plea. In one study of American college students, 34 percent of women said they had been followed or harassed by a man they had rejected.
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And one out of twelve American women will be stalked by a man at some point in her life, usually by a former spouse or lover. In fact, the Justice Department reports that every year over a million American women are stalked (most are between ages eighteen and thirty-nine); 59 percent of them are stalked by boyfriends, husbands, former spouses, or live-in partners.
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One out of four women are also hit, slapped, shoved, or otherwise physically assaulted by their stalkers.
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In fact, five independent investigators on three continents report that in some 55 percent to 89 percent of cases, stalkers became violent toward former sexual intimates.
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Most are men.

Men also batter. One-third of all American women seeking emergency medical care, one of four women who attempt suicide, and some 20 percent of pregnant women who seek prenatal care have been battered by an intimate partner.
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And in a study of thirty-one battered American women, twenty-nine reported that a male partner’s jealousy was a frequent cause of the beatings.
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These statistics are not surprising. The most common cause of wife battering everywhere in the world is male possessiveness.
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Men kill too. About 32 percent of all female murder victims in the United States die at the hands of spouses, ex-spouses, boyfriends, and ex-boyfriends, but experts believe the true numbers may be as high as 50 percent to 70 percent instead.
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Over 50 percent of these murderers stalk their lover first.
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Men commit the vast majority of spousal homicides in all other countries, too.
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The classic tale of jealous murder is Shakespeare’s
Othello.
What a mess. Othello, a dark-skinned Moor, had achieved the rank of general because of his valor in the Venetian wars against the Turks. Now returned to Venice, he meets Desdemona, the beautiful daughter of a senator. The Moor and the maiden fall in love almost instantly; secretly they marry. But Othello has used a go-between, Cassio, to help court the fair Desdemona. And to reward the young soldier, he promotes him to be his chief lieutenant.