Blog

How Hooking Up Can Set the Stage for Love

Hooking up In today’s liberated world, hookup culture is rampant. Take a look around any bar on a Saturday night, and you’ll find lots of people getting ready to go home with someone they just met. While some bemoan the lack of “traditional values” and clearly defined dating rules, relationship experts have begun to realize the power… Read more »

Why Having Kids Can (Temporarily) Hurt Your Relationship

For many couples, parenthood ranks among their greatest dreams. You might have an idyllic mental image of playing with a smiling, happy baby, pushing a stroller through the park on your way to a family picnic, and putting the baby to bed before relaxing for some evening adult time. While all these things are certainly… Read more »

3 Reasons You Should Never Settle for a “Good Enough” Relationship

Settle for a relationship For many people, the drive for a solid, strong romantic relationship is powerful. This makes perfect evolutionary sense, as our ancestors had a much better chance for survival when they could divide up the tough tasks of primitive life. Today, however, while a lifelong relationship can be highly rewarding, those who remain single are not… Read more »

GET HAPPY: the “Meaningful Life”- Romantic love is not necessary

Prayers, betting parlors, doctor’s appointments, monuments, diets, holidays, college degrees, lottery tickets, Valentine’s Day cards, wedding rings: what do these things have in common?  Each offers hope. The Statue of Liberty is a beacon of hope. Los Vegas sells hope. Immigrants risk their lives and leave their homelands because they hope. Gaming people hope. At… Read more »

5 Tips for Successful Dating

Tips for Successful Dating Although many people hate “the game,” or the process of dating, the reality is that there are no shortcuts. If you are looking for love, companionship, or someone to fill your Saturday nights, you will have to go out there and find it—which means navigating the complex minefield of dating. Fortunately, while shortcuts don’t exist,… Read more »

What Is Companionate Love and How Can It Save Your Relationship?

What Is Companionate Love The triangular theory of love, pioneered by psychologist Robert Sternberg, claims that all love relationships are built on three legs of a triangle: intimacy, commitment, and passion. Relationships can be described and defined according to which of the components they possess, with consummate love containing all three in equal balance. Companionate love describes relationships that… Read more »

Your Temperament- and Your Best Partner’s Temperament

“We look at brain chemistry!” Why we are naturally drawn to some people rather than others? It is a huge mystery. Why are we more compatible with some people and not others?  there are some answers out there.  Helen Fisher and Lucy Brown along with Bianca Acevedo have conducted brain scanning experiments to study just… Read more »

We’re in the Movies!

Here is the NY Times review of the documentary movie on heartbreak that features Helen Fisher.  It’s not the most positive review, but the Times thought it was important enough to see it. We think you may like the documentary.  We think it is thought-provoking and entertaining.  The characters are interesting; their lives are interesting; we… Read more »

Helen Fisher Featured on BuzzFeed

The Anatomy of Love is thrilled to announce that one of our founders, Helen Fisher, PhD, was recently featured on BuzzFeed! Her piece, entitled “16 Facts About Dating That Will Change The Way You Think About Love,” turns everything you thought you knew about love and romance on its ear. The article is a real… Read more »

6 Keys to Building a Healthy Relationship

Building a healthy relationship Humans have a nearly irrepressible longing for meaningful connections with others. Romantic relationships are at the top of many people’s wish lists, yet it is easy to fall into unhealthy patterns of intense couplings followed by dramatic breakups. If you are ready to break that cycle and build a relationship that can last, you need… Read more »

Modern Love: Helen Fisher’s evaluation

  Hooking up; Friends with Benefits; living together; constant yakking on cell phones: many Americans believe the young are ushering in an era of emotional isolation and sexual chaos. But I am optimistic about the future of relationships. Foremost, Singles are leading the way to a far less prejudiced society.  Some 75% of singles would… Read more »

Are Second Marriages Doomed?

A quick look at the statistics shows that the failure rate for second and subsequent marriages is quite high. While the divorce rate for first marriages is a shocking 40-50%, this number climbs dramatically after the first marriage, to nearly 75% in third marriages. This seems to indicate that marrying multiple times is fruitless, silly,… Read more »

Science Goes To The Movies- CUNY TV

    The City University of New York has a great cable channel in New York (CUNY), and today, August 21st, The New York Times featured a CUNY program with Helen Fisher as one to watch: Fifty Shades of Grey, Fatal Attraction, and Last Tango in Paris. From CUNY TV’s website: First aired: August 21,… Read more »

Birth of your first child- CBS This Morning

  Helen appeared on CBS This Morning with Charlie Rose to comment on a new study with surprising results: it concludes that the birth of a first child leads to depression more often than happiness!  Helen has some interesting thoughts about why this finding might be true. Click here to watch (From August 12, 2015) Will birth… Read more »

Travel: Love is Everywhere- Helen on the Pamir Highway

Today, Lucy got an email message from Helen, quoted below.  Helen has been away for over two weeks traveling on a vacation to Turkmenistan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and more– all those countries north of India and near Afghanistan.  She went into the Pamir mountains on the Pamir Highway, which is exotic, but very rustic and even dangerous.  Lucy was afraid… Read more »

3 Ways to Move on After a Divorce

move on after a divorce A divorce is a massive psychological and emotional blow for anyone. No matter how difficult your marriage had become, whether or not you initiated the divorce process, it is normal to feel devastated. The person you expected to be your lifelong partner is gone, and your trust is shattered. You may feel isolated and alone,… Read more »

Can Romance Become A Long-term Love for You?

Falling in lust is easy. A biochemical, hormonal response to someone you feel drawn to, attraction is a powerful evolutionary drive. Intense passion, putting the other person on a pedestal, spending all of your time together…many people interpret these feelings and actions as love– and they are! It may just be early-stage, short-term love, though…. Read more »

Will You Ever Find Love?

Thinking About Valentine's Day The quest for romantic love is as old as the human race. In fact, some experts believe it is even older, as certain animals also exhibit strong bonding behaviors and even monogamy. Yet the irony of love is that the harder you look for it, the less likely you are to actually find it. While… Read more »

Is Monogamy Natural?

Searching for a life-long mate is an age-old quest. Monogamy may have been an early evolutionary adaptation, since those who lived in family units were in a better position to survive and multiply under harsh primitive conditions. Yet most people didn’t live that long, and “serial monogamy,” or a series of monogamous relationships, was the… Read more »

How to Find True Love

Girl Happy show white T-Shirt with Text (I love) The quest for romantic love is one of the most primitive and powerful urges we have. More than a simple feeling or emotion, love is what the ancient Greeks called “the madness of the Gods.” Today, we know it as both a natural addiction and a physiological drive like hunger or thirst. With so much… Read more »

Love and Cooking!

Michael P. Brenner, Glover Professor When we are in love, we often like to cook with each other.  We are creating something together, cooperating, engaging in an everyday-living task together.  Early in the relationship, it is part of getting to know each other, like our food preferences, and it brings us into each others’ homes.  The quiet anticipation of eating something… Read more »